Sunday 30 September 2012

The afterlife.



After our second lecture and having a one to one with our tutor Ben I finally decided to stick with religion and the afterlife for my theme throughout the year and games proposal project. I thought this was the most interesting, and I had enough ideas floating around in my head in which I could apply to each of the four areas of the project. My next step is to research in depth different religions and their beliefs of the afterlife this way I can expand my knowledge on the area and create a better understanding to work from.

Tuesday 25 September 2012

Religions and cults

After researching different themes i was most interested in different religious beliefs and cults.
I researched ancient Egyptian gods and their beliefs and found that they worshipped many gods, these gods were usually depicted as animals of the world, gods where thought to have owned Egypt. The Pharaoh was the Representative of the gods, or even thought to be a god themselves so they also owned Egypt. Egyptians worshipped their gods with animal sacrifices and incense, they believed this would keep the gods happy. They also believed that there was an after life, where Anubis would weigh you soul against a feather, if your soul is heavy with sin then you would be punished. They also believed that what you are buried with, you will take with you into the after life.

Another religious cult i came across was the Raëlism belief. They believe in scientifically advanced humanoid extraterrestrials known by our primitive ancestors as Elohim. Raëlism espouses belief that Elohim synthesised life on Earth through mastery of genetic engineering, and human cloning.Thier are over 55,000 followers worldwide who believe in this riligion. They believe these scientifically advanced will return to earth once there are more followers who believe in them.

How could i apply religion/Cults to each assignment?
This is the next task as i need to think how i could tie in this theme of religion and beliefs with the 4 assignments:

1. Professional game conception.
-Game idea based around cults or beliefs,about scientifically advanced humanoids coming from other worlds, or could be based around the afterlife, what its like? are their gods? who is there?

2.Professional character conception and 3D modelling.
-Scientifically advanced humanoids or maybe a new interesting god design or what happens to people in the afterlife.

3.Professional Level design.
-Level focused on the player exploring the after life or exploring the secrets of a religious temple. 

4.Professional environment design and 3D modelling.
-An environment of the afterlife or even an alien world or a religious temple.

Ill have to wait till my next lecture now to get feedback on my ideas and hopefully move forward in my project.

Thursday 20 September 2012

Lecture 1

Lecture 1 for the games proposal project was interesting and exiting.
The project is split up into 4 areas:
  • Professional game conception.
  • Professional character conception and 3d modelling.
  • Professional level design.
  • Professional environment design and 3d modelling.
Which I'm eager to get started on and learning more about the design theory's within each of these areas to improve my current knowledge.

Our new tutor Ben Hill, also talked about new methods of creating game concepts and documents in a much more efficient and productive way. Instead of making documents hundreds of pages long, cut that down to 20-30 pages or even less, this way the information can be easily accessed and implemented without trawling through pages and pages of irrelevant information, although that means the documents have to be very concise and contain the most vital information to get the game idea across. 

So our first step in the process is coming up with a theme, now again same to the contextual studies assignment we cannot take reference or inspiration from past games we have to look outside the industry for ideas and reference.Without using the Internet we tried to brainstorm ideas using different themes as a starting point such as religion, science, politics, music etc anything in our world that we could use as a starting point.

Here are a few of my mindmaps created in class:

Themes:

Religion/Cultures- Ancient Civilisations-There religious beliefs they had-Gods-Cults-followers.

Science- Medical advances- Longer life expectancy-Population increase- Drain on the earths recourse's.
-The invention of power sources-Electric-Hydra-Steam
-Technical advances-Machine operated equipment-Robots

These are the two themes i started in class, i will now need to go and use the Internet to further my research and knowledge to fully decide which theme i will be choosing, but this is a great starting point to get the ball rolling. I defiantly think religion/cultures is a great theme to use but i will still research as i don't want to limit myself and become to attached to ideas, as i may find a better one round the corner.