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

Project Management

James Willock showed off a piece of software today that would increase our efficiency and job management quite a lot. Its called basecampHQ and it helps set roles, dead lines, meetings, jobs and other such project orientated things.
I'm getting a license sorted out now with Sarah and I hope to have it set up by Friday at the latest.

Roles and Required Work

i think this covers what sort of work we'll need to do and we don't need to have strict roles in the group, just plan out whats needed

character and environment research
character/creature artists/animators - diff expressions per creature?
environment artists/animators
level/world map design
flash code - low grav/movement/interaction/combat sequence
planning for stats/perks
storyline/quest structure
sound recording - Foley/voice recording/music (maybe)

i think to start with we just need some visual idea for creatures and environments and then think about whether we need to create a unified style. as the creatures should be varied, it might work well for their styles to vary. all spore creatures look similar, so maybe different styles would be more interesting.
i thought that we could make one detailed, blinking eyeball that we could all use to save time.

Final Proposal

We've just pitched our main ideas to tom including:
a futuristic rts wargame with aquatic aliens set on a flooded planet earth,
a point and click puzzle game about death and a necromancer who have been demoted to harvesting the souls of fish,
a rpg set in ancient greece where you play as a son of Poseidon expanding his empire by sinking land and forming the Mediterranean sea,
and an rts set on earth after the polar caps have melted, focusing on resource management when food and fuel supplies have changed with the changing global environments.
However, we have decided upon a family friendly game with influences including spore, pokemon, viva pinata

this is the first summary of the final idea for the project - nothing is fixed

MICROBE underwater game

Overview
The game is set in an underwater civilisation with varying settlements and cultures
The style will be cartoony and be suitable and appealing for all ages
The player can choose one of numerous, varied creatures to play as
Each creature has 5 stages of evolution
With each stage, more limbs can be attached to the creature, expanding its abilities
The player explores the world, completes quests and fights with other creatures to gain XP, DNA and to evolve
The five stages of evolution will not vary visually as a result of the DNA collected but the variation and power of the limbs will

World
From the world map view, the player can travel greater distances, to and from settlements
While travelling, the player may have random encounters whereby a fight sequence will be initiated
In settlements there could be traders where objects could be bought and sold
The settlements would all be old in style and technology, ranging from Prehistoric/Caveman, to ancient Aztec/Roman/Greek, through to medieval and fantasy

Large creatures exist which can consume certain materials and excrete others; for example, feeding one oil could produce diamonds

Pet
Pets can be encountered or purchased throughout the world and vary as widely as the player’s creature
After purchasing a pet, the player is able to carry more objects as their starting inventory will be quite limited
The pets act as a beast of burden and steed and allow faster travel across the world map
The pets also level up and evolve, as well as being able to assist the player in battle

Combat
The fights will be in a separate screen to the turn based
The player will choose an attack and then complete a button sequence/timing bar/spinning timing circle
Several challenges may appear in a row to make a combo, possibly with increasing speeds
The range of attacks depend on the limbs obtained by the creature
Several of the same limb increase that attack and some attacks are only available through having a certain combination of limbs
There is a choice of three tiers of attack sequences which advance in difficulty and power of the attack
This gives less advanced player an easy option but with less damage done to an opponent
More experience would be gained for more advanced attacks

Limb variants
At any time the player can choose to reproduce asexually (reproducing with itself and dividing into two) and alter the limbs of the creature

Spike
Electrode – a lightning attack
Ink jet – stealth/blind the enemy so they may miss with their attacks
Poison/acid jet – continues to damage for several turns
Inflatable fist (like blowfish)
Air Jets – can force the creature away/end fight sequence
Boil water
Shield

MAGIC

Healing could be done through magic/potions or a symbiotic bacteria which aids the creatures immune system

Defeating enemies and completing quests will earn the player XP to contribute to levelling up
Each level, the creature will gain health and other stats
After a certain number of levels, the player will evolve one of five times making them larger and able to support more limbs

Creatures

I mentioned using Ricky Gervais' Flanimals as inspiration for the creature design in one of the game ideas, this is what I had in mind http://www.flanimals.com/gallery_poster.html

We could also do something similar to that to show the evolution of the creatures and or customisation of the creatures. Might look nice in the documentation.

Or we could do like the evolution of man drawing, I think someone mentioned this at the last meeting.

Thinking about the enviroment.

I've been thinking about what the environment of our game would be, style, age, materials, etc.
I think the choices are:

Medieval/Fantasy - This type of architecture could be enforced by the fact its at the bottom of a fish bowl and fish bowl's usually have some little castle at the bottom.

Prehistoric - Buildings could be built out of gravel etc.

Modern - To reflect the real world but with an aqua feel to the structures.

Futuristic - I don't think this would work well with our theme, but its always a choice if needed

Organic - Because were going microscopic, having an organic feel to the whole thing would be a good idea, sort of like moss on the bottom of the bowl.

Early Roman/Greek - This could work as well, its something different but I'm not sure if it would fit in with the feel of the game.

Art Nouveau - I like the idea of this, the fish bowl could also be in a late 1800's environment.