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Showing posts from July, 2017

Camera Angles in Resident Evil Remastered

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Resident Evil Remastered(2002, Capcom) is unique not only in the fact that it was one of the first zombie horror games to come to console, but also in the way it used its cameras. Capcom comprises their camera work in Resident Evil from fixed angles. These fixed angles allow for a more purposeful and immersive design and fits in with the horror genre style of gameplay perfectly. The creators of the game were able to place these cameras in such a way as to facilitate jump scares by hiding enemies and encounters, establishing immersive shots for narrative and dictating what the player could see. This gave the creators a large amount of control over how the game was to be played. Enhancing the part of horror in this early gen game was amplified most by the camera work. By establishing angles that convey different meanings (i.e. undershot for a powerful look on a character or a wide/long shot for an encroaching horde) the creators of Resident Evil were able to convey exactly what th...

Modernist Greybox Building

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This weeks Exercise consisted of studying a particular architectural movement and designing a building using the principles we had learnt during the lesson. Modernist architecture has always fascinated and befuddled me so I thought I'd have a crack at it. Modernist architecture uses a lot straight edged and flat shapes in interesting ways to create unique and interesting buildings that differentiate themselves from the rest of the movements.Another key feature is that Modernist buildings tend to incorporate a lot of large windows. After looking up a few examples of modernist buildings here's what I came up with:

Rapid World Building

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Hey Guys, So the idea behind this exercise was to use a piece of software that we don't typically use when designing worlds. In this one I chose MagicaVoxel mostly for its simplicity and ability to rapidly block out ideas. The idea I had going into this was to create a compact level in the design of a defensible fortress protecting something extremely valuable with an overall Mayan/Aztec theme. I knew I wanted to combine different types of defensive architecture from varying ages so I set about creating them. This was created just from the top of my head combining a medieval moat, a strong outer wall with perimeter guard towers, a killing field between the outer and inner walls, an inner wall and a stepped pyramid to give defenders that final defensive height advantage if attackers manage to make it in. I also though that I would block out the colors for textures I want : green = grass, blue = water, yellow = sandstone, brown = wood, brighter yellow = gold.

Braid and The Witness a short comparison in World Building.

Braid (Jonathan Blow, 2008) is all about the idea of forgiveness and how people can be quite unforgiving. People often say that they wish they could go back in time and change things and Braid quite literally allows the player to go back and correct their mistakes by changing the flow of time. This game and its puzzles are all focussed on the ability to change time either to correct a mistake or use this ability to progress further in the game. While this can be fun, it is also quite restricting for idea creation for puzzles for the creator and runs the risk of becoming repetitive. The Witness (Jonathan Blow, 2016) is a much slower paced game with a lot more puzzles that vary in complexity. Much like Braid these puzzles get more complex as the player progresses, yet the mechanics behind solving them are relatively simple: the player must find and trace the outline of shapes in order to solve puzzles. Much like Braid this is a very simple mechanic and not complex for the player to gr...