+Massive few weeks worth update+

On the 1/10/2012 we we're given our brief and told to assemble into a group of up from 2 - 4 people, for this project we had to choose between four games and create design document around a game that was adapted from them.

The games we were to choose from-

1. Medal of Honour
2. Fatal Frame
3. Moshi Monsters
4. Flow
5. Portopia Serial Murder Case

After forming a group with my roommate, we later decided to choose the Moshi Monsters.

We started off by deconstructing the game to it's simplest roots, what got it money, (this is before we had actually researched the game.) Olly suggested that merchandise was the best way to go through.

As me and my teammate had just recently gotten ourselves interested in magic cards, we decided tying collectable cards onto the product would not be such a bad idea, as well as leaning towards mature audience would defiantly allow for some interesting designs.

Our original plan was to include a type of scan system that will take the information from the cards, taking the monsters off of them and placing them in game, buying packs would allow people to have more monsters allowing for replay ability.

The following week we had a meeting with Matt, who suggested that we should at least come up with one concept for each game, to 'test the waters'.

and so Me, Olly and now are new member Sam met for a lunch meeting at Yo-sushi to discuss ideas.

 

It was not until the following week we were actually able to meet up and discuss are ideas. The meeting started with everyone pitching an idea they had for one of the genres.

For the Medal of Honor adaptation we suggested the idea of the player playing as a Prisoner of war rather than a fully trained military solider. Giving us more freedom with the mechanics besides the typical run and gun, as playing as a citizen they'd not be trained in fire arms.

For the Portopia serial Murder Case, we'd tackle it like a hard edge murder game like LA.Noire and Heavy rain, starting the game with a slow steady feel so that players will connect more emotionally with the the characters and struggle along with them as the game goes on.

For the survival horror genre (Fatal Frame 2) we again decided to go for a more personal approach to the characters, feeling that if we could get players interested in the characters and who they are it make the players more concerned for their survival and thus more scared if something bad happens to them. The short story idea we came up with in this story was that the player would play a sister who is coming to pick up her sister from a mental health institute after receiving a phone call about her, but when she arrives no one at the hospital knows anything about her or who she is.

Sadly we could not come up with anything for Flow so the game idea was discarded.

By the end of our meal we STILL could not pick one idea for a game, so in the end we decided to forcefully choose one via a game of chance, Moshi Monster's game out on top.

So we spent the rest of the day coming up for categories to help divide our games creatures into subsets, we went with the Beast, Fish, Flying and Insect and that each could then be split into Forest, Fire, Water and Air.

Once this was agreed upon we split the work load between us.

I'd tackle Insect and Flying.
Olly would take beast

and Sam would handle Fish.

The next week Olly and Sam met up with Marie Claire and Kim to discuss the project, while I stayed home and work, they both arrived at home to discuss what Kim had talked about.

She said that she liked our idea, but suggested a few changes to beast types and elements, such as instead of calling Beast, Fish, Insects and Flying.

We should call them Mammals and Birds. But she also suggested that we switch Fish out for Reptile and replace Forest with Earth. The group discussed this and decided it was a good course action, Sam and Olly then stated that they would like to see environment designs as our world would be split into elements, Olly reeled off possible elemental designs, but I stated as how we had plan to include additional content as a factor into the game, the regions and elements should be kept down to four and basic or risk confusing players.

So now the tasks our set like this.

Olly will handle Mammals and Air environment

Sam will be tasked with Reptiles and Earth & Water Environment

And I'll be doing Insects, Birds and Fire Environment.

Sam was tasked with handling the story, but Matt noted that all his story ideas sounded more fit for a signal player game rather than a MMO one as he stated.

"If every player is going to be a chosen one, special hero type character, then no one feels really special"-Matt

As the design went on, we slowly started get further and further away from the Original Moshi Monsters concept and so started to look at games like Pokemon for inspiration and reference.

One day Me and Olly decided that we wanted this game to available for everyone to play, so even if you didn't have the best graphics card, you could still play the game, but at the same time we still wanted to keep the grand scale of the world the player was being put into to, so I told Olly about a game called Sonic Battle.

Sonic battle was 2D pixel game that used isometric levels to convey that people were playing in a 3D space and the sprites while 2D could move up like it really was a 3D environment. So then Olly looked into more games with similar play style such as Star Ocean 2

Which like Sonic Battle had 2D fighters moving around in a space, but this time the player could access a list of commands at will to help in battle, very similar to Final Fantasy or Kingdom hearts.

From then we decided that in the overworld the players would control 2D sprites and be able to move around an isometric world, buying trading, accepting quests or just taking wit friends, but like in poke'mon or Final Fantasy being out in the wilds could draw you into a battle against NPC enemies and then the game would move into a more Kingdomhearts/Start Oceans 2 like battle mechanics with player using the both the arrow keys and the W,S,A,D keys to move and select commands from a list.

http://www.supercheats.com/guides/moshi-monsters/

http://thegaminggang.com/2012/08/tgg-video-aaron-forsythe-talks-magic-the-gathering-gen-con-2012/

http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/06/finally-yo-sushi-uses-sms-for-offer-instead-of-wasteful-email-then-print-vouchers/

http://cartoonnetwork.wikia.com/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon

http://www.siliconera.com/sonic-battle/

http://thecodeoftruth.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/review-star-ocean-second-evolution.html

http://startingsteps.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/game-review-kingdom-hearts-birth-by.html