PRE-PRODUCTION & RESEARCH DOCUMENT

Below is a link to my pre production and research document:

Pre Production and Research Document

GDD

Below is a link to my GDD for this project:

Lights GDD

Narrative

As lights features no conventional narrative, I would have tried to weave in snippets of vague information that would give the player a framework for what was happening to their character and why. I did this by writing down small pieces of information, told in a strange format that would give clues as to what was taking place in game.

There would be 10 of these little scrolls littered around the game-space for the player to find that would expand upon their experiences in game by providing clues to the back-story. These were limited to around 50 words each, so that they could be read as a non intrusive overlay to the game, this was however, out of our reach, so all I have is each piece written out.

"They came from above, they created the temples and this holy place and gave men the power of language."

"They stayed, for thousands of moons they stayed. And shared with men their unusual skills, joy was had by all involved and the wise ones and their human proteges lived in peace."

"Many great works of science and art were made, the wise ones always looking on the works of the humans with the approval of a loving parent." 

"Grand lights began to coalesce above the obsidian temples, at the apex of their pyramid, they grew day by day for years and year, for so long the old would talk about how big they were when they were young"

"The wise ones spoke, but none understood, it hadn't happened before, communication had always been easy between the two species, because they didn't understand, they didn't heed the warnings they faced"

"The wise ones retreated into the temples for 7 months and 7 days"

"One Day they left, just gone for good, the men wept as they knew not what to do, for the wise ones had been the guides human civilisation"

"Oracles spoke of their return. But it never came. The tension caused forced men to fight, blood was spilled on the steps of the holy temples, and seemingly in anger they barred their entrances in stone using magicks left by the old ones"

"Few stayed behind, in hope of the golden times of the past, this went on the generations until the original truth had passed into legend."

"The last of the priests left this place and walked out into the desert, alone and the temples were left alone never to be seen again"

Research: Environment and Setting

The environment is intended to be that of the north African desert.

The Sahara has a great range of features, and is so vast it features many different types of environment to draw inspirations from.

The endless dunes deserts are more renowned for.

Rocky terrain mixed with sand and a mountain in the distance.

With a mix of these kind of features we could create an interesting setting, the tone of the sand in the dunes picture is perfect for the dust particles and also will make a nice contrast to the obsidian of the structures in the scene.

The pyramids of Giza with the city in the foreground, it shows how the dust of the desert obscures vision over a distance.

The imposing sight of a south American pyramid, the stepped design is more appropriate for our intended designs.

Obsidian

Using obsidian as a material could be very interesting as it would be of such a stark contrast compared with the light yellowy sands of the Sahara. I think the contrast would be visually striking.

Puzzle Mechanics Research

Puzzle games have existed for decades, and puzzle elements feature in many games, even where the main mechanic of the game relies on a different skill set. Puzzles can be used in a variety of ways, mainly to provide a challenge for the player, but when done right, can induce an element of tension that is comparable to games where you are constantly under a hail of gunfire.

Puzzles in first person games, normally take the form of activating objects (usually switches) in the correct order, standing on specific parts of the floor in a correct sequence or remembering information and answering questions posed by some sort of machine or character. As we hope that our environment will be interesting enough for the player to explore, we simply want puzzles in the game just to give it some more depth.


Portal

Portal  is perhaps the most famous and successful example of a puzzle game in recent years. The unique portal gun mechanics made for interesting and challenging puzzles that could often be solved in a number of ways. It also featured a quirky storyline, as well as snippets of information available to the player, if they went looking for them. The puzzle's themselves are great, but in a way, just glorified switch puzzles where the switch could potentially be any part of the game world (in this case, the testing chambers). Portal's success shows that even in this contemporary age of visceral first person shooter action, slower paced puzzle games can still be great and played by a large audience.

The puzzle design in Portal is inspirational to me as a puzzle designer, as when I played through, I never got bored despite all I was doing was shooting the portal (switch) gun at the correct part of the level. If I can design puzzles that are even 25% as fun as the ones in portal I would consider it a success.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWj781LiMtc



Tomb Raider Series

This series had long been associated with puzzle solving combined with a smattering of platforming as well as gunplay. The nature of these puzzles being in ancient temples/tombs is a helpful inspiration to our project as we feature similar themes in our environment. The puzzles herein feature the ever present switch mechanic along with timing. The timing is the main thing that brings any sense of tension to these puzzles as often the player won't have long after having pressed the first switch to move on to the second. It really makes me think, how much focus testing is done when companies have these elements withing their games, how many people test to see what the average or lowest possible time would be for completing each puzzle. This will be an interesting point to remember in future and something we will probably have to look into when we design our final project in the third year (not because we don't want to do this now, but because two months doesn't really allow a great deal of time for things like this, especially as I am learning almost from scratch how to use UDK to create puzzles).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P3PQ0YAkKU


Amnesia

Back to the ever present source of inspiration that is Amnesia then. Amnesia features the exact switch mechanics that I intend to use when developing my puzzles for this game. Matching symbols and icons to the correct switch, pushing them in a specific order, these are the kind of simple yet effective puzzle designs that have been used for decades and are proven to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_fJJqgptQg

Genre Research: First Person Adventure Games

First person adventure games are numerous, but not many of them are triple A titles. The best examples are normally independently developed by small teams. I think going for an idea in this genre is beneficial to us as difficult things like AI scripts for enemies won't hinder us.

It is difficult to create a sense of tension or atmosphere with the player not facing any immediate threats to their avatar's life, I think we can compensate for this by having an intriguing environment for our players to explore as well as puzzles that that make the player think about what to do next, as opposed to worrying about being attacked around every corner.

Examples of FP Adventure Games:

Amnesia

One of my favourites in this genre is Chinese Room's Amnesia, a first person horror adventure game. The game is played from a first person perspective and the lighting effects, tone and audio do a great job in creating a real sense of tension for the player. The fact that it has monster's that you have to hide in complete darkness makes it one of the more terrifying gaming experiences of recent years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IF68RF8MXA

Amnesia makes great use of having small parts of the game's lore written in notes that the player finds through interacting with the environment, a bit like the books in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, I think this is a nice touch, as it allows the player to learn more about the game world if they choose to do so.

Amnesia also features a number of switch puzzles, I think when you have a game that doesn't have combat mechanics you need something like this to alleviate the player's boredom as I imagine that merely exploring an environment would become tedious after a time without some sort of other challenge on offer.


Dear Esther

Chinese Room specialise in environmental exploration games, and Dear Esther is every bit as compelling as Amnesia despite not having the element of enemies chasing you around. The game has received a great deal of critical praise for its approach to interactive storytelling, done by exploration of a mysterious environment. Dear Esther would be a fantastic influence on which to base some ideas for our final major project design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JOXayur3QE


Myst

One of the first examples of nonviolent puzzle exploration games, Myst  is still a great game that developers of these genre games could learn from. A series of screens from the players viewpoint as opposed to a fully animated and living landscape, Myst entranced it's audience upon it's release in 1993 with it's interesting world that felt fun to explore even if lacking in a bit of depth and detail. Myst was an evolution of the old point and click adventure, which was itself and evolution of the older text based adventure. Although it looks dated now, Myst  was a unique experience in gaming in 1993, and introduced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-8CFun3nEw


The Walking Dead

Telltale's The Walking Dead,  is a great example of how the older text and point and click adventure games have evolved, while not a first person game, I think is worth a mention as I frequently cite it as a source of inspiration. Lauded for it's quality storytelling upon launch in 2012, it won over millions of fan's the world over with it's blend of exploration, tension, puzzles and character development. The game doesn't use a first person perspective, but the idea of using different objects on different objects harks back to the age of the point and click adventure. It's this kind of thinking that it encourages the player to do, normally in intense zombie filled circumstances is one of the highlights of playing through. It was launched in an episodic format, with players waiting a month at a time for the next episode, I liked this idea as it gave me and fellow fans something to talk about each and every month. The development of the main character Lee, and the young girl he protects as a father figure role is fantastic and heartbreaking at it's conclusion. It makes some great use of environmental storytelling in some sections, although the vast majority of the game is like a TV show with it's scripted nature. This said, for examples of great storytelling and character development in recent games, look no further than Telltale Games and their Walking Dead series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuxotWssdPY

Lights Overview

What is Lights?

Lights is a mysterious first person RPG with no combat mechanics. The main challenges to overcome within the game consist of puzzles, of which there are many and of various designs. Language is a major part of the puzzles as many contain riddles with clues as to how to solve each puzzle.

The player must navigate a seemingly empty desert landscape, littered with artefacts of a bygone civilisation. Through the dust storms the player will find ancient temples and ziggurats with information within that alludes to the origins of the game world and the mysterious protagonist’s purpose.

The mysterious language of the temples, a strange cross of cuneiform and hieroglyphics, is revealed to the player in the game’s opening scene, and finding the mysterious tri-pebbles will illuminate the strange script into something more understandable.

Why Lights?

We wanted to make a game that makes the player think about what is going on, and we thought that giving as scant an amount of information as possible to the player to be conducive to this process. If the player isn’t fed all the information, they can make up their own minds about what is happening.

 What does the Player control?

The player takes control of a blank slate protagonist, no information is given about who they are in control of, we wanted to do this so the player could project themselves, or anyone they chose to be the protagonist.

What is the main focus?

The main focus of the game is exploration, puzzle solving and finding out what is going on. We hope that the mystery will keep the player looking for more clues and information and incentivise them to continue playing.

Production Schedule for Lights.

 Here is the production schedule for our game trailer, Lights. Group work is marked out with a white colour, red symbolises my tasks, blue - Ryan's and yellow - Greg's. Where there have been moments where it is required that myself and Ryan attend it is marked as purple (mix of blue and red), this is because we are Foundation Degree students where the summer show is compulsory attendance and Greg is BA so he is exempt.

Hopefully, with this schedule we will be able to keep on track with each of our tasks and not have things snowball too much that we end up with a huge amount of work to do in the final two weeks. Using Gantt project to create this schedule allows us a nice visual representation of time and how we should manage ourselves, rather than just having a list of text on paper.

I hope using this method will encourage a more professional workflow from us and that we will be able to keep to all of our deadlines as and when we need to.

Game Flow Idea

Mysterious protagonist awakes within a cave, nearby is a lit torch from a wall brazier, strange that there is only one lit torch in a room that contains at least 6. Initially the path is totally linear, with the player having to follow a set route to encounter the first puzzle.

The player eventually comes to a chamber in which the first puzzle is contained, there is a pedestal in the centre containing some strange technological/magical item. This item contains most of the mystery of the game and is never truly explained (JJ Abrams Style yo!). Obtaining this item triggers a cutscene in which the hieroglyphs transform through several languages before landing on English, and this should change the textures on all of the previous walls so that they are now readable by the player, this offers nothing other than deepening the mystery of the game. (easily subject to change if difficult to do, just block the old pathways off or something).

This first puzzle requires the player to activate switches in the right order, under the guise of the playercharacter learning to read the strange hieroglyphs using the strange stone device they have picked up from the pedestal.  This first puzzle will be simple and only require the player to activate the 4 switches around the corner of the rooms which will be indicated by the hieroglyphs.

After solving the puzzle, a cutscene triggers, in which the player sees the huge stone doors of the temple open.  The camera should pan now outside and show an image of the desert valley outside. Following this, the player will be able to freely explore the environment (see map). The valley is made up of a desert landscape that has a sandstorm going on making visibility not so great.  The player should, however, be able to make out the three large pyramid structures laid out around the valley.

Each pyramid contains a little information about the setting as well as a small puzzle, apart from the 3^rd and largest pyramid, which leads to the end of the game. The pyramid on to the east or west of the player as they emerge from the temple are smaller and slightly more difficult to make out in the storm but still easily visible, this was a choice as they are optional places to visit.

Pyramid 1 (eastern)

This pyramid has a stairway that leads to a room at the very top, within this room lies a puzzle, simple matching icons puzzle, contains more writing on walls to give the place more mystery. (to be added to this document later).

Pyramid 2 (western)

This pyramid has an identical layout but contains a different puzzle and different clues to the setting. The puzzle in here is a basic numeracy puzzle.

Pyramid 3 (final)

When the player reaches the top of this pyramid a cutscene triggers, showing the player being enveloped into light and disappearing from the scene, only to appear in a pitch black setting with a strange alien voice speaking to them. To be decided.