Resubmission: Annie Royal: Possible textures to use

We decided we all need to use the same or similar textures to keep it consistent, we're all going to choose some then decide on a few of those, here are the ones I found:

Original texture

Texture with Cutout filter applied to it

Original texture

Texture with Cutout filter applied to it

Resubmission: Annie Royal: Possible Trap Ideas

The whole group have come up with a list of traps to include in the game, I've quickly drawn out a few sketches of what they could possibly look like and to bring the ideas to life, some of the ideas may be scrapped or changed.

Resubmission: Annie Royal: Level Map Sketch

(Click to enlarge)

(Sorry about my terrible handwriting)

Here I did a quick sketch of how the map could look, the map is surrounded by cliffs and the player has to make their way to the end, collecting gems and avoiding the various traps in the level.

Resubmission: Annie Royal: Environment Concept Art

I was only able to make two designs as Photoshop kept crashing, these two look similar however I wanted to add some trees into the bottom one. As we are doing a straight path platformer, I thought that the path could be made by having snowy cliffs either side, so the player has no option but to head straight.

Resubmission: Annie Royal: Environment References

As it is quite difficult for us to be able to get first hand research for our game environment, I found some images online to give us an idea of what our game could/would look like and to help us in figuring out how it will look.

Resubmission:Daniel Henry: Additional Research (The British Museum)

As a group we went to The British Museum to gain an understanding of the Ancient Roman era whilst strengthening the sources of our research, i took a few photos of pillars as thats one of the main assets used in our game.

Roman Statues that caught me and my groups attention during the visit. The photo (Top Right) of the female slave might be used as a reference for the main female character in the game.

Environment Photos (The Roman Empire Section) : I took a few close up photos from pieces of Roman Empire inscriptions, stones and bricks to attempt to create interesting textures out of them whilst keeping it coherent to the theme of our game.

Roman Helmets: Various styles and shapes which were on display there. The stylisation of the Roman helmet (Bottom Left)  is one of the key references used for my character.

Roman Shields /Weapons & Torso Armour

Resubmission: Annie Royal: Everyday Life Research

I wanted to look at some articles about people that have visited the Arctic to get their insights on what it was like to be there and how it looked, as I can't experience it for myself without spending lots of time and money.

The first one includes a few photos, which helps us with knowing more about what it looks like.

http://www.independent.ie/life/travel/world/ice-age-a-photographers-arctic-adventure-30630576.html

Group: Putting the GDD Together and Editing

Using the stuff that we had all written and noted down together before, Annie put it all together in a word document and edited it and made sure that none of it contradicted itself:

Overview

The Forgotten Rome is a third-person platform game for the web, it is based in Rome in 27 BC, where the climate of the Earth has dropped rapidly and now everything is buried under snow. The player plays as a woman called Charlotte who has found herself stranded alone in the now snowy Rome, the player must get to the end of the level without falling down an endless pit or being eaten alive by wild animals, collecting as many gems as possible on the way. The player only gets one life so to survive they must avoid all traps, when the player does die they will lose all their gems and game will restart from the beginning. Similar games include Crash Bandicoot as the game follows a straight path and there is only one camera position, forward, there are also enemies and traps that the player has to avoid and wumpa fruit to collect. However, Crash Bandicoot has a health system, where the player is able to get attacked a few times before dying and respawning. The player is also able to collect 100 wumpa fruits to get another life. The design of the game is cel shaded, where the characters and objects are almost realistic looking but still carry a lot of cartoon characteristics.

Story

Based 27 BC, back when the Romans were around, the world's climate has changed dramatically and Earth is now covered in freezing snow and ice. A woman named Charlotte has found herself stranded in this dangerous, freezing, white world, she has lost her memory and doesn't remember how she ended up where she is. She seems to notice familiar architecture and landmarks from the buildings and rubble that are protruding from the snow, she realises that she is in Rome, but not the Rome that she remembers. It is now covered by snow and surrounded by mountains that tower over her.

What Charlotte doesn't know is that a horrible blizzard appeared and everyone started evacuating Rome, as she was scrambling to get out of her masters villa, she was knocked unconscious and fell heavily into a dream. Her dream is now the game and she must find her way out of it.

Wild animals, such as wolves and Arctic foxes have taken over this land and are not giving it up with a fight. Charlotte will have to survive and find her way through this chaotic, freezing place and get to a safe place. On her travels, Charlotte will be a prey to the animals, to survive she will have to keep on running, jumping and dodging. There will even be traps lying ahead to stop Charlotte from getting to the end of her terrible journey, only the strongest and most willing can survive.

Characters

The Forgotten Rome includes one main character, she is in her early twenties and her name is Charlotte. She is a slave of a rich Roman family, she has long brunette hair which she ties up to keep out of her face, olive skin with faded freckles, brown eyes and a scar on her cheek (but she does not know how it got there). Her outfit is the typical Roman attire (she can survive the cold because it's a dream), a dirty, light brown tunic with brown wooden shoes. We chose a female character as most games use male protagonists, and we feel that we need to make the female gamers included and welcome in the gaming community.

There are also lots of enemy characters, such as wolves, Arctic foxes, penguins, seals and snowy owls. They will each be wearing their own Roman armour to show that the game is based more in a dream, as in real life, animals don't have armour.

Level Design

Each level will have collectable gems that the player must gather, and traps such as endless pits, spikes that come up from the ground and animals that are trying to attack the player. There will also be hurdles such as pillars lying on the ground that the player has to jump over. The player will be surrounded by mountains meaning that they can only move forward to progress in the level, at one point in the level the path will split and the player will have to choose what they believe is the safest route to take. There will be platforms with endless pits underneath, the player has to make sure they don't fall down as they are jumping onto the next one. 

 

Stone and snowy textures will be used on all of our assets such as the buildings, ruins statues etc for the level’s environment. A snow falling animation will be added to the character controller, particle effects will be added to the enemies when they are defeated, to show that they have been defeated.

Gameplay

On the journey, the player will be collecting gems, the more they collect the higher their score will be at the end of the level. When the player go towards a gem, it will disappear. Once the player has collected the gems (Maximum amount of gems you can collect is 30) and has got to the end of the level, a scoreboard will pop up to show how many gems the player has collected.

However if the player touches an enemy without killing it (by jumping on top of it), the player will have to restart the whole level again and the amount of gems they have collected will reset back to zero. Pits and spike traps are also an automatic death zone, the player has to jump over them to avoid falling to their death or getting stabbed.

A respawn system will restart the whole level again, meaning all enemies and collectables will reset and appear back to where they originally were. When the player respawns, the character will flash red for a few seconds to tell player that they have died that they are starting again.

User Interface and Controls

HUD Elements

Score Count

Pause Menu (Resume / Settings / Quit)

Main Menu (To maybe be added later to introduce our game)

Controls

Simple controls using a keyboard, controls that people are or should be used to:

UP ARROW – Forward

DOWN ARROW – Backwards

LEFT ARROW – Left

RIGHT ARROW – Right

SPACE - Jump

Additional buttons could be implemented once the character development on Charlotte is finalised, such as a button to fight or a button to make the character run faster.

Sound and Music

The music that will be used in the game will complement the speed of the characters movement. (So very fast up-tempo music)

As it’s based in a snowed over Rome, we want the soundtrack to really make the players feel like they are in Rome. Solid sound effects to really bring the game to life, environment sounds such as the snow and wind could be over enhanced just to let the player know that something is about to happen.

Some very good examples of this aspect are in the Tomb Raider series:

Links to sources of music, which would complement the theme of our game:

-Ryse Son of Rome Soundtrack: Mad Nero -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfpEK_RyM7Y

-Total War: Rome 2 OST- Engineering An Empire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJkfZprcjS0

- Fallout 3 (Ambient Soundtrack) from 12 mins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLozm8LNxsg

A sound for when the player collects a gem, could be a metallic sounding click or something. A sound for when the player dies, and sounds for the enemies such as growling or cawing, or for when the enemies are killed.

Daniel Lenart: Group Character Development

Character Development

After a great session with a character developer who gave us a lecture, were was able to develop our main character especially her story.

Here is a brief overview in bullet points of the main characters/games story:

• She is a slave of a rich Roman family
• A horrible blizzard appears
• Everyone starts evacuating from Rome 
• She runs sacred around the masters villa
• She gets knocked out by something such as a pillar and becomes unconscious

•   AS SHE IS UNCONSCIOUS THE GAME IS WHAT SHE DREAMS OF

• She wakes up alive finding out along with the player she was also saved by the family she serves during the evacuation

Deeper character background will be developed 

Ramone Lawrence : Concept for game title screen

This is a concept for our Game title screen "The Forgotten Rome" We was thinking to have the character Charlotte in the foreground and have her very small to give the viewer a scale f the world she needs to tackle.

Danie Lenart : Animations POSE/WALK

Daniel Lenart

Animations

IMPORTANT NOTE: Blogger does not take videos over 100mb that is why quality of video was a limit 

My first animation was inspired by Mortal Komat character Liu Kang, I really like his intro fighting pose so i chose to go with it.

Here below is also my walk cycle 

https://vimeo.com/112428462

https://vimeo.com/112428459

Daniel Henry: Animation Masterclass Work (Fight stances & Walk Cycle)

                                          Kazuya (Character from Tekken - Reference video for my fight stance      (above)

 Animation Study on Kazuya's stance 

This Fighting stance was just to make Norman quickly Block two punches, parry the third punch then finish of with a forceful kick in slow motion. This study was to test out the timing and spacing of smaller movements such as the block and parry whilst adding a kick.

The Reference video for my walk cycle animation

Norman Walk Cycle Animation that i based on the video above: 

Ramone Lawrence: Steps and head turn and Walk cycle

Daniel Henry: Final Game Asset Sheets

Ramone Lawrence: Asset Sheets

These are my Assets sheets I designed, I used my groups textures to collaborate with my groups work. 

Daniel Henry: Final Piece Of the Ruins (Textured)

Side view

Front view

Additional side view 

Daniel Lenart - Asset Development/Research

Daniel Lenart

Here are so old and some new images of research into my asset development/team project. Inspiration from games such as Uncharted 2 which had a great level with snow and stone statues, temples and so on. Inspiration from Museum and places like St Paul's in London or Rome.

Daniel Lenart - Assets

Assets

Daniel Lenart 

As me and my team went through some changes we were able to all decide on a stone/snow theme. We all made sure our assets will fit and compliment each others. Here are some of my assets I have made.