Unit 68

Research Doom to CoD (FPS)

Maze War was the first game to start of the FPS revolution in 1985 but Doom is always the game that pops into peoples heads when thinking back to the roots of the genre and where they first got the thrill of death-matches in a LAN party in a room with friends in 1993.

There have been more version of these games but never came quite up to match with its predecessor but its always the game that everyone looks at as the start of the biggest genre there is and other FPS to be inspired by.  

Since then the FPS genre has been dominating the gaming industry with many of the biggest gaming franchises spawning from it like Golden Eye, Counter Strike, TF2, QUAKE, Medal of Honor, Halo, battlefield and a HUGE amount more.

The biggest FPS in the genre in history is the Call Of  Duty franchise starting in 2003 and since then made 21 different titles on a mix of consoles and mobile devices. The franchise has even been awarded the Guinness world record for the best video game series ever.

There have been huge changes to the FPS genre over the time period of these two franchises, over time the Story's and worlds have become richer and the hardware of new consoles have made things possible that Doom could never achieve in its time, one of the biggest things being Xbox live making it possible to play and talk with people around the world for the first time without them needing to LAN together in the same room. 

Its not so much a run and gun game anymore but its become much more, its a whole world you can immerse in and enjoy with others around the world.

TWISTED GAMES

All of us in the group worked together to come up with the idea of the game and what the story was going to be. We went through multiple different versions with everyone throwing in different ideas and mixing everything together, which was then structured and refined by Tyron.

I did write the background story for the main character for the 10 page document. We all had a basic of what happened but never when to detail in the main story write up, that the farther was abusive and killed the mother but that was all and i just expanded on that keeping tabs with Tyron to see if he liked how it was within the story.

Background:

He grew up with his older brother and sister. At a very young age there farther was a very abusive alcoholic drug addict and he used to come home after a night and beat them, especially the mum when she tried to protect the kids.

One day he came back and went too far and killed the mom by beating her bad and knocking her off her smashing her head into the corner of a side, the older brother went for the dad swinging at him while the sister ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife and ran back to the brawl.

She shoves the knife into the fathers back and he falls to the floor, she pulls it back out and stares in horror then looks up at the older brother who is staring at the knife. He demands the knife from her and she looks at him confused of why. Then he walked over and took it from her hands and walked back over in front of the farther and looked at him straight in the eyes, staring at him with pure hatred. He enjoyed for a minute watching the pain her was in then grabbed the farther by the hair and smiles right at him just before lunging the knife into his stomach over and over laughing and enjoying the moment he gives the pain back the one who did so much to them.

The youngest was just at the side watching all this in horror; too young to do anything about the scene that just happened in front of him that will scar him for life.

The three of them kept quite of exactly what happened between the older brother and the dad and mad it sound like it was under self-protection. After this they were put into care and every home they were put into and being pulled apart in some cases they never quite fit in and was always put back into care. When the brother was older enough he became the guardian of the other two and moved back into the house that was left to them.

In the group i was in charge of the character development concept art and there information sheets.

This concept drawing is of the older brother Erin Blakely. I was inspired by a character Draven showed me of Daniel from amnesia, i liked the way his hair was long, dirty and messy and how his skin looked pale as if dead and i wanted to interpret that into my character.

I also did an information sheet for him.

This is the main character who we have given no name or face as it is a first person game and we really wanted to make it feel like you are the character and that all this happening to you to help the player immerse and feel more within the story.

i wanted to keep a similar structure of the older brother head though to be as there related but gave him medium length messy hair.

Kyle worked on making a 3D interpreted model of this character from the drawing i did above.

Kyle's 3D model

Here is the information sheet i did for this character for the 10 pager document.

We had this idea that the player had to find items of past victims, something that was personal item. This was in the mind of that if he found them and link them with what he did he could in someway find redemption and i drew a few ideas below.

I also helped design the logo for Twisted Games with a few sketched ideas. The below one then inspired Tyron to make a final logo with that style of type.

For the 10 pager document i also worked on the character controls which we all decided to do for PC.

Game Pitch - They made me





Concept pitch feedback

1


•Nice logo at the beginning
•Good intro.
•Nice concept, nice voiceover and people working combination.
•Video at end is slow to start but has impact, maybe need to think about using it more effectively
to get same / more impact.

1, Is the concept viable and deliverable (in its 
current form?)

Good concept, I don’t know how feasible, but could be

2,Would you ever consider backing the idea 
financially? whether this be via crowd funding or 
individual investment.

Maybe via kickstarter.

3,How professional the pitch is compared to 
pitches you may have seen as part of your role?
It would be good if you could comment on 
presentation, delivery and technical approach to the 
presentation.

Yes fairly good for the resources available.

4,Please comment on whether you feel the concept 
also has potential for starting a crowd funding
campaign.

Yes it does.





2



1, Is the concept viable and deliverable (in its 
current form?)

Another brutal and disturbing story. One that I think would struggle to get a PEGI rating. I like the
idea that the environment is somehow the characters mind

2,Would you ever consider backing the idea 
financially? whether this be via crowd funding or 
individual investment.

I would not back it in its current form, as the story is too dark and disturbing


3,How professional the pitch is compared to 
pitches you may have seen as part of your role?
It would be good if you could comment on 
presentation, delivery and technical approach to the 
presentation.

The pitch was clear and the video good. It would need more visual concept drawings.

4,Please comment on whether you feel the concept 
also has potential for starting a crowd funding
campaign.

It has potential to be a crowd sourcing campaign,
as it will connect with a large audience who like

dark subjects.




3


1, Is the concept viable and deliverable (in its 
current form?)

It’s a bold concept and I think it has definite curiosity value.

2,Would you ever consider backing the idea 
financially? whether this be via crowd funding or 
individual investment.

I think with the info provided it felt more like an interactive art concept than an actual game,
so a little more explanation of gameplay features would be cool.

3,How professional the pitch is compared to 
pitches you may have seen as part of your role?
It would be good if you could comment on 
presentation, delivery and technical approach to the 
presentation.


The pitch was good, and they detailed some very nice ideas – the house changing to reflect
the mood stands out as a great feature, just need to make sure the gameplay isn’t lost under the weight

of the concept.

4,Please comment on whether you feel the concept 
also has potential for starting a crowd funding
campaign.

I definitely feel it has potential. A little more concept art and design detailing would be

good.

Unit 44 Website Design

HTML

HTML is a computer language used to create websites. It works by using closed tags like <img>
and mostly come in pairs like <header>....</header>, the first a opening tag and the second being a closing tag.
A web browser reads the files and turns all the tags and information within them into a visual and interactive web page.
HTML also can use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to define the design of the website like text, color and shape etc.

Both HTML and CSS are important for web design and one cant be without the other. I will describe this using a house as an example. The HTML is everything within in the house which shows what kind of people live here and what they are about. In this case it would be images, links, text and videos etc.
The CSS is the Structure of the building itself like walls, floors, wallpaper... in this case it would be the borders separating the content of the HTML, the colors of everything and the size of some content.

Now without the HTML no one would want to want to live in this house nor visit the website as it would have no content and be empty. Without the CSS everything else in the website would be a mess, in one big mash up on the ground and harder to understand whats going on, which wil also put people from visiting the site.

These is the building blocks for any website.


Website design issues

http://mimarch.net/#slide10

This website has a huge flaw to its slideshow. You have to hover over the squares on the slideshow to change the image behind but the way this happens is horrible to your eyes as it changes so fast and all you have to do is slightly hover over one. It is also transparent making it hard to read within the slideshow change.
A second flaw is the the navigation bar, There's the main one with Home, Markets, About Us etc, which is fine but the second at the top left is so strangely placed. Its at a spot you would expect the company name or the logo to be and that this bar would be in the middle left of the page.
The footer i find is the best part of the  website and have nothing to fault.




http://www.wrdaonline.org/

Theres only one main thing that comes to mind straight when i went on this site and that was the colour scheme, it was dreadful on everything even the drop down boxes on the navigation. for that reason it would be a website i wouldn't want to spend much time on as its not nice on your eyes.



http://www.bolenreport.com/

Straight away there is so much to take in with way too much text  and columns (messy), the colour is all over the place especially in the navigation bar  where its at its worst, its not needed and could be just black and white.

The layout of everything is good and i knew where everything was i just think there should be less columns or text.

http://www.rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk/

This website is all over the place, there is just way too much there and the colour scheme does not help. I can understand what the websites about but i don't understand what i'm supposed to do on the website and where i'm supposed to go. its pretty much a poster but put as a website.

Poetry Slam

In our group we came up with this paper prototype to not only make a basic design but also understand where we want interactive items and links to go.

I also sketched an idea of the design for the website after the group work. With both of these above we kept to the guidelines of what Poetry Slam wanted but kept the design simplistic, but also added in a few things of our own like the news feed to give it something new and different which is also helpful to the user to know what is going on.

After our group work i worked on additional ideas for the home page and others like the gallery and Event pages.

In the actual website so far i have got it to the point where the design is simple but everything thing works. I also added in the welcoming paragraph from there website to the front.

There is still allot to add especially to the design which i'm working on the CSS to do so.

Evaluation

I have learnt allot doing this unit and i am pretty happy with my outcome, but i know i could do more and at a better quality of a website with the amount i have learnt doing this and expanding my knowledge of HTML and CSS scripting over time.

I have had a mix of feedback good and bad and most of the points made by people have pretty much been the same. The main thing that i was getting from people was that the layout was nice and simple with nice colors but it needed more of a design to it and was suggested a few ideas like adding in a drop down menu or make it less bordered.

This is definitely the main thing i want to work on as its always the first thing anyone sees when entering a website and also the main thing that people who viewed the website commented on.

There is also a few more plans of what i do want to add to the homepage like a slideshow above the the navigation bar and then to add another logo and associations into the footer.

The other thing i got from most people was to fix the logo and get rid of the white around the outside of the logo but what i would like to do is design a new and better looking logo for the website.

other than them there wasn't much else said but there is one thing i want to work is to make it a bit more lively maybe with some pictures or  a small simple design in the back.

There is definitely allot for me to work on even before moving on to the design of the other pages like the gallery and from the feedback i got i can understand which areas of the website needs a priority to change and make better to the user.