Update #9 - Game concept document.

This is a copy of the document I wrote about the game, based off Leah's original concept document. It is the final version that we're using for the game.

Concept Document 

-Introduction

Celtic is a RPG/Action adventure game for the PC and Xbox 360 that throws the player into the area of Isca in Roman Britain. As a tribeswoman from the Silures, the player must try to stop the Romans from conquering and destroying everything she knows and loves.

-Description

Britain, 250 AD. The Romans currently conquer the majority of the land, and one of their key strongholds is the town of Isca, which they have converted into the garrison town of Caerleon. The Romans are currently trying to capture or exterminate the surrounding tribes, who are defending themselves by means of guerrilla warfare tactics and berserk fury when confronted. You are Dwynwen, a young tribeswoman fighting for her culture and the right to remain independent against the seemingly endless Roman army. Experience the historic narrative, loosely based on events surrounding the point in history when the Silures took on the Romans in a bid for freedom. 

Fight for your tribe, assist your kinsmen, and gather knowledge of the enemy threat by using your acrobatic skill to outrun soldiers, scale walls, and sneak through military encampments. Use your knowledge of the Welsh countryside to lure Romans into traps and decimate their armies in real-time ambushes. Experience firsthand the culture whose fierce reputation has dominated the land for centuries – The people who stopped the army that conquered the entire of Europe. With the help of strong, fierce Celtic warriors, help your people understand how the Romans work so you can break them with precision.  

Explore the Roman garrison within Isca, with only the shadows to help you. Explore the countryside between Isca and your Celtic village. Participate in varied missions and tasks for your chieftain as you fight for your own reasons – to defend your very way of life. Learn fighting and assassination skills to become a competent warrior, trick your enemies with subtlety and cunning, travel cloaked only in shadow, learning the streets and rooftops of Isca as you search for weak points within the garrison. Use the skills that living in the wild has given you. Steal items from around the camp to cause mistrust, release the cavalry’s horses to cripple their manpower, befriend those who require your aid. Turn the organised, disciplined garrison into a whirlwind of chaos.

Take risks in order to learn more information for your tribe, delve deeper into social histories and into Roman society as a silent watcher. Experience the sights and sounds of the amphitheatre and discover Rome’s infatuation with the blood sport of gladiatorial combat. Choose whether to trust the words of an ex-soldier now fated to live as a Gladiator, while at the same time ensuring your own tribe trusts the information you give them. Will your clan survive? Their only chance lies in Dwynwen.

-Key features 

·           Explore – the history of Caerleon, as you travel through the town of Isca and the Roman fortress of the lions.

·           Interact – with history, as you experience life in two vastly different cultures.

·           Discover – the best way to push back the Roman army, as you use your stealth and cunning to infiltrate Caerleon and perform reconnaissance for your tribe.

·           Fight – for your way of life. If you fail, everything you know as home will be destroyed.

·           Aid – a wide range of villagers and warriors, as in return they may offer valuable information or advice.

·           Experience – life in 250 AD, and the sheer terror of living in fear that each day might be your last as a free spirit.

 

-Genre

The game is an action adventure RPG. The game will follow a main quest but with many optional side quests, which while being unnecessary in order to complete the game will add a sense of scale to the game. The game will feature exploration, combat and stealth.

 

-Platform

The game will be available on both the PC and Xbox 360 at launch, and the PC version will be compatible with the Xbox 360 controller.  

Music

Just a quick update with a link to one of the pieces of music I made for this project. Hopefully with more to come.

http://toddc.tumblr.com/post/100332797/a-piece-i-made-for-our-videogame-yaaaay

Update #8 - Misc stuff and future work

Ok, i'm pretty sure this wraps up a lot of what i've been working on, aside from a few key things. First, after a lot of trial and error I managed to get animations into Torque which is a major step in the scheme of things. Admittedly actually getting the animations into engine required deleting part of the model so she's no longer got any hair, but as she's being remade anyway for animations sake everything should be fine. But aside from that, with the help of Yucel we managed to get animations to bind to keypresses within Torque, allowing us to have buttons that do whatever we want. So now, when you press "1" Dwynwen waves, as an example.

Aside from that, i've also been making some music for the project. The first thing I finished is currently looping within the game but hopefully i'll be able to create some more files for use when the player is in danger, and sneaking, and so on.

And finally, i've been remaking the amphitheatre that Lewis made, as his model was amazing but a bit too detailed and hard to texture for our project. This new one is finished now but unfortunatly isn't fully textured yet, but it's only a matter of time as there's only a small part left to do. It even has flags now, and I looked up the name of the legion stationed within Caerleon, and found out their banner. As they used the Capricorn as their symbol, I used the zodiac symbol on the flags to make it fit with the less-detailed and more-stylish design of the game.

Update #7 - Additional models

The other models we decided to feature within the game are those of the roman guards and a basic horse model. We were going to have the gladiator as a character but instead decided to show him only in animated stills, as this way it would be less work and we could make it more dramatic. I made an incredibly basic guard model for use as a place holder and gave him a quick texture, making him look like this -



He's meant to be being remade but this model works within engine if anything messes up as far as re-making him goes. The horse was made by Leah and textured by Aliks, and then myself, Leah and Aliks edited the base texture and created a new one to fit more with the theme of the game.



The reason for having the horses within the game is that as an optional mission it's possible to release them and allow them to escape from the stables, causing confusion and making some guards who would otherwise be difficult to evade easier to navigate around. I'm not sure if this will make it into the finished game or not but the horses will be there regardless.

Update #6 - Textures

Having never done texturing before this project I was quite worried about starting, but once I got into it I really enjoyed it. After doing the stuff for the map and texturing Dwynwen I moved onto texturing the objects and doing some basic images of trees for use in the terrain. These were just flat, 2D images which in my opinion really add to the enviroment.

In the game world they actually sway slightly to give the impression of wind.

For a few examples of the objects (Made by Lewis, textured by me) here's some other screenshots.









The texture on the roof there is blurry due to torque hating me -_-

Update #5 - Some research at St. Fagans

Myself, Aliks and Leah took a day trip to do some research into ancient welsh villages. And as every welshman knows, the only place to go if you want to look at welsh history is St. Fagans.

We took a lot of photos to use as reference for models and textures, and i'll include a few here just so that it's documented.











There's a ton of images and all of them are awesome. And i'll leave you with this one - Even though we had the final design for Dwynwen down ages beforehand and had already decided she'd be in poses like this throughout the game, it seems that St. Fagans did it first :(

Update #4 - Some modelling...

I suppose due to the lack in here about physical models within maya or torque, it's probably needed so here goes.

Josh created a model of Dwynwen, which myself and Leah then edited. We ended up with something that looked like this -



As you can see, it looks similar to the concepts that Leah did, one of which i'll include here for cross referencing.



After this I spent a lot of time working out how to get the model into engine. I got lucky and eventually ended up with it working fine, as shown here -



As you can see, she's untextured but is in game. At the time it was a huge thing as importing from Maya to Torque is pretty irritating at times.

After this success, I went on to texturing her. After redoing it a few times I eventually ended up with something we were all happy with, in this -



It's a pretty rough texture as i've noticed now I look back on it but it fits with the concepts and the style of the game. And after this, I managed to get her into game and textured too which was a real bonus. Unfortunatly I cannot find an image of this at the moment but there will be one featured shortly on the blog.