Concept and Design of Maegnos

Our game has a title now: Maegnos. Seems to take inspiration from Greek or otherwise similar roots, but also sounds like the English word 'magnet'. Kind of packs a lot into the title, already suggesting at both the mechanics you are about to experience, and hints a little at the art style of the game.

Rough concept from Sedona

The above illustrates both the character concepts and the logo concept the will most likely not change from now on. I'll delve into specifics about the game later.

Team Update

Not too long ago, we received a new member to our group named Dennis. He seems to be more oriented on programming and is already suggesting ideas on how to approach a simplified collisions system and a rendering optimization. Although I'm a little hesitant to accept both because we don't need to be thinking about optimization now, especially when we barely have a code base to work off of. Again, same thing with the collision system. Until we figure out how Havok does what it does, or at the very least what it can take care of, then I think we should worry about focusing on studying the structure of wildmagic++, and exploring the options WM++ gives us.

Mark Duarte is another group member that recently joined us, who also seems to be focusing more on programming and similar fields. We haven't heard much from him, but things should pick up pace as we start to dive into production. 

With these new group members, communication could be an issue so Lindsay created a website not too long ago, of which 4 of us are members so far. The 4 core members are friends and know each other well, so the Skype group we have now is mainly filled with chatter amongst us 4, and some work related chatter sprinkled in between. The website allows us to go to a place dedicated to the game, so we could discuss everything improtant there, rather than forcing people to read through our nonsense to get to the important stuff.

I'll keep posting regular blogs here, but stuff from me that will appear on that website will either be a summarized version of the blog posts here, or an announcement or talk about a feature for the game.

Click here to go to our site.

Overall Game Concept  

The game so far is to be a 3D platformer that invlolves lots of puzzle solving and combat. The main mechanics revolve around the theme of magnetism. Every single object and even some plates of wall either have a positive, negative or netural charge. They react as expected, if an object is charged enough it will start attracting/repelling away from the player, which can be used to manipulate the environemnt and solve puzzles. Massive objects and plates of charged wall will instead attract/repel the player for some interesting options for traversability.

In terms of combat, the player will have a staff to defend themselves with. This is also the staff that allows the character to manipulate objects with the force of magnetism. Enemies have the three states described above, and this will have some interesting impact on the combat. As a standard, there will be a light/heavy attack variation, although depending on the implementation, the heavy attack may just be a finisher to a combo or something similar. Swinging attacks with an opposite charge (say positive to negative) to your enemy will do extra damage, because the opposite charge attracts the enemy to your staff, and helps deal extra damage. Swinging with the same charge helps push enemies away from you so you don't get overwhelmed (also helps space enemies out for combos). Heavy/finisher attacks use the same notion, just ramped up. For example, using a positive finisher on positive enemies will send them flying away from you, while doing the same on negative enemies will suck them in and do much more damage.

As a side note, as mentioned in the last blog, my ideas will probably be heavily influenced by the fact that I wanted to do a fighting game. Unfortunately, puzzles will be implemented first, with the addition of combat later, so if anything happens, combat is the first in line to the cutting room floor. Not all of combat however, just specific and/or advanced features of combat.

Character Concepts

The character that I am designing right now will be a sort of 'Mentor' to both the characters in the game, and to the player. Relating to the characters, he is older than them and acts as an elder/supervisor of their journey to prove themselves on their rite of passage. Towards the player, this will of course be a voice to guide them on how to use the various features of the game, and maybe even help them solve some early puzzles.

Turnaround for the 'Mentor' character

I wanted this character to be less stereotypical 'old man' with robes sort of mentor, rather he is a retired warrior who can still be helpful/athletic if he needs to be (we haven't figured out how to stick him into actual gameplay yet).

My progress on modelling him so far can be seen below. My current issue is that I think I have too many polygons for a 'low-poly' model. Especially when I try to attach the hands to the body, which will raise the total poly count pretty significantly because of the edge loops that need to run throughout the body to maintain detail. I still need to do the face and feet, and the details (like the pauldron, knee pads, loincloth, middle ornament and vambrace) to complete it, but the main anatomy is complete, working from here on should be easy enough.

Finishing Thoughts

I know professor Hogue said that these blogs also provide useful feedback about where we are struggling, and what we have issues with, so in later blogs I'll dedicate a subheader to the topic. Other than that, I'll be posting next week.