Saturday 21 July 2018

Major Project - Name Ideas

NAME IDEAS

Whilst keeping my game description fresh in my mind, I tried to think of suitable names that this could be called. I realised that the name of the game would need a name that catches the eye and is easy to read, as well as reflecting the aim of the game. It needs to reflect that it is a strategy game where both aggressive and passive methods are possible and make people want to play it. Below are some of the names I came up with:

Fortify of Invasion
Assault of Redemption
Redemption Assault
Freedom and Terror
Conquer Quest
Masterrain
Dreadreign
Battlecraze
Chase of Campaigns
Prototypes & Victory
Conquer of Strife
Elements of War
Siegeforce
Champions of Corruption
Fortify and Die

In the end I have decided to go with Conquer Quest as I feel that this is easy to remember, but effective enough for someone to want to play the game. It reflects the fact that one aim of the game is to conquer but also the fact that there is different quests going on in the game at the same time. I feel that it is an effective title for the game. 

Wednesday 18 July 2018

Major Project - Game Overview

GAME DESCRIPTION 


This game can lightly be related to other real-time strategy games like Command and Conquer, Age of Empires 2 and Halo Wars. The aim of the game is to build up your civilisation until it is the best it can be and then you can win the game by choosing one of two pathways - befriending the other settlements or by conquering them. 

The game starts by picking a faction: 

The Raiders - who typically are people who attack an enemy in their territory; a marauder.
The Insurgents - who are normally people fighting against a government or invading force; a rebel or revolutionary.
The Nomads - a person that travels from place to place to find fresh pasture for its animals and has no permanent home.
The Reapers - a person or machine that harvests a crop.

These are the normal definitions that each faction have - although these factions are tailored to a certain way of play, it is up to you how you wish to play with each one. You have to keep in mind that for instance the Raiders will be able to carry away more materials each time they attack and the Nomads are able to build quicker. 
But due to this being a strategy game, you choose which path your chosen faction will head down, giving you different scenarios along the way depending on various factors. 

After picking your chosen faction, you will then go on to choose a starting map, this is where your main base will be. There are three maps to choose from, and the three main objects (but not limited to) that you can pick up and use to build your base: 

Forest - Trees, wood and vines.
Desert - Sand, sandstone and cactuses 
Junkyard - Car doors, metal sheeting and steel beams

Once you have chosen your starting map, you can build up your base with the given resources from that territory. Once you feel you have built up your civilisation and base strong enough, then you can go out and find other bases and from here you can decide your fate or victory.

Befriending the other civilisations on the maps will bring more resources and help from other civilisations, but could potentially make your base more prone to being attacked or raided from other civilisations. Whereas on the other hand trying to conquer other bases will make other bases put their guard up more, and could make it harder for you to scavenge for resources. 

Either option will bring up different endings as to whether you conquer or befriend other civilisations.

Saturday 5 May 2018

idea

I started my game environment idea by looking into kit bashing as a method of creating the environment. Kit Bashing is where you take pre existing objects or parts of pre existing objects and put them together to make new things. After talking to Phil who point me in the direction of a few animals that kit bash, as well as suggested to think of 3/4 environments that could be used within the game.
 
So looking into animals that use things to build other things, I looked at beavers, ants, birds and caddis flies. All these animals use items in there surroundings to build with. Beavers with building dams if the water is not deep enough to keep them safe from predators and their lodge entrances ice-free. The fire ants which are found in wetlands, sort of kit bash using them self link together to build living rafts to keep the colony afloat during floods. The larvae of the Caddisfly use silk to make protective cases, which are often strengthened with gravel, sand, twigs, bitten-off pieces of plants, or other debris. They have also been used be artist who have given them pressures materials to build their cases.
Image result for beaver dam
Beaver dam
 
Image result for caddisfly cas3e
Caddisfly case (made of stone)
 
Putting all this together am looking to push the aspect of kit bashing being part of the game. The bases of the game would be to select a race and a starting area.At the moment I've landed on 3 environments, a forest, a beach and a juke yard. Each area has it's own advantages and disadvantages. For example a forest area will have lots of wood to start off with, animals, fresh water, vines, ect. Where as a beach area will have sand, stones, fish, shells ect. To win the game you have to collect resources to build up your base and defences. Once ready you would have to destroy the remaining teams.
 
I am now looking into survival techniques of ways to create shelters, fire, water storage, trap ect, that will give me some examples of way of objects found around to can be put together to create useful things. So I started looking into how to build shelters in different environments such as the desert, forest and snow environment.

So looking at the how to build a shelter in the desert, you started by finding an area that has a natural dip in it. If this is not possible you have to dig a rectangle hole down a few 3/4 feet, a size that you can fix in laying down comfortably. While digging down place the sand you dig out on 3 of the sides, leaving one of the smaller sides open. This adds height to the hole through creating banks around it. At this point you would need either some cloth or a tarp that you can place over the hole, as well as some rocks that you could place on the cloth/tarp on the outside of the banks to keep it in place. When reading about this I was thinking the hole and cloth shelter could be adapted as a possible hiding mechanisms. By building multiple shelters in a big hole and building a support structure, wooden planks could be place on top of the supports and covered with sand for camouflage. This could also allow defences to be place on top of the planks. I also looked into how to get fresh water in desert like conditions, not too sure if it will be involved in the environments yet.       

Desert survival shelter
 
There is multiple ways to build shelters in a wooded area. A lot of these basic shelters are built like bird nets, using sticks and branches through weaving them together to make the structure. One of the most basic shelter is a built by weaving sticks and twigs together to make two A shape frames, which is tide together alone one side of the A. This allows the frame to lay on the floor with two sides giving support and the sides connected together is facing up wards. Then by weaving more sticks and twigs that have leafs still attached on to the A frames to build up the walls. The walls can also be built by getting larger sticks, a placing them onto the side of the frame to give even more support and more sticks for twigs to go around. This method is really effective and can be used to create other shelter shapes.      

 
 
Leaf hut