Life at university

I am attending University Campus Suffolk doing BA Hons Computer Games Design. I am in my first year and currently planning to do level design for my dissertation in my 3rd year.

Critical game studies

I found in Eddies lecture the "games Britannia" documentaries extremely useful. They showed us the history of games, what makes games great and theories on how games effect society and visa versa.

Design document

For this document i will be doing it on my redesigned version of "The royal game of UR". I have already designed the board game and play tested it with fellow game developers countless times, tweaking it where necessary.

I have given it a more modern theme and set it in space. I have changed the rosette squares into the nine planets of our solar system. Therefore, it will teach the player the order of the planets too. There are several aspects i have kept the same, like have five pieces. Rosette squares you cant be taken by your opponents. Plus, the planets are four spaces apart.

Poster design

For my poster design i will redo what i have done as i didn't put enough iterations in. I will now be creating a poster on my current group game, which is a fighting game. I have currently started coming up with a concept design for one of the characters as i am one of the main artist in the group. Once the main character is finalised i will use a variety of grids to come up with various designs for the layout of the poster. After choosing the best ones i will then make several more similar one to polish the poster up.

Solo game

For my solo game with Chris i am creating a tower defence game. The theme i have have chosen is cute war. The point of the game is to stop all the enemies, that are travelling along a set path. To achieve this the player must by different types of towers and upgrade them. The towers will attack the enemies. The way i have made this fit the theme is my enemies are going to be little kittens and the harder enemies will be cats.

I will give the game a comedy factor as killing kittens can displease certain audiences. The camera angle for the game will be a top-down view as i am working in adobe CS6 flash professional.

Currently, i have designed several maps to choose from but i will make one to begin with and get the game polished, before starting new maps.

My next plan of acting is to create the MVP so i have the basic game working. Then i will start on the art and animations for the towers and enemies. My aim is to get the MVP done in 2 weeks time.

Group project

Did several concept pictures for our fighting game today after lectures. I started with very basic cartoon characters, then did some more complicated anime characters.

I am currently waiting on my group to decide what kind of art style we plan to go with. My personal preference would be somewhere between the two. This is because cartoons are easier to animate using sprite sheet but want the details of the anime. Plus, i have only recently started drawing anime and I'm not confident the quality would be consistent.