Composistion

Castlevania: Symphony of the night
I was suprised to notice the composistion for this image was of the golden section. The main focus of the image on the right of Alucard and the 2 main side characters - Dracula more of a antagonist
This then curls around left to the owl, going back down to the rose and a smalled inage of one of the other character, not as frequently seen in the game.

Golden Sun box art
The composistion for this piece is a simple diamond shape, the characters fit almost perfectly in the diamond; the lighting on this goes from daker on the top to lighter at the bottom, seperating the two halves as well.

Final Fantasy XII
I boiled down the composistion for this to be an 'L' formation one, the overhead arch way and the right wall appear to be framing the rest of the piece, as these areas also have a considerable lack of detail compared to the rest of the image. The 'L' composistion emphasises the area it is framing.

Light

Reflection

This is where the light bounces of the object, in another direction.

Refraction

The light goes through the object but is redirected, this also dissipates the light somewhat.

Light's colours

White light is actually the entire pallete range of colours into one, the colour of objects is actually only seen due to object absorbing the colour it actually is.

For example shining a white light on a blue object, all other colours would bounce off of it (Red, Green, etc) but absorb the blue light; letting the human eye percieve it as blue; the same applies if it were a red object.

Also, red light is the one colour that reaches the furthest; which is why the sky appears red as the sun sets.

Black however is the exception and absorbs all light colours.

Shading

Light intensty

Intensity of the light affects the intensity of the cast shadow, softer lighting creates a gentle appearance on the object, whereas harsher lighting creates more dramatic shading, also lessening the colour of the object.

Distance from source of light

The distance dircectly affects the intensity on the object, fairly basic- the further away the source of light the light the shadow cast. The angle also affects the shadows cast, using the sun as an example- the sun high in the sky casts a small very central shadow on the object; later in the day the sun is lower down; the shadow is now almost twice the size and a more stretched version of the original object.

dynamic occlusion

indirect lighting

Silent Hill 3 nurse, Masahiro Ito
Considering how dark the shading is, the surrounding area would be particularly dark; accentuating the harshness of the light on the nurse, also the fact that her skin has a shine to it also shows how harsh the light is. The lighting on her is very central infront of her; the shadow casted from the gun she is holding is nearly black.

Devil May Cry 3 concept art

As opposed to the Silent Hill nurse, the lighting is coming from behind and slightly above; making the front darker. This lighting frames him and the red of his jacket makes the moons light appear a much cooler shade. Lighting from behind a character gives them a menacing appearance; the rain refracts the moons light, lightening his front slightly; letting more detail become visible.

Fragile Dreams, shopping mall environment

Lighting for environments I find most interesting as a multitude of light sources can be used in the one image to create the whole style and feel of the environment.
In this case there is only natural lighting is coming from above the building which is only shining through the windows; the further distance however shows the only detail being the wall windows light flowing through making that part of the building seem wider open and almost dauting to go near.
The overhead lighting makes this whole scene feel cold, theres no minimal tones to the image; it is an intentionally cold piece; although the light in the forground accentuates the overgrowth, making it feel more welcoming in the forground part of the environment.



Sub-Antagonist design

Ideas for one of Nyx's children, Hypnos - Sleep
-signifying flower for hypnos being the poppy; Hypnos is Nyx's son in Greek mythology- he is said to sleep in a cave where no light can reach.

Hypnos being the cause of everything falling into a deep slumber- however because of this, he was awoken to do so. My aim with Hypnos is to appear serene, but to disturb his sleep will result in chaos.

Originally looked at him being a sloth, but it seemed too obvious. The lower half of the page is mainly focused on a more human appearance with a cuccoon like shape for his bottom half; vines coiled around him and laying in poppy petals, emphasising that he is sleep and that he doesnt move much at all.
He physique was made to be very weedy; considering he is being cradled, I wanted Hypos to be not so much a lazy antagonist, but more of a "dont want to dirty my own hands" sort of enemy.
So in this case possibly vines are controlled by him as a weapon?

Concept art

Further deatailed ideas drawn from the silhouettes.

Messing around with potential flame colours for Freedom.

Finalized turnaround of Freedom, the silhouettes with the bulky bottom halves of the legs and arms really appealed to me and also made him look less dainty.

Concept art of a few of the main characters and Nyx: the antagonist in the background.
This was before settling on Freedoms colour scheme.

Freedom sitting by river bank, Used brush pens to help with how and where lighting and shading would sit, as it had dawned on me after our lecture on Lighting is that Freedom is a lightsource; so he wouldnt be able to cast a shadow.

Colour testing of Freedom casting light around him, along with colour palette for the open areas.

Finalised concept art of Hypnos - one of the antagonists, Interior of Hypnos' cave - interiror lines with vines and poppies, Freedom watching one of his betheren struggling against the vines.
May add more to this later on

Side characters: Fragments of Phoenix concepts

Along with Freedom, there are other fragments of the Phoenix. I'm still going over the amount of fragments that the main character finds, but for the length of the project I will focus on the ones that are integral to the plot.

Some ideas for possible fragments.
using animals for their shapes: Dog, Squirrel, Stingray, stylized for of Sea lion, Griffon, Jester shape, Horse, Snake.

Only the dog and snake have a name in mind. Their names representing what fragment they are when the world was created.  Dog: Loyalty, Snake: Rebirth.

Environment sketches

Rough sketches of some focued areas of the world of my game concept.



Entrance of cave, inside the cave perspective.

Raised the contrast of this, to get better detail. More designs of wide expanses is going to be a focus for my game.

Native village concept.
Just an idea that I was juggling around, which will most likely not progress much further than this as the main character would have minimal contact with any populated looking areas, considering everything is sleeping.

Top: mountain/ hill range, less flat environment and showing water sources.

Middle:  inside of willow tree forest. Going into further detail from the zoomed out image, second down. Will do some more concepts of this area once I have intergrated it into the plot and also is a interesting change from wide open areas.

Research into willow tree will be done fore this.

Bottom: Cliff range, this page of images is just basically showing the diversity that I want my world to have.

Silhouette sketches

I managed to get 50 silhouettes done overall for the main character, which I found greatly helpful towards finalising how I want my character to look like and made me realise how much I could make better from the inital concept of him.

I didn't do the full 100 silhouettes as from the first 50 it gave me a concept in mind of how I wanted the main characters to look like and I felt that by doing a further 50 it may mess around with what I had in mind.
That and I was severely running short on styles of fire to draw out, and the figure was staying essentially the same; with that in mind the last page of silhouettes I drew out is definately going to be reffered to for the progression of my character.

Looking into the mythology

The phoenix is possibly one of the most widely known beings throughout many cultures mythology. It is seen in Arabian, Persian, Greek, Koman, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian and possibly more; this is the main reason as to why I chose a Phoenix for the key part in my game concept, its very widely known and easily recognisable creature.
Over the different mythologies the phoenix generally has the same idea behind it, a bird of rebirth. When a phoenix dies, it bursts into flames and from that is reborn from it's ashes.
Its cycle of rebirth does differ from culture to culture, for instance in asian myths the phoenix, known as Ho-Oh and/or Feng-Huang the first part of the name was the male  and the second part to the name was the female. In a few myths the phoenix is even said to change into a human.

The life span of the phoenix always seems to be around 500-1000s of years old in all cultures.

The most well known idea seems to be from Egyptian and Greek culture; which is the culture is will be leaning more towards with my concept; when it comes the time for the phoenix to die it gathers a nest of twigs and ignites itself.
The new phoenix that is born from those ashes then embalms the ashes of its old self in an egg made of Myrrh and other spices, which it then deposits itself in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis.


As I am drawing from mythology for the basis of my concept, while still giving it a twist to make the game interesting; it was quite obvious that I was going to stick with mythology for my antagonists so to speak.
I wanted to stick with Egyptian and Greek for the enemies so I looked into any Gods or other entities that played relevance to the night.

For Egyptian I didnt really find any that striked my interest, the only two that beared relevance for me was: Kuk: Personification of primodial Darkness and Nephthys, the Godess of the night. As I want my game to be for a somewhat wide age range I dont think the names would be memorable enough, also these gods arent particularaly malignant so to speak; if anything they are far from it.

Greek however proved much more fruitful considering the sheer degree of Gods they have in their culture.
Asteria: The Godess of nocturnal oracles and falling stars
Hecate: Night, moon
Nyx: The Godess of Night
Erebus: The primordial darkness

The last two turned out to be the most promising, In the end I sided with Nyx as I think a female fits the concept of the night better; that and Nyx is inherantly above Erebus (who is her brother)
Choosing Nyx also opened up the names for potential boss enemies as she gave birth to many children that were embodiments of various 'negative' Gods of sorts.
For instance some of her children: Old age, Death and Sleep; sleep in particular will possibly play a pivoting part in my plot as the current situation that the character is stuck in is that everything has falling into a deep slumber.

Colour version of Main character

Just an example of the general style I want, the characters colour will progressively change to a warmer flame as the player goes through the story.

Enviroment and side characters sketches

Phoenixs nest sketch

Native design and spirits

Choosing a platform

In terms of gameplay I drew my inspiration from the old Spyro games, Shadow of the colossus and the Golden Sun games.

With a degree of freedom of exploration, plot based things stopping progression to a certain area and so forth.
To really get the most out of the areas and also puzzle solving it will involve a degree of ingenuity or just good observation.


My choice was narrowed down very quickly to having my game on the home consoles as I felt that vastness of the world would be shown off very well on a small screen like portable consoles, also graphically home consoles I think would produce a better quality of the fire; considering that fire will be a heavy focus in my concept.

I did breifly consider the game possibly being the the 3DS, however I felt it may make the game a bit too gimmicky.

Enemy designs

Sketches of potential enemies for the game.

In game sketch and health bar ideas

Top image: A rough sketch of what I want the general in game scenes to look like. The default camera behind the character; camera can be moved with the right analouge stick.
The character will only take up a small portion of the screen, I want the players to really get a good look at the environments and this should also make the world feel vast and daunting; making the character look insignificant compared to the the world he has to explore.

Lower images: Designs for possible health bars, I want some form of indcation as to the characters current condition on the main screen whenever hostile entities are nearby. I wont want the health bar to be there constantly as I feel as though it would just be unecessary rubbish filling the screen; confontation with enemies will be at a minimum.

Along with that are designs for items that can restore health.
The idea behind these are from Egyptian mythology of the phoenix, that the phoenix embalmed its old self in myrrh and other spices; depositing itself in the egyptian city of Heliopolis.
So I've made myrrh a restorative item for the character.

The character cannot actually die per say, the enemies can devour his flames; myrrh will reignite it.

Game concept Ideas.

The setting is Fantasy/ Mythology based, a world where the Phoenix is considered a god; creating everything in their world and also acting at their sun.
The Phoenix is made up of spirits that created the world, they are seperate beings as they are one.

However one of the spirits escapes from the Phoenix; both curious and jealous of the world they created. A native finds the spirit, both curious of each other the native takes the spirit back to their home land.

Not long after the spirit flees his home, in the distance the Phoenix is seen bursting into flames; Nyx: the night spreads across the land, everything the Phoenix created falling into slumber.
The spirits are thrown across the world, the protagonist finds one of his bretheren; motioning towards the Phoenixs nest. For it to be reborn the spirts must join together at the nest which the egg lies.

Still deveolping the plot, but this is the basic outline as to how the plot will go.

Initial Character design

I had the main character's design pretty much set in my mind from the moment I settled for my concept.
I wanted them to be agile, not made for combat. So favouring exploration is necessary for the player as that's all the character cn really do from the start.

I want my whole game idea to be very stylised, as my two focuses are fire and night I wanted these two features to really stick out; which felt would come across better if I gave it a distinct style.
I've kept facial features to a minimum, which will be applied to other characters that will be drawn up. The main character will not be able to talk, which is why I have removed almost all details to a face; save for his eyes. If anything his emotion will be portrayed purely through body language and his eyes; looking at most games with main characters who do not talk eg. Legend of Zelda, Golden Sun.
The audience, although unable to tell exactly what the charcter is trying to say, unless repeated through other characters, still seem to form a bond with the character. Also with the lack of speech it seems to draw the player towards the character, they are somehow very likeable characters.

However with mine, I want the audience to have, initially a bad impression of the character. Which as the game progresses the player can see his development, along with him.


Freedom: the name of the character, the spirits names are what they embody. So in this case he is the embodiment of freedom, when the world was created he was the last to be born. He was born in the phoenixs last rebirth.
He is the most fickle spirit and also prides himself in his speed; and has not once been caught by his other bretheren.

Envying the world which they created; that he could not experience the world himself. Having done all this work for other things to take it up an lazily enjoy, and ruin it; and he was stuck in the nest, not allowed to leave.
Curious of the outside he flees the nest.

Fragile Dreams notes

From the information I have so far I'm fairly set with having a theme of solitude for my Zork re-imagining as aside from exploration that was the only other feature I feel as though I can draw from it. Seeing as all games have a degree of exploration.

Fragile dreams in particular is a game where finding compainionship is the entire surrounding theme for it.
It's setting is in a what appears to be a post apocalyptic world - there is no evidence as to why there are no other people about, or even any evidence as to what happened.

The story starts with the main character: Seto burying the old man who looked after him for what seems to be his entire life. What made it even more depressing than it already is, was that Seto never once learned the 'Old man's' name; paired up with that this was the only other living person he had ever met.
Seto finds himself looking around his 'home' looking for anything left by the 'old man'; he finds a letter from him "Head east of here and you will reach a red tower"
His goal to reach this red tower, which is almost always in sight when outside; in hopes of finding other surviors - As I played the game there was that niggling question as to what got rid of all the people?
As the game progresses he meets a few companions along the way, however so far for me all the companions met werent exactly living people. One being a computer, an android of sorts and a ghost.

Shadow of the colossus notes

Starts with the protagonist seeking out a spirit that can bring back his 'love interest?' who was killed because of a curse she was haboring.
However to do so he must destroy the 16 collosi as its power is split into them. There is also a hint of something else to pay after completing his task.

The world is vast, and allows for a large degree of exploration. Making looking for the colossi quite a task, with the players only hint to their locations are by the light which is emitted from the sword you wield. Travelling the expanse is mainly down to your trusty horse, reminding me of Legend of Zelda in that aspect; the player grows an attchment to the their mode of transport as it is a living thing and reliable to you.

Same with ICO, Shadow of the collosus; its quite a solitary game, the lack of speach and such a large world for one person.
with ICO there is constant interaction, with the girl being escorted by you, but the language barrier makes it difficult to really converse with her. It makes it seem even lonlier that the two cant fully understand one another and yet it makes their relationship that much deeper i find.

Amnesia Notes

Genre: Survival Horror
Daniel, the main character; recently regain conciousness with no prior memories; save for his name.
The game actually starts with him actually drinking something to rid his memories.

He wakes up in a castle, the only thing that gives the player and idea of what to do is the trail of pink liquid dotted in the floor. The game begins with no actual goal per say, but more having to look for the purpose to being with.

Flashes of his memory or letters from his former self tell the player what Daniel must do, revealing bit about him and also hints for what to do to progress through the game.
Right off the bat, the first letter that you find after following the pink tells you what you goal is, why Daniel has no memories and to set the fear into the player; that something is following him.
The gameplay is all in first person, putting the player in Daniels shoes, I felt that the narritive for this in particular accentuated the the whole scariness of the whole game, first person prevents you from seeing what is beind Daniel; generating a paranoia of anything out of his field of vision. This whole concept is accentuated by the lack of weapons.
There is a heavy focus on the exploration of the castle, which is ironically much safer than outside; the aim not being to escape but to find the person in the castle and kill them.

Puzzles forward progression, obvious puzzle based blocks or players using their ingenuity to find methods to progress onwards from what stops you.

The game actually uses the characters sanity as a factor in the gameplay - works well for horror. Light regains sanity, being able to see , a basic fear; mind playing tricks on you with the dark; light makes it better.

In terms of enemies/ antagonists; confrontation is anything but advised. Monsters are extremely strong, you cannot kill them and have a degree of intelligence to them; some more so than others. For example light and noises attract their attention. What makes the monsters scary is that confrontations are few and far between, you dont get a good look at any monster until about 30-40 minutes into the game. The lack of interaction with hostile entities keep the player on edge while wandering the castle; every area pretty much needs to be looked over with a fine tooth comb to progress, however that fear pushes the player to be constantly wary of their actions.
There are the select monsters that are triggered due to plot purposes, however I recently learned that there are other monsters that randomly pop up. So even the secrity of knowing what monster appears where cant make the player feel anymore secure.
Fear is also generated from the lack of contact with other living things, save for the monsters. Being alone in a disturbing place in itself is scary; so seeking solace by finding someone else eases the terrors; however there is the fear in finding something living in the castle, making the process even more difficult.

Possible research material

Before doing any in depth research I jotted down various games, films, books etc. that involve different degrees of exploration or even different kinds.

I want to show the possibilities that were considered, but for more detailed research I felt as though I should narrow down from what I have already looked at for a more focused genre of game i want to do.

'Nine hours, nine persons, nine doors (999)' - Chunsoft (2009) : Drops you into the plot. Choices you make for your progressions and also what you do towards characters in converstions both directly affect the plot. 9 seemingly unrelated people take part in a game, they must keep to the rules or be killed, however if they dont escape in 9 hours they will drown. The party are trapped on what seems to be a replica of the 'Titanic'. Relies on working with others under life or death situations whether or not they like each other.

Link: http://www.ign.com/

'Amnesia: The dark descent' - Frictional Games (2011) : A survival horror where the main character, Daniel, finds himself in a castle with no memories of anything aside from his name. He spends the game exploring the castle he is in, gradually learning himself what he has to do here; so Daniel knows as much as the player. Uses the players ingenuity through the game, having to find other routes of items throughout the castle to help progression.
http://www.amnesiagame.com/#media

'Golden Sun' series- Camelot (2001) : RPGs are the most typical genre in terms of explortion; Golden sun I feel has a lot of freedom for a game on the game boy. There is the exploration of an entire world, by foot and then in the second installment you had a boat broaden those horizons, the game had linear aspects to show what the player had to do, but a large degree of it was all down to the player actually finding their way, being logical and talking to people and so forth. There was a goal for the characters which actually progressed to the complete opposite in the second game; due to the characters perspective and the difference in the information each are given.

'Persona (series)' - Atlus (1996-present) : All the games are heavy on exploration, however the main reason for picking this was the degree of self-exploration that is present, which is more so in the 4 installment to the series; not so much the character the player controls but actually the friends that are made along the way, you progressively help them. So not just literal exploration but figurative.

Though in a games aspect, this may be a bit too vague to choose a less literal form of exploration.

'Project Zero' (series) -

'Pokemon' - Game Freak

'Fragile Dreams'

'Heavy Rain'

'Heroes of Might and Magic'

'Spyro'

Films : Indiana Jones, National Treasure, Angels and Demons, Number 23, One Piece (Series)

Books: Chronicles of Narnia, Adventure/desicion making books, Jurrasic Park, Game of thrones.

Taking a look at Zork

Upon starting the game it all felt a bit like being dropped into the middle of nowhere; which it literally is.
The Character, AKA: You start in the middle of a field; a white house nearby, boarded up windows and door, with a mailbox outside.
From there it was pretty much whatever you could think to do next. Considering it seemed to be the only point of interest, I directed the character to the mailbox, which frankly resulted with more stress over the game not registering most actions I hoped to take; for example 'look' action wasn't registered, however writing 'examine' instead was fruitful. Throughout my playthrough I found navigation to be very difficult, purely due to losing track of what directions I had chosen and that it only took in certain words to consideration.

When I moved on to examining the door; to be told again that it was boarded up. trying to open, kick and break the door resulted in being told there was no chance; the game does allow a degree of ingenuity, before moving on to something else I tested to what extent the game can consider; within logical reason.
I wrote down 'burn door'
which resulted in 'with what?'
This was a nice suprise but this just brought back the problem of 'What do I actually have on me?' and also the hope that you could actually burn the door. Selected 'matches' to be told I had none.
Assuming that the house was just a landmark to recognise where I am, I moved onto wandering to forests, canyons and so forth; just reaching points that were impassable; (some points of which gave the impression that they were progressable with the right equipment)

The venture in the forest consisted of kicking leaves to find a grate, and finding a jewel encrusted egg- which gave me the assumption it was of great importance; and didn't find out if it was by the end of my playthrough; also that a thief robbed me blind after a great deal of my progression.

Once I discovered that there was a way to progress with the house; which during that portion of my gameplay I finally discovered that it was a fantasy styled; however this is only shown by the elven sword I picked up and the Troll that was encountered under the house.

After finishing/giving up the playthrough and looking over the notes jotted down, I couldnt help but notice how lonely the game felt. I spent about 10 minutes following after the sound of a bird singing when I was exploring the forest; to no avail. Looking around the house, it gave a feeling of abandonment when examining everything. There is no sign of life, but evidence that there was; with nothing showing what happened to them.

Exploring the dugeon under the house gave me a heavy 'Amnesia: the dark descent' vibe, and was all i could picture in my head while playing.

It got to the point where I had found a piece of paper congratulating me on Zork:1, whether this means I 'completed' the 'goal' or sorts is something I dont think the game would point out; which brings the question, what is the end to this game?

Overall was a very interesting experience, parts of it gave me alot of possible ideas I can work with and also what else I can research for my reimagining.
As the game revolves around it I'll keep the heavy exploration as the focus of my concept.
Lonliness, gritty, survival are the major theme's I'm picking up on from my time playing it; which I think I'll look further into games on a similar scale to that.