The end of the first year

So it is almost the end of my first year at the university. I remember my first days on this course as it was a week ago. I was shy, curious and I didn’t know what to expect. The first term was fantastic, when I met all these new people, my tutors and I started the university life. I also begun my adventure with 3d modelling which was a bit intimidating at first but I quickly realized that it isn’t that scary, it just required some patience and practice. One year ago it took me a whole week to create 3d model of Dalek. Now I feel like I could do it within an hour, which I’m really happy with, as good time management as well as being efficient in short amounts of time are essential on this course. Its quick pace was sometimes killing me and it was hard to keep up, but… well I have to get used to it if I ever want to work in the gamming industry! I found both visual design and game production projects very interesting and I feel that every each of them thought me something new and valuable. Generally I preferred projects that allowed me to design something like the evil character project or the 3d gladiator project. Nonetheless, I’m aware of the importance of drawing from life and I’m glad that this course program required me to do it quite often. Life drawing sessions helped my to better understand the human anatomy and it’s noticeable that my characters are more coherent now. However, life is not a dream, so there were also some things on this course that I didn’t like... For example it happened to me a few times that I came to Fletcher just to be informed that there was no sessions that day. It’s probably not a big deal for students that live in halls that are 3 min away from University, but there are also people like me who live away and a simple note on Facebook or blackboard would prevent them from wasting time/money on traveling. I also found formative assessments a bit disappointing. I believe that it would be much more beneficial for us if Chris and Heather instead of assessing our works on their own would seat with us just for 30min, get through our drawings/models and give us some short verbal opinion on every project… But back to more pleasant subject now: critical game studies. Even though I hate writing and it was really hard for me to get through all the tasks from handbook I’m really happy that I did it, because they gave me some knowledge on how the gaming industry works. I was never good at standing in front of people and talking so I was really terrified when it came to doing the presentation… but after doing it three times my confidence got much stronger and I’m not so worried of the presentation that I’ll have to do in the future. Concluding – my first year at the university was fun, I’ve learnt a lot and I’m looking forward to the next year!

Elements of game design - part 4

What is a good game environment design? Is it one that takes your breath away and makes you stop a game for a while to take a look around just to appreciate the view? Well, yes. But if you are overlooking the surrounding while playing a game it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was poorly designed. Sometimes it has to be created in that way not to distract you from the plot and in that case it’s good too because you can be dragged into a game without analysing the surrounding. If the environ takes your attention from playing because at the back of your head you keep thinking that something is wrong it’s a sign that Level Designer or the Game Environment Artist messed up. For example below you can see a picture of a first person shooter set up in Mario’s world. It just hurts the mind, doesn’t it? Well... maybe that example was a bit over the top, but you know what I mean…

In general good environment design should support the atmosphere and narration of the game. In my opinion one of the best instances of that can be found in game Portal. At the first look it’s a first person puzzle game that takes place in some kind of test chambers. Levels look quite alike; all are clean bright and insipid. However, in some places, you can find a hole in a wall or an open ventilation shaft and if you go inside you start to realize that there is something wrong with this place. Hidden rooms are small, dirty, and gloomy and their walls are covered with some writings. When you find one of those you can’t stop looking for another one to get some more clues. It’s a great way to tell the story through the environment.

Another example of an outstanding environment design can be found in the game Prince of Persia. It’s easy to say that the developers of this game put a lot of attention to the look of levels, and no wonder, because the main gameplay element is concentrating on climbing the walls and jumping form edge to edge. I admire the concepts of this game artist David Levy as he had to create in them believable levels with magic atmosphere but also had to considered the way in which player would interact with the surrounding.

I know that I’ve mentioned this game sooooo many times in this blog, but I can’t just simply write a post about environments in games and not talk about Shadow of the Colossus! Most of its events occur within Forbidden Land where you have to defeat 16 colossi. Each colossus dwells in a unique lair, so you can find here mountains, deserts, caves and many more… All of them are beautifully designed and they emphasize character of each colossus.

Environments are just as important as any other element of game design and they have to work well when put together with characters. Wrong decisions in developing them can easily affect the player’s perception of the game. 

Links:
http://vyle-art.com/
http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/cat_game_environment_design.ph p