Game Design class

Class @ 15:00,
Saturday afternoon.

See you there :)

TOON BOOM Showcase 28/07

The Toon Boom showcase event is being held at The Refinery in Sandton

from 6-8pm. We will be leaving from TOW campus @ 4pm.

Address : Refinery Building, Block C, Wedgewood Office Park,
Muswell Road South, Johannesburg.

Hope to see you there.

Game design environment workflow example

As i mentioned in the class, the work flow I suggested is to be able to quickly see what the level will look like in the game. I wanted to post a simple example to show the idea, and i hope this gives a little more insight to why it will be helpful.

Step 1 (shown below): Draw on the level layout (your numbered block), from a top down view. What i am drawing is what would work in the level, from a gameplay/level design perspective.


Step 2 : Block the level layout using ONLY primitives, I did not spend time modeling anything. This allows me to redo the level layouts 100 times until satisfied. 


Step 3 (shown below) : Paint on top of a "player view" (note : mine is not an in game view on purpose).


Step 4 : Complete the list of per asset, per level, per area objects for full level asset list.

Some comments on why and what, most of them are on the image itself. Other than that, i wanted the exit to be most prominent in the level, so they know where the way out is. I also wanted to give them cover from the zombies as it is an earlier/easier part of the level. All lighting and placement is intentional, very specific to gameplay being fun and worthwhile, rather than artistically good but defunct as a level.

References

Reading reference

Obviously incredibly important is a good handful of references and reading material on the subject. Here are some for the level design part, more about reading and planning than artistic and visuals here :

l4d blog - design terms

Creating multiplayer maps for Singularity

Singularity - large scale concepts and level planning

Visual reference

Finding hundreds of images for reference of subway is not hard. Even really cool ones from games, l4d has a subway level, max payne had one and im sure you can think of a whole lot more. Find them, read them, study them.

One guy i can link to, a member of the polycount community, has a really good example on his website www.envart.com .

Cool, questions welcome! And the more reference you have the better. Post links to reference in the comments for others to use as well.

Game Design class

Class @ 15:00, Saturday afternoon.


- Posted from Mobile

Animation 2 Module 3

Please download the brief here. I also included some models for you to use, but your welcome to create or download your own as long as the rig is functional.

SA Stereoscopy!

If you've visited the cinemas recently, you might have seen this gem, made by Luma Animation and Ogilvy Johannesburg, among the advertisements.