Concept Work: Why I no produce a lot...
In short I'm pretty certain of how I want my idea to materialize. Concept work is/was for pitching purposes.
As this is solo project I am inherently going to be a tad lax when it comes to producing pretty-pictures to convey my ideas.
This is not to say there is not more to come but; "why communicate ideas with yourself" is the question I'm facing at the mo, and I think the answer currently is; "to get a grade and build a portfolio whilst improving your quality of drawing".
I've often been guilty of creating 100 ideas not a single product, this isn't something I feel is wrong, but ideas are a dime in a dozen.
Whilst bouncing ideas off of others is fairly effective means of creating work, I tend to find I'm pretty contrary and unwilling to deviate, as a leader of myself this in truth this is more for the sake of clarity.
With only 5-ish months left (-dissertation) to create something awesome, I'd rather not squabble about the pros and cons of lighting with anyone the game does not exist.
In the later stages I'll adjust my strategy once I have a game to work with, aesthetic is the icing on the cake, it's not the entire thing.
Concept Work: Rough Drawings...
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| Britney |
^The realistic proportions (-the arms) look a little lame, since I was drawing her out I thought I might as well try the look out.
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| Teddy |
^Probably one of the cooler ideas in my head, but one that is unlikely to be added as I'm certain a functional model with AI and fluid animation, would be a huge time-sink.
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| Cyringe (Cyber + Syringe, get-it?) |
^The idea with this dude was to have the tutorial reference the annoying fairy from Zeldar, just for the tutorial.
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| Kelrad (It's like Darlek but spelt backward, get it?) |
One of my lamer ideas that is a little ugly and um-necessary, I'll add another Dr.Who reference.
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| Jet-Pack Shark |
^A pretty neat idea stolen and tweaked from the "Lazer Shark" "memes" online.
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| T-3X |
Thought of initially as an arch-enemy, this is defiantly not going to be added.
It seems, over-all, like I'm losing a lot of the charm, I think I'm going to drag everything into a more stylised aesthetic. A photo-realistic interpretation of everything will take too much time and will almost certainly look pants.
In terms of code...
Basically my program creates a list of inactive clones and a list of active clones, it selects randomly from the inactive list and adds to the active.
The objects are prefabs taken from the "prefab" folder, each platform has a couple of vectors to inform the next platform where it needs to generate.
Upon hitting my "deactivation plane" it makes the object inactive and adds it to the inactive list.
I'm having issues with the physics and trying to streamline the code into something more efficient. The addition of gunplay and other misc elements seems, in practise, easy to implement.
I plan to lend my code out so the codes its legibility is especially important to me.
All in all everything looks to be going pretty well, context is something I will refine later, doing so now seems premature whilst the game still lacks functionality.
Conclusion...
My most important task this month is to get the grey-box working completely in a manor that is easily adjustable. Most of December and January are looking to be focused on the completion of the dissertation, from then onwards asset creation will be my focus.
I think that it is vital to have functionality before adjusting the aesthetic, by getting the harder, more technical aspects out of the way I'll have not only a solid foundation on which to build on, but a more flexible schedule during the later stages of game development.
