Updraft (6 week game)

Below is a piece of 30 minute concept art for the game I'm making over the next 5 weeks. 

The game is called Updraft, it's a 2D side scrolling game that would be suitable for both the PC and Mobile platforms. In updraft you take upon the role of a stray leaf, that's falling of a tree in autumn. You have to try to catch the "wind flows" that populate the different environments that the leaf passes through.

The art-style will be watercolor based, which should be challenging but ultimately rewarding as it's a style that seldom gets used in many games today. The game will be rendered in 3D but be played from a 2D perspective.

I want the game to feed the player information but in a way that doesn't neccessarily involve an on screen HUD all the time. An example can be seen below;

As you can see the TV's in the shop window show that the prevailing wind is at 6 and it's a sunny day. The player will be able to use this information to inform how they play the game. In this example a wind speed of 6 is quite high so they'll be able to move quickly through the level and since it's a sunny day the foot traffic on the pavements will be higher which means they'll have to dodge more obstacles. I plan for the game to have many of these types of information ports, coming in a variety of different forms.

Constitutive Rules

Above is our mathematical break down of the constitutive rules of the card game 'War'

War infinite shuffle

Player 1: 10S JS KD 6C 6D 2S 7S AC 3S 8D 5C 5D 8H AD KH 2D 4S 7C 3H 3D 10C 4D KC 4H 6H 7D

Player 2: 9H 4C QC 9S 10D QH 5H QS 10H 8C AH 8S JH QD JD 2C KS 9D 3C 5S 6S 7H 9C AS JC 2H

If this hand is dealt to each player then the game war will never end providing that the hands are dealt and player 1's cards are always added before player 2's cards to the bottom of the winner's stack. 

The possibility that the game cannot end means that the game system is broken. Despite the probability of this being minuscule it's still a possibility. For the cards to loop back to the hand that you see above the players must "war over 30,000 times"    

More land-form inspiration

In war
The sum of the deck is worth 416 this is because

2 = 2
3 = 3
4 = 4
5 = 5
6 = 6
7 = 7
8 = 8
9 = 9
10 = 10
J = 11
Q = 12
K = 13
A = 14

So if you add all those together you get 104 which is the sum of one suit. Since theirs 4 suits in a deck you multiply it by 4 and you get 416, the sum of the deck.

The game ends when one player's deck is the sum of 416 and their opponents is 0.

However when you break down the mathematics of war into simple number it quickly becomes apparent that the game is ENTIRELY predetermined since the players draw all the cards from the TOP of the deck. Providing if player 1's cards are always added before player 2's card to the bottom of the winners stack or vise versa the game will remain predetermined. It changes when the cards are readded to the deck in a different order.

Implied rules of war

Implied Rules of War;

Do not hit your opponent
Do not take too long showing your card.
Only play with other humans (Other Animals may not grasp the concept)
Do not lick the cards.
Do not claim your opponents card is your card if theirs is higher.
Do not play war on the outside lane of the M6
Do not play inside the large hadron collider.

Enviroment Research

When it comes to level design, I've found that the way I like to work is too get a comprehensive understanding of the environment to help inform my designs. This will allow me to create and sculpt belivable environments that look functional and real. This will hopefully help to immerse the player in the playable universe.

The way I've approached this for my current project is by researching how land formations have been formed. An understanding of how the land is formed can greatly help to create belivable natural environments. When this is coulpled with an understanding of how you want the climate in your level works then you can build up very belivable lands capes and then populate them accordingly.

You can decifer what types of rock will be found in your environment, the tree & plant genus's and even the types of wildlife that will roam the enviroment. For my project which is set in a fully natural enviroment devoid of humans development this becomes very important. Despite my game being slightly fantasy based I still belive these fundamental constructs are important to good levels.

This research will hopefully make me avoid cluttering the enviroment with a mish mash of landmarks and scenery that doesn't really flow very well. Since the world will be "designed" rather than naturally formed some deviation from the constructs will obviously occur but this has to happen to create an interesting gameplay enviroment that meet the needs of my game.

I've found that studying topographic maps that show river flow has been a huge help in understanding landformations. This should help to create better, more realistic landscapes in my game.
 

Rock & Enviroment inspiration