Documentation

Though the final major project doesn’t start until next year, I’ve already started to generate ideas and gather research materials and reference images. A part of this process was thinking about documentation.

As this will be the first project of this scale I’ve had to produce on my own organisation and specifications will be of great importance if I want to stay on schedule to produce a working finished piece to the best of my ability.

With that in mind, I’ve produced a dry run of the game outline that will accompany my final major project;

Concept:

For my final major project I intend to produce a game level for a computer or playstation 3 platform. A garden on an island in the middle of a lake in the Japanese Chainiwa or Strolling garden style. Either during the summer or Spring. I will be looking at Japanese legends and myths to collect inspiration and I am particularly interested in the legends surrounding sun showers – the legends of Fox weddings – and would like to combine these with other myths and legends to create a mystical or Ephemeral feel to the garden.

By the end of the project I hope to have produced a full level containing the garden on the island and either a bridge or boat crossing the lake. If possible I would also like to produce a room or two of a building within the garden.

I will use 3DS max and mudbox for modelling and the Cry Engine for building whiteboxes and the finished level. I will be using photoshop for authoring textures but I also wish to produce textures by hand-painting them.

Technical specifications:

Lead character:

Though the level will be mainly first person the lead character you play as will be one of the characters will see most often. The character must be distinctive, recognisable and high quality and to that end should be relatively dense. Around 15,000 tri.

An NPC:

An NPC in the small garden would likely be viewed multiple times. Whilst they may not need as many tri as the main character but  10,000 tri

A Vehicle:

This will be the boat that carries the character from the mainland to the island garden. It will have about 9000 tri and 1024x1024 texture sheet

 

The Environment:

As the environment will be viewed mainly from a first person perspective, the tri count will need to be slightly more dense than a third-person level in order to maintain the detail of the objects. I do not want to set a specific tri-count for the environment. However I am aiming to have at least a frame rate of at least 25fps on the final level.  Tri will be used efficiently with this aim in mind.

Props and scenery objects:

Props and scenery objects follow much the same rules as the environment itself. Props will be repeated in multiple areas of the level and as most scenery objects will be plants and stones and will therefore be repeated many times.

Though not the final idea for my FMP this basis will form the complete design document for my project.