In this project, I am required to come up with 100
silhouettes either of environments or characters, I choose the latter, then
develop and finalized it further complete with its model sheet. Coming up with
100 sketches of characters out of a blank page only filled with boxes is
difficult, which is why I decided to divide them into groups; main characters
(Protagonists and antagonist) Julian, jewel and Seth and also the murder
victims to 20 each and the rest for other supporting characters (in that
order).
The style of my design are set in a current day and there
are really no weapons or armors involved, therefore it was slightly trickier to
come up with distinct silhouettes and poses, which is why I decided to work
more on what they’re wearing instead of the poses itself. Also to further
elaborate, the different death situations are more interesting to work on in
this case, some of them are inspired by various Japanese detective comics to
movies like SAW.
I have chosen 1 design each from the main characters to be
finalized but kept it focused more on the protagonist, Julian.
Here are the visual concepts of Julian from the silhouette
process till its fully finalized form.
The Character Julian was meant to be a silent hero type in
the beginning but because the isolated plot would mean that he won’t be
interacting with much characters apart from dead people and his sister and Seth
that he’ll only meet at the very late part of the game, his character is forced
to be more vocal, unless I introduce another element which can act as a
narrator or chatty side-kick (think GlaDos or Wheatley from Portal or any
silent hero Japanese Role Playing Game side characters). Julian is naturally a
quiet person but he is presented with this confusing situation where he had to
use his new found ability of diving into people’s memories and having to solve
a massacre in a strange mansion, therefore he will be throwing comments every
now and then and during cutscenes but again not to the point of him sounding
whiney due to his confused state; that is more or less overshone by his
compassion as a younger brother that’s will put his life on the line to get his
sister back safely. Visually, he is really simple and straight forward, scruffy
hair not too neat kind of look, I threw in a stripe sweater to capture a more
gothic look to suit the setting but covered it up with a dark colored jacket
that has a hoodie to make him look slightly more mysterious and emphasize his
moody personality. The symbol on his back is an in-game symbol for ‘Divers’ and
only appears when he is in a Dying Memory state and at save points. Even when
Julian is forced by situation to speak, I still try to keep him more in sync
with protagonist such as Wander from Shadow Of The Colossus or Isaac Clarke
from Dead Space, that keeps conversations at minimal and let players be in
their shoe, like a vessel in many ways.
And lastly the concept for Jewel & Seth Haissem
(Antagonist).
Thats J. J Abrams talk on TED about The Mystery Box, this was shown in one of my Contextual Study classes and I completely agree with his take on mystery and how its being applied on movies and narratives. I personally think this idea of less is more or mystery almost like a recipe/ theory even to some of the best, most immersive games I've ever played and hopefully will be making in the future.
So I based my CS presentation based on this idea and how it can be applied to making coherent world in games.
I picked some games out, Shadow Of The Colossus (SOTC), ICO, Red Dead Redemption (RDR, Portal, Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas (GTA:SA) and Assassin's Creed (AC). All of these games shares a very detailed, fully immersive 3D environments, but at the same time, also very vague and mysterious in a sense; many of what you encounter are not explained, sometimes in the narratives and others in the gameplay itself.
Many things are just left there for the players/ audience to bump into/ encounter and then have their own idea and interpretation about it, in most cases this becomes 'viral' due to discussions on forums and word of mouth.
To explain this further, I singled out this brilliantly beautiful game called Shadow Of The Colossus.
The objective of the game is simple; hunt down 16 colossus in this beautifully immersive free-roam landscape, there no enemies along the way, no traps, nothing, just simply find and kill bosses quest, and all you're armed with is with a sword and a horse, it gets no simpler than that, mind you, it sounds boring from this description but it is truly one of the most interesting game ever made as will be explained further.
There are lizards around this 'world' you can explore, that you can kill, acquire its tail and eat it, which boost your stamina (stamina is used to climb, whether the bosses or the path leading to it, so the more stamina you possess, the longer you can climb without falling off). There are also fruits on trees that you can eat to increase your health points, so far none of this is ever explained in the game and is in no way needed for you to finish the game and thats fine. However, this is where it gets interesting, in the beginning, your character, Wander, came from an 'outside world', crossed a bridge and down a shrine into this 'secluded world' of SOTC. When you try going back up across the bridge you'll realized that its blocked and therefore you're stuck in this land for the rest of the game (a way of keeping the players in the area). However, you'll then realize that behind this shrine just below the bridge, there are walls that are climbable, but you haven't got the stamina to do so because it was too tall, this is when you realized, you can boost stamina from killing lizards and also bosses to get you strong enough to climb these walls, and when you did, you're rewarded with the strangest yet most satisfying thing ever.
The climb was intense and annoying every time you fall off and die but when you get to the top, you'll find a Secret Garden that got briefly shown at the ending of the game, again none of this so far was in anyway explained or even mentioned in the game. I could probably go on to talk about the narratives and other brilliant stuff from the game, but I think this garden proved my point. Getting to it leaves you with a sense of achievement, discovery, awe, but at the same time confusion and questions, now this is when players and audience start discussing about this in forums or by other means which made this topic a myth, a legend and most importantly a cult hit.
Similarly to this, all the other games above posses the same sort of mysterious traits as well. Sure, the right cultural reference and settings are really important in creating a believable world such as RDR (sets in the old west) or AC (sets in the Holy Land of Jerusalem and also Europe), but again for example in AC, Ubisoft threw in this Symbolism mystery about Apple of eden (Adam & Eve), politics, historical figures, which are all extremely very controversial and makes the players think and question many things. It doesn't matter whether its intentional or not, the key thing is to get players to start discussing about it (in a good way of course and not because the game/ movie is a so open to discussion because its a blank canvas) and that way, automatically immerse themselves in this story created not just by the developer but by players' imaginations. That is what I think creates a good coherent world.
In conclusion, yes, coherent world is made up of immersive, culturally accurate, detailed and believable visuals, but more importantly, it is open for discussions/ interpretations and memorable, more importantly its in your mind.
This blog will revise and re-explore these 2 topics from school's lecture and how they are applicable/ relevant in creating better artworks.
LIGHT
Key notes
- Refraction
- Reflection
- Absorption
- Shadows
- Subsurface Scattering
- Franel Effect
- Dynamic Occlusion
- Actuality VS Perception
- Color Relativity
Value - Light-dark
Saturation - Intensity
Hue - Color
Misc Notes
- Rabbit's vision are 180 degrees
- The eyes/ lens sees upside down, but inverted in the brain to orient it back to the rest of body.
3 example of artworks that uses principle's of light
Artwork from Killzone 2. The light from the gun's shows 2 things, subsurface scattering which happens on the muzzle itself and of course bouncing light which happens to the frontal area of the gun. The eyes of Helghast soldier clearly shows a good example of how intensity of the same hue results in the glowing eyes effect.
Artwork by Chase JC from Deviant Art. This picture is made up of mostly shapes and silhouettes which are similar to shadows, its interesting as they're all simply shadows of different values but are able to create such depth.
Artwork by Yaguete from Deviant Art. Similar to the example above, this picture is simply made of shadows with different values, but in this we clearly know the light source is from behind the colossus.
COMPOSITION
Key Notes
- Divine Proportions
- Golden Section 1:1.618
- Rule of Thirds
- The L
- The Cross
- Iconic/ Diamond
Misc Notes
- Focal points
- Vary elements
- Odd elements
- Spacing
- No Kissing
- Domination
- Avoid Obvious
- Spice it up
3 examples of works that uses good principle of composition.
A scene from Once Upon A Time in The West. This compositions puts the main character, Harmonica, at the right top point of Rule of Third, it clearer had enough spacings, deliberate point of perspective and size isolation which all points out to his position as the focal point of this scene. Very subtle yet brilliantly pulled off by Sergio Leone, especially in this tense anticipation scene.
An artwork from God Of War. The Cross composition clearly shows in this picture; the opposing color temperature on Zeus (light on dark) to the ones on Kratos (dark on light) almost divides the painting into 2 section of top and bottom, yet, it still works as one great composition.
This is a painting of Patrick Bateman from American Pyscho that I did recently on Photoshop. Consisting of the Iconic/ Diamond composition that works well with portraits especially the full frontal type such as this.
*note* The idea had been changed quite drastically, this is because I thought the previous idea was too stale and don't really have anything much to play around with, so i added a supernatural element which I think should make the concept a lot more exciting and interesting.
Genre: Supernatural Thriller Puzzle game-play
In game ideology
“The mind & soul produces certain chemical that lingers upon the
body’s disposal, this last moments of consciousness can be tapped with the
right method and apparatus, provided the body was never moved or tampered from
the spot where the incident had occurred, the more extreme the moment of death
is, the more memorable it became, thus leaving more distinct ‘stain’ and easier
to be tapped into; eg soldiers died in battle/ the fear induced in death by
torture.”
Prologue:
-Julian arrived in a gothic looking mansion looking for his sister, Jewel,
who went missing.
-After exploring the mansion and discovering that he is able to ‘dive’
into a corpse’s last moments before they die, Julian freaked out and tried to
escape
-Only to find out that the bridge connecting from the mansion ground
to the ‘outside world’ had been destroyed, someone is trying to keep him in.
-Without any options left (dialing for help doesn’t work due to
signal absence) Julian explores the Mansion to find traces of his sister
through puzzles & corpses and finally stumbled upon a secret lab (The
Abyss).
- The plot thickens….
Full Plot:
-At the beginning of the game, Julian discovered he is a ‘Diver’ and
is able to tap into dead people’s last moments and uncover some information and
memories from them (in forms of puzzles & action sequences), there are 7 (reference
to original game) main boss fights (Dying Memories) throughout the story
involving 7 people that died in peculiar ways (elemental) throughout the
mansion.
-It turns out that Jewel & Julian both are part of a project
created by a conglomerate, Seth Haissem, who hired scientist and occultist to
research upon this ability to tap into people’s Dying Memories (justified by
his reasons of understanding how world war soldiers died/ spies/ historical
figures and make the world a better place) The only difference is, Jewel
volunteered for the project (although she got reluctant after knowing people
are killed for this project) & Julian was entirely clueless.
-At the end of the game, Jewel was accidentally killed by Seth in the
secret lab, which triggered the full ability of Julian’s dive, he managed to
tap into his sister’s memories (not just her last moments) and find out ways to
stop Seth and kill him and also escapes from the place.
-The ending shows how Julian manage to carry Jewel all the way out of
the Canyon and collapsed out of exhaustion (died) on a field overlooking the
mansion which is now in flames.
-After credit roll, an unknown figure came towards the now deceased
Jewel and Julian and tapped into his Dying Memories. (new game+)
Game-play mechanics:
-Maneuvering around is divided into 2 sections E&E (Exploring
& Examining.)
-Exploring allows player to control Julian in Third-Person view and
move around the page by page environment (mostly), usually in areas connecting
from one place to another like hallways, path, etc.
-Examining changes the view into first-person, usually when entering
a room or examining object of interest.
-There are occasional QTE (Quick Time Events) that occurs throughout
the game (usually involving traps) success leads to progression of the game and
failure means starting all over from previous checkpoint or simply retries on
the same QTE (depending on how serious the event is).
-Puzzles are abundant throughout and they are usually solved
interactively; point & click, tap, drag, shake, etc.
-Dying Memories comes in form of everything above ( E&E, QTE,
Puzzles) and usually QTEs comes after tapping into Dying Memories. Also as
Julian ‘dives’ into people’s memory, he will start and end the scene as that
person, but gameplay will still be as Julian.
-To die in Dying Memory (no matter how paradoxical it sounded) just
meant that an attempt of diving into the memory failed, after a third failed
attempt, it gets blurry (memory unstable), however it will be easier to pass
through.
-Cut-scenes are in a form of animation that occurs in certain parts
of the plot.
Meanings & metaphors:
-Jewel represents the treasure that everyone (Seth and Julian) is
looking for, precious to Seth because he thought she’s the only ‘Diver’ he
knows & precious to Julian because they’re siblings.
-7 main ‘bosses’ that died in a certain way represents the 7 elements
of the world that will play quite a big part in the storyline. Fire, Water,
Void, Wind, Earth, Light & Dark, they will die according to their
represented elements; for example water element ‘boss’ died by drowning in a
tank and Earth element died impaled on a tree.
-‘Dying Memory’ system is heavily influenced by Demon Souls &
Dark Souls online experience, whereby players are able to touch other players
‘bloodstains’ and observe how they die and learn about nearby traps or ambush,
etc.
The idea of ‘Diving’ came form an old JRPG (Japanese Role Playing
Game) called Alundra, who is a ‘Dreamwalker’ and able to enter people’s dreams
in forms of dungeons to liberate them from nightmares.
"Mystery House
is an adventurecomputer game released in 1980 by Roberta and Ken Williams
for the Apple II.
The game is remembered as one of the first adventure games to feature computer graphics and the
first game produced by On-Line Systems, the company which would evolve into Sierra On-Line. Because of
its use of graphics, GamePro
named Mystery House the 51st most important game of all time in
2007."
Plot:
"The game starts near an abandoned Victorian
mansion. The player is soon locked inside the house with no other option than
to explore. The mansion contains many interesting rooms and seven other people:
Tom, a plumber; Sam, a mechanic; Sally, a seamstress; Dr. Green, a
surgeon; Joe, a gravedigger; Bill, a butcher; and Daisy, a cook.
Initially, the player has to search the house
in order to find a hidden cache of jewels. However, terrible events start
happening and dead bodies (of the other people) begin appearing. It becomes
obvious that there is a murderer on the loose in the house, and the player must
discover who it is or become the next victim."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_House
In
game story/ background research:
As explain on the plot section above, Mystery
House is a thriller text-based adventure game that requires player to explore
around finding items that in one way or another will 'unlock' the progress of
the game, so in a way, it is very puzzle based; encounter problem> find
answer >solve problem> move on kind of game-play. This has been the core
of so many well known exploration-inclined games such as; Wild Arms series,
Resident Evil series, Portal series and ICO just to name a few.
The narrative itself was inspired by a book by
Agatha Christie called "Ten Little Niggers" which was then rephrased
to "And then there were none" due to presence of the racial epithet.
This book tells a tale of
10 strangers brought to an island by an unknown host and killed of one by one
just like in the game. However, the twist was that each murder committed is
parallel to the nursery poem, 'Ten Little Indians/ Soldies' down to the last
bit where the last person alive in the story hanged herself; "One little Indian
boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were
none." Also a piece from a ten soldier boy figurines in the dining room
table went missing each time the murder occurred. This might be something I'd
like to carry over to my reboot as well.
Ten Little Indians poem
Ten
little Indian boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Indian boys sat up very late;
One
overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight
little Indian boys traveling in Devon;
One said he?d stay there and then there were seven.
Seven
little Indian boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Indian boys playing with a hive;
A
bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five
little Indian boys going in for law,
One
got in Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Indian boys going out to sea;
A
red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three
little Indian boys walking in the Zoo;
A
big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun;
On
got frizzled up and then there was one.
One
little Indian boy left all alone;
He
went and hanged himself and then there were none.
Its an interesting tale full of dark twist and
having read the book prior to this project definitely will help a lot in
capturing the essence of the novel that was portrayed in Mystery House.
In addition, Mystery house put a spin on the
narrative slightly by adding the 'Jewels' as a motive and the player as the
last character to survive by killing 'Daisy' the antagonist of the game during
a climatic kill or be killed situation.
Gameplay
research:
Mystery House was heavily influenced by another
similar text-based games like Zork/ Colossal Cave (minus the visual), which at
the time was a success in gaming industry. I believe this visual text-based
genre evolved to be other different types of game-play such as; adventure,
thriller, mystery, puzzle, trivia based exploration games, even dating-sims and
it is most probably how Point & Click and Escape games came about.
Few examples of games that comes to mind that's
I can relate to rebooting Mystery House:
The 4 examples mentioned above are all very narrative (not
necessarily have an awesome/ massive plot/ twist) driven games with
minimalistic game-play style; they all have very simple HUD or even none, which
I strongly believe can greatly affect the player’s immersion in the experience.
MYST intentionally left out tutorials or hints which the other 3
games uses, this I think is also brilliant in keeping the experience real as
well and allows players to think and get more satisfaction out of solving
puzzles without any clue, this might be bad in some cases as it may confuse and
left player lingering in one spot for ages, however as done in games such as
Another World, Demon Souls, Portal, Shadow of Colossus; managed tutorials/
hints as a part of story and not necessarily have to be a separate section
which detach players from the game.
One last important observation would be that all of them are using
so called ‘Page by page’ environment where player is unable to freely explore a
3D area like in games such as Grand Theft Auto/ Fallout type of sandbox
exploration, instead we have fixed angles that player can explore inside of. It
is more commonly used in third-person Horror/ Action/ RPG and point & click
genre games. Many games actually started out this way and later on evolved to a
fully 3D exploration game like; Silent Hill series, Resident Evil series, Final
Fantasy series and even MYST. I’d like to keep Mystery House ‘Page by page’ as
this method is very cinematic and I’d like to shape this game to be slightly like
a interactive thriller movie, more importantly it functions well for point and
click games and also in my opinion, when MYST was remade into fully 3D control
it lost lots of the mysterious essence it originally had.
Sales/ pitch
research:
Essence taken from original Mystery House:
- Still sets in a house/ mansion
- Puzzle based/ solving gameplay
- Eerie atmosphere ( like how everybody just disappeared the 2nd
time at lobby )
- Story influence goes back to 'And then there were none' Novel by
Agatha Christie.
- The Jewels
- dull color except for key items? like in Mirrors Edge. (original
game is B&W lines)
Changes in reboot:
- New plot & look (see New Plot & Concepts)
- Point/ touch & Click based thriller
- if its on touch-screen enabled gadgets, will be more actions
involving swiping & other gestures
Target audience:
- 13 - 40 yrs ( mainly people who owns the gadgets mentioned in
consoles targeted section,
and also old enough to see experience gore and morbid story.)
- also might appeal to people who played original Mystery House from
the 80s
Consoles targeted:
Main:
- Ipad/ Iphone
- NDS/ 3DS
- PC
other possibilities:
- PS3's PSN
- Xbox Live Marketplace
No-no:
- Wii
- PSP
- Arcade
Part 2 : Developing the game
-
-New Plot & Concepts:
--Night time, raining heavily
--Main character, Henry, crossing a wooden bridge to a lush Gothic
looking mansion (located on a cliff surrounded by ravines).
--Inside greeted by 7 other fellow guest.
--After being ushered to his room and took a nap, Henry was woken up
by loud explosion.
--The bridge (only way back out to ‘outside world’) was destroyed and
everybody gathered round to realize 1 person was missing and found dead later
on.
--After a few more incidents, it became apparent that everybody died
in a certain way involving their jobs & a murder is loose in the mansion.
--Everybody started turning on each other.
--Amidst the confusion, Henry uncovered a secret lab hidden under the
mansion & met a prisoner called ‘Jewel’.
--Turns out one of the guests, Rose, faked her death in 1 of the
incidents earlier & is the mastermind behind all the murder
--Henry & Jewel tried to escape
--Ended up in a climatic kill or be killed situation with Rose
Ending 1: Both Jewel & Rose died.
--In a climax of guilt, exhaustion and confusion, Henry walked towards
the broken bridge and disappeared behind the fog.
Ending 2: Rose died.
--Found the secret path out to the bottom of Ravine and back up to the
‘Other-side’.
Ending 3: Henry died.
--Well, Henry died, Jewel got re-captured and the killing spree
continues.
