The Tomb

I am currently reading and excellent book called, The Tomb in Ancient Egypt by Aiden Dodson and Salima Ikram. It contains within it some excellent research material and maps of tomb interiors all of which are extremely useful to the themes in my game. The book goes into a lot of detail and is heavy reading but the information will be very useful when I have to arrange and design my own tomb environment.

The Lost Pyramid

On Monday 29th there was a very interesting program on channel 4 regarding the lost pyramid of pharaoh Djedefre. The site where the grandest pyramid of all had once stood is now a mound of rubble. The program set out to explore all the theories of archaeologists working around the site and in connection with it to discern what had happened to the Djedefre's final resting place. I watched the program and there were many interesting elements that were helpful to me such as a brief history of Ancient Egyptian building techniques and their customs around the pyramid after the pharaoh had begun his journey into the afterlife.

Norwich Museum

On Dec 19th I visited Norwich Castle Museum. At the museum there wasn't really much on Ancient Egypt that I hadn't already read in various books however it did give me a chance to see some articles first hand and realize the size of some trinkets as well as mummies. There was also a sarcophagus there which was really good, most of the original paintwork and decoration remained intact and was good to get an idea at least of the size and how they might have looked. More than that though was what they might look like in the environment of my game, where they would have been for 3,000 years just like the ones in the museum. Before the end of term I want to try and get to the Fitz William museum in Cambridge as this has a lot more of the subject matter that I want to look at.

Research Documents...

I have decided to do individual research documents and reviews for each of the games and films that I am using rather than one big document containing everything. This will make for better organistion when I put my work on the server as well as a more indepth analysis of each article.

Costume thoughts...

So that myself and people who are looking at my game idea can get an idea of what I want Edward to look like I have done some costume research. It is much better to have some visual aid when describing what a character or anything should look like than having nothing as every persons mind will surely come up with something different. These are the characters that i have been looking at to make an image of what my character might look like.

1. Richard 'Rick' O'Connell ( Brendan Fraser) from The Mummy 1999

The second is Indiana Jones from the series of films (1981 -2008) starring Harrison Ford.

I am looking at these to character purely from a costume point of view, although the characters of each are very intriguing i want to create a character that will fit into the world that I will create, although taking inspiration from these has been very helpful in no way am I actually trying to copy the personality of these characters within my own. These are just two examples in a wider picture, just so people can get an idea as to what kind of looks i want my charater to have costume wise.

My Main Character

At first glance, yes, Edward seems a mundane name for a game character. It also may seem that no thought has gone into this at all but that is not the case. First of all there arnt many archeologists with fancy names like Sir Zeliek or Baron Rivendare, most are normal every day names like Howard or Arthur and i wanted my character to be no exception to this. Having an everyday name makes him seem more like an everyday person eventhough he is not in an everday situation. The main character in Silent Hill 2 is called James Sunderland and even though he is not in a normal everyday situation withing the game, you dont control him going to work or parking his car, the name strengthens that games themes and help us as a person connect with the character more. At least that is my opinion, im sure there are other takes on this which I intend to look into, but I tried to think that if I had not been designing the game, if I had been playing it what would make the story and characters some alive more for me. This is also another reason why I have been playing the games like Silent Hill in order to discern how this choice affects the games story and our connection with it.

Archeology

Obviously there is much more to Archeology than one man on his own plundering about it a foreign country looking for treasure. I want my game to have a certain amount of realism within it as well as all the supernatural that will occur during the story. So I have begun researching the cultural and governmental issues that surround high profile archeological finds, probably the most famous exmaple to give would be the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in the Valley of the Kings on 4th November 1922. There are other examples however, although not in Egypt the discovery of Minoan palace at Knossos and the issues surround certain parts of its reconstruction. All of this I have gone into detail in my research document.

Characters

Although I want to focus primarily on environment design, my game must have interesting and appealing character that the player interacts with. In the game i dont want to have some kind of super hero character who takes on armies by himself, but rather one who is clever and resourceful. I have many ideas floating about at the moment as to how to portray my character and the story that will surround him. For a start he is an archeologist who is still searching for his big discovery.
Throughout his life he has always been in the wrong place at the wrong time and been unlucky with digsites, however this is all about to change. Upon again finding a tomb in an unchartered area of the Sahara Desert in Egypt, at first glance into the chambers that have been excavated, Edward thinks that he has just stumbled upon another plundered tomb but as he clears more of the sand and rubble that has blocked the tombs passages and chambers of years of flood and sandstorms the paintings on the wall become clearer. Could this be the find of his life?

Design Document

Today I finished compiling my game document, I started writing this at the beginning of the term and it covers all of the design aspects of my game. I decided to keep it as a design document and not as a technical document as its is the elements of design that I want to focus on, at least for the moment. I have compiled the areas that I cover in my design document from two resources, two similar design document set ups both of which were given to me buy NUCA handbooks, the first entitled Tinymonkeys Sandcastle Summer is signifacntly older and therefore could be more dated this is why I chose to reference another document and add some other chapters into my document. The second reference was from the handbook Games Art & Design Level 2 compiled from many different sources by Chris Lowthorpe, though I only used one section of this which was the one referenceing the game document and how to go about creating one effectivly.

Other Games...

As well as the two mentioned below I have spent the past week and a half playing through some other games that I thought had some very interresting aspects to them. These were; Wild 9, Descent 2, Morrowind, Soul Reaver 2 and Gears of War. All these games may seem vastly different at first look but it wasnt the actual gamplay or themes that I wanted to concentrate on more the way in which that particular game had achieved something that I wanted to make work in my game, in Gears of War for example it was the detailed environments that i was looking at and the design of them which make the fairly mundane story alot more interesting for the gamer to play through. This isnt to say that the story to my game will be mindane in any way but as I am focussing primarily on environment design I need the ones that i create to be just as engaging.