This post is about my contributions to the Falling game during Fall semester 2012.
Zombie Divers Design
After we decided to cut Graviators and change our game to something else we came up with the idea to splat zombies. As the designer I was responsible with coming up with a new design that fit the basic idea we came up with as a group.
My initial idea was to drop the zombies down a pit. This was so we could make tube based levels. Tube based levels would allow us to get more obstacles into the level and populate the entire length of a level more effectively. Obstacles also serve as reference points that contribute to the sense of falling and speed.
I modeled a quick reference of things the artists should start concepting and building.
After I presented the idea to the team one of the artists on the team immediately said he wanted to make the game so that the player drops the zombies off of buildings instead of down a pit. He claimed they wanted to build buildings instead of pit sections.
This seemed like it was ok with the rest of the team and we thought we could make buildings work with the design in place of doing the pit based levels.
At this point our Zombie idea still needed to be passed off on by the professors. So we got a prototype working and white boxed a level.
I then put together a quick trailer that we could show our professors to get them on board with the idea. The professors liked it and gave us the go ahead.
Zombie Trailer
Zombie Design Document
I wrote and maintained a design document so that team members could refer to it.
Here is a link to the document:
Falling control scheme
Can be seen in the design document above.
This is the last tangible contribution of mine that is still in the falling game.
The falling controls are similar to the actual movements of skydivers, while still being relatively simple.
This was designed based off actual motions a skydiver would make to move while falling. The moves are quite exaggerating compared to a real skydivers motions so that they are large enough motions for the Kinect to easily differentiate between different moves.
Death of Zombie Game
We came under pressure from several people to change our game again! We started hearing from the professors that they were not very excited about the theme being zombies anymore. They were claiming that it wasn’t “indie” enough and that we needed to have a good reason for using zombies. The main reason we had chosen zombies was so that we wouldn’t be disqualified immediately for violence when we submitted to IGF.
Secondarily we wanted to use zombies because they are very popular in pop culture. One of the artists had taken the stance that because they were popular they were overdone and we shouldn’t use them. I disagreed with him on this stance. We then had a visit from a professor from another school that had had a project make it to be a finalist at IGF. This professor cautioned us that even our zombie deaths might get us disqualified. So at this point we were hearing from multiple sources that zombies were not a good choice.
Secondarily we wanted to use zombies because they are very popular in pop culture. One of the artists had taken the stance that because they were popular they were overdone and we shouldn’t use them. I disagreed with him on this stance. We then had a visit from a professor from another school that had had a project make it to be a finalist at IGF. This professor cautioned us that even our zombie deaths might get us disqualified. So at this point we were hearing from multiple sources that zombies were not a good choice.
The team got together to go over our options. I framed the situation for the team as such:
1. We go forth with zombies, which was already an approved thesis idea and had a good amount of design already done, and say screw it if we get disqualified from IGF.
2. We go back to the drawing board AGAIN and think up a new game/theme. By selecting a new game the majority of all of the art and design work would have to be thrown out.
I voted for option 1. I was against changing the game because we had already changed once and I thought it was ill advised to keep changing the game.
It turned out the team wanted to change again...
So we all pitched a new round of themes for the game.
I pitched a game called Bear Down
Bear Down Design
I chose to do the design document on a wiki, however the following link is the document in pdf form. It is somewhat out of order.
This design was simple enough and within scope so that we could have it ready and polished for IGF.
Switched teams
This is the point where I was switched to a different team so that I could help them get their game far enough along to submit to IGF.
