First my project which revolves around giving a story to the games we play regardless of their lack of narrative, the likes of playground and table games. My first task was writing a list of as many games as Towers, Josh, Sam and myself could think of mainly playground games and basic games like 'Thumb Wars' and 'Slaps'. I then has a spark of creativity as I thought it would be interesting to write a narrative which encompassed several of the games into one fantasy tale. What lead me to this was the way in which serious subject matters and technically semi-narratives creep into the games and rhymes of kids, eg Ring a Ring o'Roses interpreted as talking about the plague.
However Josh thought this may be overstretching myself slightly so I will instead just be taking one game and writing a narrative which links to the game and how it is played. With this I intend to see whether as a video game with the narrative and context in place the game can be as popular as it is to play without.
My other task is based around a game which requires narrative for the player to understand their goal and the context of their actions. This task should also show how important a narrative can be in setting up the game-play itself. Due to the nature of this project and the fact I aim to have a working prototype of it I decided to keep the game itself relatively simple.
To this end I designed the idea of a sort of comically sci-fi take on the Noah's Ark story. The player will find themselves placed into the role of a young alien boy with a strange device which appears to be able to catch other creatures. However should they try catching more then 2 of the same creature they will be unable to catch the creature and will be scolded by an unseen alien in an indistinguishable dialect. After a short while though the player will (through yet undecided means) be able to understand the scolds of the alien as it becomes clear they have been tasked with catching 2 of each animal to warp to the spaceship.
For the sake of making a working prototype I will trim the creature variety down to 2 initially which will provide just enough to make sure the mechanics work. Upon success of this I plan on perhaps adding maybe 2 0r 3 more creatures so the game itself will remain relatively small but it will have enough variety for someone playing to get into. With that in mind lets not walk before we can run, my first task is to truly get to grips with the Unity engine a task made much more practical with the help of my new book Unity Game Development Essentials. Following the tutorials in this book I managed today to create a basic mechanic of throwing a ball into a breakable wall. Though this may seem a rather menial task it provided me with a much greater insight into coding in Unity, not to a level where i'm prepared to write scripts for myself quite yet but that goal at last seems within reach now which feels good. This has also provided me with much more motivation to toy with Unity more as it no longer seems like my 'white whale' so to speak and I actually can see myself adjusting to this ins and outs of this program. So all in all PROGRESS would be the applicable word even if on paper there may not appear to be much I assure you it is there.
On a side note since my last post I was offered a 2 month contract Quality Assurance Testing at Travellers Tales in Knutsford. This is a great opportunity for me as it provides a concrete step into the industry, admittedly it requires me to leave my current permanent job to pursue but your only young once as they say. So hopefully if i figuratively work my socks off they will keep me on (any of my readers keep your fingers crossed for me). Though the full days and 4 hour commute will impart restrictions to my computer time I will have my 2 hour commute to and fro with which to let my creative juices flow into written work,designs and dare I say it even a few sketches.
So Peace Out people
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