research

Hideo kojima a Japanese game designer is the man who has brought us the metal gear solid series and he's the reason its so successful. The way he express the story through gameplay and cutscenes is magnificent. Kojima has worked on this series for more than 25 years and every single one of his games have been a huge success proving how good he is at his job. He likes to concentrate on the narrative a lot in his games not just the gameplay, which is unique as a lot of game designers find the narrative unimportant. Hideo kojima is inspired by the film industry and trys to make his cutscenes like films which I think he's done perfectly and with the way he ends each game with an amazing cutscene making you want the next game to find out what happens next. 

Metal gear solid peace walker is one of Hideo Kojimas master piece games. This game really inspired me with the way it explained the story through cutscenes. Instead of using flashy cinematic's and animated cutscenes he used static frames like an interactive comic. He also made the scenes interactive by adding buttons that the player had to press in a certain amount of time or they failed. This also made player stay alert and keep them from getting bored if the cutscene was a long one, which in my opinion worked well. The way he was able to express the story using such a unique style was magnificent and deeply inspired me on the way I will be doing the cutscenes for Don't talk to strangers.

Ashley Wood is an Australian comic book artist and illustrator who is well known for his cover art, concept design, and his work as an art director. Wood generally works in mixed media, often combining oil painting with digital art making. Wood worked on the art for the cut scenes of metal gear solid peace walker, which inspired me to do the cut scenes for Don't talk to strangers in that style. Its in the style of a black and white interactive comic. 

“Tetsuya Nomura” started working for Square enix in the early 1990s mainly as a character designer. He was a character designer for the some of the final fantasy games in the final fantasy series and all kingdom hearts games. He debuted as a video game director for the kingdom heart series in 2002, which I think he did a really good job with. Like the way he used music perfectly to express the emotions of the characters and how the story was presented by the characters and events in the game. Also the way he uses camera angle in cut scenes perfectly astonishes me. 


The world of videogames has come a long way since Pac-Man first chased Ms. Pac-Man across the screen in what many consider one of the first-ever videogame cutscenes. Today we have both in-engine and pre-rendered masterpieces that tell amazing stories and feature jaw-dropping visuals and production values that are beginning to rival some of Hollywood's efforts. 

Another way I got my inspiration for the cutscenes of Don't talk to stranger was from reading manga and comics. I fined it amazing how the artists can show so much with a single picture, with how one stance could show so much movement or emotion and how a body proportions defined a character and how they would do it perfectly. Also the way it's all in black and white but you still see colour is there as the shading is so well done. I also really like the way they draw environments as they fit in perfectly with the plot and the characters and they are very consistent with each environment. In some manga the environments are not as detailed as others but they still create the same impact and it perfectly, so this shows you don't always need a lot of detail for it to work.   

I also done some research on some interactive comics as the cutscenes for Don't talk to strangers will be in the style of an interactive comic. One of the interactive comics I found was Lost Girl written by Navid Khavari and drawn by Tigh walker.   

Lost Girl is a Interactive Motion Comic that merges elements of traditional print comic books with animation and audio effects, motion comics provide a unique story-telling medium.

As the name Interactive Motion Comic suggests, this story is interactive. As it plays out, you will be given choices: parts of the scene will "glow" when you run your cursor over them, showing you opportunities for you to interact with the scene and its characters, and discover parts of the story that would otherwise remain hidden. Look through Detective Dyson's cluttered desk for clues or go head to head with an MMA fighter.

This is the sort of style I plan on using for the cutscenes of Don't talk to strangers, by using buttons and icons so the player can interact with the cutscenes and make there own choices and each choice will trigger a different event. 

There are many games that use stickmen as characters such as “Smoking kills”, “Stick war”, Simon Hason’s “Tactical Assassin” and many more. They all have something special in common: success. Although it may seem like there is only one way of drawing a stickman, it really isn't. There’s a whole new world in stickman drawing where many aspects are taken into great consideration.

There are many ways to go about drawing a character. You could go with an exceptionally, realistic look character with amazing shaders that adds to the realism of the game you’re playing, or you could go with an abstract looking character that uses toon shaders to mimic a drawing of a cartoon character – but in 3D. These ways have both been very successful, where one way cannot work the other, and vice versa. However, there is a third way of drawing a character, the stick way, which I want to pursue for my 2D flash game.

To add more depth to the cutscenes in "Don't Talk To Strangers" I started looking at different stickman games and art to see what different styles of shading and techniques  there is. Then I could apply these techniques to my own drawings, which would improve the final version of the cutscenes. After some research and looking at different stickman games and art I found a couple of different styles and techniques that I could apply to my work. The technique I found most useful was using gradients for shading so I decided to use this technique for shading on my own drawing as it quick and effective. It will also improve the overall outcome of my cutscenes.


A game very similar to Don't tall to strangers is "Tactical Assassin" created by Simon Hason. In Tactical Assassin, Simon Hason has put a lot of thought and effort into the environment for each level in the game to make the streets and buildings seem more realistic and feel like your normal everyday street. To do this Hason has combined aspects you find in an average street perfectly and implemented them into his game. However with Don't talk to strangers we aimed more at making the game play realistic. First we plan on adding bullet drop, which varies depending on your distance so it adds more of a challenge to the game.  Also we will add recoil and we might add wind depending on how much time we have. Other than that Don't talk to strangers is very similar to tactical assassin and seeing how successful tactical assassin is I think don't talk to strangers will we just as successful as long as we finish and the game play and animation runs smoothly. 

Stickpage.com is a website full of 2D flash games, which are stickman games. This website is very inspirational and has massively influenced me whilst working on Don't talk to strangers. Even though all the games use stickmen and people think all stickmen are the same, there actually not the same. There are tons of different ways you can draw a stickman, such as the thickness of the lines, the colour or maybe the shading. These little details are what makes a character. In some games colours are used to represent good and bad for example a evil character is coloured in red to represent evil and a good character could be blue to represent good. There is also lots of different styles of environments that go very well with the way the characters are drawn. Some are basic, some lack colours while others are extremely detailed. If I ever need inspiration, stickpage.com is the place to go.  

Evaluation

I was given a brief that asked me to create something interactive for my final major project. However, if your working in a group your parts don't have to be interactive as some people may contribute drawings while others the interactive part, etc. I decided to work in a group with Samer to create a flash game called Don't talk to strangers, which is a prequel off his scratch project from the first year. Suriv was trained to be a solider, he was given orders not to communicate with anyone except general tucker, hence the name Don't talk to strangers. The game will have a similar style to games like Tactical Assassin create by Simon Hason, which is a sniper game. However there are some unique differences in Don't talk to strangers. For example realistic physics in the world, this means there will be bullet drop for long distant shots, meaning you would have to aim higher than the target in order to hit, etc.

I have learned a huge amount during my final major project. First I have now learnt how to use illustrator to its full potential during my time producing the cutscenes for Don't talk to strangers. At first I really hated illustrator but now I find it really useful and will use it more in the future. I also learnt a lot about level design as I was helping Samer out with designing the levels I done some research in to level design which helped me learn a lot and help him greatly with the level design. I even learnt how to communicate with my team better and give constructive criticism to help them improve there work. I learnt this my giving Samer a lot of feedback on his work and ways that he could improve them.  

Overall I was able to learn how a typical workplace in the video game industry works. How people communicate their ideas, maybe use Facebook, Skype, etc. Learning this will be really helpful in the future that I am aiming for. It helps prepare me for short deadlines and the pressure of those deadlines. This does not only prepare me for the video game industry but also any other workplace, like the movie industry, the engineering industry, etc. So overall this is more useful than I originally thought it was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IDxkz5mtYE&list=FLEprXvhVRVXXuadbcLSCTlQ&index=1

In my final major project proposal it explains how I intend to process my evaluation. As stated in my proposal I was to pick 5 people at random and have them test our game: Don't talk to strangers. I would be recording their gameplay and reaction and then edit them together to study later on. This video is just a simple montage and not the video I assessed. According to the reactions and gameplay I could see clearly that the interface worked well as each tester understood how to play the game instantly. The Don't make think rule was applied perfectly, as there were no instructions on how to shoot the gun or how to move the camera, even so each tester new how to do these things. The testers also enjoyed the game except one, who had a small problem with the game he was testing. There was a small bug and he could not shoot his target even though he was aiming perfectly. So one of the things that did not go so well was the fact there were still some bugs in the game. I also noticed how the tester would get frustrated because they had to sit through a scene of text before each mission and would have to rewatch it if thy failed, which I could tell frustrated them from there reactions.  

If I had more time I would of like to improve my cutscenes some more and add them into the game, like I originally planned to but unfortunately I ran out of time. In the end even though I finished the cutscenes because I did not get to put them in the game and had to print them out instead to present my work, I feel the scenes do not look as good as it would of if it was in the game. I would also liked to of designed more side missions to go in the game as we only had one working side mission in the game that was playable. I feel liked there could of been more characters in the game as there was only a few. But the overall I think the final outcome of the game was good seeing how little time we had to make it.