Pitch work

With a lot of work to do on the pitch it took up a few weeks because we did the pitch in Open wonderland it meant testing things within the program as well as making sure we had the right things to say for the pitch.

Open wonderland opened up a lot of doors for us because of what can be done in the program, this meant we thought of the perfect way to do the presentation would be inside part of the ship. A 3D environment of corridors inside the ship was thought up and implemented into open wonderland. We had practice with the pitch but not at the same time as in the ship as the work took a while. This meant there were some hicups during the presentation but even with the difficulties the pitch went well and the world was well received.

I'm glad we did the pitch in Open wonderland rather than a normal power point controlled presentation. It really payed off and is useful for the future to try and get investors interested.

Game Balancing

Game balancing is very important in a game because you don't want to player to get bored if the game becomes too easy or frustrated if the game becomes too hard.

Because Hex Quadrant is a story based game it becomes easier to balance the game and make sure the difficulty rises with the players experience. The further through the game will increase the strength of the enemies but we will still increase the power of weapons but at a ratio that will still provide a challenge. It will also become harder as you progress to deal with the Xehla in the way you want, making you work for the ending you aim for.

Design Document and Pitch

This week we have decided as a group to do our pitch in open wonderland so we can implement different styles of presenting our ideas, this idea is going well.

The design document is going well and we are all working well together to get it done.

The thought process for the pitch has helped us with choosing things like the platform we would intend for the game to be released on. We chose the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. We have also agreed it could potentially be released on the Wii U.

User Interface

The UI of a game is very important as it has to be something the player is ok with looking at for hours on end.

We based the UI design on the name of the game, Hex Quadrant, using hexagons in the UI for things like ammo and health bars. The UI also has a counter for the friendly Xehla in the area willing to help you along with a directional compass with will show the direction of the story objective

Gameplay

This week was game play and we discussed various ideas about weapons and how they would be implemented in the game. We also talked about the Xehla and how they would work within the game play. We knew that we wanted the Xehla to influence the game play dramatically and because of the multiple factions this causes a giant shift in how you can play the game. Either using the Xehla to help you in various ways such as collecting ammo for you and helping with upgrades or taking out the majority of the loyal you find instead of trying to turn them over to the rebels because you would do anything to try and get off the ship.

Story

This week was centered around the story, I wrote up a very rough idea for the story and main ideas

We decided we wanted to make a futuristic first person shooter game set thousands of years into the future in a different galaxy. The main character you will play as is a humanoid alien, very thin and tall with a long torso and as this being you would be fighting against an enemy race. What you don't realise once you've arrived on this planet is that there are two factions, the smaller beings are actually trying to help you, providing you with ammunition and weapons. They hide and live in small tunnels. The actual enemy beings are almost gorilla like in stature, big and evil. Although the majority of the smaller race are helpful and friendly a small fraction of these small beings use the gorilla-like creatures as portable turrets/vehicles.

The setting of the game is a very large space ship, the humanoid alien has landed here and does not know where he is or what he is about to find. When he meets the first race of the unknown enemy, the player will not know that in fact these small beings are actually quite helpful to the player; they provide the correct arms for the main character to be able to properly defend himself against the larger enemies. You are in fact trying to save the smaller rebel faction. What you learn as you play more of the game is that the larger enemy race have in fact used the smaller race to make weapons etc. for them as they do not have the skills, they have enslaved some of the smaller beings to work with them and against you as the player. As they player you will have a heads-up display to show you the members or the percentage of the smaller race in the same area as you that are willing to help you by collecting weapons, manipulating objects and machinery as well as saving members of their same race that have been captured.

The start level of the game is you getting pulled onto an unknown spaceship, the reason for this is still undecided, you will initially have your own weapon but it is quite basic and one that you are not sure whether it will be able to do any damage in this unknown place but allows you to feel slightly more safe that you may be able to defend yourself. You see the small beings running around you, they are very quick and stealthy but don't seem to be threatening you, eventually you come face to face with an enemy being. We want to make the small beings to look more un-civilized and 'damaged' so they will be disfigured or scarred due to being tormented and used by the bigger enemy race.

Character and Setting

This week we concentrated on the character design

We have chose 3 alien races that are crucial to the story, we have Trigen the main character a tall, thin, humanoid alien the protagonist of the game and the character that will be controlled by the player. The enemy race we named the Asgar a huge race. They have the same body structure as gorillas but they are closer to reptiles with their face and scaly skin. The Asgar are brutal and and used to dominating smaller races. They Xehla are the third race in the game, very small in stature and slaves to the Asgar. They will be a crucial part in the story as they are split into two factions, the rebels, friends to Trigen and the loyal helpers of the Asgar.

We also discussed a little bit about the setting, the whole game will be set aboard the Asgar ship inside the twisting corridors and huge rooms, the internal setting will hopefully cause tension at parts because they are going to be challenging to maneuver while fighting the huge Asgar.

Progressing with an idea

This week we decided upon the idea for the game, and delved further into some of the ideas. We chose to give each person in the group a part of the game to concentrate on to get a higher level of work. Mark was given the weapon system and gameplay, my job was to come up with the story factors and Becca concentrated on the characters.

This meeting went well and we got a lot planned out to continue with in the weeks

First Group Metting

The first group meeting took place last friday. Our group consists of 3 people, Myself, Rebecca and Mark. We sat down and we discussed the direction we wanted our game to go, throwing around different ideas and examples of games we have enjoyed. The first major hurdle we came across was the genre we wanted to design. Many different ideas were suggested such as First Person Shooter, with examples we enjoyed such as the Battlefield series and 

Borderlands.

We discussed making our games an RPG and discussed many other Genres. We looked at many games we enjoy and would have liked to take inspiration from such as the Bioshock games and World of Warcraft.