My new game, and design talking

[marks]

I just posted a bunch of stuff on our design wiki, take a look if you're interested. Going to go into a lot more depth soon, my friend just finished his Degree so we're gonna start ramping up soon

https://www.assembla.com/spaces/scifigame/wiki/

[dissonance]

did not know you were keeping a devlog (or something like it); i'll be reading this one for sure!

edit: asd =P

[marks]

Well, this is more like ... the actual design documentation for the game that we will be using to make it. It's pretty empty at the moment because a lot of things are undecided but we are slowly starting to fill it out. A lot of what we're doing at the moment is copying pages upon pages of notes onto the wiki xD

[marks]

We've added quite a lot more of the design documentation to the wiki - any feedback would be much appreciated.

https://www.assembla.com/spaces/scifigame/wiki/

[KILLA-COW]

So Galen basically equals Glados. Reaaaal original.

[marks]

I've actually not played portal. And anyway, that was just an idea we were throwing around - we decided it doesnt fit and we have a very different narrative structure (hooray for actually hammering that shit out) which I'm in the process of writing up onto the design wiki right now.

Quit trolling.

[KILLA-COW]

I'm not trolling - it's actually an 'opinion'. Am I allowed to have one? I'm glad you've changed your mind on blatantly copying Portal.

[dissonance]

Pissing, ocean of piss, etc.

Anywho, Reverse Displacement means... pushing the player back?

[marks]

Yeah, thats correct. Instead of using typical displacement methods that drive a player forwards through a level .... we want to do it backwards. It fits our gameplay dynamic better.

[marks]

I've been posting some of the architecture pre-vis work in the Art forum, some examples if you missed it:

[Mr. Happy]

As a former philosophy student here's an FYI:

The main point of kantian ethics is the categorical imperative, i.e. 'rule' or 'law' based determinations of the morality of an action; actions are judged 'automatically' and 'objectively' by how they are described and the rules can NOT be bent (i.e. killing is wrong no matter what)

You got utilitarianism basically right though although 'greater good' doesn't really refer to a group of people but rather to the quantity of good. it is more specifically about the math of how much good is produced, sometimes it is focused entirely on the individual (hedonism).

Neither philosophy is really about the 'who the action serves' (individual vs. group) but rather the method of determining the moral value of action.

Yeah, thats correct. Instead of using typical displacement methods that drive a player forwards through a level .... we want to do it backwards. It fits our gameplay dynamic better.

Can you avoid making the player feel like they can't win? Reading your design doc it says you go up through a building to the roof. Does this mean you always fail, always being pushed back, or are you defending an objective in each level that will allow PROGRESS to the next level? (for example, powering a generator to open the door to the next level) Is the roof an extraction point? 'progress' and 'movement' are entirely relative, you are still setting up a sequential arenas with a fail/success condition...isn't 'time' the real dimension of direction? Maybe the scoring system reflects the 'backwardsness,' i.e. you want to stay in each area as long as possible (is that the case?) What is the goal? Is the roof goal or fail?

Could you say a little bit more about that, how does it fit your gameplay dynamic better?

Also, is this a project for creative assembly and if not how does that work with your contract? Do you not have a non-compete clause? Is this a commercial project? I'm just curious about how that stuff works, don't want to get you in trouble or anything

[marks]

Thanks for the clarification - I will admit those were very brief notes of very long design discussions - Brady knows more about that stuff than I do !

In essence yes, the idea is to set up a sequence of arena-type gameplay zones where the player must successfully defend an objective for a set amount of time, and then they progress to the next arena. We're also planning to switch that up part-way through the game, but its early days with that yet. The roof is the 'goal' I guess, in the sense that thats where you are going to end up, but you want to take as long as possible to get there.

The core gameplay dynamic is that you're fighting a rearguard action - a fighting retreat. Because of that, it makes sense to displace the player backwards rather than forwards. Almost like, once you've successfully defended an objective in an 'arena zone' ... the volume of enemies increases forcing you to retreat. Like I said before though, this is stuff we are going to need to prototype heavily, which is what we're starting to do now.

My CA contract doesn't really have a non-compete clause. It basically just says don't try to headhunt people from CA if I leave.

couple more architecture concept shots for you

[Mr. Happy]

That explanation makes more sense to me now! The only tower defense game I've played is that one from the steam-potato-arg and I can see how this is very different.

You've made good progress on the layout and architecture! I like those little side areas with the 'flat' steps that lead up to the railing, I've never seen anything quite like that in 'stately' architecture.

Is this 'eurozone' ? I remember your old art-bible having more sci-fi, like shots from moon, obviously it's evolved, will the two cultures be shown with differing architecture? Your current art bible has some radical sci-fi stuff too!

[marks]

Tough to call for sure on the geographical setting at the moment, like I said we're still in the middle of actually designing that stuff at the moment! The layout hasn't even been considered at all, at this stage I'm just concerned with making the architecture and the space look and feel classical roman. Once I get started on the second pass, that's when everything gets sci-fi'd up.

We're trying to stay away from "high sci-fi" ala Moon and such, we're trying to keep it as contemporary as possible, a stylised vision of the near-future. The two cultures will have very different architecture and such, however for at least the vertical slice demo, we will only be working on the roman-style stuff.

[zombie@computer]

The pillars are more greek than roman-style atm :p rest looks nice.