FBAUL-IST GAMING 2018
ISLE OF THE DEAD: JUST SURVIVE
The group:
Our group consists of two people: Francisco Morais Ferreira from IST and Nicolina Nunes from FBAUL.
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Francisco Morais Ferreira
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"My name is Francisco Morais Ferreira and I am a Business Applications Engineer at DXC Technology with the responsability of being team leader of two integration Technologies, SAP Process Integration and Oracle SOA, and a Master’s student in Information Systems and Computer Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico. I am currently doing specializations in Enterprise Systems and Interaction and Visualization. I am graduated in Computer Science Engineering at Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologias da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. I choose to do this course because I wanted to develop a game and at the same time, get some fun of doing the course."
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Nicolina Nunes
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"My name is Nicolina Nunes and I am a Fine Arts Student at Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa. In this degree I chose to follow animation. I have some bases at drawing characters, environments, 3D modeling, tradicional and digital animation. At Media Theory II, I chose to participate in the partnership with IST and with this I face a new challenge of creating a game together with my colleague."
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Concept of the game:
The theme is a survival shooter game created on Unity. The game would be on an island infected by creatures of the dead world, where the objective will be to survive for an unlimited period facing the different waves of skeletons and zombies to reach the highest possible score.
Stakeholders map:
Players people:
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For the players personas we defined two types of people, Survival Killer and Horror Killer.
Person: Survival Killer: This type of person stands out for showing an interest in: Be a Killer. Preference for individual prowess. Be competitive. Like Survival Shooters. Enjoy playing a single player survival shooter.
Person: Horror Killer: This type of person stands out for showing an interest in: Be a Killer. Preference for individual prowess. Be competitive. Like games with Horror content. Likes to kill creatures from the world of the dead (Zombies and skeletons).
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Game experience goals:
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The goals of the gaming experience are to combine the fun of a simple game with survival horror content and shooters that have a lot of interest in the current gaming community. The player will have to be able to increase his Personal Score and achieve a new High Score through of the gradual increase of the difficulty of each wave in the game scenario. For this purpose the player must demonstrate concentration, strategy and dexterity to survive in the longest time possible and getting more score for each death. The goals are mainly personal prowess, the player must feel satisfaction and pride for each wave completed. The game should be in addition to interesting, challenging, starting already with an initial difficulty in first wave, but at the same time, the player is able to find solutions in a time to overcome the difficulties imposed.
March 30th 2018
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For the concept of the main characters I created a simple zombie where I was inspired by the characters in the game Plants vs Zombies, one of my favorite games. The zombie is simple, with a greyish tone to give the idea of ​​dead, with ragged clothes. The goal of this concept is to be simple so that I can continue 3D in the ZBrush program. This will be a challenge for me since I'm not a master at this program but I hope to achieve it!
April 15th 2018
I bring some news about the concept of the characters. I began to sculpt them in Zbrush, and to paint them. Right now what I have is the most common character in our game: a zombie. This zombie was inspired by a shipwreck, since it is an island. With shorts and dirty yellow shirt. This is not the most difficult to kill, nor the one that earns the most score. I hope the next post has finished the other zombie!
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April 30th 2018
In this post I bring the other character: the zombie king. This zombie no longer has the clumsy air of the other since it is the leader of the zombies. It is the oldest and the most experienced on this infected island. Muscled and his clothes all tattered already to the point of resembling a mummy because of his years of experience. This is more difficult to kill and thus, the one that earns more score!
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I also bring some assets that I realized for the game's funds! In the next post I hope to have the game poster ready, just like the logo!
May 15th 2018
In this post I bring some conclusions that I removed from this project.
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I entered this adventure with my colleague Francisco even knowing the risks that we could face. We are both workers / students and we know how difficult things become so, conciliating the two worlds and at the same time having some time to relax is not always easy. The proposal seemed appealing to me, a game of zombies, how couldn’t? Besides, we did a good job and we understood each other what it was easy to reach consensus. What made me more intrigued was that Francisco was aiming for the game to be 3D. I was apprehensive at first. I knew from the beginning that it would be a huge challenge for me, since I do not dominate 3D. I wanted to opt for 2D and follow the path that brought me more security and stability, something that I master both drawing and animation. Even so, we went ahead with our game.
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I started by sketching a comic character, the first zombie, the idea came to me in seconds, it was easy to pass onto paper what I had in mind. As soon as I could I move to Photoshop to be able to idealize it with colors. I immediately sent it to my colleague and he was very satisfied with the result, now it was the most complicated part, to make that drawing, that zombie, in 3D. The next day I started by making a list of 3D programs that had the option:
-Blender;
-Zbrush;
-Maya;
-Lightwave;
-Daz3D;
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I opened one by one and explored them minimally, from this list I soon dismissed everyone and went to the most intuitive, the Zbrush. The amount of times the program shut down and lost almost everything of my work happened during this project more than twenty times. There I was able to sculpt my character, I painted it, so far the process was going well and I was motivated to continue! Then I sculpted the leading character and painted it. I made some assets for our game, which was really quick and easy due to my practice. At the same time, Francisco was following the whole process and was doing part of the game.
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The biggest challenge was finally coming ... the animation of the characters. I spent hours watching youtube tutorials of how to animate characters in Zbrush, it even seemed easy the way the artists did, but in practice it was completely different. Not even following step by step could. I reinstalled Blender, tried to pass my characters to the program and could not. This routine impasses for a week before the evaluation. The finished game, the finished characters, the assets, lacked my art in the game. It was not easy to realize that I would not be able to fulfill my initial goal and what I committed. But from this project I withdraw various learning and positive things. First, I met a very nice person, understandable and always ready to help. I created a concept for a game. I learned and improved my skills in Zbrush, which I can now say is software that I can master (except the animation part, unfortunately). I'm just sad that I cannot actually see the game, because that's just what I missed. I hope in the near future to have an experience of this kind, and then, to achieve my goals!
May 30th 2018
