Entertainment Design - Semester 2

Entertainment Design - Semester 2

Week 1
This semester I will be working in a collaborative project with seven other students to produce an engaging piece of digital entertainment. The group is composed of both Computer Arts students such as myself and Games Design Production Management students. Throughout the semester I will keep this blog up to date with both the groups progress and my own contributions to the project which will be assessed by Abertay University.

Meeting 001 - 14/01/2015
In our groups first meeting today, we discussed our individual talents. We decided that the game we would be making would most likely be a two dimensional game as this was preferential to most of the group and we felt more comfortable with our 2D asset creation skills as opposed to 3D modelling.

We collectively decided that the best course of action would be to create a game using the Unity engine because the programmers in our group also felt more comfortable with it than Adobe Flash. I have never personally used Unity and I'm eager to see what the engine can do for our project.

We then decided to select our games base genre. After a little discussion about what sort of games we did not want to make, such as a horror games, the mutual like of Sci-Fi became apparent in the group.

The first action point our group agreed on was for everyone to create a Sci-Fi themed mood board so we could then share and compare our initial ideas.

Week 2
This week our group collaboratively agreed on what sort of game that we are all interested in. We discussed everything from role playing games to shooters.
I was volunteered to have the role of the spaceship designer. It is my job to create our game's interstellar vehicle from the inside out.
I put together a space ship mood board to get some basic ideas.

I also made a simple mind map to get out some concepts of how the ship will work/look.

Week 3:

This week I have been thinking about what kind of space craft our crew will be travelling in as per our team meetings.
I discussed with the team the kinds of spaceships that our crew might inhabit such as new sleek high speed ships, powerful military war vessels and even old run down rusty freighters.
I created another mood board that I can draw inspiration from.

I also volunteered to write up a few basic premises for our story.

Premise 001 – Old Research vessel is damaged and catapulted into deep space.

Deep space research vessel gets too close the gravitational pull of a black hole.

In an effort to escape the massive gravity well before they are pulled passed the event horizon, the crew pushes the ship’s engines to beyond the maximum safe limits.

The black hole slingshots the vessel into deep space however the ship suffers massive damage to the primary and secondary systems. Weapons, Shields, Life support and the Sensor Net are barely functioning and the Hyper-launch system is down.

All long range communication systems have been destroyed.

Premise 002 – Battle hardened military vessel is transported against their will.

A military destroyer assigned to defend an outpost from enemy attack is overwhelmed by a horde of alien attack vessels.

The Destroyer is suddenly bombarded with large amounts of plasma which has an unexpected reaction with the ships shields.  Power output suddenly sky-rockets, propelling the ship a vast distance into unknown enemy territory.
The huge increase in power short circuits the ships internal circuitry, rendering the destroyer helpless. 

Premise 003 – High speed exploration vessel knocked off course by a massive supernova.

A prototype, high-speed exploration vessel is knocked off course during a hyperspace speed test when a nearby star suddenly and expectantly goes Supernova.

The crippled ship spirals off into unknown space.