Continuing
on our five weeks project spoken about in the previous post.
This week
we first had a brief meeting discussing the basic mechanics of the games. How
the character is going to move, shoot etc. We changed a few things. First, we
would have the game runt from room-to-room, but now we decided on a continuously
moving screen not locked to the player avatar. We decided this because it would
offer a better flow to the game, and a bigger challenge if the player was
always forced to move, never being able to stand still.
So the
avatar is always in movement, even if you don’t touch the forward key. If you
touch it, you will speed up, hence moving forward. If you press the backwards
key you will slow down, but you can’t stop, as you reach the left edge of the
screen it will continue to push you forward no matter how much you press the
backwards key.
The player
will move through a level full of enemies that will shoot randomly, and the
avatar will defend itself by shooting as well. The avatar takes damage when hit
by enemy fire or colliding with one. The avatar has three health points and
will die and the level will reset when those three lives run out.
During our
second meeting we built our paper prototype. We made a simplified grid-based
version of a level. The player always moves one step forward each turn, but can
additionally choose to take one step forward, backwards, up or down. Backwards
is only available if the frame allows it. Onto of the board is a frame, that also
moves one step forward each turn, illustrating the continuously moving screen
in the game. We have yet to playtest enough to figure out how the battle will
work, but there is monsters and projectiles as well.
So, as for
the story of the game. The game begins during a public demonstration of
Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. Bell call’s up a volunteer from the
audience, which is the avatar of the game, Mary. There is two telephones on the
stage. Bell makes picks up one and makes a call to the second, and Bell is to
answer that one. But behind the scenes Elisha Gray, Bell’s self-proclaimed
nemesis is fumbling with the cables, wanting to sabotage Bell’s demonstration.
But something far more unexpected happens. Too much electricity enters The
telephone, and when Mary picks up the telephone she is sucked into it. She
comes out through another telephone, during world war 1.
Mary has
traveled through time, and now it is her mission to find her way back to Bell’s
demonstration back in the late 1800-centry. She has to find a working ringing
telephone (the one she came through broke). She will be opposed by static
creatures that interferes with the phone call and has to fight her way through.
When she reaches another phone she is taken further into the feature, going
through the 30ies, 50ies, 70ies and finally 2010, where at Bell’s museum she
will find the original phone and be able to return home.
As for the
personal work I have done so war for this project I’ve made the different
outfits of Mary. At each level, which is another era Mary has a different
outfit, a different suit, that is proper to that time. That is how we included “suit”
into our game. “Telephone” I think is pretty obvious how we included it.
Until next
time.
 |
| Different suits of Mary |
