Zone 1!

Zone 1 draft is done, I will show it to the guys tomorrow and see what they reckon. I'm quite happy with the outcome and the city design looks awesome, taking the form of a spiky shell with medieval towers popping out of it.

Zone 2 will be a sunken ship and will make for and interesting design, bring it on lol

Liam

A quicky

A quick update:

Initial map layout created. This includes collision areas, battle areas, city entrance and movement for the character.

Environments

The environments are coming on nicely at the momen, as I type this I have two of the four zones we agreed on drawn up. I am also working on putting one into Photoshop. I have four different city concepts done aswell, just need to deside which ones I would like to use in the demo :)

Meeting 17-3

What a productive day we've had today. I think everyone now has a very clear image in their mind of how the game works and is going to look. We've got clear goals of how everything is going to be set out and what to do for next week, basecampHQ really is a god send for this type of management.

Group meeting – 03/03/09

Intentions – to decide upon core content and required work of game

World Map

World map will be top down

The avatar for the player in the world map view is one of several pets, which enable quick travel across the world map

Random encounters take place outside of settlements and will be more likely in certain areas – such as tall sea weed.

There could be a danger meter on the HUD to inform players of the relative threat in their location

Certain areas could be home to large ‘boss’ creatures

Settlements will be side scrolling with options to enter several buildings

We considered having a day/night cycle with bio-luminescent fish coming out at night

Time could also feature within this cycle, as certain buildings or objectives could only be available at certain times of day

Outside a central hub-city, there will be several smaller cities within a countryside setting

Further out from there will be the badlands area, with increased chances of random encounters and with more ferocious creatures

Battle Mode

Battle screen will be side on

We have decided to remove the additional weapon-limb concept to make the visuals more consistent and ease the design process

Instead, the player will gain attacks and DNA points from enemies they defeat

They will begin with 1 attack – decided by the species they choose to play as

From then onwards, every 10 levels, they will gain a slot to add a new attack to

Every attack gained from an opponent will be available in the weapon slot screen floating above the available slots

These can then be dragged and dropped onto a slot to make them available to the player in battle

DNA points will act as XP for the player and be gained for completing quests or defeating opponents

They will appear, floating on the skills screen with a slot for several stats, each of which can have DNA points dragged and dropped onto them

They will each have a maximum level and DNA can be removed from each stat and reassigned – ‘natural selection’ as a cheesy title perhaps

Level system

We are considering either 50 or 100 levels, with a major evolution every 20% - being 5 or 10 respectively

There will be a selection of 6 starting creatures for the player to choose from

These will each evolve 5 times but randomly; every 15-30 levels rather than every 25

This could make the levelling process more personal and unique for each player

The different creatures will start at different positions on the world map, with different back-stories and quests

We have decided to use real voice acting rather than text, to make the game more interesting and potentially save time

A new character ‘king prawn’ has been added as the king of the entire realm

A name of ‘Mikros’ has been assigned to the world – as it means small in Greek

And the group has decided upon ‘Microbe’ as the title for the game

Roles setup

Roles have been discussed between the team and are as follows:

# Character Artists and Animators: Roger and John (JJ Helping)

# Environment Artists and Animators: Liam and James (Chris Helping)

# Programmers: Chris and Matt (Roger Helping)

# GUI Design: JJ and Callum

# World Map Design: Roger

We also have decided to give lead roles to people, just to keep the team heading in the right direction, these are as follows:

# Roger – Lead Character Artist

# Liam – Lead Enviroment Artist

# Chris – Lead Programmer

# JJ - Lead GUI Artist