Sketchbook: Project Core

Raggdoll

Project Core
by
Middle Mouse Interactive

Team Members:

Joe Frayer - Project Lead
Adam Lauwers
Rene Soler
German Benitez

Fraya713

Glad to be a part of the group! Looking forward to working with all of you and am excited to see our idea come to life!

Raggdoll

Glad to be on board!

acapulco

Eh? What is this?!

ZacD

... yeah, whats the point of having a thread of nothing?

vofff

Lol wrong place!

roosterMAP

WTF? dont post for nothing. thats what twitter is for. lol

TheBigBeaner

Patience peeps we shall be posting some work shortly. Just getting everything in place atm.

.Murder

At least have work to show whne you make the post, Its not like you have to reserve a thread ...

Raggdoll

Guys please have some respect..we are aware ... but its a sketchbook thread a public @ that ... yes its not private but we are using this thread for a team project that we are very serious about... so please if you don't have anything other than the obvious, please refrain.

Have some professionalism please, there are hundreds of threads with lots of art for your hearts delight.

German B.

ima

But why make a post with nothing in it?
And not even telling what WILL BE in it.
Just a random "Title" by "Team", "Team members". I don't think that's very professional of YOU.
It would be better if you waited until you had something to show, or at least some info to give, before starting this thread.

Raggdoll

Hey guys maneged to hack in momentarily @ work... here are some quick sketches.

Joe can you post a run down DNA of our design doc so far please for the peeps. Thanx.

I will sync up a template PSD to our account as soon as I get out from work

More WIP from other members soon. Thank you for your patience:)

Raggdoll

We are currently working on making our design document more organized for proper presentation for you guys here.. bare with us.

We have jobs, family.. well life in general that we also have to deal with in order to pursue our passion, goals and vision.

Although I will say this about the project to create some speculation and not leave peeps in the dark.

Project Core:

Future..about 300 years from now. We have used up all natural resources from planet earth. Even with mass technological advances we were unable to stop destroying what little we had left.

Soon earth began to die from the inside; its core began to stop, there was nothing to do but hope that some form of salvation will appear.

In all this time war, famine, new viruses, incurable diseases and sometimes voluntary suicide led to the withering of global population on planet earth.

Soon the population of earth that wanted to live in a perfect utopia the "good peeps", an equilibrium with nature (as said in their faith) found a distant planet similar to ours. But untouched by human hands.

Unfortunately the "evil" powers.. the other population on earth soon also found out about this planet... except for them it was not utopia... it was just another planet to be conquered... to be harvested.. ready for the taking, claim and rule under an Iron fist to whom ever tried to enter that planet in refuge from the now dying earth.

Both sides now had a race against the clock to be able to complete interstellar travel and leave earth in its final moments of destruction.

These are the accounts of final moments on earth.

Fraya713

Well it's nice to see we already got some fans among us lol, yikes, maybe this isn't the forums we want to be posting our work in? Maybe www.gameartisans.org is a more friendly and appropriate place. I'm just kiddin' my loyalty hangs with Polycount
However, I'd appreciate some professional and calm criticism as we get our work posted. Bare with us as this project is much larger than we even considered.

Our thinking behind "reserving" a thread was to post our work in progress, much in the same matter as an Unearthly Challenge would be set up.

Here is our Working Game Doc. Template, Yes, I did find the template online and credit has been given. This document will change and evolve as we fine tune our idea and make some major design choices. It's quite long, I thought twice about posting it, especially how early it is in the design stage, but obviously some guys lack some patience, so here you go. We will mainly be concentrating on the Game Art and Concepts of this project for these forums for multiple obvious reasons. Much of our story and Idea will most likely be left out of the forums. FYI: The organization that looked nice in our document has been lost to the forums.

Game Doc Template By: Mark Baldwin

Team Name: Middle Mouse Interactive
Team: Joe Frayer – German Benitez – Rene Soler – Adam Lauwers
Project Name: Project Core (Working Title)
Copyright Information:
Version: 1.0.0, Joe Frayer, 01.08.2010

Design History
-Description of major versions and changes within the document

Table of Contents
Section I – Game Overview
Section II – Gameplay & Mechanics
Section III – Story, Setting & Character
Section IV – Levels
Section V – Interface
Section VI – Artificial Intelligence
Section VII – Technical
Section VIII – Game Art
Section IX – Secondary Software
Section X – Management
Section XI – Appendices

Section I – Game Overview
1. Game Concept
2. Feature Set
3. Genre
4. Target Audience
5. Game Flow Summary
6. Look and Feel
7. Project Scope
A. Number of locations
B. Number of levels
C. Number of NPC’s
D. Number of weapons
E. Etc.

Section II – Gameplay & Mechanics
1. Physics
2. Movement
A. General Movement
B. Other Movement
3. Objects
A. Picking Up Objects
B. Moving Objects
4. Actions
A. Switches and Buttons
B. Picking Up, Carrying and Dropping
C. Talking
D. Reading
5. Combat
6. Game Economy
7. Screen Flow
A. Screen Flow Chart
B. Screen Descriptions
a. Main Menu Screen
b. Options Screen
c. Etc.
8. Game Options
9. Replaying and Saving
10. Cheats and Easter Eggs

Section III – Story, Setting & Character
1. Physics
2. Movement
A. General Movement
B. Other Movement
3. Objects
A. Picking Up Objects
B. Moving Objects
4. Actions
A. Switches and Buttons
B. Picking Up, Carrying and Dropping
C. Talking
D. Reading
5. Combat
6. Game Economy
7. Screen Flow
A. Screen Flow Chart
a. Screen Descriptions
b. Main Menu Screen
c. Options Screen
d. Etc.

Section IV – Levels
1. Level #1
A. Synopsis
B. Introductory Material (Cut scene?* Mission briefing?)
C. Objectives
D. Physical Description
E. Map
F. Critical Path
G. Encounters
H. Level Walkthrough
I. Closing Material
2. Level #2
3. etc.
4. Training Level

Section V – Interface
1. Visual System
A. HUD - What controls
B. Menus
C. Rendering System
D. Camera
E. Lighting Models
2. Control System – How does the game player control the game?** What are the specific commands?
3. Audio
4. Music
5. Sound Effects
6. Help System

Section VI – Artificial Intelligence
1. Opponent AI – The active opponent that plays against the game player and therefore requires strategic decision making (example, Civilization or Chess, how is it to be designed?
2. Enemy AI – Villains and Monsters
3. Non-combat Characters
4. Friendly Characters
5. Support AI
A. Player and Collision Detection
B. Pathfinding

Section VII – Technical
1. Target Hardware
2. Development hardware and software
3. Development procedures and standards
4. Game Engine
5. Network
6. Scripting Language
7. etc.

Section VIII – Game Art
1. Concept Art
2. Style Guides
3. Characters
4. Environments
5. Equipment
6. Cut scenes
7. Miscellaneous

Section IX – Secondary Software
1. Editor
2. Installer
3. Update software

Section X – Management
1. Detailed Schedule
2. Budget
3. Risk Analysis
4. Localization Plan
5. Test Plan

Section XI – Appendices
1. Asset List
A. Art
a. Model and Texture List
b. Animation List
c. Effects List
d. Interface Art List
e. Cut scene List
B. Sound
a. Environmental Sounds
b. Weapon Sounds
c. Interface Sounds
C. Music
a. Ambient
b. “Action”
c. Victory
d. Defeat
D. Voice
a. Actor #1 lines
b. Actor #2 lines
c. Etc.

ZacD

You also need to establish a work flow before figuring out all the random details like # of weapons. Something like:

Preproduction
Ideas and Concept
Script
3D Layout(s)
Storyboard
Pre-vis
Editing (rough)

Production
Modeling
Rigging and Skinning -> Test export into UDK
Animation
Temporary sound
Integration
Game play
Materials
Lighting

Post production
Testing
Music/Sound
UI and Menus

Raggdoll

ZacD thank you very much for you r post!... some cool usefull info. :thumbup:

ZacD

Here's a short animations workflow that I found and found really practical, of course its not a direct link to game design, but you get easily apply it and alter it for games. As you can see its not a strictly linear process, but there's a lot of ground work that needs to be laid before you move too far down the production ladder.
http://sebastien.laban.free.fr/cgtalk/workflow_200807.gif


and video http://www.vimeo.com/7708580

it was a small 2 person team, and their workflow and management is amazing.

TheBigBeaner

Damn. nice thanks for the info ZacD. Kudos to you my good sir.

roosterMAP

i like the organization here. lookin forward to see what you guys produce!

Swag87

Sweet.

Raggdoll

Raggdoll

Mesh and Texture Quality Test for Project Core

Raggdoll

Proposed 2 sector level in Italy

acapulco

Your sketchdude should really learn to sketch properly. If there wasnt 'vehicles' in letters I would never assume those 1000 lines were vehicles or even anything. If there is an idea, than use these sketches as fondation and draw above it in a new layer. No one can guess where he wants to go and this is reaaaalllyy not good for the 3d artists.
No offence, just my opinion!

TheBigBeaner

a few quick sketches to get my head wet