[MacJ]

here is a scene from Ak-SaySubcha, the game concept that popeye and I are working on.



here is one of the characters you can be; her name is the "misses"


This is the Prince of Theives; in this place Robin hood is an electric insect.


This character's name is Grog,


This is the Kung Fu Elephant.

[m00ftak]

wowzers! This game looks very very cool. I'd play it


also, i really like your style

[frantic]

very good sketches...I especially like grog..it speaks for me.
what kind of a game will this be? A video game?? if yes, wow then...how long would it take to create such characters by 3d modelling:))
really hard work...hope it will come for ps2 also..

keep up.
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Emir YARDIMCI
www.emirart.com

The Frayed Ends Of Sanity...I Hear them calling me...

[MacJ]

Right now the game is only intended to come out on PS3 and Xbox2. If TurboGraphx 16 were still on the market I'd release it on that too. Its a good old fashioned Captian Commando-ish style game, but of course with full displacement maps and global illumination, with Subsurface Scattering in the mix. As far as actual play mechanics are concerned, I'm not a game designer, but simply concieving the world and storyline. I have ideas, but a true game designer is going to be needed to really iron out the nuts and bolts of how it would actually play. Ideas and input are welcome.

[BlueFley]

Very very cool concepts, I especially like the fourth one, looking foward to see more from you guys concerning this game!
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bluefley.cgsociety.org

[Metaswink]

Mmm, so Joshy.

Yeah, I really like the first pic. It has personality out the wazoo. From a game design perspective the first thing you want to ask is 'what are the verbs?' In other words, what does the player do? Once you've figured that out, figured out what your 'core mechanic' is going to be, a useful exercise is to imagine the granularity of the game. For example: what does the player do each second (the core mechanic), what does the player do each minute (pick up coins? Fight an enemy?), five minutes (complete a stage? Find a new area? Complete a goal?), thirty minutes (complete a level by defeating a boss?), each hour (advance the story, travel to a new place?), and so on.

To me this doesn't spell brawler. The characters look too contemplative (as most of MacJ's characters do). I always find them to be evocative in a very strained and discordant way; always fascinating for the weirdness of their emotional depth. Also, his characters always look somewhat na�ve to me, somewhat purposeless. As though they know they have a purpose but can�t remember what it is. So, with the caveat that while game design inspiration can come from anywhere it�s best to develop it independent of theme, the game I'd make with MacJ's characters would be a 'first person feeler.'

Imitation is the basis of all human learning.

The main mechanics would be entirely based on gesture. Facial gestures, posture, movement. I�m envisioning three separate but integrated systems, one for producing facial gestures, one for altering posture, and one for animation. The crux of the idea is this: communicate without language. Traverse a bizarre landscape fill of disenfranchised, lonely characters, and to find the �purpose� for each character. Each character would have unique gestures, movements, and facial expressions, which the player could imitate using one or all of the afore-mentioned editors. Some characters would react negatively to being aped, some would react positively. Some would react to imitations of other characters, some to seemingly random gestures; some would imitate the gestures of the player. The goal of the player would be to get each character out of the pattern they�re currently stuck in and into a pattern that represents their �purpose�.

Theme: Mac�s artwork has the visuals taken care of. I picture each character having unique sounds and animation, but no dialog. The characters would be completely sold by their gestures, and all their wants, needs, and feelings would be displayed this way. It would be interesting to try and craft a story around the combined purposes of all the characters (have them all interrelate in some way).

Random ideas: somehow affect the huge wind creature in the background with the flapping of butterfly wings. The man wants to fill his own wineglass.

Implementation: The animations and sounds are challenging but doable (the mandate is essentially �create emotion using sound and animation only�. It can be done and done well on a large scale (see The Triplets of Bellville), but it would be very production intensive and has never been done in a game before. The biggest problem from a design standpoint is interface (as it tends to be with high concepts). For facial gestures a simple, clean, representative face would work, with clickable points to drag around pieces of features � ends of the eyebrows and mouth, open and close eyes and mouth, a simplified facial rig, basically. For animation, an animation blender that can be scrubbed over time and contains a certain number of canned animations that can be blended with sliders to produce a sufficient variety of new animations. Tony Hawk�s Underground has a trick editor that works in this way. For posture, a very constrained skeletal IK setup that would allow the player to define dynamic predilection for certain bones using sliders or a rotation tool. For example, the player could slide the �spine� slider between �bent and grizzled� and �spry and sprightly�. This would provide a context for the animation editor. To elaborate: a basic walk cycle could be hunched over or tall and proud based on the setting of the spine slider.

A game loop (a few minutes in game) would go something like this: player wanders the landscape. Player finds a character. Player takes a first shot at imitating character�s facial expression, gauges character reaction. Player imitates characters posture and animations using appropriate editors, watches reaction. Character seems to react more and more positively to player�s movements until eventually character is moving in a completely different pattern. Player saves current gesture and moves on to a different character.

To sum up, the player�s verbs are move, imitate, and gesticulate. The player can alter their character�s animations, facial expressions, and posture, and can use these tools to affect changes in the patterns of the characters around them.



Final random brainstorm: players could also walk/move/fly different patterns to interact with characters, or imitate the patterns various characters walk/move/fly.
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"The game of life is always called on account of darkness."

[MacJ]

that was a heavy response, actually, you anticipated an idea that I had in mind but didn't tell anyone, you mentioned communication without "language," perhaps you don't have the same definition of that word as I do. The idea I had was communication without spoken word, rather the act of communication is sort of a high-speed magical sculptural process, communication goes very visual and very public, You seen how octopi communicate? Deep sea octopi? they have chromatipores on there skin that are directly linked to their brain, so basicly they wear their mental state on their skin, and in the deep sea this is all they ever see of eachother because there is no light except that which is exuded from its phosphorescent pores. In this game space, things like puns and verbs could be conjoured and casted like a spell by a great magician/sorcerer. anyways, I was think that the intentions of characters in the game could be transduced into something beheld as opposed to small noises made by the mouth. the act of communication taken to a different level, its like these characters literally have, or learn the ability to spill their mind into 3 dimensional space as sculptural animated objects to be beheld by everyone present,
JoshScrilla: It could get pretty crazy, dunno the exact implementation, but bascicaly there would have to be a system where if I wanted to communicate "Galleon" or "10 dimensional process", an object or scene of somesort would come out my mouth rather than something as low definition as say English,
confusing? I'm not totally sure I know how it would work, but it seems like a reasonable thing; look at operating systems for example, the more visual they are, the more intuitive to use. Things becoming more visual and less code-like seems to be a trend in developing technology. Anyways, I need to think about this one a bit more before coming up with anything concrete or conclusive.

[Mon]

Great work there! Your stuff has a lot of character, I like it.
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www.mattiassnygg.com
Blog!

[frantic]

ps3? oh, we'll have to wait

anyways... cool stuff.
_________________
Emir YARDIMCI
www.emirart.com

The Frayed Ends Of Sanity...I Hear them calling me...

[Duracel]

I really like this idea of playing ... reminds me a bit of Oddworld - Abe's Odyssee, where such elements were slightly implemented as a small part of the game.

Im really interested in such a game with such characters ... but i guess its hard to sell - well, manager/publisher will think so - and so they will kill such an innovative game-idea early enough ... or put it into a 3DShooter *lol*

So the hardest part wouldn't be to create an excellent game in this style, but to make people in high positions believing into it!

Good Luck!
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Lars G�tze

www.duracel.de Gallery

Detailling a speedpainting is nothing but speedpainting in detail.

[Metaswink]

Not everyone needs a publisher to fund their prototypes .
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"The game of life is always called on account of darkness."

[MacJ]

oh yea, I should mention that most of the content for the game idea I mentioned above has been shamelessly ganked from the ideas of Terrence Mckenna. He didn't concieve of using them for a game, so I think its actual implementation could be fascinating. Theres a lot more to it, and furthrer explanation would be required to do it justice. I can elaborate on the specifics if anyone is interested.