Monday, March 7, 2011

On the designing of levels

Todays work has been focus mainly on the design and mechanics of our levels. The 'real' course for the project will not start for another three weeks and the work being done right now is under the Level Design-banner. Thus we focus on the best way to construct our levels, to bring out the best possible experience for the players.

This is all theory at the moment but the general plan is to create small design-patterns (templates, if you will) to construct the larger levels from. These patterns will be created with specific aesthetics in mind to help build and change levels to give a certain feel. If this sounds oddly cryptic we will most likely post the system when complete along with proper examples. We are not sure it will function fully the way we imagine it so obviously it needs a lot of testing.


Basic Mockup - Work in progress

When not dreaming up systems for levels we have been busy setting up mock-ups of our game. Basic images of what the game could look like using place-holder art and stuff. These are primarily used as a tool to compose and adjust things like camera-angles, GUI, lighting and so on. Take note - this is done in haste and should not be considered even close to a finished product. 




Early WIP of the cars.


The promise of food and drink now drag us away from the office. More to come later.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Carnage Project launched!

The Carnage Project has now officially started! The project will be in development from this date to the scheduled presentation at Gotland Game Awards in late May. The team behind Carnage consists of students currently studying the second year at the department of Game Development at Gotland University (Högskolan på Gotland).

This blog will be devoted to follow our time in the office - showing work in progress, ever-changing game-builds and hopefully post some other interesting stuff as it's being created. The game will be made in Epic Games Unreal Engine 3 using the UDK-tool along with some additional software for content creation.

If you look behind the scenes you'll find that a lot of shady work has been going on for some time. The basic game-concept was crafted in early fall last year and has been shaped in to the design we have today during dark winter nights resulting in a complete board game prototype. Our goal was to have a (as good as it gets) complete design in place at project start in order to fully focus on the production-side of things come spring. No doubt a lot of features will still be subject to change during production.

From this day the deadline is close to three months away. Time to work.