RAF: “The Damaged”

• Game about a damaged world, with six major cities/areas/rooms, in a medieval setting.
• World is populated by 6 categories of evil (drug addicts, gluttony, alcoholism, violence, greed, laziness, etc) like Shadow of the colossus.
• Each city has a “boss”.
• Some regular people, some “damaged” characters, with a vice/problem.
• Dynamic between these 2 types of people.
• Main character half-god?
• Through exploration, see who you hate the most, begin killing off the damaged people.
• You are an omnipotent-style character. You start killing one type of
• people in this world but the other types take over the space previously occupied by the types you just killed (cannot actually kill them all) you must make a choice: try and fail or join the ranks (needs some expansion/clarification)

The look:

• Creepy characters, rich, dark, grungy atmosphere
• Like some old great civilization that has fallen, now inhabited by useless, broken people.
• Medieval, fantasy, horror theme

Game genre/mechanics?

• First person style game play.
• No levels, just exploration. Medieval GTA
• Not sure about the ending of the game, needs help with the development (ex: what is the motivation to go on the quest?).

STEPHEN: Idea #1 “Ohme”

• Prefers to explore mechanics over sound or storyline. He can do design, does also graphics and programming.
• A side-scrolling game populated with cute, unique characters, doing what they do. Ex: road crew drives around fixing holes. Ex: crazy science dude mixing chemicals and burning holes in the ground.
• Possible forest setting.
• Example: Raccoons! With some industrial guy wanting to kill the forest, you would have this guy going around trying to make things right.
• So, dynamic solutions to puzzles by interacting with the different characters.
• Dialogue: you can pick stuff up and use items, like feed road crewà they follow you around and help you (creative, procedural dynamic stuff, creative problem solving)

Idea #2: “Noir”

• Interested in accessible games: to people with disabilities (difficulty holding a controller, visually impaired)… Using senses other than vision to solve a puzzle game.

Inspiration: Pit

• Wants to extend this into more of a puzzle game; can’t get a sense of the space around you; compact space.
• Somehow you get into a “spot of bother”
• Adventure game, figure out a way to escape…
• Setting could be a detective who is thrown into a basement and has to figure a way out of that space by using his other senses to navigate around and figure out puzzles to get out. Example: he could try and crack a safe by listening to the mechanical ticks of the safe dial to get to the items inside.
• Short game, not many rooms

Things you can do:

• Try to listen to noises…
• Drips of water/puddle to see yourself…
• Can feel along walls…

Idea: Wii controllers—use vibrations for some feedback for example.

He needs good level design, and good sound design!

MAX: “Battleschool”

• Multi-player first person shooter based on the book “Enders game”
• Zero gravity, 2 teams on opposite sides of a cubic room.
• Can’t just get from A to B, have to jump around—movement is important, starting and stopping is tricky.
• Sliding gate to get into the cube.
• Randomly appearing smaller cubes could provide cover.
• players are kids. Shooting someone shoots a (tagging?) beam so when a specific limb of your body gets shot, that limb looses hit-points.
• Limbs are unusable when their respective hit-points reach 0. Not being able to use limbs, like legs, can affect movement or, if arms are affected, aiming.

• To win, eliminate all opposing players or capture the flag-like goal.
• Possible other mechanics like hooks to swing around in 0 gravity and a “golden snitch” mechanic for an alternative method to winning

For next week:

-       If you haven’t yet, post your name, skills, what you’re interested in on the blog in the section “Who We Are”

-       Next meeting, we will be discussing our goals.

-       Concrete teams should be forming now, pre-production finished by the end of the semester, with design document.

So this is where each group will answer their own question. Think about what you’re trying to say with your project–what problem are you solving, what is its reason for being??

This will help us understand each other, but it’s also a good exercise for people who need to get used to explaining their artistic intents when submitting to a show or applying for a grant…

Please respond to this post with your name, your program of study, what you do, and what you’re interested in!

Thanks!!

Sorry it took a while to get this out.

The most important things that came up during the meeting are in the email I sent to the group; if you did not get it/have a crazy filter and don’t even know it’s lost in a sea of emails (you know who you are),  I will reiterate. Or just copy+paste.

1- We will be having a second Pitch Day next Monday night at 6:00pm (11th floor, same room 11.707):

• This is for anyone who was unable to make it last week, or who just joined.
• There will be no re-pitching of pitches. If you’ve pitched, you’re done!
• On that note, anyone who did pitch an idea, make sure you’ve written up a summary/saved a slide show/whatever for those who were not present last week.

2- There will be a new section on the blog for both a) “who we are” and b) “the answer to your question”:

a) When you have a chance this week, you should add a small blurb about yourself to the “who we are”,
i.e. your name, what you do, what you’re interested in, what program you’re in.

b) If you’ve pitched an idea, or have already been thinking about it, we are trying to get people to post “the answer to your question”.
What does that mean? Well, what question are you answering with your project?
More specifically, what is it you are saying with your project, and what is it a response to?
It would be great if we can get used to explaining our intentions, especially if your group would like to show the end product, or are applying for grants!

**web people, does everyone in the group have permission to edit the blog?

3- The deadline for applying for special projects grant with FASA is this Friday the 12th, at midnight!
I attached the form to this email–if you would like it, feel free to email me–you also have to write up a separate detailed budget and project description.

4- Finally, and most importantly:
Although there were no koalas present, we did get attacked by a bunch of huge birds flying out of the wall, and then got really bored.

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Now for the notes:

After a giant, cheesy round of intros,  we went over the pitches from last week. If you missed them, here is another (really) short summary:

Ramy’s concept:  perspectives

• Think of the tent in Harry Potter 4….

Moh: creepy creatures

• Ugly, obnoxious, but you want to empathise with them
• Surreal, deformed, no blood/obvious horror, but scary in their own right.
• Merging idea with Ramy’s environment

Samir: sound

• Using it as a core element of a game, used to summon objects
• Sound effects created by people
• Mix between Drawn to Life and Scribblenauts (but in 3D)
• User calls in objects, the game recognizes them

Peter: growing a planet

• Create vegetation, flowers, trees, planet grows itself, kind of a sim thing, but take out the chore aspects, more of an experience (sand box)
• Will make a small prototype first
• Sean will write a story/gameplay
• Alexis will work on the programming
• (see emails for more info!)

Brian: interactive game for mobile phones (see emails for more info!)

• Make use of player’s geographical area as a playing ground (multi-pl)
• GPS tracking, marker recognition, augmented reality
• Work with a server application to take care of the tracking of GPS
• GPS tag visible to anyone else within range, can tag them
• Have data, properties associated with them
• See Urbanambush.com

Pedro: 2 ideas

1-small fear of light, controls the basic human function, the body

• control the sphere inside the human body-basic stuff…
• MUST EMAIL/POST HIS PRESENTATION

2-“panel kill” imagine if a bunch of comic books scattered on the floor, jump into each other’s stories

• interact with other characters & their stories/worlds

Nancy: “Tuesday” 4 friends at a bar

• Hardware hacking: use a remote as a breathalyzer
• Wario war-type games to keep it interesting
• Explore 2D flash with live video
• World changes as the alc level goes up
• Applying for a grant!
• Concept of how ppl go into different personas when drinking

Jonathan: 2 ideas

1-zombie game, take drugs to stop from becoming a zombie, otherwise ppl seem tastier

• Playing with ppl’s perception with the game world

2-platforming with fighting, merged!

(Nancy’s stickman zombie stumbling off a platform)

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WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH IN NEXT MEETING:

• What is possible?
• What are the goals for the summer?

———————————————————-

More on scheduling:

Our production cycle is one year.

Winter semester: design document (due April)–how the game will play, sketches, references, tests, etc
N.B.: ONCE DESIGN DOCUMENT IS DONE, IT’S A SHUT CASE

Summer semester: production!

Fall semester: (December) is the end! + drinking!!

Pacing is important!

PITCH DAY NUMBER 2!! Next week.

OUR GOALS:

• Make not only the fun game aspect, but look into things like ex: motion capture
• Are we creating games for festivals & get hired at existing companies, or make our own mark? What does it mean in the market, etc in Post-production. But it might be helpful to ask these questions now… Who are we designing them for? What is it that makes game fun? Wake-up call: what do we want to achieve??
• Tip: only ask the question you need to ask.

–>For this week, answer the question! Put it up on the blog, organized by project.

Miscellaneous info:
-Can maybe use motion capture at a lab at McGill: physics-based animation (talk to Shahin)
-Club members (again) please put down your name, program of study, what you do, and what you’re interested in doing  :)

Ramy filled me in briefly on the new ideas for the game. (Can we get notes up pls? I’m out of the loop…)

He told me that we are dealing with a disaster in a city, and that the user plays the game through different perspectives & characters. The characters have to find a way out and use objects found to do so… I was wondering if this could mean that we are unveiling a mystery, how the disaster came about. Just something to ponder. This way we can still have a strong concept (once we figure out what the disaster is), and can come up with some really creative ideas. Maybe there is no disaster, and it’s all internal? ~ Oooh…

Anyway I was just thinking of the game play and I thought it might be a good idea to be revealing clues about the disaster through each character played, to solve some sort of mystery, even though actions will change outcomes etc etc.

what do you think?

Thanks!

Charlotte

ps this is my first post, so if it is not done ‘correctly’ I apologize!