Assets

We went back to the Queen's building as we wanted to make a walk through to where we wanted to the player to go. There is so much to work with and also because the Queen's building is so unusual it was pretty fun. We have the player exploring the ground floor and the first floor in order to find another way out.
We don't want to give too much away of the plans...

As the theme was chosen we thought to help give the obvious look of an asylum to list out what assets we could have;

(Ok this is part of our asset list, still trying to get a full page)

We set up all the assets into the rooms that we think would be most obvious, for example; Beds in the cells and fire extinguishers are basically everywhere.

We also thought that it would be nicer to let everyone choose what assets they wanted to do and felt more comfortable with. 

Theme!

We have finally chosen a theme!
After looking at all the moodboards and concept art that the group had come up with, we decided that the Abandoned Asylum theme would be great.

The Asylum idea was chosen by everyone as it is a very strong theme. Everyone has an idea about what one could look like from the inside, and the amount of horror movies there are, there is plenty of reference and research to use.

We had to put all of our work so far into a presentation, to present infront of the rest of the year and the teachers. On this we should be then hopefully get some feedback about it, hopefully we will not have to start again and that the teachers will like it.

Moodbaord by Evie

Fingers crossed.

Concept by Shuwei, paintover

Meeting continued

Todays meeting 11/02/12

Everyone was here which is a good thing. We decided to hold back on finding out which engine we should use as it was becoming a main focus and I didn't think we needed to focus so much on it when we hadn't even got a basic theme down. I thought depending on what we create and what the level will hold, then that should help decide which engine would be better.

Everyone had to make moodboards to help sell their ideas to the rest of the group about the theme and ideas they had come up with.
As our level has many different rooms in it, I came up with the idea of everyone maybe creating a room, to help work faster, but a problem with this is that everyone has different styles and it might not work with the rest of the level.

An issue came up about making a time scale of what everything should be done by. Just a rough idea of mile stones through out the project so that everyone can see how much time there is and how we all need to work efficiently. This helped to plan out what everyone should be working on, when it should be finished and the time scale.

For the following meeting we decided that everyone should make concepts and make some visuals about what the Queen's building could look like.

First meetings under way.

As we started the meeting, it came across as one of the main problems that people wanted to get sorted was, what engine are we going to use. We have the choice between UDK and Cry Engine.

Now as a group we have all had the same amount of experience of UDK, the basics of how to import and export. I think everyone is comfortable with this. But on the other hand with Cry Engine, none of us have any experience and it will all be down to our own research to make any progress in this. (Will this mean too much of our time will be taken up with basic cry engine research?)

Inspiration was a big part of the discussion and we asked what is the group interested in such as; games, films,  videos etc.
So we have set for the weekend, for the next meeting to come up with some moodboards and ideas to help find a theme for the building and what we find that could be fitting towards the building. Everything is to help push things along and in getting started.

The Library?
Whilst photographing the building, Maarten found that the university library is actually attached to the Queens building. Could this be part of our level? Or should we just for get about it and keep it separate.

Strengths and weaknesses.
We all have them and it seemed like a very good idea to get a general look at everyone's strengths and weaknesses, this can help through out the project by helping each other out. Hopefully if someone is finding something difficult they will speak up to the group as we are all in the same boat and help each other.

As we don't all live together and myself commutes to university we thought that creating a Facebook group would help with communicating outside of meetings. Also to help with files and everyone's work, Maarten came up with the idea that we all log into drop box. This is where we can upload all our work and everyone can see the progress and what we are all working on. Also it is a great way to keep back ups. Another positive about using Dropbox is if we forget our USB's we can log onto Dropbox on any computer and access our work, but aslong as we upload.

Tasks for the following meeting;

• Think about inspiration
• Have a look at both engine's and find out which one you prefer and why, have to give reason.
• Sort Dropbox out
• Make some quick sketches and concepts of ideas
• Fill out strengths and weaknesses (these can be found in dropbox) 

Getting started...

Hello there! We are game art students at De Montfort University currently approaching a group project. This  has been set to help us to understand what it is like to work as a team and what it would be like to work within a company. This blog is to help us show our development through the project.

We are working on a group project that is to create a specific building on campus in a style such as resident evil. A horror shoot-um up. We aim to create a playable level within the building (Queen's building) by the end of May.

So after saying our hellos to the members and getting ourselves familiar with everyone we decided to jump in and start generating ideas, to see what everyone thought about and what styles. What theme?

As it is the early stages nothing has really been planned yet, just when and how often we are hoping to have meetings and alot of visual reference taken from around the Queen's building to help generate ideas and what we have to work with.