3 replies to this topic

[ambershee]

19th October 2008

• Zelda styled world analogy applied to the Open World; open exploreable world with puzzles and 'dungeon' Challenge Levels.
• The game is saved by visiting save monitors, there will be no encryption on save files.
• The -mod switch will be adopted.
• The game world will be mostly terrain and mesh based.
• Each location to be a separate map file in development. May be broken up differently in final, dependent on Dynamic Evil transition requirements.
• The world is a nonsensical mass of Mayan, rugged outdoor and laboratory environments - a dreamworld built up of a thousand sleeping people.
• Artists to begin concepting DataRun's world.

9th November 2008

• Gameplay documents unveiled.
• Dead City basic concepts conceived - boatman to take player into the Dead City.
• Priority locations; Centre World, Temple of Heroes, Dead City, The Massive.
• The environment needs to be around 3 times the horizontal scale, due to speedy player movement speeds - keep it spacious!
• Player always resumes play in the Centre World
• World is generally open, with some blocked areas for the purposes of structured story progression.
• Make the Dead City more than a pool of Salvationable NPCs?
• Artists to focus on concepting Dead City.

16th November 2008

• Dead City architecture decided to be 'Rundown / Abandoned Oriental Metropolis, with Favella styled structures'.
• The wiki is now available at http://sheelabs.game...title=Main_Page
• The subversion server is available, details at http://sheelabs.game...itle=Subversion
• Jen to work on Dead City boat concept.
• Mike (zelenykocur) to work on Center World panorama concept.
• Other concepters to work on Dead City architecture.
• Rashad to work on player model.
• 3d Artists to work on new, jagged rock meshes.
• Erich to prototype movement metric environment.
• Gareth to work on Dead City theme music.
• Technical staff to be assigned projects - contact Ambershee.
• Ambershee to work on Post Process system, refreshed dodge metrics, draw up world layout and continue updating wiki.
• All staff to update their details and create personal pages on the wiki, and set up subversion.

30th November 2008

• Erich to continue movement prototype - Ambershee to finalise movement
• Mike to work on Centre World architecture
• Myles to work on Centre World volcano
• Kinjutsu to work on Dead City modular architeture

7th December 2008

• Dead City discussed. The Dead City requires an impressive central structure as a focal point, visible from the Centre World. This could potentially be a massive statue, such as the Statue of Liberty, or the statue overlooking Rio de Janerio (which would work well with the favellas), or a monolith important building. It could prove better however, to avoid identfiable structures, and keep the Dead City themed, but not restricted to any recogniseable real world location.
• Kinjutsu to continue modular architecture, bearing in mind potential destructibility, and using walls,instead of blocks for flexibility, Michael to concept possible structure shapes.
• Mike to continue Centre World concepts - hanging gardens of Babylon?
• Julson to work on post processing effect (dynamic evil) improvements.
• ChopperDave to work on dynamic fire spreading system.

Edited by ambershee, 07 December 2008 - 10:19 PM.

[ambershee]

14th December 2008

• More detailed sketches of the Center World architectural pieces are needed - such as the large stone archway, and a few fence and pillar pieces.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon.jpg - a good image to look at for Center World themes.
• Meetings need to move to Skype or IRC for better stability and ease of use with many members.
• Use photographic favella references for Dead City architecture - http://www.viaggiare...Rocinha_Rio.JPG
• Some sketches of the Dead City central structure to be completed.
• Some generic tiling textures to be completed.
• http://sheelabs.gamemod.net/wiki/index.php?title=Datarun_Team - Add your details!!
• The Dead City will likely consist of a few larger streets, a lot of alleyways and maybe a town square. Some buildings will be accessible. Clever occlusion should hopefully resolve potential performance issues.
• Adam to look into scripting for future 'technical art' applications.
• Dynamic evil to be fixed with health and post process volumes.
• Advanced Post Process volumes to give access to the post process chain.
• Character light environments to be tweaked, and will be able to be turned on and off at will for quality or performance, dependent on location.
• Loading scenes are to consist of distorted scenes from the dream sequences, played back as silent bink video - thus no horrible 'loading screens' of doom.

[ambershee]

21st December 2008

• There will be no meeting on the 28th. Technical and art meetings are now the same meeting.
• The world should be to the same approximate scale as the player - but the world needs to feature much more dramatically open spaces, and a strong vertical element. The player is able to move very quickly, and jump very high.
• Instructions for compiling and using the DataRun code are coming.
• Favella structures to be worked on so that a location prototype can begun to be built.
• Wall-dodges will be made considerably more prominent, allowing for a much faster and longer dodge. Dodges can now also be chained and used repeatedly before hitting the floor, allowing the player to move using the dodge more freely.
• 'Grind' rails are to be introduced, to allow the player to slide on certain sections.
• Wall-walking should be implemented. When the player reaches 90% or more of their maximum speed, they will be temporarily able to walk on any surface. When doing so, they will decelerate dramatically. This gives a limited wall-walking functionality.
• Volumes are used and manually placed - this includes a new post process and light environment volume, a grind volume and a wall-walk volume. Greater freedom comes with added designer workload, but it should pay off.
• Dead City 'Atlas' statue to definitely go ahead. Use the same 'character' in the Temple of Heroes and the Massive in a different pose? Create him as a 'player' model and use him in various 'animations' as poses?
• Atlas is fantastic, but probably won't suffice as a recogniseable structure.
• Dead City pallet to consist of muted browns, greys and blues.
• Dead City could be set at night, allowing for suitably dark blue ambiance, with artificial lighting painted in a contrasting yellow/gold. The lights could be used to guide the player a little.
• Mike to talk to Kinjutsu about architectural pieces, and finish up Center World dark version.
• Coops to work on puzzle potentials in Kismet - brief to be provided.
• John to work on special 'brain-vessels' mesh - brief to be provided.
• Ambershee to prepare material examples - brickwork, glass, solar panel, masked blending, and start documenting puzzle systems.

[ambershee]

4th January 2009

This was a brief meeting to pick up after the holiday period. The next meeting is on the 11th, and from the meeting on the 18th onwards, all meetings will be conducted via Skype.

• Carter to begin work on Mike's Center World architecture concepts.
• Puzzle Document to be available shortly.
• Ambershee Priority: Ambient Occlusion, Writer's Briefs, Material Examples, John's Brief.
• Kinjutsu to begin texturing her work.
• Writer's meeting to be scheduled - special one-off meeting.
• Fragments are 3d objects, picked up when the player touches them. Each gives a short ~3000 word story accessed via a paused game menu. 50 Fragments - 5 locations, each with 5 light and 5 dark stories. Fragments are sort of hidden - but are easily found when exploring.