Pitch Day!

The day of the pitch is upon us! Feeling like an overall bag of nerves, I drummed up my flash cards and slide input to be included in the overall presentation fairly quickly over the last week. I sent this off to Bryan who was putting the whole pitch slideshow together. Went over my part again and again while timing it. We read the brief once more to ensure we were heading on the right lines. 15 minute pitch plus questions. cool. 5 minutes each for us to rattle off our parts and hopefully secure the backing of a financial backer for our game.

We met up today a couple of hours beforehand to get everything straightened out, and I found that the more I talked, the more the time went on, the nearer the deadline for our presentation came, I was starting to get a severe case of the jitters worse and worse. My neck broke out in a rash, I was sweating, my stomach was churning, I was eh-ing and pausing in places I shouldn't have. It was official - I was terrified.

I can't say the same for the other team members but I find public speaking truly frightening. It's like the dream you have where you're doing a presentation in front of people and suddenly you have no clothes on and everyones laughing at you.

The pressure was on! I had to hold it together long enough to ensure I remained on track, and confident enough so as to not screw up my teams chances at a great presentation. The pressure was added by the fact that when we got to the room we were a bit early and no one was there, so every moment we waited I was checking who was walking down the corridor to see if it was our potential clients. From the moment I clocked eyes on them walking down the corridor I was in meltdown mode. I was able to collect myself quickly and made general small talk as we set up.

Boom. Intro video is in motion. The pitch had started. The longest 30 second wait I've ever had. Oh...it's finished? Guess that's my queue then. I rattle through the introduction of our company - Wrang Again Studios, and proceed to inform the backers of our game, the target console and explanation why, as well as a brief understanding of our influences. After prattling on about this for what felt like an hour, but was actually 2 minutes, I moved on to describing the overall story. This led into Tom's part, which was an utter relief as I could start to relax, but still remain cautious enough to see what sort feedback we received. Tom had no sooner started than he stopped. That's what it felt like at least. Tom had covered the characters, and the key zone shifting elements of the game and explained how it came about. This then led Bryan on to explaining the gameplay and why we though it was a good model for making money off.

I was waiting for the inevitable which never came about. The feedback we received was great. The questions thrown at us - we're easily answered and we got through it due to brilliant team work. I'm very happy with the way things turned out. This has been a real eye opener as to what to expect from the real world when I come to work in the industry and has provided valuable insight which will remain with me for a lifetime. I'll definitely practice speaking in front of a group of people though. My nerves nearly got the better of me this time. Without a solid team, I really don't know what would have happened.

Scott

week 11 - We're....done?(well, the game design document at least)

It was a long journey and there were many bumps on the road. I quite honestly under-estimated how much work needed to be done in order to achieve the final result that is our game design document. I'm just glad  I don't have to print it out for anyone or I may feel the wrath of Green Peace for the amount of trees I'd need to print on.

We found after we thought we were done and doing a last lookover, that we were missing certain bits of the required specification that had been layed out, this ultimately led on from one bit to another and resulted in giving us a nice bed time the night before hand in date of 4am.

The sigh of relief that swept over us was monumental.

I thought it would have been made easier as I was working with two guys I've known pushing 3 years and have travelled my higher education path with them since college. How wrong I was. It was certainly a bonus at times but we had to be really careful that we sorted out any disagreements or differences of opinion amicably or the whole project was put in jeopardy. Thankfully we all have solid heads on strong shoulders, and as a result, this proved to be a minor issue.

All that's left for us to work on is the pitch which takes place on the 10th of January at 11 o'clock. I'm confident that this will run with success as we all feel passionately about our game. Stay tuned for a final blog after the presentation to hear how it went!

Week 10 - almost there

The main story arc is finalised! Took a while but we got there in the end.  All we need to do is implement era stories and the game is complete. This is our plan of action this week and we should be done come next Tuesday - attention spans permitting.

Here's a look at it for the moment.

The year is 2112. Dreamscape has been hard at work with its development of the Somnium technology, named as such, as this is the Latin word for dream. Ready to reveal the technology to the world, an advertising campaign is launched to promote it. Marketed towards the rich and famous, the experience can be referenced as a millionaire’s playground.

This is an experience of a lifetime. Live in the shoes of a Knights Templar, fight as a red coat mercenary, experience the turmoil of the Salem witch trials from the perspective of a witch or choose to walk in the footsteps of a successful scientist who has studied dreams as his specialized field.

However it’s not all blank cheques and satisfied customers. In order to provide the ultimate thrill to their paying customers, Dreamscape needs to gather resources from the dead. Those very same actions and methods used on the dead have caught the eye of a Left-Wing Human Rights activist group. The group has one monolithic issue with Dreamscape - they believe those that are dead should remain dead and respected - not disturbed and used in a scientific recreational activity for the well off.

As a result, a virus codenamed ‘DV8’ is developed and implemented into the P.O.D by one of the group who has secured undercover work at Dreamscape.

As the customers are enjoying the exciting lives of those they have chosen, they start to realise something is not quite right. The virus has taken hold and their virtual reality world is suddenly becoming very, very real. The notice that they start to experience pain like never before, instead of being able to live the experience as the person they have plugged into, they start to notice weird anomalies within the world, buildings changing shape, monsters and characters that seem to appear as if they don’t belong in the era that the rest of the area is in, and it’s quickly realised that Dreamscape MUST do something to help them.

Week 9 - Things are wrapping up nicely

As we approach our 12 week deadline the game design document is filling up well and is almost finished.
I use the term almost finished loosely here though as there is always a point where you re-read over something and realise you need to make adjustments to it for everything else to make sense.

I was having a bit of a hard time writing within the document how the player would choose the Scientist class, as the idea of the pod for Somnium was that upon entering the pod the player would be faced with his class choice.

In my Scientist backstory, I'd written initially that he was a university graduate that was recruited to work for Dreamscape on the somnium project, however I've had to tweak this slightly.

We have decided that the Scientist was the person that came up with the idea of Somnium, however died before his work could be completed. His work has since been carried out by Dreamscape, and customers have the option to play out the part of the man that started it all.

He soon finds himself thrown into the deep-end when the machine starts to malfunction and he is called upon by Dreamscapes senior analyst to perform what starts off as light debugging routines, to uncovering a virus named DV8 that has been introduced to Dreamscape's systems by a left-wing human rights organisation (with terrorist tendancies) that wish to sabotage Dreamscapes projects due to the nature of the Somnium system.

Will update further with hopefully the final progress.

Signing off....

Week 8 - Deadlines are drawing in!

So within about 5 minutes of Jim starting the lecture the realisation hit us - it's almost hand-in date! With our working hats firmly attatched to our heads, we devised a plan to get as much done as possible. More collaboration took place between myself and Bryan as there are a couple of Game design doc areas we are working on jointly, in order to tackle the bigger topics.

I feel I can reveal a bit more to you guys, the avid readers wondering what the vagueness surrounding our game idea is. Pretty much because Tom and Bryan have basically advertised it on their respective blogs from day one where-as I took the more 'protect your IP' approach that was drummed into me since college and only gave away breif details here and there.

The game idea is done! A cracking start on our paperwork and I've been nominated 'the guy' that collects everyones data and puts it niceley into the document.

More about the game then...

So in the last couple of blogs I hinted at some Matrix/Assassin's creed-esque ideas we were implementing. Initially I had drawn up a background for the scientist which explained that he worked for Dreamscape's Somnium project as an oneirologist(a studier of dreams) - however upon working out how to implement this particular character choice, I've had to change that a little.

The Somnium system lets a user 'plug into' a memory core of someone past-lived. It is the beleifs of this human rights group, that once a person is dead, they should reserve the right to rest in peace. Dreamscape however beleive that no harm can come of this experience and think of it more as a themepark ride for the wealthy, a way for them to escape the mundane life they may lead ( money can't buy you happiness afterall). The virus unleashed on Somnium is intended to bring the systems into disrepair, and Dreamscapes reputation along with it.

More to be added as the Game design doc comes to a head...

Over and out..

Week 7 - Unproductive?

Another week, another potential opportunity to drill down some ideas for our game. We spent the morning bantering ideas around and expanding on ideas originally explored and even wrote off some ideas that we felt were no longer required.

The lecture itself on monday lasted a whopping 15 minutes so that gave us a lot of time to get stuck into the thick of it, we tended to digress a bit from the task in hand but managed to punch out  more of a solid 'backstory' to the game and give it a bit more 'meat. I showed the backstory of the scientist world to the other guys and got some feedback to amend some things and improve on it so a finalised version of it could be produced. Bryan took the map of the game world away to work on, and will have a map of the world to look at by next week, Tom took away the feedback of the concept pictures he drew up, with a view to draw them in a bit more detail. I proceeded with my assigned tasks for the game design document and will update more information as it becomes available.

Unproductive? In sheer scope of the work achieved on the day there wasn't much done physically but we took away a lot of ideas to work on and write up more of the game we are creating.

Untill next time...

week 6 - Multiplayer!

We weren't in the best frame of mind when we met up, lack of sleep in all three members played a big part in that, however we did manage to discuss how we were going to incorporate multiplayer.

We talked about the different ways that other games implemented multiplayer and I mentioned that I much prefered local co-op (on the same machine) and the others mentioned they preferred multiplayer online (via xbox live etc)

We agreed that the multiplayer will be localised, however would have online capabilities to play with up to 3 other friends in a party over the likes of xbox live. In the instance where 4 people were playing on seperate consoles, the game would choose the person with the best network connection to host the game.

We discussed at length the possibility of hosting the multiplayer on a dedicated server however due to the costs involved in keeping a server up, and maintained, we decided that matchmaking and finding the best host would be the best user eperience.

The game will still play in its entirety in the multiplayer as it would in the single player, however you would play each persons part of the story out once at a time (E.g Templar is party leader - three friends are in the party playing). The story played through will be the templars portion of the story until this is complete at which point a world transition will take place and the next person in the party's story will load with the rest of the party in tow, helping out.

More information will be updated as it's available on this.

Until next time...