Concept design: Würthel City

Given that compilation times on our final project for the masters are kind of high, I'm going to spend that idle time in-between doing something useful and write a new post.

(Yeah, I know I could use it as a legitimate excuse to slack off, as in XKCD's comic strip)

 

Well, going on-topic again:
At the end of yesterday's post I talked about a conceptual design we were asked to do by the U-Play Studios representative, which had come to give us a talk on starting up a video game developer studio. We were to think of ideas for a browser-based game.

To answer the question '...and what does a browser game look like?', there are lots of examples online, some of which you may have played already: Bitefight, Ogame, Ikariam, Striker Manager -done by the company that asked us to design the game, by the way-, and several more.

After a bit of brainstorming and casual chat with friends, I came up with 'Würthel City' (any similarity between the title/city name and certain massive corruption case in Spain being completely intentional). It allows players to put themselves in the shoes of a detective newly arrived to a metropolis where crime and corruption rates have skyrocketed.


Your goal as that detective is, of course, to become the best one out there. You'll be either competing or cooperating (via guilds detective agencies) with lots of other players to solve the highest number of cases.

To do that, you'll have to move around the areas of Würthel City, interact with NPCs and/or other human-controlled characters, and use your skills and equipment to make your way through the cases, which might range from robberies, drug trafficking, murders, corruption, kidnappings and such.






Click on this link for the English version of Würthel City's concept document.The PDF goes through these basic outlines in more detail. I apologise in advance for the crappy fake screenshots. I did some rough sketches at that moment to illustrate the concepts that I was trying to communicate, and didn't focus much in visual quality. I expect that they're descriptive enough, though.

PS: Würthel City, Spanish version

First attempts at design

So here we come again. I'm updating my stuff chronologically, and today it is time to post my first, lame attempts at game design, using an open source mind map tool called Freemind. I found it quite useful to sort out my thoughts.

This image shows the first one; it features some loose ideas about an evolution sim a bit influenced by Dwarf Fortress called Natsel. I began it hoping to create something more faithful to science than Spore turned out to be.



As you can see, I focused on how to create the world, the mechanisms throughout which the living beings would evolve and acquire new abilities, but I didn't get to develop the aspects more linked to gameplay.

Then I started thinking of THE MOTHER OF ALL RPGs, and started another mind map, this time a lot more exhaustive (but still incomplete). This one was one of the possible projects I proposed in the beginning of the master. Unfortunately, it wasn't appealing enough (besides being overly complex for the master's scope, I'd forgotten the mind map at home and had to write a dirty sketch with the concepts I managed to remember), but I'm still considering it as a future goal. I'll have to do an exhaustive go-through so I update it with some ideas that I've acquired recently while playing some other RPGs.

I'll probably talk more about this project in the future.

BEWARE!! Giant diagram.

On my following post I'll upload a conceptual design I did for an assignment which required us to devise a browser game. While the first thought that came to my mind was something related to those 'Choose your own adventure' books, set on the typical medieval-like fantasy world, I ended up switching to a detective sim after some chat with my flatmate.

PS: Here are the Spanish diagrams as well, although they're a bit outdated: While I was editing the English versions, I added a couple of notes and changes.

Natsel: Spanish version

RPG: Spanish version

PS2: In case Blogger decides to keep messing with the links to the images, here's the URL to the Imageshack album where I've uploaded the four diagrams

TINC v0.1

This is my first game, coded at irregular intervals on my free time during 2008. To be honest, I'd already done one at the Computer Graphics subject while at university, but I lost the floppy disks where I kept the last copy -_-U

But that's enough talk about the past. Behold TINC!!

As you can see, it is totally not a shameless ripoff of Columns. Many people start by coding a Tetris clone, but being the spirit of contradiction that I am (well, that's what my parents like to say), I chose Columns instead.

It is coded in C++ using SDL, with some Boost to add some flavour here and there. Although I started coding it on Linux, in the end I switched to Windows and Code::Blocks, to finish with Visual Studio Express.

This means the game is for Windows systems only, I'm sorry (it might work on Wine, but I haven't tested it myself; if somebody is willing to give it a try, please tell me and I'll put it here as well).

Attached are the MU links to the binary files (most of the space it takes is caused by the VS2005 and VS2008 redistributable packages), and the source code. Since I haven't touched it again since last year, it is quite messy (not even mentioning the graphical interface, which I did in a rush and never got to refactor it again).

For those who never read README files, these are the in-game controls:

• Arrow keys: move or drop the falling column.
• Z/X: Rotate the pieces of the falling column up/down
• P: Pause/Unpause the game

Oh, and if it crashes before starting the game, you may have to install the two VC redistributable packages I mentioned before.

Enjoy!

Binaries

Source code

Hello, World!

Well, a week or so after I decided on a -bad- name for the blog, I think the time has come to finally open it to the public.

First of all, I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Tania (although I tend to use Ithil online, I find it prettier and geekier) and I'm a wanna-be game developer currently based in Spain. I have a degree in Computer Science and at the moment I'm studying a Master in Video Game Creation and Development at UPC's School of Professional and Executive Development in Barcelona.

My intention towards this blog is to use it as a tool for future world domination portfolio of sorts where I can share some ideas for games or even small projects I've developed either as a hobby or as part of assignments. In addition, you will also be able to find me rambling or ranting about videogames, the industry or programming.

As a gamer, I lean a bit towards RPGs, my current obsession being Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins. I also love strategy games (both turn-based and real-time) and several other genres, such as action games, adventures, platformers, puzzles, etcetera.

Let the show begin!