Alpha

Today was our first milestone of our project - the Alpha presentation. All groups got to go up on stage in front of the class, some second year students and some teachers to present our game. It started with a short presentation of our group, why we chose the concept we did, what went well/could have gone better and our goals for the beta. This was followed by a demonstration of what our game currently looks like and how it works and finally we got to answer some questions.

The presentation went well and we were not surprised by the questions we got since most of them were things we have discussed earlier. One question for instance, was if we only have male guards and upon the answer "yes" we were asked why. We had early in the process discussed this issue and we thought about having guards of both sexes for the diversity, however we decided that we would rather focus on having fewer animations and doing them well and if we found the time later add female guards. That is a big if though and I do not think we will find the time; it will be better spent perfecting artifacts that are more important.

Another question we were asked was if we had any form of non-lethal violence in the game, they felt it was very unlikely that guards would shoot to kill in Sweden. Our main goal is to encourage the player to use stealth and discourage the use of violence, although it will always be an option. By making all violence extremely bloody and messy and humanizing the enemies we want to hint at the player "why are you doing this?". To answer the location issue, we wanted to put it close which helps the player to relate to the use of violence since you are always more affected by things that are close to you in some way, the need for it being super-realistic is not that great. Another reason is that there are not that many games that are set in Sweden and therefore it sets our game apart from others.

At this stage I am happy with what we presented and how it went, now we just have to keep working really hard and I think we can come up with something really good. I feel we are getting back on track now as we have located some issues - the main concern for me being the art style getting a bit lost on the way and not coming together with the music - and we are now on our way to fixing them.

Finally I thought I would show you some really fast sketches I drew this week, just to picture how the main menu could look like. This was mainly just to get some ideas for the layout, what kind of background? Do we want comic book dialogue boxes for menu buttons or perhaps comic strips?

We thought of using a scene from the interrogation room at the start of the level, with a flickering lamp and a mobile phone on the table but when sketching it I thought it looked too much like a 30-40's something mafia story. I felt that the ones showing the huge panoramic windows was a better representation of the game and I will be able to show airplanes landing outside, enhancing the feeling of an airport. I also felt it would be best to have the main character involved, looking like she is fleeing from something and try to incorporate comic strips for buttons. I feel that all these choices combined add up to what the game is all about.

This is a screenshot of what our first level looks like at the moment in our Level Editor. All graphics will be updated with a better colour scheme and textures and lighting to make the environment feel more alive and real.