Tag Archives: AO3

AO3 Game Directors – Profile

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A profile on the job of ‘Game Director/Creative Director’ with specific focus on ‘The Last Of Us’ game. Information was taken mainly from a documentary on the games production, but also from wikipedia pages on the two directors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Druckmann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Straley

AO3 Building the HUD

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Based on ideas generated from doing the HUD annotation, I went into the game and started making changes to our HUD, just making it nicer designed and smoother.

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The first thing I really wanted to change was the Clue count. Before we just had the clue graphic with a number next to it.

I wanted to make it more visual, rather then just a number. So I thought the there could be a new clue graphic added to the row with every collection. To do this I added a ‘Replicate’ behavior to this actor, and made how many times it’s replicated by controlled by the Clue count attribute I’d already set up. As the attribute keeps track of how many clues the player has, the HUD will now display clues collected.

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I thought about creating a different graphic to represent Clues in the HUD, but then decided it was best to use the same one as the in-game collectibles. Really just for simplicity and continuity, as the player will easily be able to see the connection between the things in-level and the HUD, and will really build a connection with this graphic.

Next I wanted to add something that would tell the player how many clues that needed to collect. My idea for this was to have a graphic for the empty clues, a dotted outline where they should go. I quickly made this in Photoshop, using the same canvas size as the Clue graphic. I then made a new actor, called it ‘Empty Clue’ and put a replicate behavior on it. I set the number of replications to 3, as that’s how many need to be collected in the level.

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The only other part of the HUD is the score. I wanted to set this up on the right hand side of the screen. I changed the colour of the font to yellow, giving a visual link to the stars that make the score go up, as well as making the score seem appealing and like it’s worth something.

 

AO3 Game Design CV

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Game Design CV

I’ve been playing games for around 10 years. I’m a casual game player, but when I find a fun game I’ll get really immersed in it. The first games I played were Nintendo, so Mario, Zelda, and Starfox. This has influenced my taste in games; fun and imaginative games based on speed and reflexes and a puzzle solving, exploring a fantasy world.

I have a lot of skills in Art, which I can use to make good game graphics. Ever since I was little I’ve read comics and tried to draw my own. This process of learning then experimenting in the comic genre has given me a clean, energetic, stylised and cartoony style, and a love of drawing fantasy and the bizarre.

Whilst my natural instinct is a pen and paper style, I easily transfer over to digital: as I’m very experienced in Photoshop, and have a basic understanding of Adobe Illustrator.

I also have a passion for creating and drawing worlds and characters, making things that are a bit weird. This also translates into story-telling skills, as when I was reading comics and watching films I was learning how to put together a story.

I have basic animation skills and experience, having played around with Adobe Flash for around 6 years. I can use these skills to animate graphics I create for the game.