Here is the latest look at the Leviathan stand at the University of Newport graduation show!

 

Leviathan at Graduation show!

So here is my little spot ready for the graduation show and the first public showing of Leviathan!
The show will be the evening of Wednesday the 19th of  June at Newport University in Wales.

very exciting!

Heres a little brand new screenshot to celebrate!

                                       

Leviathan Trailer.

Leviathan Production.

30/04/2013

So I'm deep into production now and programming Leviathan myself at the same time as producing the art and overseeing  various other bits and pieces that need doing such as sound and the piecing together of the trailer.

With being so busy recently I haven't had much time to blog and dropped the ball in that respect, to give an accurate depiction of these final jam packed days I will be doing a daily blog that is much more diary like to give a cutaway kind of look at the ups and downs of building just the end slice of Leviathan.

Two weeks time is the hand in but the graduation show is about six weeks away, I intend to continue the blog right up until the graduation show itself. Teams doing a really great job!

Sam.

Looking back to move forward.

Looking back over design stages as we move into production I realised that I have mentioned very few games that have influenced me during the design of Leviathan so I thought I'd quickly name some of the key influences game wise from the beginning of the project up to now.

                                                                The Majesty of colours.

                                                               Limbo and Machinarium

                                                                      Castle crashers

                                                              I wish I were the moon.

                                                                           Sam.

Playing card design

The Devils hand.

It was always my desire to have the player play against the devil in a non violent game that would allow your opponent to cheat. I wanted the player to have to play a very rule oriented game of some simplicity, something along the lines of cups or cards. The player would have to play by the rules and the devil could cheat his way through the game. These are the card designs for the game you would play with the devil, I will be using these designs for business cards and possibly promotional material if there is no chance to implement  them in the final game.

Sam.

Production. week 1

Week 1 of Production.

Week one of production has began. My soundtrack has been sorted out and I'm lucky enough to have the very talented Jason savory working on it. I've seen his previous work and I'm very excited to see what he creates from the inspirations I've sent him.

I have turned my hand to programming doing some bits on construct but I'm looking to hire a programmer. I want the game to be the best it can be and im just not the programmer for this, I come from an art background and I would much prefer to outsource as much programming as I can to someone talented in that field.


I took to the whiteboard once more with Deborah Price my animator and started working on how the ethical system within the game will actually work getting down to the gritty details. How does the game measure what the player does? when does it change the scenery to show the players actions on the world? what exactly are the choices the players can make?

Above are the notes from that day. These outline how my ethical system will work within the game and how the system will be set up to record the players actions and respond appropriately.

Work on the background art has began and I'm excited to post that up soon, me and my background artist Max Perkins worked together on it today discussing different styles for the game. I have decided to have a layer of detailed backdrop mostly to communicate story and then layers going into the distance almost entirely in silhouette to give this larger fake world feel to the game giving it the desired aesthetic look. I'll go into this in a later blog once we've tested the looks a bit more.



I have also got prints back of my final poster designs which I handed round at my last presentation some of these are designs I've shown before but one in particular is four simple colour posters I'm using to represent the characters. These four images can stand alone or be viewed together as a set and were designed to be striking at a distance.

Sam.

Promotional poster, Character set.

Promotional Poster.

I have also got prints back of my final poster designs which I handed round at my last presentation some of these are designs I've shown before but one in particular is four simple colour posters I'm using to represent the characters. These four images can stand alone or be viewed together as a set and were designed to be striking at a distance.

Sam.

Storyboard for Animatic.

My storyboard for two animators to follow and build into the opening animatic which explains the larger plot. This will lead directly into the game, from there onwards the player can choose the amount of story they wish to experience.

The cult of the Leviathan.

Concepts fot the cult of the leviathan. These designs were made to tie together aspects of the human/leviathan alligiance to make a recognizable force throughout the game. I have used the leviathan statue as a symbol of the leviathan cult itself on posters and in bronze masks the cultists wear. These will be used in the game in the main town to show the player how much influence the leviathan is exerting on the human population.

sam.

Leviathan presentation.

The trailer for leviathan is above or go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXal-6tmzJw

This is a trailer I built primarily to show how the choice system will work in game.

The majesty of colours Review.

For the Ethical choices within Leviathan I have been looking at other successful games that have tried the same thing, one in particular that struck me was The Majesty of colours by Gregory Weir.

The majesty of colours has the player act out a large Lovecraftian beast which can interact with changing elements within the game, these interactions trigger different events leading to different endings. A very similar premise to my own game. Colours has proved very popular in its reception especially regarding its simple aesthetic style (a usual of Weirs) and its multiple choice ending but its the Ethical values at play that I'm really after.

The game sees you the player given simple choices, you can help the little island people or you can destroy them, you can also do a bit of both, all of these choices create the multiple endings. My problem With Colours is deep within the ethical web it creates. When the player makes a decision there is a block of text that appears telling the player what he has done and hints towards what choices can be made. This system of the game itself interacting with the player doesn't allow the player time to reflect on their own actions as the game itself is telling them how their actions are perceived.

Planes bearing banners fly across the screen, these flags show either a heart or a skull respectively depending on the choices made, in this way the game itself instantly judges the player in the same way a good or evil meter would in other failed ethical games. Weir himself commented on the amount of narration within the game when he released a blog on how he made colours, weir said-

'I wrestled with a big bad design dilemma during production: how much narration should I include in the game? ''majesty'' would have been a cleaner, purer game without any text...'

The game ethically is not 'wrong' but it doesn't allow a free thinking reflective space for players to derive the outcomes of their own actions according to the theories of Sicart which my game uses as a theoretical starting point regarding its ethical choice system.

sam

The Leviathan statue.

The Leviathan statue.

This is one of the most important pieces of the entire game. This statue is the main way a player can interpret how their actions are changing the game. The statue is in the centre of the town that the player runs around and all the villagers pray to it, as the player completes tasks the statues appearance will change. Help the leviathan worshippers and The statue will get more tentacles and look shiny and looked after, Harass and hinder the leviathan followers by helping the mythological beasts and the statue will became aged and dilapidated  There is even a few sneaky middle ground ones I'm working out but we will get to that later, I want it to be a lot more complicated than just good and bad and this leaves the player free to judge what the statue represents, I don't want it to be perfectly clear so that aspect of the game is open to player interpretation, to a degree obviously if you go around killing everything you will see this reflected very fast in the statue.

The statue design didn't take long to nail, I already had a pretty clear Idea of what I wanted, something symbolic and a touch abstract, After a few thumbnails I had it.


I started colour testing, This turned out to be harder to nail than I thought and needed alot of tweaking, it was important I chose a colour that felt neither good or bad but a happy boring medium but also stood out nicely against the town backdrop.

Still didn't quite have it...

I tested the statues against some backgrounds  one was a rough concept for the town (above) which was built for the purpose of the test, its the same grey as the majority of the background will be.


Heres a test against the most complete backround I have drawn by Max Perkins for 'Stop hitting me'
my mini game tech demo.

The final I went for is bronze although the base had to be tweaked to let the statue stand out. Bronze stands out well in the backdrop while not dominating the backdrop, it also ages well turning green in its age giving me some nice colours to play with when I go on to mess around with it later.




(Below)
Little design addition I did was to add the shape of the priests daughter into the leviathan statue, The leviathans stolen the priests daughter and I wanted some kind of symbolic representation of that within the statue, I like the idea the player may be able to spot this little easter egg him/her self although its only a very small detail.

Sam.

The Ceartas.

The Ceartas is the boat that carries the priest, after he is changed into a puppet to traverse the devils prison world the player must sail this vessel up to the island Tartarus. Ceartas is Gaelic for justice.

The Boat was always something I wanted to feature in the game and will be used at the beginning to teach the player the games controls, for instance the player will be required to jump up the mast and interact with it at the top to shift the sails. The player will sail the boat up to the island Tartarus and the games beginning to start the quest.

THE DESIGN.
The Ceartas is the boat the priest puts together out of the ruins left of his home town after the leviathan destroys it. The boats figurehead is a mixture of a selkie (half seal half women creatures of scottish folklore) and blind justice, this came from looking at the purpose of figureheads throughout history, they were mostly used to convey the name of the ship in a non-literate sense.

I researched into scottish fishing vessels quite a bit but disliked alot of what I saw so I had the priest construct the boat himself giving me le-way in my design to create something more suitable.

For a look at some early Scottish fishing boats that originally inspired the Ceartas take a look here.





With the boat done I started doing some concept bits and pieces to hand over to other team members, finding a look between real and puppet world was interestingly more complicated than I thought it would be.

Writing and  drawing a walk through of the game is my task now. The theory is really important, if the ethical game-play doesn't communicate to the player then the whole game wont play as I wish.


Sam.

week 9 (beginning)

The team 3

The 3 letter name thing seems to be a trend.

The game takes shape...

The background art is in full swing although the rooms are still being cut and changed as I solidify my idea of the puzzles. This is the wonderful work of max who will be doing the backgrounds and some of the items.
You can see more of maxs art on his own blog here.

While it looks fairly simple this room is filled with purpose within the game and has a few more bits and pieces I havent shown here as not to ruin the game. Everything in the backround will have purpose and theres alot of hidden bits and pieces I hope to include, eyes peeled!

Sam

Week 3

Level design 1

I'm working on the most complex puzzle first as it more effectively summarizes what I wish to do within the game. This is just the first iteration and will no Doubt change quite a bit, there's still a long way to go but it gives you an idea of what we will be looking at.

The character you play is the puppet priest in the bottom left of the screen, you will have to leap about the devils theatre where you can interact with the other creatures and scenery on screen.

Miltons leviathan.

Its nearing the end of  the week and all the individual sprites and art assets have been built, I think next week will be more theory and really nailing how I want this game to play. I'll be doing a few bits and pieces with sound and the background style, at this point I just want to get all the little pieces of leviathan together ready for white boxing,  playtesting will be very important and I really want to start this process over Christmas so I really need the basics put together by then.

Some exciting things in the works.

This is some pages from my copy of Miltons paradise lost regarding the leviathan. the art is by Gustave Dore and is part of my research not just because of the tonal qualities in the picture but also how he frames the vast leviathan, its given me an idea for a similar in game shot. Miltons writing has really helped me think about my game in more of a visual perspective, miltons writing seems very visual to me and replicating this slightly could improve my writing, something to experiment with.