It was important for the team to fully dicuss what elements we were including into the trailer. We decided on content and I have discussed this in the previous post, and split this between the team members in order to help speed up production work. Because of the level of detail that we need and the style we are going for a quite low poly apporach, faking our environments with textures and normal maps to give definitions.
I was tasked with creating the animations for the final product, as the animation would be quite a simple task in essence to everything else, and because I was the most comfortable with cameras and animating elements in the game in order to produce the final product. As the animator I am going to have to make sure that I get more comfortable with the camera elements, and how to properly rig/manipulate some of the creates to work well inside the final product.
Inspiration of this kind of animation I have taken from this youtube video, from the game Dark Descent. It has a very basic animation but one I would like to apply to the characters, specifically the front approach of which it details quite a clear aspect how we would like to animate the trailer view of the main character. With the low poly hand works well to an idea Joey said about making a character.
I have also been tasked with modelling the front exterior of the Salts Building, which is set as our main building for our storyline. We also stated that it may be possible to use the front of the building as a splash screen, for example, remember the old Resident Evil games with the gore warning, which showed a modelled element of the environment, we could use something like this for our our own splash screen.
The other members of the team where tasked with developing there own sections as well aswell as a marketting jobs, I will discuss these below for reference.
Joseph Brown
Joey was tasked with creating the central plaza area, with the aid of Michael and/or Stuart and Curtis if required. This is a large task as the central plaza is a main figment our game, and needs to be rather detailed. Joey was optimistic about taking on this task, and therefore the group saw no reason to decline him this environemnt. As well as this, he also wanted to model the lions, while I am personally not willing to place so much work on Joey, he was addiment to take on the task and as project leader, allowed him. However I stand back ready to help him progress with this, if required, as does the rest of the team.
Bust of the Lion, a model Joey will be creating.
Central Plaza, to be modelled by Joseph Brown
Joseph has also been tasked with handling marketting and assuring the team marketting elements have been done correctly, and effciently. He has been tasked with creating the A3 Poster that will be posted around the local environment.
Today we had a meeting between the development team for Cybertronix, to discuss the building of our 3D trailer. To begin with we begun to develop the brain storm, that would describe the trailer content as well as a little back story to help us visualise the environments. It was important for our team that we all got our own point down, and to help decide the story and the trailer, we took elements we liked from each story and implemented them into the final idea, as we believed everyone followed a very similar structure and also provided content that we believed as a group really worked well for the story.
An example of my point, relates to elements that Curtis introduced in his story that we really liked, inspired by the stone angels from doctor who, he created foundation that the expression of still objects, such as statues, would change when the player was not looking at them. While this is a small feature, it really does create sense of a dark and quite shocking environment, that would work well in the final idea.
Another example, was the idea of having a tomb under the Salts Building, specifically the plaza, this came up alot in peoples back stories hence we decided it was obvious to implement this feature and concept.
Brainstorm for Trailer Production
Proposal
As a team we decided the following elements need to be implemented into the trailer. Because we have not yet created our storyline, we decided by covering the elements more important to the story line, and also to allow for us to change and expand on ideas our own ideas.
We have decided on a storyline base that included alot of elements from every member of the team, so i'll explain briefly what this details.
The main character, the protagonist of this story, is an ex-solider, tormented by his own past, and suffering from the dishonour detained on his father, and ex-mill worker in Saltaire, who was condemend to Linchfield because of his insane notion of the existance of the Wine of Titus, an old relic said to provide the drinker with immortality. When his father died, he left an old key, with no notion other than, "It will open the way" in a message along with the rest of his fathers belongings.
During a local newscasts, covering the excavation at the Salts Building and the discovering a metal grating, seemingly and entrance to something, engraved the intials TS. The main character deciding this may be his chance to prove that maybe his father wasn't mad, deciding to call his girlfriend a comms expert, into helping him break into the vault.
Using the key he has retained from his father, he manages to open the grating, which reveals to be a spiral staircase, which opens down into a tomb. During the course of the plot, the main character handles choices and elements, and completes puzzles, while fighting the lions, that have been hunting him, allowing him the pass further.
Apart from the lions as the bosses, for the sake of provided history and progressing the story, the player is also being hunted and followed a evil historical organisation that stretches back to the days of Sir Titus.
The choices the main character makes throughout, will depict how the story progresses and will choose how the end plays out. As well as the ambiences, the main character will get flash backs of his past and the past of Saltaire as he gets closer to his source. The end, the main character has the choice to save his girlfriend from death, grant himself immortality, or take it for himself and prove to the world it exists and make his fortune.
Content
We realised because our story we will need to implement quite a solid amount of content. We have decided that we will make 2 enviroments that are based on the current Saltaire location, because we are working with it in present day, we will try to keep the locations the same. The two locations we will be replicating are, the front of the Salt Building, lions included, which we decided would make a good main menu display, if used.
Here is a reference image of the front of
Salts Building in order to give a visual idea of what this looks like.
So, today we have been tasked with generating a solid individual backstory for our trailer. What do I mean? Well, basically, we need to express our ideas through the use of creative thinking and writing, for a logical guy like myself, this should test my creative senses, and allow me to expand my understanding of story structure in the gaming environment. The backstory isn't just what will happen in the game on a story standpoint, in my personal opinion it has to represent elements of everything, setitng the scene and hitting the following points in order to assure that the planing stage for the trailer covers everything we wil be doing this year.
Mind-Map of Trailer Back-Story
Points to cover:
- Sound, ambience is just as important as the visiual representation. It somes cases it tells a story itself, the back mysic helps the mood and sets the physics of the scene. For this I will consider some more fitting music for my trailer, by looking at other trailers of similar build and taking examples.
- Visuals are vital. Music tells the story but without the visualisation it will nothing more than a CD track, visuals provide many attributes to the scene, such as telling a story through actions, and expressions.
- Narrative. Look at Skyrim trailer, basic, simple. The voice over does the most to set this scene I think, it gives a general approach to the story, sets the environment, it is from this, I believe included an narrative overlay would benefit ther trailer. However the narrative, overlay would have to be the sound of characters speaking, working along as it was a movie, this would benefit the scene well.
During this session, we had to create a enviroment inside 3DS Max. We were tasked first to handle dealing with with creating the basic box modelling, to create a window. We based our windows on the primary architectural design, building a simple box, and setting the width, length and height to 6, 30 and 10, we got a primary level design.
From there we applied a bend modifer, applying an angle of 190 percent and 90 percent. This applies an accurate bend to the box level, and allowed me to extrude the end twines to create a sort of window shape. This allowed me to further build upon this element, I decided to go for a more victorian style, making more strict points and angular edges.
Building a top block, with a more vampiric fanged design to it, allowed me to compliment the victorian architecture I was aiming for, and hence improve my design with low poly blocking, however, increasing the basis of the design.
Duplicating each element, and grouping I was able to create a basic primitive with the window, allowing me to build on this. This particular element was useful as it allowed to me to save on the amount of work I would have to generate and increase my work flow.
Unfortnatly, the computer kept crashing on me, and I wans't able to get as much of the desing done as I wish, I had to apply basic materials to the object and settled for a unfiinished scene to meet the end deadline. But these are the contraints and the problems of game development and it has taught me to back up more often and keep a auto-backing system in order to save my work for crashing of unstability.
During this week we began to generate our environment planning, by taking the photos of the areas we where our design idea is based. I took the images from the central plaza of the Salt Building. (See image below) and used them them as a reference for my central design, in evaluating each image however, I decided to use the one that had a more symmterical and central point of reference.
The reason this image was best used to reference the artistic idealism I had, is simple. As you can see from this image there is a two point line of perspective. Both lines stretch from the corners of the image to the central window pane. Because the image is primarily symmetrical, it possesses the concept to apply a central area to design. I also chose this particular area to model due to the basis that it is a central and intriguing point inside the college itself and central to our trailer storyline.
Fine Liner Design (Black and White)
This particular design was unfinished, and I found it difficult to truly grasp of the concept of simiplicity which slowed me down in my design. However, we spent around, one hour sketching the simple concept behind the image. I placed in numerous structure points to help organise my image and keep it central and accurate to the design I had. I did find this difficult as trying to replicate something accurately is a very difficult concept to apply.
I also placed into directional notation to help me to understand what direction light would be travelling and where it was likely to be reflected, when it comes to designing the scene in 3DS Max. For example, an Omni light for the lamp lights stationed next to the central staircase.
I used the structural lines and directions I set to help me organise and plan the environment accurately, so applying it to a 3D scene would be easier.
I added more detail into the scene after the intial sketch in the next hour, using a fine liner pen to apply shading techniques, such as cross-hatching, and line shading, to add depth and 3D to the scene. It also allowed me to simulate light in the scene, which can be applied via the use of shader techniques in 3D software.
The concept behind which we applied was to draw the scene as basic as we could, like lego, applying the building blocks as we progresses, building upon one another, bit by bit, until we was left with something that represented a skeleton like set of primitives that defined the environments shape and gesture.
Using simple techniques like cross-hatching, squggly lines to represent certain areas, to quickly define a large location. And small lines to represent bricks, helped me to create a detailed but quick sketch of the location.
Through my research in Unit 6, I decided to create an analytical review of the Coca-Cola Zero product. I found a create document that covers the process of how they advertised and provided the concept behind Coca-Cola Zero, from this address. http://advertising.microsoft.com/europe/coca-cola-zero-campaign
I quote from this website.
"Seeking to maximise exposure to Italian 18-34-year-olds, Coca-Cola’s Avatar-themed Coca-Cola Zero campaign used the reach and audience profile of Windows Live Messenger combined with the power of remessaging. The Messenger campaign reached an impressive 2 million users in the target audience, with re-messaging increasing this by 78% to 3.6 million."
This depicts the aim and audience number increase for the product. An amazing advertisement scheme that returned 78% increase to there 2 million user target, increasing it to 3.6. The most interest element of this reponse was how they advertised there product. Utilise the audience profiling mechanism of Windows Live Messenger, which is very similar to he same process that Facebook uses. It would seem that this form of advertisement is effective, primarily because it targets the specific audience in question for the product in mind.
It reminds me of the documentary I watched on Facebook which covered a large section of how Facebook earns its money through effective product advertisement, the use of demographic targetting for providing products was interesting, it seemed the concept behind it was to allow product advertisers to select specific options and provide them with a number of individuals that this advertisement would be targetted too.
It seems like this is a rather effective method, and shows with the increase in popularity within that sector of advertisement.
As with the coca-cola zero product, the campaign objective was, as I quote from the same source from the Microsoft Advertisement Dispository.
"Increase reach and exposure amongst a target audience of 18-34-year-olds "
I believe that they have hit this objective and with the concept applied I believe I might actually consider applying this method into our production work, perhaps using facebook as a advertisment medium, however our research document didn't show this as a interesting possible method, YouTube however provides an effective medium as its fame and media orientated approach would allow us to apply our video to the advertisement method, something that will be seen by many people especially on popular videos.
The interesting application Coca-Cola zero applied was this, quoted from the same source.
" The Coca-Cola Zero campaign used super-expanding banners within Windows Live Messenger to deliver its Avatar-themed ads to a target audience of 18-34-year-olds, with re-messaging used to drive awareness amongst an active online audience. "
The use themes for instant messaging devices could be sometihng we could look into creating and activivating our more creative side. The collcated results of this method was the following, quoted again from the same source.
"The Messenger campaign reached 4.4 million unique users, 2 million of which were in the target 18-34 age group
The re-messaging campaign reached 2 million users, with 1.6 million in the target audience "
In our recent meeting we had to get down and design our trailer. This was an interesting moment for the team, as the trailer is what defines our game, before it has even been released, and is something a lot of the team got involved with. Unfortunately Michael Prior wasn’t present, and was unable to provide his valued input with the trailer design. In this post I will be discussing the points we discussed and how the trailer will play out.
Challenging.... Artistic....
These are the words the team came up with to describe our game. They wanted something that fell into these categories, in order to sell our product and create a truly immersive game world. With these points in mind we knew we had to work with these key points with the plot line and ideas we put forth with our trailer.
So, what is our idea?
We had a few ideas brewing around between our tiny group. Previously we had discussed the possibility of utilising a education puzzle based environment. This was of a large interest to me, as it seemed a basic, yet very solid idea. However, it didn't have the enthusiasm of the team behind it. Alas, many other ideas where stretched out between our constantly active tongues. Curtis implyed that we create some kind of horror scenario, with the use of undead historical figures, however, the idea was very generic, presented not much in the terms of a educational story fashion, and scouting around the groups we discovered that the other two team where planning something similar. In an aid to be different and try something new, we denied the idea, and the team agreed.
Our Results from the Public
It wasn't until we looked at our target audience of which is 25 +, we knew that it was obvious something along a more interesting, mature and solid storyline was inviting. While this was our target audience, we also had a large area of interest from the younger faction, so we knew we'd have to incorporate some kind of adventure, into it to make it more interesting and interactive. Besides, who doesn't like interactice anyway.
Because of the statistics we have, we also know that our age range is quite young to old. A mixture of both, is always good, it means we are interesting a wide market area. I believe keeping the game mature, and aiming for an around 15 + would be a good sure way to make sure the game can be bought by all the market, I will bring my suggestion up with the team.
I will explain in our next meeting how I believe that making the age rating low and providing mature but educational content will attract more customers, and also not sour the name of Saltaire too much, with a violent aptitude, which we are not looking for in this product. We are looking for a logical, but creative outcome to a story, a game that requires thinking and on par interaction, whether the adventure is one of the mind, and providing learning in the form of something many can enjoy, especially tourists to Saltaire, of which Saltaire gets many.
Preview from Uncharted 3, it reminded me a possible environment for the game, with the old rustic, victorian look.
Joey came up with the final idea, taking inspiration from Indiana Jones, Uncharted and some areas of adventure based games, like Tomb Raider. The idea was to have the player be a treasure hunter, and have to wade through the crypts under the Salt Building, to find a special treasure. I immediatily caught on with the idea, and a few of the others did, with some speculaton from Stuart however. Nevertheless we all inputted our improvemenets to the idea, Curt implied we could make ourselves key NPCs in the trailer, like myself could be the tech savvy assitant, like how Lara Croft has her tech savvy side kick to help her during adventures.
Tomb Raider inspried our idea. The Clock work tools at the back give us an idea about the steam punk/technology of the game level chambers.
We nodded and liked the idea, it was a sort of easter egg. Joey also mentioned that we could improve the adventure aspect to be more interactive, similar to how the story of Uncharted goes, by providing puzzles as well as a way to manipulate the environment, to get people thinking. This was a good idea. we was onboard with this concept, and alot of ideas where zooming around, by the end of which we all had a decent idea on how we wanted the story to go, however we haven't solidfied anything as of yet, least not until micheal returns for the next meeting.
The Name
We took into context the value of the good name. The general idea was to relate our name to the our plotline, which was similar to games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, with a more artistic element of Steam Punk implied, and photo-realism, involved with flash back of events and locations around Saltaire. We decided in relation to opening this for sequel and more of an adventure series we would go with the name, Saltaire Chronicles: The Wine of Titus.
The name was a freefall choice, due to the basis that the storyline was thought out during the initial planning stage. The group pitched in and chose a lot of names that related to the plot we had. Each member of the team selected 4 name ideas each and we decided for the sake of making voting easier, that each member would then select their favourite.
I myself selected the name of The Vault of Titus, trying to play on the element of treasure and a mysterious element involved.
Joseph Brown was the one who came up with the idea to Saltaire Chronicles, in which he came up with two secular ideas, naming one The Golden Alpaca and the other the Wine of Titus. I have to state now that we all liked the idea of Wine of Titus due to the basis that Titus banned alcohol in his village, and having a scared bottle of wine that is rumoured to grant the drinker immortality, seemed quite interesting as a reward for the player at the end.
Stuart , chose the name of Salt, Rock, Shock which was a play on the puzzle based idea we selected, as I stated we based our idea of the name, and built around it, however Stuart was basing this name on the previous idea we had before the new one was introduced. This idea was favoured by us all until the story plot line, Joseph introduced was seen more favourably, and therefore this name didn’t realistically work well with the atmosphere we had.
Finally, Curtis selected the name of Titus Exhibition, this name was interesting, however to me it seemed to imply the use of the Exhibition building, and our project trailer was focused around the Salts Building, the others agreed on this concept. After a rather one sided vote, it was obvious what name and plotline accompanying it we was selecting.
Job Roles
The job roles where not discussed heavily, we mentioned in the team that any Photoshop work should be taken care of by myself and Joseph Brown. However we decided it was best not to fully discuss who would be taking care of what, until Michael returned and we could properly discuss this with him and we decide the best roles for each of us to take, based on our skills.
It is probably the case though that we will need to take multiple jobs to the lack of use, realistically we will be looking at the follow positions that need to be filled.
-1 – 2 Photoshop Developers
-2 – 3 Modellers
-1 Sound Manager
-1 Animator
-1 Effects Artist
Of course, mixing and matching the jobs would be most likely the correct course to go down. This would be based on the areas of expertise each of our members had.
Story/Plot Development
Before we move onto to discussing each point, such as artistic style and genres, I feel the need to discuss the plotline for our trailer. We decided our game would be heavily based around adventure, but primarily about solving puzzles (To involve that educational feel). The start of the trailer will begin with an overlook of the Salt Building at night; the concept of the ideas is that the player takes the role of a treasure hunter, searching for the lost treasure of Sir Titus Salt. With his trusted assistant, he ventures into the depths of Salt Building into an old tomb that contains a powerful artefact that is said to give its user immortality.
The player will have to solve and wade through numerous puzzles that relate the Salt Family and Saltaire as a whole, while being stalked by the stone lions that are the guardians of this secret. The player must fight to survive, and as he delve in deeper and darker, the way out becomes harder, with no choice but to press on.
In the end, the player is gifted with the wine, but just as he grabs it, he hears a growl and it flicks out of game. The aim being that the lions had finally caught up with him, for a final showdown. This is the generally storyline for the game as a basic guideline, and we will discuss a more in depth story based development for the trailer, once Michael return
The plotline is to try to introduce historical aspects about Saltaire, as educational phenomena it was the sole idea that we implement a lot of the history of Saltaire in our fictional storyline. This was to broaden the area of design and also to incorporate a more real story line behind our original concept.
Genre
We decided that we wanted to incorporate a adventurist genre with use of puzzling, taking elements from horror (in correlation to the lions) that works with our story design, because we are using elements of all three of these we will have to take into context how unique how design will be and incorporating multiple genres will suit us well.
We are taking inspiration from many different elements, such as Uncharted, Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones, researching into those areas to help define the characteristics of the story.
I think a tomb raider idea works very well, people love an interactive adventure and when coupld with puzzles it opens up the world for a more intriguing setting.
This video of Tomb Raider 4 gameplay gives a great insight to the type of end product I am looking for, the incorporation of puzzle and adventure elements.
The use of tombs and exploring forgotten locations is often present in these games, and since we are basing ours in an underground chamber, beneath Saltaire, I believe it creates a great ambience for the player.
That is why I believe a Puzzled Based Adventure type game, is the best method to go with. Employing adventure and education in an interactive environment.
I did a little research into this particular genre to see what kind of market they recieved. On this basis, I have to say I have loved the Tomb Raider franchise since I first got a playstation, back when I was around six. Coupled with this, I have always appreciated the artitistic and unique style. However, thast my opinion, and in order to better sell our product, I needed to see how our inspiration competitors did, and learn from this. I found a great article that gave me some insight into the lifetime sales of Tomb Raider.
Unfortnatly, this seems to be a rather worrying element, there has been a steady decline in the units sold as the years have gone on. Whether this is down to decline in interest, expecting of more from these games, or even just a lack of enthusiasm on the developers side, it is defintely something that the team and I need to look into, at some point.
However a similar game to Tomb Raider, Uncharted 3, statistics state from this website.
"Sony’s Uncharted 3 Drakes Fortune shipped 3.8 million on its first day of sales on Nov. 1, the company announced today."
This means that uncharted as sold more in one day that five of the Tomb Raider games have sold in a year. Fantastic statistics, and it probably be worth looking more into Uncharted for some ideas on how to progress with our game.
Areas of Discussion
The Areas we discussed for the main idealism for the game and style generated and bullet pointed below.
-Set under the Salts Building, where an old tomb that holds the last and greatest treasure of Sir Titus Salt.
-The incorporation of Lions as protectors guardians, which relates to their history as keepers of peace, incorporating their duty to protect the treasure of Sir Titus Salt from the unworthy seems key here.
-Puzzles to solve as the player progresses each level, this also builds on the adventure and progresses the storyline.
-Subliminal images of Saltaire and Surrounding Areas, in Black and White Imagery.
We discussed numerous areas of the trailer. Mostly style, environments, and effects that help to benefit the overall look and design, and complement the plot line. We decided due to our results from our queries begin returned as a even mixture of Past, Present, Future, that we would set the time in the present, but because the player is delving into a tomb over 200 years old, the element of past and present would mix, with traps that are far to modern for Titus’s era, steam based gizmos and enemies. Where thinking the Dwemer from Skyrim, here, which were a bunch of dwarves that had clever devices and enemies that had technology far beyond their era. (This also relates to our steam punk idea for adding in this sort of element).
We already know that from our results we would be basing the concept around Salts Building. However we felt that we didn’t really want to do the interior of the Salts Building, due to our initial idea being that we wanted to incorporate a tomb based idea. We decided to make the tomb under the Salts Building, and this allowed us to incorporate the lions since they are sat primarily outside of the Salts Building itself.
Now that we were satisfied with the environment and how the general style was going to look like, we decided on characters. We never did solidify characters, but we did discuss that we wanted to place ourselves somewhere in the fold, Joey stating that I should be in the assistant of the player, due to my technical background, and this would work out as Easter Egg, adding the developers into the fold of the characters.
Apart from using the stone lions as the protectors, and adding us into the fold, I would personally really like to see the spirit of Titus Salt, and his children be involved as a part of the plotline, well not all but some historical figures that tell a little part of the history of Saltaire and of course our fictional storyline.
On this area, it will probably be a good idea to discuss the artistic style. We wanted to go predominantly 3D with this, to try and tell a much better story, and to express more creativity. We wanted to add a lot textures taken from the surrounding area to try and keep the current feel, however for the inside of the tomb we may need to explore a more old and worn out location. However, I do like the idea of a cross between old ruin (Egyptian) and the incorporation of a steam punk based environment, as I have previously stated.
Credits
Obviously for the credits, we only discussed what would be implemented but not how it will be implemented, personally I would like to see the names and jobs roles used through the bulk of the trailer, like in Metal Gear Solid, was a introduction to the creators, rather than blanking out or placing it at the end, like a rather generic design.
