Environment Project

To kick off the project, I wanted to overload my thought process with imagery of environments and existing game genres that I could take and adapt to make my own. I always make the habit of changing my mind half way through the design process when I have hardly any time left because I don't plan as deeply as I should. (Note to self, fully weigh up all options before concepting begins.) I'm already a big fan of the zombie/apocalyptic/survival genre, especially films like mad max: beyond thunderdrome, with baron wastelands and barbaric hordes of rebels held up in self built fortresses. I think looking at something I'm a fan of is good area to start off in because I am stilling doing something that's needed of me but I can relate to it making the process of designing more engaging. Having said this I need to keep the player, audience and game community as a design priority because this final outcome isn't for me. So the first rule of design club is 'what will they get out of this?'.

To add a new dynamic to a genre that already exists, I have looked at a variety of real environments like third world shanty towns and picturesque Venice river fronts. I have also looked at traditional paintings like Claude Monet's house of parliament . I crammed all my imagery into a few A3 mood boards to refer to throughout designing.

To research a bit further into the apocalyptic genre, I looked at a TV documentary called 'Life After People' which shows what would happen to the world that we leave behind which relates to there being much fewer humans left on earth. The documentary gave me an incite into how cities decay when unmaintained, threat of pandemics, natural disasters and the animal kingdoms survival of the fittest. Here's a link to the documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbr6mnX95iE&feature=related skip to about 26 minutes in.

Whilst researching, I was devising more rules that would lead to effective design of the environment and characters. I split them into environment, character and final concept sub categories to get consistency throughout.

RULES

Environment- 1. More is less (don't over do things)

2. Maintain continuous derelict feel to surroundings

Character- 1. Characters must be simple with an exaggerated main character as vocal point

Final Concepts- 1. Composition, mood, how well does it engage the viewer

2. Leave audience to conclude the events that have come before

3. leave as much to interpret as possible

From the rules I began to concept the environment for my

chosen apocalyptic genre. I wanted to design the general state of the world after apocalyptic disaster and the area the majority of the game would take place. The story I decided to go with was a brake down in technology in the future that caused nuclear weapons to launch devastatingly wiping out the majority of the planets population. Survivors of the blasts that were caught by radiation were disfigured and in some cases transformed into mutated beings.

I wanted to take the player through a specific area where I thought there could be a high level of threat and a good place that could influence the style of enemies. I decided upon a mental asylum. I took a silhouette and played about with numerous to create a derelict building that had looked as if it had been inhabited by its once patients and sinister travellers.