Plan for Stacy Davidson
by Stacy Davidson · 10/20/2001 (7:51 pm) · 0 comments
Well the next installment in the Lost Citadel series is finally starting to look like a game.
Now officially titled "Rystar, Defender of the Lost Citadel", this new title is by far the most advanced game we have tackled thus far at Salsa Shark. Rystar is a 3rd-person 3D action/adventure game in the vein of Zelda 64. It draws its basic art values from 80s toys and cartoons with colorful visuals, exciting fortresses and riding beasts, and nasty bad guys bristling with "action features".
I've spent the last few weeks sort of fleshing out ideas and solidifying the basic concept behind Rystar. Mike Oliver and I have tossed the logo back and forth and that's just about done. We've also begun talking about the music and we have some tests we're working on. The thing about this project is that all these seemingly insignificant design aspects become infinitely important to each other as the design develops. The style of this game is based on a careful balance, so you really have to think about how everything is going to work together. You can't really ignore everything else and just concentrate on one aspect at a time, or you loose the overall flavor.
The other major task lately has been character design. Basically I'll spend an hour or so just flipping through comics and old toy catalogues and sketching ideas out of my head. Coming up with a creature for Rystar is a bit tricky, because one of the things we've said is that every character must have an action feature and must be somehow unique. No matter how cool it is, If you can't immediately see it in a blister pack on the toy shelves, it's just not good enough for Rystar.
So then when I have a nice stack of interesting creature sketches to work from, I take one and begin modeling it in Lightwave. The basic shape of the character is important because we're going for the heroic look to them.. everything has to be "drawn the Marvel way", they have to look like they could be comic characters. So anyway, once the basic proportions are correct, I start to work out the action features. This process is usually about two hours, and then I have a 3D character ready to be brought into reality through texture and animation. But that's a different story...
Did I mention I've just gotten over a week of horrible flu? Getting sick really gets in the way of game design. I don't recommend it at all.
More later..
-SD
Now officially titled "Rystar, Defender of the Lost Citadel", this new title is by far the most advanced game we have tackled thus far at Salsa Shark. Rystar is a 3rd-person 3D action/adventure game in the vein of Zelda 64. It draws its basic art values from 80s toys and cartoons with colorful visuals, exciting fortresses and riding beasts, and nasty bad guys bristling with "action features".
I've spent the last few weeks sort of fleshing out ideas and solidifying the basic concept behind Rystar. Mike Oliver and I have tossed the logo back and forth and that's just about done. We've also begun talking about the music and we have some tests we're working on. The thing about this project is that all these seemingly insignificant design aspects become infinitely important to each other as the design develops. The style of this game is based on a careful balance, so you really have to think about how everything is going to work together. You can't really ignore everything else and just concentrate on one aspect at a time, or you loose the overall flavor.
The other major task lately has been character design. Basically I'll spend an hour or so just flipping through comics and old toy catalogues and sketching ideas out of my head. Coming up with a creature for Rystar is a bit tricky, because one of the things we've said is that every character must have an action feature and must be somehow unique. No matter how cool it is, If you can't immediately see it in a blister pack on the toy shelves, it's just not good enough for Rystar.
So then when I have a nice stack of interesting creature sketches to work from, I take one and begin modeling it in Lightwave. The basic shape of the character is important because we're going for the heroic look to them.. everything has to be "drawn the Marvel way", they have to look like they could be comic characters. So anyway, once the basic proportions are correct, I start to work out the action features. This process is usually about two hours, and then I have a 3D character ready to be brought into reality through texture and animation. But that's a different story...
Did I mention I've just gotten over a week of horrible flu? Getting sick really gets in the way of game design. I don't recommend it at all.
More later..
-SD
