For our Year 2 Spring Submission we were asked to get into a group (maximum of 8) and produce a 'vertical slice' of a game of our own design. Initially I was unsure of who to work with as several students in our group had already teamed up. Eventually the remaining class members combined, including me (in total six of us) to form a group.
After several meetings and group discussions, we all had come to an agreement with creating a basic isometric Role Playing Game (RPG) set in an alternative medieval world. Here are some reference/mood boards of the medium topology style we all had in mind.
We all discussed our own strengths and weaknesses for our roles in the group and after some thought, I wished to try out as the environment artist (one I am less familiar with) rather than a concept artist; of which I am a bit too comfortable in.
It was then agreed that I would be the environment artist and so I set out creating simple elements such as the colour palette image above. The reason I made these were to show the mood and contrasts of what our game could display, in its stylised setting, later on.
One of my tasks was to create the map layout and the player's 'activity' path. Above are six concepts I did of variations of the 'vertical slice' map. The main focus was having a start and an end point (possibly a boss) to reach which we included in the style of castle ruins roughly in the centre of the map.
This is the final map design after some consideration of the player's story path. I also created a key/legend as a guide for certain objects and characters. In addition, I made some previews of certain locations such as the village and bridge spots.
Before I completed the final map layout, I made a simple grey box section of a corner of the map in Maya.
Here are some trees that I made very quickly but had an interesting style to them. As the setting is a rural one, I will have to put some more thought into several variations as well as shrubs which will then be scattered around the vertical slice.
I will also have to construct the collision meshes around areas of the map the player cannot get to, as well as the route; as demonstrated above in my environment test.
For our first milestone presentation, I had to make basic grey box assets of our game as seen above. This is the start of the game at a makeshift camp; with the player's size highlighted.
This is the next major location, the village, with the quests aim cart highlighted in the distance.
Another key spot is a bridge passing over a river. Several NPC (Non-Player Characters) characters and enemies will be around this zone, so it was essential to get a wide atmosphere here.
The last challenge you come to in the vertical slice is a boss in the castle ruins atop a mountain range. The path leading to the bridge, is still a work in progress as the elevation is rather tricky to work out and keep flat to enable the player to walk up.
I was really pleased with how accurate I could get the Maya grey box map to that of the sketch I did. However, I am open for suggestions as I know things and their placement could change as the world is developed along with the story.
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