Daily blog: Tuesday 30th April.

My deadline is the 16th of May. The very not so distant future. Today was a really exciting day but before I go into what individually happened let me just recap the team.

Sam Coleman- designer,graphics,programming,writer   Game design course
Dan Parsons- programming.     Game design course
Deborah Price- animation.  Animation course
Max Perkins- graphics.         Animation course
Gareth Jones- writing.      Creative writing course
Jason Savory- music.        Creative sound and music course

I either contacted or worked right next to all of the team today. I started the day by purchasing the full version of construct2. The personal version allows me to actually build the full version of the game as with the free version the software had limitations that meant I simply could not build the full version.

I had a meeting with Jason savory, the composer for leviathan, we worked together literally sharing one pair of head phones and spent several hours looking through sound effects and splicing different pieces of individual sounds with other pieces to get the right effect, Jason tweaked the sounds and we worked out the timings for certain noises to stop and start by measuring the time in the game with a stopwatch. Jason also put together a fantastic title track that I'm really pleased with, he's done a great job and all that's required is for me to deliver a precise list of sound effects and music cut up for the final areas they are required within game.

After the very successful sound meeting I contacted dan regarding some programming problems I've encountered and prepared some of the in game speech to be looked over by Gareth from the creative writing course.

With this organised I started work on the bulk of the programming, with the new construct version I could finally implement the new devil wing animation that Deborah created along with Max's background art assets and my own speech system. This was all just for room one and really fleshed it out. There were a few programming errors that were ironed out during the evening and still a problem getting the devil fly animation quite right but over all the games really taken shape today.

I'm eager to get the other rooms attached and working so there is a full game run through ready for programming and assets. The conversation choices also need some more work.

Sam

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.