Who we are

Team STASIS is the home of a small group of student game artists from De Montfort University tasked with creating a playable game level from absolute scratch, utilising the UDK development software.

From concepting, visual design, research, asset building, level progression and finished pieces, this blog records the progression from 19th January to 30th March 2011.

Team members include Arron Manchester, Sam Clarke, Izzy Kahn, Sai Ali, Steven Jones and Tom Edwards.

For any questions or feedback please feel free to leave comments.

P.S A run through and fly through of the finished level shall be posted soon!

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Initial ideas – First Group Discussion

Team Meeting 01
18th Jan 2011

Attended:
Sam
Tom
Sai
Izzy
Steven

Absent:
Arron

Atmosphere

  • Clinical
  • Clean
  • Compulsive
The back-story we have at the moment is centred round a serial killer/ serial killers. We visualised the queens building as perhaps a lair or a prison that has been flooded – perhaps in an attempt to conceal and drown the killer after they escaped/ were caught.
The reason we want to keep it clinical and clean is because of the traits found with most serial killers. Messy killers get caught – they leave behind evidence. The term “serial” implies this person has killed many times. If they have managed not to get caught, it’s most likely down to their meticulous planning.

Another idea we have come up with was to have the blood show in different lighting. Blood is a hard thing to clean up, and under the right light it will show – we thought this would be an interesting way to make the scene scary instead of plastering the walls with blood and body parts.

As for lighting, we started with the idea of having very natural lighting. Perhaps sun, warmth – light rays and dust particles. It makes a nice change from having flickering lights and dark areas.  We toyed with the idea of having sun beaming in the windows, but after walking around the area (and keeping technical limitations in mind) we decided it may be better to put something over the windows and have the sunlight coming through the skylights on the roof instead, or from cracks in the walls/ windows.

For the level, we thought it would be more effective to keep the scene almost normal (a normal day), in the hopes this would be more terrifying, almost like a mind game. It would be warm, clean, bright, but little things would be off – just enough to have the player questioning. Perhaps they notice more as they explore?

3 comments:

  1. hmm I like the idea of it being mind-game like in its clinical cleanliness but doesn't this distract from the 'resident evil' style that is in the brief? Maybe I haven't quite grasped the concept here but I imagine if its too clean and lacking the gritty dark ambiance of the RE games it would just look like we have modelled too true to the reference photos and more of just a model of a queens building area rather than customised for game environment.

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  2. we wanted to kind of stray from the norm. Im sure Heather wont mind - any time ive asked her if i can go mad with the brief she always seems delighted - I think shes bored of marking the same stuff constantly.

    I think the general idea is just to make it a survival horror.

    If you have any ideas though Arron make sure to tell us :) it would be best if we have an idea everyone enjoys so that we dont mind building the ruddy thing for 11 weeks >_>

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  3. I do like the idea, being a fan of Dexter I agree with the success of clinical serial killers over manic messy maniacs. I was just wondering what characteristics could really make the concept stand out. When thinking of the queens building and clinical cleanliness I immediately think of a hospital. I don't want to disregard the concept you guys have, but you asked if I had any ideas and unfortunately I was absent to express any at the time.

    Stemming from this concept of a clean killer, I imagine a Mad Serial killing doctor obsessed with perfection, Obsessive compulsive, perhaps the environment could be a home made lab/surgery with research on the walls, lab equipment, and a killing location that could be a doctors chair/table surrounded by polythene. Love the idea of perhaps blood only showing in luminescent light.

    Again, I don't mean to detract and if the original concept is already set in stone than that's cool, just thought I'd add my bit.

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