A2: Final Project

 Isometric game research

I have had a look at some screenshots of Hades (left of the board) and Transistor (right of the board) and had a look at it's style that I have to do for the PEGI 13 rating that meets the companies guidelines. The style of the game is really smooth looking too and that is something I'd love to try and adapt into my art and environmental design. From looking at this also I see that the player models must be very low in polygons for the game to not put too much work into player detail that you will rarely ever see, that allows work to be put into more important tasks in the games creation.

In the bottom right picture of my mood board it shows the HUD I like it because it is also stylised to fit the game vibe and I may do that to show the health or anything that would be visible on the HUD, to make for a more immersive feel for this game.

Concept art research from Hades

In the first and second image you can see art for a character called Zagreus from Hades you can see that the person who made it visually represented all directions in which you'd possibly see this character. With all these points of view it makes it possible for the model developer to be able to understand what they are working with. In this game it looks like all the characters have very flashy outfits with a lot of bright colours, even when the characters are wearing black; like Thanatos in the third image, they manage to keep the looks to engage your interest.

Sales Data for Hades

I checked the sales data for Hades in the UK from 2 years ago and it was stated that the box sales for the game on PS5 were at a 70% high when for Xbox players the percentage was at a very small 7% and around the time Hades was on game pass to keep the the percentage of these two consoles for the exact same game so drastic.

Interview from Hades creative director

Hades Creative Director Interview (youtube.com)

this is an in depth interview with the person who brought together the basis of the looks of Hades and its popping art style.

Mood board for my game

The idea I have for my game is that it is set in the era of pirates. It takes place with a struggling captain that could not provide the gold he promised for his crew and that lead the crew in an outrage that got him thrown overboard, resulting in him washed up on a lonely shore. Upon sitting up from the shore he sets his eyes on a cave that leads a suspicious line of jewels but no pirate could resist in the journey for treasure...

Level concept

This is where I'd imagine he'd wash up more of a closed off shore where the only two choices were to go out in the ocean to look for better land or he would go into the cave, and still pained by his crew he was engaged into exploring the cave of riches and vastness.

For the most part, the level will take use of the design of stalactites and stalagmites to give the cave a very eerie yet open space, also with the addition of water pockets within cracks in the rocks and little waterfalls and puddles to give the cavern a very humid feel to the player.

Cave decor and feel

In this I have drawn up potential things that I could model to put into my cave designs so like chests, rocks, torches and stalagmites. I put the stalagmite there so it could be used to vary the caves since it would look boring if the caves sections all had the same feel, stalagmites are normally found in quite large caves too so it makes an excuse for the level to have quite large sections.

At the bottom of this picture I have made a design for an in-cave water source to get more of a humid feel to the cave system.

Treasure chest

first off I made the walls of the chest so that it is hollow if anything were to go inside if the chest gets an animation, to get this result I copied and pasted the same extruded cube into a cuboid shape for the chest.

Since I only made the walls of the chest I had to then add the base of it so it could then look more like a box, I made this by getting a cube and scaling it down to a really flat cuboid that extrudes past the walls for some depth.

I then added what would be metal posts that keep the wooden walls of the chest held up, and it was also used for a decent amount of depth for my design, These were just scaled cuboids I copied and pasted in each wall corner.

Fourthly I put the lid of the chest on that will eventually open and close with the applied animation, I made this by having another cube layer upon the walls i then used the slicing option on the cube at the top and I separated the top face into three sections and pulled the middle section up.

Lastly I added the latch of the chest and a layer going around the lid of the chest to show how separated it is from the bottom of the chest, I selected all of the lid detail to make it more visible to the viewing eye. With this I just Used a scaled and squished cube to get the latch result and then I copied and pasted a cuboid to get the detailing around the edges.

This is a full 360 degree view of the chest I have made.

Pirate banner

To make this shape I first started with a rectangle that faced down the long ways then I used the slicing tool to get the edges I would need to then drag those edges out to gain the effect that it is some sort of fabric that has tore or weathered. 

I then sliced the banner flag shape again to fold back the fabric onto a newly made rectangle that represents what holds the banner against the cave walls.

Then I added more detail to the wooden post that holds it up to show more reinforcement to the cave walls, I used a cube and sliced it through the middle. After that I then pull the bottom half face of the cube forwards giving it a very carved feel.

This is a full 360 degree showing of what I have produced.

Cave torch

For the torch design I started off with a simple cube, then upon scaling it to be bigger and thinner I was able to copy and past that shape and shrink it down to give that other cube more shape and feel.

Then I copied that same cube but shrunk it again and instead of keeping the shape the same I extruded it out to make a type of pole for what would be holding up the torch.

After I was done with the base that would attach to a wall I got started on the torch's base itself, for this I got a cylinder and that allowed me to use the ring edge at the bottom of the cylinder to push it backwards to give it more of a tilted look.

Thirdly I put two flattened cylinders at the top half of the bigger cylinder, the very top one is where the fire would be and the one under that is connected to the back part to show its being held up by the wall. The cone on the bottom of the large cylinder 

Finally I added a sort of protective ring made out of multiple cubes, in order to make those cubes into that shape I pushed one of the edges into the body and it made the shape more triangular. When it got to making the point corners I just selected the furthest out vertex and pulled it up to provide the shape shown.

Main character concept

I put together a quick concept of what the main character looks like, he is a pirate captain.

Pirate character 

Starting off the model, I begun with a cube and then on two sides of the cube I added a pair of cubes to represent ears, I did this by shrinking a cube and squishing the cube to get an ear shape. After that I then got to work on my eye patch for the character that proved challenging but I got through it in the end to a promising result by use of dragging edges and copy pasting the same parts to prevent from having to make the same shape size again, then lastly I put an eye on the opposite side of the eye patch.

Upon getting the painful part of the head done I then moved onto the hair, for this I used a cube and then placed it over the head like a mask/hood to have a fresh look and not overthink the shape. To get this shape I made, I sliced the cube into quarters on the top and bottom then adjusted the hair to go over the ears and then down on both sides, and upon doing that the front will not have been brought up so all I did was drag it up so it would not cover the eye patch. After the hair's basic shape I added another cube on top and stretched it out into a cuboid to add more shape it.

After completion on the head I was able to move onto the base body build. This consists of two cubes I extruded into a cuboid, I built it in a T form to represent the shoulders and torso, the torso itself has to be smaller than the shoulders for depth.

Then I made the arms and I started with the shoulders, to make this I used a cube and extruded it down. Then for the arms I copy and pasted the shoulders, brought them down and then shrunk them a small bit to give this sleeve texture for my characters simplistic design rather than going for some complicated piece of clothing.

Finally for the completion of the torso, I added some knuckles as a sign for the hands and to add more into my design, to do this I used a cube and extruded it through the full length of the hand but not the full width.

And finally altogether I have completed the full design after doing the legs and shoes of my character to do this I extruded two cubes into two long cuboids and then put flatter cubes to make the shoes. 

In this GIF I show the full complete model for my stowaway pirate captain, I am very glad with how this came out and I'm very proud.

Plan for Unity

I plan on modelling my level into the design of a cave with all sorts of abandoned loot and treasure in store to be explored. All the models I have made can be used in the cave level to bring it together for quite an adventurous level.

The level will be pirate based and the entrance to what would be the level comes from a sandy beach that floods in sand from the cave entrance, the cave will consist of loose water on the floor from water dripping from the roof and ledges. The caves will have many different rooms and secrets that are highly explorable.

Trello planner

GAME DESIGN DOC