Architecture Student attempts video game (hilarity ensues)

[Karimi]

Dear Idle Thumbers,

 

Intro

 

You may have seen me around, I'm on the forum on and off-ish.  I'm a graduate student studying architecture, and this semester I am taking a video game design course. I have never really had any experience with the Unity Engine, or game design for that matter. I decided to start a little work/progress journal here, hoping for the occasional feedback and discussion. I'm open to all sorts of criticism, I have respect for the community here and thought it would be the place to get productive going on the process.

 

 

WEEK 1 -

 

The goal of the class : Semester-long project to design a "Garden of Eden" using the Unity Engine.  Thats pretty much the larger framework of the class, they haven't said anything about 2d vs 3d, or what the game has to do. Because the class is largely made up of architects it'll probably be more of an exercise in manouvering through a landscape, however, I'd like to try something a bit closer to an actual game than an engine sandbox.

 

First week was mainly providing a groundwork for showcasing what we are interested in. I'm particularly interested in the Garden of Eden narrative, so Adam,Eve,Snake,God,and the Tree. The games I would cite as key influences in general as : Monkey Island, Loom (in particular), Fate of Atlantis, Superbros.

 

I've started writing a general framework for the narrative, still not thinking of whether this will be 2d, 3d, point and click, 1st person, 3rd person, etc. First thing is creating a world.

 

Perhaps it'll be a point n click adventure game focused solely on dialogue choices. Or a game with some sort of gameplay mechanic and a story arc above that, (space battle?). Or maybe an exploration game ? Haven't decided.

 

 

Thoughts on the story thus far is :

 

You are a slave, with his mind blanked and sold off to a slave owner on a spaceship far far from home. You are given the name Batthai and put in the service of a powerful seemingly omnipotent master. All is not as it seems, and as you delve into the secrets of your faceless master, you find out the price of knowledge may be greater than the price of freedom.

 

 

And attached some quick sketches of a possible intro. As you can tell my comic skills are on par with my game design skills (dismal).

 

 

 

 

Heres some intro text/general flavor :

 

i must have drifted off to space...
consciousness slowly creeped back into my mind
as i opened my eyes onto a blanket of
twinkling stars
they floated before me
like motes of dust caught in midday sun
my mind as empty and as unfamiliar
as the firmament which yawned before me
all i could muster was a single nameless thought
accompanied by a sense that i had been there before
maybe in a dream ?
more likely in a story I had heard, once upon a time.

the story always begins in the same way
a young boy or girl wakes up
on a frieghter or trade ship
their mind blanked
and ready to be sold into slavery
and the terror grew within me
rattling against the inside of my mind
whatever
or whoever i once was
gone

the stars shone in strange colors
and my nameless thought found its title
there was a name for the places the children in the stories were taken to
a name for places where they would never be seen
a name for places outside all they could have ever known

places called

the ultraviolets

 

I've also gone ahead and designed a type-face for the game.

 

 

Goals

 

Write a general narrative structure.

Write down 2-3 mechanic ideas

Maybe do a mockup or two of possible camera angles ?

[Nappi]

I'm intrigued by the name. Are you planning incorporate the actual UV radiation in the game mechanics somehow? You could, for example, use the fluorescence/phosphorescence to reveal hidden things in the environment, or use the destructive properties of short wavelength radiation not attenuated by the ozone layer and atmosphere as some sort of a threat or hazard.

[Ben X]

Sounds interesting. I'm guessing they'll want to see some environmental design ideas too - presumably the reason they've asked for "a Garden Of Eden" is because they want to see you design an idyllic beautiful space. So perhaps you could incorporate that into your game design and show a few ideas for it.

[osmosisch]

Kudos on putting this out there, that takes chutzpah. It looks fascinating. Are ultraviolets one step above ultradaisies?

 

As far as the Garden of Eden theme goes, that gives you a bunch of fixed elements that you can incorporate or subvert as you please. The futuristic setting already does so in part.

So what are you thinking to do with Adam, Eve, the snake, the garden's master? As well as showing the pre- and post-ejection environment? There's a lot of cool things that could happen here.

[clyde]

I just realized that the introduction into the Matrix in Saints Row 4 and the idealic, black & white portion of Fallout 3 are Garden of Eden allegories. I wonder if both of them were inspired by Pleasantville.

I love the star pattern you made for the title-screen thing.

[Karimi]

Incoming big post tomorrow, but in the meantime here's a test portrait for the Maker character for a possible convo screen.

 

 

As well as the two endings (sort of, not quite)

 

 

[brkl]

I fucking love that artstyle. I recently attempted related dithery stuff in a photography project, but that was a crash and burn sort of thing. This works.

[Thrik]

Looks great. I think a nice bit of bloom would make the more vivid scenes come alive though, take a trick out of Nintendo's book. Here's a quick example:

 

[Karimi]

"All matter is condensed apathy"

 

I know I haven't updated with text. Bear with me !

 

[Karimi]

Just presented a copy of the design doc to my class. Went pretty well, I'll post a summary of the game design later tonight. Also , don't suppose there's a unity guru here that can help answer a few questions ?

[osmosisch]

 As far as I'm aware there's a fair handful of people around here that do Unity development.

[Karimi]

Heres an updated portrait !

[Karimi]

Hey guys, my big review is on Tuesday, I was wondering if anyone with unity expertise would be up for a conversation to help out with a few questions, nothing too complex, just how to get a splash screen in game and getting the camera to pan properly.

 

 

[Dualhammers]

I really love the art style. How did you do he dithering? Is this in Photoshop or actually Unity?

By the way, you have an invigorating portfolio. It is no surprise to me that you are at Harvard. Is there a particular school or style of architecture that you want to focus on in your career?

[Lu]

Like, a splash screen actually when the game is already running? I'm not really a Unity expert, but what I would do is start with a scene that has the splash graphic and do what you want to do like fade in or fade out. Then use the loadnextlevel thing. Just make sure that scene is first in the list in the build menu. Maybe I'm making stuff way more complicated than it needs to be, so if there is a better way, I would like to know as well.

 

If it's a splash screen as you're loading the game, then I don't know!

[Karimi]

  On 12/13/2013 at 6:51 AM, Dualhammers said:

I really love the art style. How did you do he dithering? Is this in Photoshop or actually Unity?

By the way, you have an invigorating portfolio. It is no surprise to me that you are at Harvard. Is there a particular school or style of architecture that you want to focus on in your career?

 

Its in photoshop, still playing around trying to do it in unity. Its a series of aggregated bitmaps.

 

Not really big on any schools, I tend to think more along the lines of particular inquiries rather than styles I suppose. If you're into architectural work you should check out my instagram aikarimi , its got a bunch of student work from the Grad school of design here.

 

  On 12/13/2013 at 6:55 AM, Lu  said:

Like, a splash screen actually when the game is already running? I'm not really a Unity expert, but what I would do is start with a scene that has the splash graphic and do what you want to do like fade in or fade out. Then use the loadnextlevel thing. Just make sure that scene is first in the list in the build menu. Maybe I'm making stuff way more complicated than it needs to be, so if there is a better way, I would like to know as well.

 

If it's a splash screen as you're loading the game, then I don't know!

 

I'll try that, also if you've got any tips for having the camera change over time ? Or to have a game change from day to night ?

[Noyb]

Cameras have Transforms, so you can transform.Translate and transform.Rotate and Vector3.Lerp/Slerp/SmoothDamp/MoveTowards them like any other moving GameObject.

 

For day/night you'd need to make a script to contain an internal representation for game time (say 0.0 for noon, 0.5 for midnight, 1.0 for noon again), then increment it every Update based on Time.deltaTime times whatever scaling factor you want and subtracting 1.0 whenever it goes over bounds. Then use that ratio to position light sources (probably by using Quaternions to rotate Vector3.up around the appropriate axis), changing color/intensity of light sources and the ambient light, showing/hiding however you choose to represent stars, etc.

[Karimi]

  On 12/15/2013 at 8:04 AM, Noyb said:

Cameras have Transforms, so you can transform.Translate and transform.Rotate and Vector3.Lerp/Slerp/SmoothDamp/MoveTowards them like any other moving GameObject.

 

For day/night you'd need to make a script to contain an internal representation for game time (say 0.0 for noon, 0.5 for midnight, 1.0 for noon again), then increment it every Update based on Time.deltaTime times whatever scaling factor you want and subtracting 1.0 whenever it goes over bounds. Then use that ratio to position light sources (probably by using Quaternions to rotate Vector3.up around the appropriate axis), changing color/intensity of light sources and the ambient light, showing/hiding however you choose to represent stars, etc.

 

Thanks, I'll try that today (Sunday) for the camera. For game time is there a way to fake it by fading one skybox into another ? Not sure I have the know-how to figure out the sun.

[Karimi]

Well presentation went well, I've got a dropbox link if any of you want to try the game ? Its pretty rough but why not ?

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k5bkqs4hk8akh48/uv.zip

 

Ali

[Noyb]

I'm glad it went over well!

 

I liked how the sheets of particles partitioned the space and visually interacted with the background. Didn't realize they weren't solid until I accidentally ran through one. I couldn't figure out if there was more to the game than exploring that initial light maze. (Not that a game needs a larger scope, but I had my expectations set to something different by the in-game opening and mentions of dialogue and endings in this thread.)

[Lu]

Looks quite cool. It really reminded me of the Assassin's Creed loading zones, except dreamier and less sci-fi.

[Karimi]

  On 12/19/2013 at 12:32 PM, Noyb said:

I'm glad it went over well!

 

I liked how the sheets of particles partitioned the space and visually interacted with the background. Didn't realize they weren't solid until I accidentally ran through one. I couldn't figure out if there was more to the game than exploring that initial light maze. (Not that a game needs a larger scope, but I had my expectations set to something different by the in-game opening and mentions of dialogue and endings in this thread.)

 

I think if I were to continue working on it I'd definitely try to get the dialogue and the world working the way I want it to. Might try to find someone to partner with and work on this in my free time.

 

If anyone wants to work on this just msg me !