Unit 70 Computer Game Story Development

How story are used to enhance gameplay

There have been many ways of telling storys over the years from cave paintings to movies and at this moment in time the latest way of telling a story is through Games. A story is supposed to be immersive to whoever is playing, watching or listening and to be able to show you these amazing worlds.

Video games is kind of a mix of many types of story telling in its games like books for example, there are games where there are allot of reading and no voices so its like reading a book with moving visuals. I find that its can be good but can distract from the game itself sometimes.

All games use animation to tell storys by the way bodies move or facial expressions for example. Even if it were silent you could tell whats going on, if there angry or happy and this just makes the world more alive with the story. so if it were a horror genre there will be people crouched in corners scared and shaking making it believable.

I think one of the most interesting ways of story telling in games is ones that makes you have choices changing the outcome of the game so theres multiple storys like the 3rd person shooter mass effect. It helps create a feeling that you are part of a the world and you really have a choice in what happens.

Cinematic is another way of telling a part of a story in games. It takes you out of the interactive area of the game into a very movie type scene in more detail so you concentrate more on whats happening in the story a lot more clearer.

One of the best games ever i think wich uses allot of these in a great way was The Last Of Us. Its a apocalyptic world with an infection going around. They had real actors come in and do motion capture for the characters to get as much realistic movement possible in the game  from the fighting animations, facial features and cinematics making it feel believable. The characters dialog was written perfectly with great interactions between the characters pulling you into the story and whats happening.

Background story of game

Today

Character development

My game story

Chapter 1

You are coming off a plane after escorting a big British convoy of supplies from Greece to Ukraine, then spending 6months fighting on the front lines there.

It was a hard and difficult time with the cargo being attacked and losing the lives of two friends on the front.

(Flashback game play off the attack and fighting on the front line)             -spiderscribe

You are just happy to be away from all of it, this war that’s lost you so much.

You’re on a 2-week break and you’re back home in La to see your wife and daughter.

They meet you outside the military base to take you home.

3 days later you are out on a day with your daughter on a picnic in the outskirts of La and the wife is back at home.

You are having a laugh with your daughter chasing her around and tickling her when you hear a familiar rumble in the air.

Your phone rings, it was Gaz (best mate from military)

    

     “What’s wrong?” you ask quickly

     “GET OUT OF THERE, NOW!!!!” Gaz yells out of the phone. “We c- couldn’t stop it”

     “Stop what!?”

     “I’m sorry Colt”

The sound of the rumble was getting even louder and you look up into the sky. You’re worst fear was true and 3 fast objects were moving in your direction.

They shot right over and went towards the city and as you watch each one hits the city.

You have to cover your eyes from the bright light of the explosion.

The force blows you and your daughter off your feet and you get knocked out.

You wake up in a haze looking around. The sky had gone a fiery orange, you’re daughter was lying on the floor a few feet from you and you go rushing over.

You roll her onto her back and into your arms. You put your ear to her mouth to listen for a sound of breathing, a deep breath comes and you sigh in relief.

   “Hey, sweetie, wake up” you call to her in a shaky voice.

She wakes up blinking with a scared look on her face and looks around quickly.

    “W-what’s happened?” she asked in a worried voice.

You sit there blank, not able to say anything.

     “Dad? What about Mum, she’s in there”

This makes you worry; you put your daughter down and start looking around. You had it before you got knocked out, but where is it now? Where is that phone?

Your eye catches it in the grass and you rush over for it. You quickly dial the number and put the phone to your ear.

The phone just went into a continuous beep; you pull the phone from your ear and look at the screen. There was no connection.

You turn and look towards the area you live in, it looked like it was only hit by the end of the blast and not too damaged. She could of survived!

You stand there thinking for a minute and then you make up your mind.

         “I’m going in to get your mum,” you declared.

          “What in there? You can’t go in there.”

           “We will find somewhere safe for you to stay” you tell her “then I will go in and look for your mum”

            “You can’t go, it could be dangerous Dad”

            “But I got to see if she’s ok”

You walk over to your daughter and help her up off the ground and walk off towards the car. All the windows were smashed so you carefully wiped the glass out of the seats, started the engine and sped off towards the city.

Chapter 2

SPIDER SCRIBE PROLOGUE 

GAME DIALOGUE

Evaluation                 

The story is very good and I want to be able to find out what happens. The map on the top of the screen is very helpful because it shows you the different ways you can go.  I like how you added humour by being able to eat the key.

Something I think you should add is the player being able to control the car on the road like allowing the player being able to swerve to avoid traffic. This would allow the player to make it feel like the player has got more control on the direction they take in the game, Another thing you can do is make it so you can take the items out of the case, and interact with more things; and you need to correct some of your typos.

Overall I can see that the game is going to become good and im interested on how the story is going to end and cant wait to play the finished version.

Essay

How Video Games are inspired by art

In this essay im going look at how art movements can inspire games being made.
Art can inspire Games in a ways. To using a form of art as a style for a game (limbo, german expressionism) to understanding a time period (Assassins creed series).
But saying this i dont think games are hugely inspired by art but just implements it into there games in certain aspects.

Im going to look at the Game Assassins Creed as it is a good choice of game when looking at art. The games are based around a variety of time periods and the storys are fixed around huge events in history like The Third Crusade, Renaissance, golden age of piracy, the American revolution and a bit of present as well as the future.
The time periods and the events what happened around them inspired allot of art and Ubisoft loves using it within there games in many ways. I dont think that they inspired the game itself but more the setting of the games and understanding what it was like in that time period.

They do allot of research into the countries and the cities, looking into artwork from the areas to see the point of view of the artist of how everything looked back then and interpret it into there games to create an atmosphere of being in the period of time.
They also look int the original blueprints and maps of the cities itself and the layout of where the buildings are. This was done in assassins creed 2 for Venice and Florence, Brotherhoods Rome, 3 for New York and Boston.


5 minutes in they start talking about the maps from the time period.

They then have to create there own map and figure out where everything goes and how it will work like shops, guarded areas and how a player will use parkour to get around.
Also they go look at the cities now and look at the buildings and the architecture to figure out not only the look but how they can use the building to climb in the game without making much change to the structure.   

Another way they use the Art and time a period to inspire them is with there costume designs.
Im going to use assassins creed 2 to show this.

Assassins creed 2 is based around the renaissance time period in Italy. In the game when you are in venice there are allot of crowds wearing venetian masks at the festivals, so they had to design many different mask shape and styles.

On the left you can see the festival crowd and some of the characters wearing masks from full face masks to just covering up the eyes.
all of them in different styles inspired by real masks they saw in venice.
Also below is some concept art for a mask which Ezio would wear in a mission.

In Ezios assassin outfit there are also bits what are inspired by the time period like the cloak but with there own spin of it only going over one shoulder and the bonus it gave of hiding the hidden blade.

In Ezios assassin outfit there are also bits what are inspired by the time period like the cloak but with there own spin of it only going over one shoulder and the bonus it gave of hiding the hidden blade.


I would say video games itself is art. In a way its a 3D piece of art what you can interact with, like looking at a a Van Gogh painting and walking into it and looking at it from all angles digitally.
In a way like people read a book and are inspired to draw a character or setting of how they imagined it to be, games can work in the same way look at art, movie, books etc and wonder what would it be like to have that sort of world but be able to explore and be part of it.

Saying that i thing games themselves are art, i can say that assassins creed was inspired by the Prince of Persai series.
It wasn't just inspired though, it was originally going to be a Prince of persia game that became more and twisted into its own franchise.

Philippe Bergeron - "We were working on Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, And as we worked on it, it just became something bigger than Prince of Persia. We felt it wasn't the same thing, and that's when we started thinking about it as Assassin's Creed. At the same time, Désilets was super into the Third Crusade and that time period - making a Third Crusade game was a lifelong dream of his. Eventually, as we worked through it, we realised that we wanted to make it into a brand."

http://www.totalxbox.com/50961/features/assassins-creed-how-a-prince-of-persia-spin-off-became-ubisofts-flagship-ip/

The Game was called Prince of Persai Assassins and was supposed to come out in 2004 and even had a trailer shown below. and if you played the assassins creed games you can see the elements from the game in this like the hidden blades ant templars.

This image on the left was one of the original concepts of the Prince for the game by Khai Nguyen.
This then inspired the character Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad in the first assassins creed games.

So this game over time evolved from one game and idea into a completely new franchise which is now huge.
I can see the links between the 2 games as i liked the PoP franchise before assassins creed and there is a lot of similar   traits like the freerunning, which was a big part of the PoP games.

KWL method

i thought this was a good method to use in working out what i know and need to find out about something.
i think it will be useful to finding out information to put into an essay on a certain topic and extra bits i could of missed out.

Everything is a remix

I found this very interesting video that dives deep into the creative world and shows us that ORIGINALITY is just a word.
The video shows us that allot of the biggest creations throughout history started off as an idea and just remoulded to become better by someone else over and over, from evolution to modern day technology.

The main thing I found interesting is when he goes on about the laws of copyright. There are allot of companies who sue others for using there idea in there way when the did the same thing themselves to get that idea.
This does make you wonder how far this will go and if it will even be possible for innovations in the future if every company who has a slightest similarity will sue.

Unit 1 - 3 The art of the game

Task 4

Concept Art

Character

Name-                           Colt Tanner

Super Hero Name-      UNKNOWN

Age-                              17

It lives in Pill

Research of area

Pill

Other places

clifton suspension bridge

RESEARCH
Gilles Beloeil

I like this concept art and the way its been done. it looks like it been done in allot of detail but when you look closer the colours are so simple and not shaded into detail.

tri nguyen

The same thing with this one except on the detail. He used simple colours and didn't do much with them to put it into detail.

I like both of these concept artworks for the simplicity in the colours.

I have always like the sketchy, rough looking art and its the way I like to draw. I also like to draw like that on the computer. I like to keep the hand drawn look than it all be smoothed out and perfected.

Jamie hewlett

I like his sketches he does of the Gorillaz. the way he hasn't made it smooth but kept it rough.

Also I like this Jamie Hewlett inspired drawing by a deviant artist called ArCatiel.



its sketchy ,rough, simple colours with shading. but it looks detailed.it also is how I would of done it on the computer if I were using illustrator and I could easily mistake this as my own if I knew I didn't do it.
http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/274650580?view_mode=2

I would like to keep my concept drawing in that sort of style and colouring.
I want to keep the sketchy and simple colours as they have done. i wouldn't so much call these people inspiration as this has always been how i draw but they have been artists who i have looked at and seen similarity in my own but much better making me want to progress into there standard.


MY CONCEPT

warning that the picture quality isn't great.

I like the outcome so far on my concept art and i think i have done well in using my inspiration of artists in my own piece of work. i kept it the sketchy look i liked and used simple colours without going into huge detail and i think it look good  when the image quality isn't altered by the internet.

At first i drew the outlines of the bridge on paper and then put it to the computer, This then became a challenge at first as i used a drawing tablet to go over it and add in the detail and colour. Until that point i had never used a tablet before and it was strange to get  used to but i got the hang of it quickly.

This has helped me learn to use a tablet which will help me hugely in future projects if i am drawing.

Unit 4 - Communication of Art and Design (illustrator)

Messing with text

HAIKU poems

illustrator logos 

pear logo

honey bee logo

Illustrator drawing

Visual recipes

Research

Development

Final piece

Music Festival

Poster Research

Fonts

These are some of the fonts I found and liked. I already have an idea of what genre of music festival I want to do and I think these fonts will suit it.

idea

I’m going to do a festival poster based around Dubstep music.

I want it to look very techy and futuristic, with a club light sort of background, dark and bright lights.

I want to use big blocky faded type of text for the heading and the main writing to look electro. ( similar to fonts on mood board )

I will search up similar posters to see the type of style other festivals use and find cd covers and videos of bands who specialize in that music.

I am going to call the festival, “BRISDUB 14”
I will draw a few different ideas i have, find out what i like and what goes think well. i will mix and match the ideas  to make the final version on the computer.

dubstep moodboard

The style of dubstep based artwork, as shown above consists of dark colours mixed with a few bright, glowing colours ( like club lights ).
It can have a techy look to it, which suits the genre as most dubstep is made on computers.


sketched ideas for poster

Development of ideas on computer

With this poster i added 2 ideas into one and added a few extra ideas into it, like the arms of the crowd from the lettering.

Design Report - Damon Ginters

Designing these posters was fun to make and I learnt a few new techniques when making them that became very useful.

One of the things I learnt to do was how to make the backgrounds fade into two different colours, which I used in both of my final designs.

I have learnt that its best to use as little fonts as possible which I did with my second poster, only using two type fonts.

When I was researching posters I noticed that the ones that used more bright colours caught my eye more than others, so I used more bright and noticeable colours when designing my final posters.

I sadly enough didn’t get to do as much research as I would have liked to do as I wasn’t able to do any over the holidays because I had no Wi-Fi for a month, but I did do my best when coming back to college to catch up.

When a was able to do research however I searched up some posters. I chose music festivals so that’s what kind of posters I searched. I tried to keep it in the Bristol area and found a few what I altogether liked and some which I liked certain aspects.

I wanted to base my festival posters around Dubstep and researched into two things, type fonts that went with the genre and dubstep inspired images which were put into a moodboard.

I used the research I did to help me within the designing, using a few of the fonts and using the images I acquired to inspire me.

I drew a few ideas I had mixing up a few of the images around dubstep I found and converted them into a poster look, putting my own spin to it.

I chose two for my final posters and started developing. The first poster came out how I originally wanted , with few minor changes from comments, making the 14 into a 2014 so viewers could understand it meant a year, i also changed the background shade colour and direction.

The second idea I ended up merging another to it and putting an extra idea I had to it. I think it came out better than they would do alone. With the extra idea to make letters into a crowd looked good and added to the feeling of being in a club raving with the base.

I would of liked to develop my techniques more. So if I was able to do it again I could make it look more detailed. I would of liked to make a logo for the festival to put on to make it look more real.

I would like to find out how to make text and images to fade, as one of my ideas I was unable to do and had to be changed because of it.
i would like to learn how to make the background into a cloudy look instead of the fading.

I think  the posters went well and I have had some good comments. I have had some bad comments which I would liked to of worked on, but sadly enough there wasn’t enough time.

I have made a few changes to both of te posters, mainly my first and final design.

My first one I rearranged everything at first and changed some of the text.

After I changed the background colour and added music bars into the design.

I like the last one the most and made it my final design.

My second poster I didn't change hugely, mainly a rearangement of everything and then after I added in sound bars and changed the fade of the background .

I like my final poster and I think from last week I have improved on it and made it better from my mistakes.