Proposal

Final Major Project Proposal EDEXCEL Level 3 BTEC Extended Diploma in Interactive Media with Game Design
Learner Name: Elliot Fenton
City of Bristol College School Media & Art College Green Centre, St Georges Road Bristol BS1 5UA
Specialist Area: Interactive Media/Game Design
Date: 13th March 2013
Section 1 Working title: To be decided based upon completion of storyboard and characters Ideally, a working game will be the final product. This game should be under the genre of ‘2d sidescrolling platformer’. By this I mean fully functional, not a complete few-hour-long game to professional standards, but to a high standard nonetheless. I could base it upon Arcade and oldschool console classics like Super Mario and Donkey Kong Country games. Hopefully I will be able to make an original, unique game that can stand out, despite taking influences from these and more. I will use Unity as it is the engine I know the most about. I also feel that its dedicated 2D plane of working would be beneficial here: I would like my fighting game to be 2-dimensional and this particular engine would make this a lot easier to implement. My inspirations will include the games I mentioned above, but will also include games like the recent popular Arcade releases on Xbox and Playstation, for example, Supermeatboy, Scott Pilgrim, etc. These games proved that retro-style games can be, and are fun without being graphically impressive, or even too complex. With this in mind I plan on making a game that really focuses on gameplay; I do personally believe that with big budget games of recent, the main focal point has been graphical complexity – I definitely do not think this should be their priority, merely a nice addition for ‘bonus points’.
Section 2 I will try to take a lot of influence with my project, and make sure that my project only takes the best parts of each influence. For example, I will take inspiration from the platforming nature of old Mario games, or even newer Mario games (although between the two, there are virtually no differences). Overall, the game will be a side-scrolling platformer in 2D and I hope that the inspirations are seen through the final piece – I want mine to be compared to some of the greats, if possible. I am going to use the basis of old, nostalgia-inducing graphics and art styles as my general feel for the game as this is my preferred style when I personally play games. Effectively, this is me taking an influence from my own experience – using what I know to influence my choices.   My sources will include books and websites. I will mostly use websites, as they are the easiest to access for me. I will try to stay away from Wikipedia and non-official-looking websites as I can never trust what is written to be the truth. Therefore if I DO use websites, I will make sure they are legitimate, such as articles, news sites, etc. Overall I believe it is best to find the research and examples in a physical copy, but these days this seems to be harder to do. Regardless, I will try my best to find them, unless it is not possible; for example, if the research were playing through a game, I would have to use the medium the game was created on. For an Xbox arcade title, I would need to use the Xbox to get the research.
Section 3 I will be using Unity to create my game. Within Unity, there are many techniques to use, all of which are obviously digital techniques and processes, as Unity is software. My non-digital techniques or processes will be drawings, rough sketches I imagine. This is because I am not too confident in my drawing skills as it is but I will definitely need to portray what I want to end up with, in a physical copy, so a quick drawing would count as this. I would also need to draw for a storyboard, which is another thing I may need to make. In Unity I will have to use scripting, terrain creation, assets and prefabs. I will need to use Cinema 4D if I want to create prefabs, which are 3d rendered images, to a high standard.       Week 1: Research successful games of a similar genre Week 2: Create title screen and story Week 3: Draw characters and level on paper Week 4: Create level prefabs in Cinema 4D and level music in Garage Band (may carry over to week 5) Week 5: Create 3d characters in Cinema 4D and anything not finished from last week Week 6: Import characters to level, start final game Week 7: More working on final game level, script writing Week 8: Should be halfway through game by now Week 9: Finish game Week 10: Build, evaluate, hand in
Section 4 I will document my evaluation with a Word document. Within this, I will write about what went well, what didn’t go as well as planned, and what I would like to do differently if given another chance. Obviously I do not know what went well or not just yet, I will not know until it is done. So until then, I can only hope everything goes well. If all goes to plan, I will have a complete level of a side-scrolling, maybe platform-style game upon completion of this unit. This, I hope, will channel old greats of this type like Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario, and more, which will be major influences.