Over the summer I had given great thought to what exactly I wanted to do for both my research report and my studio practise. I had a few ideas in mind, are similarly ambitious and achievable with the time that I have, but I was struggling to find one the most appropriate.
After a quick email to my tutor Mark during the holidays, we discussed my project ideas, which are as follows:
Option 1:
Near future game (2030), revolving around urban warfare between two superpowers (USA vs Russia). Russia for a long time, since the cold war, have been planning a mass invasion. Nuclear Missiles are not an option, as Russian hackers have disabled them. The war takes place on US ground for once, creating a need for underground deployment positions (UDP's) from the US, where they store, maintain and deploy vehicles and units. My plan was to model one of these UDP's complete with vehicles, an armoury of sorts as well as a barracks like area.
Option 2-A:
Taking one of my favourite past time games, Age of Empires, I want to create a handheld/mobile device game styled around Age of Empires. There are games such as Clash of Clans that are similar to this, but their mechanics work on a long term Real Time Strategy, taking days to build up. What I had in mind was a much more fast paced game, where you build up, gather resources, micromanage and battle. With the original AoE, games can take 3/4 hours, so I will have to think of some mechanic to turn that 3/4 hour game into something much more manageable for a handheld device, more around 20/30 mins.
Option 2-B:
The alternative option to 2-A is instead of making it a RTS where you can control elements such as gathering on a micromanagement level with getting visual feedback, to take it down a notch and create a game very much like Ikariam. Players start with a plot of land with several "Build Points" on it. They can then choose structures to build on those points that will benefit them most, as there are more structures than there are Build Points. They will then set a certain amount of population to gather resources, research upgrades, as well as to train in to military.
The players town/city is based on an island, shared with 10 or so other towns/cities. To attack someone on your own island n it takes 15 mins to travel there, giving the enemy time to prepare. To attack someone on another island that is 1 position away it takes 30 mins to travel over water plus 15 mins to travel over land. Every position that an enemy island is away adds 30 mins.
If you are being attacked, you would get a push notification on your phone telling you that you are under attack. The message will be sent out as soon as the enemy player has started to move to attack you.
Option 3:
War Thunder is a Simulation game that revolves around World War 2 (It just won an award for Best Simulation at Gamescom 2013). It has 3 main play styles; those being air, land and sea. At the moment they only have the air option available, as it is only a beta, where players take control of a variety of planes from 5 different countries, and essentially have dog fights in the sky as well as complete other objectives. My idea revolves around this.
The idea is to create a mobile handheld version of Warthunder in short, but only focusing on the air battles. Players control the planes using the gyroscopes inside the device, as well as a few on screen buttons to shoot and control the planes throttle. The games would be played online, in a 6 vs 6 and 10 vs 10 format. Models would be low/medium poly, including an entire landscape to play over.
After a conversation on the phone, I decided to follow through with Option 1 with Marks recommendation. The project itself is more suited to my abilities, but needs a little tweaking. Overall I am more happy now knowing that I have a good base to work up from.
Regarding my research report, I wrote an essay last year which involved a section about Cloud Gaming. While doing research for this I found that there is a lot of information out there about Cloud Gaming, as well as lots of potential technological developments regarding it. I felt at the time that I could write so much more about it, but as it was only a 2,000 word essay and Cloud Gaming was only a small portion of it, I did not get the chance to.
No comments:
Post a Comment