Greetings,
I want to give you a sincere, hearty welcome to the first official post of Homemade Games, Fresh From the Oven Daily (Just Like Your Mom Used to Make). Week 1 has come to a close for us here at Hogwart's School of Gamecraft and Artistry. What occurred in Week 1?
Forming the team, for starters. Our group came into the class as the "stragglers" who didn't already have a game team formed. We were the ones that enjoyed our Summers...or used it to catch up on credits. Either way, we're a big, happy family now. There are two designers, one of them being myself, and three RTIS fellows. I was on a game team with one of them for my Freshman game, REMBlocks. Oh the memories. One of programmers I know somewhat decently from other classes and whatnot, and the other is a complete stranger to me. I'm sure we will all get nice and cozy with one another over the next two semesters--or die trying.
Right now, I don't foresee any major difficulties amongst the group. I've known my fellow designer from other classes, and I have a feeling we'll get along in terms of design styles and methods. We'll all have our disagreements, I'm sure. I can't wait to observe or maybe even take part in some fantastically passionate arguments--I mean, discussions about the game in the future. It'll be healthy arguing, like in any good family.
Our ideas are pretty basic and vague right now, but one definite is that our technical director wants to do something with soft body physics, which presents us designers with some interesting decisions and opportunities. It's not often that games feature a soft body mechanic, and there are a number of different directions in which we can go.
Something that struck me personally was that our technical director mentioned that soft body physics weren't limited to just blobby things; it could also be used in swarms of particles. That's got me thinking about groups of things. The first thing I thought of actually was Miyazaki's soot sprites, from Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.
Pictured: Mind-numbing cuteness.
That got us thinking about the game as more than just particles--or at least, I hope it did. I personally like to see character in games. I'm not particularly attracted to games just on the basis that they feature some kind of interesting physics. Furthermore, I'm also not especially interested in games like Osmos or Flow, which were mentioned as inspirations for the sort of direction to be considered for this game. I can certainly appreciate them for what they are, and they have my respect. However, they aren't necessarily games I would simply pick up and play myself. I'm sure some kind of common ground can be met between something cute/entertaining and poetic/abstract.
Pictured: Flow (Left), Osmos (Right)
We'll just have to see how things pan out as we lay down more groundwork for the concepts. Also, we've got to get our engine started up too. I'm really hoping to keep our scope reasonable so we can produce something of great quality. My priority is to keep it simple--everything. If the design is simple, then (generally speaking) everything else following that should be as well. Simple doesn't necessarily mean easy; it just means there's less that could potentially kick us in the balls (or ovaries, in my case).
I will have to end this post. It was a pretty nice, long post since it's the beginning of the semester and I don't yet have tons of work! I will cherish it. We'll see how things are by the end of Week 2, homework-wise and game-wise. See you then! Peace.
Sincerely,
Alicia Yeargin.
P.S. We're calling ourselves El Citrap. (You can figure out what it means.)
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