Inital Ideas.

Okay so there are normally many initial ideas but can see how you progressed from one to the other; well ours doesnt have the visible jump, not that much anyway.

First idea - Hunter, simple as that, everyone was making a horror game, where you are the weaker person in comparion to what you are being attacked or whatever by. So we (me and Ishy) was like hmm.. the opposite of being hunted is being the hunter, examples of games like this were games such as God of War, Prototype, InFamous and verious others where it took an army for you to ever be scared to take it on, or some sort of HUGE creature, so we spoke about something simlar to Alex Murcer from prototype, a person changed into a monster that goes to hunt down and get revenage, this idea didnt progress more than this although the environment was described as grubby like alleyways dark environements etc.

Second idea - Tank. This idea originated from the hunter, the hunter was you being more powerful but had mystery and stealth, you wasnt running through the day smashing armies of old ladies running through tanks. But this idea was, it was a 'whatever they throw at me if i charge at them they WONT win' insipartion from this mainly revolved around the hulk but more powerful! Yeah i said it.. although this idea was discared recently into the discussion.

Third idea - Nightmare. Yes this is similar to horror BUT  not the way we was going to make it, it was going to be an overexadurated nightmares with a large push on humor SO its the opposite of the horror which other groups were doing. We spoke about a man running down the streets being chased by a huge robot version of his boss shouting at him about the documents he hadnt finished throwing work equipment at him while you ran down the street in a pink bunny suit, the randomness would have gave ti a humourous gameplay but not the most powerful narative story, the inpiration came from a game called Cathrine.

Fourth idea - To this point this was our most evolved idea. The nerd rage idea. This idea continued the humor feel but would have allowed a more strong stroyline (kind of). It was about a sterotypical american man (Fat, lives at homes, loves games and movies etc.) and he was a PC gamer, he was in love with his PC but one day he returned home from chess club and found that his house was robbed, and saw his PC and all componets were taken, there was a letter left over which was a ransom for his computer, This is where the game starts, your character goes to the meeting place for his PC all nerded out with his weaponary which was all nerd customized and the game is a 'retreave object' game, where you ahve to go to different locations fighting the people who currently own each part of the computer e.g. gangsters, shops etc. and gain each aprt of the PC back, the parts included Mouse, Keyboard, Monitor and Tower. resorting in 4 different locations, alleyway for gangsters wass mentioned and the mall where someone had bought one of the computer parts. The game was going to be 3rd person and the characters weapons which we spoke of were a modded nerf gun, toy light saber and food shooter. The characters were going to be modelled giving it the feel for the game thats why is was also in 3rd person. There was going to be a cutscene were the gangsters were walking towards eachother playing fitting music, the song for the gangsters was going to be 'Pon De River' by elephant man which was an offical remix. while the nerds epic music was going to be game music i.e. gears of war, halo 3, battlefeild and other games theme tunes. it was going to be cartoonized similar to bourderlands 2 and games with similar styles. The character was going to be a tanky character aswell due to his weight. This idea was dropped because we wouldnt have had the time or ability to make the character models with was essential for the games feel so without the models we couldnt achive what we wanted so it turned back to the drawing board.

Final idea - So NOW is the idea we used in the end, this idea came from a previous ideas made by Ishy for a FSP on a spaceship while the ship was exploding. The new idea was a Sci-Fi shooter where you had to obtain a object and deliever it, the storyline is quite longs obrace yourself. The stroy follows humantiy, the earth is empty now, no life is left there and everybody lives of seperate floating spaceships known as dictricts. there are 5 districts which means 5 different populations of people, similar to countries you could say district one is russia and district two is china etc. although the ethnicity on each ship is mixed. each district has its product to produce, so each ship is specific to something that is essential for humanity to life. These are:
District 1 - water
District 2 - protein
District 3 - processed food
District 4 - vitamins
District 5 - artifical energy
So each of the distrct makes its own uniqe produce which is then given to other districts, so district one gives water to all the other districts while keeping some for themself.
each district has its own means of getting the produce it needs. They are:
District 1 - Extracts from a ice core planet.
District 2 -  These maintain and breed eatable animals, so basically a farm.
District 3 - These use the resorces from other dictricts the most to make articial foods.
District 4 - Vitamins, one alternative planet 'super vitamins' were found which only requires 6 vitamin groups with is extracted from the planet.
District 5 - This uses sunlight (directly from the spaceship), tidal (erath), wing (earth), coal (extracted from 2 planes, the remains of earth and another planet, phosphorus (needed for plants to grow) and oil (taken from rock planet). these are then created into stored enegry and dispached.
Each district owns the nessesary equipment and rights to the other planets to allow it to then continue making what is nessesar yand why only the individual districts can specialize in what they do.
The year is 2272. And there hasnt been an alterntive planet to live on which has all the requirements needed for human survival. The story revolves around a 17 year old boy whos goal in the game is to obtain something to return to his mom who is pregnant. The narative comes from the obtained object is nessessary for the mom to survive and the boy is the remaining 'man of the house' as his dad passed shortly after the new child was conceieved. the mom is 7 months pregant and the dad paassed while she was 2 months pregant. Human greed as came once again and one of the districts attacks and tries to invade your district to obtain your goods and create them for themself using your resources. When you was younger your dad use to take you virtual hunting using 4D reality and this is how you know how to use a weapon, as it is a shooter. throughout the level there will be many enemies you will have to kill and proceed to find what your mom needs, your character has to play a powerful role as he is fighting to save his moms life and also his younger unborn sister. the game of your character is under 18 so he isnt classed as an adult so you feel that he is still a child fighting but not too young where it would be impossible for him to make it. At the end there is a large surival fight and your character dies before you can give the medicaion to your mother, everyone in your district dies expect the few people who were able to be put to cryogenic sleep and land on a planet that they can inhabit. your district crashes and dies due to this your ditricts produce cannot be made and humanity evenually dies except for the people who have escaped now have to restart civialization on the new planet.
Within the level there will be easter eggs and many view points, areas that are accessable but not important to progress through the level, through the level you communicate with your mother through an ear piece. Your character isnt anything in the social ladder e.g. he isnt a commander or president etc.

These are the inital ideas which gave us our final one, happy reading!

The Start of Another Long Journey..

Welcome Ladies and Gentleman to the offical ongoing blog of Men In Black productions!

Here will showcase all the ongoing work that is being put into Project District (Codename).

Here the troubles, success, changes and other decisions will be all here for your eyes to feast upon!

First lets just say what this project includes, within this project we have to work within a group with one designer and one or more artist(s), within the mean in black group is me (Connan Henry-Madden) and Ishy (Ishmael Parks). I play the role of the artist and Ishy is the Designer; you as kwhat the difference is? Well it's simple, I create the assests that go into the map/level and Ishy is the one who sorts them out while there, so for example if I make a door I will do that but Ishy has to make the door open. There is more to it then that but for the base of it thats the role although it wont always be that simple. We have been told to make a level with a narative story behind it. On the first day the project had its Pre-Launch Ishy still had a small amount of work to finish, so while the rest of the groups created their ideas we didnt. This ended up being benifital as we found out that all the other groups within the class were doing horror because it would have been able to be the most powerful naratively if it is exercuted properly. Although me and Ishy hadnt discussed yet in my mind horror/survival was very high on the list for ideas. Based on the amount doing horror we choice not to because if there was one uniqe idea from the rest of the horror games we would have a better change of standing out creating a more memorable game.

So we started considering ideas.. BUT you'll have to wait for the next post for that!