We started this week with a team chat with our lecturer and discussed our projects. Myself and James didn't raise too many concerns currently with the project so we mostly discussed the details of the project proposal document. Below are the notes we made (using nodenogg.in);

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From this meeting I took away a few key pointers. The first is that our lecturer suggested we set out a singular narrative path to offer as an example in the document as to how the game will play out and this will give us a good idea of how to structure further storyline implementations. As I understand it, the document is supposed to show what we intend to do and simply demonstrate that these things are possible, not necessarily make them. Therefore, I would like to include some process of using the application Meshroom to photograph and re-construct objects, making them into usable assets in Blender and then including them in a unity scene, potentially with some very basic code (e.g. movement script, narrative links) to make a prototype. This will also be very useful for testing the concept  and gathering some feedback for market research. I also intend to mark out some of the tasks that will need doing and to start constructing a pipeline for the next semester. I'm conscious that in 5 months we will be finishing our degree and this is an awfully elaborate idea to bring to life in that time for 2 people, so we're going to have to pace this project very well to keep on top of it.

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In the afternoon of the Tuesday myself and James also ran through some more detailed ideas as to how the game would play. Following Lucy's talk last week (see professional contexts module) I've tried to re-structure the game to be clearer and more accessible to the player. Originally I wanted a full 3D scene with 3D characters to interact with, however Lucy pointed out that this could be cluttered and when I first explained the idea she visualised the characters in 2D. Now that this has been mentioned I can see how it would be an issue and it would also have been a much larger workload for the team so we have re-designed the gameplay to be more of a one-sided set and to make use of some clever camera angles to make the scene work. We would still like to include sculpted / 3D printed characters in the physical scenes but we intend to give them basic looping animations and when interacted with, a visual novel style overlay will allow the player to access the interactive narrative. 

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I had also found in my own research some interesting looking dolls which have elaborate material visuals as well as an intriguing style, very similar to that of Tim Burton;

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(Images from Pinterest)

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I went on to make a list of my top priorities moving forward with this project -

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- Starting the document proposal, researching previous proposals and structuring ours accordingly

- First pass of scriptwriting and tightening up the narrative.

- Storyboarding the gameplay from start to finish (where cutscenes will be, what the players objectives will be, when the interactive narrative comes into play etc.).

- Possibly starting some character designs to suit James' clothing visuals.

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Further Research:

- Playing through Lumino City and Truberbrook both for design research and researching the competition

-  Watching the Greatest Showman (its a slightly different concept but a very up-to-date and successful visualisation of circus performers of the time)

- James has suggested looking at Cirque du Soleil costumes, The Corpse Bride, Cirque Berserk and behind the scenes videos of  American Horror Story (they have a series called 'Freakshow' designed around some of these ideas). 

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The first thing I started on was outlining the processes needed to fit into the pipeline. Below is an image of the notes I had made with the project broken down into tasks.

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Originally I wanted to break the project into 3 segments - the first for getting the game done with one lady to interact with, the second by adding in another lady and the third and final lady being our final goal. My thinking was that by planning the project this way we'd have a basic game made from the start and then we could decide what was possible according to time later on. However, once I started plotting the narrative, I realised that by adding in characters later on, they would be changing how the first characters interact and the narrative would be very complex to weave together. As a result of this, we have changed the gameplay to reflect a more linear dialogue pattern than giving the player freedom to speak to whoever, whenever. It was always designed to be a short narrative experience, not an open-world exploration with lots of NPC's (non-playable characters). 

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Later in the week I outlined the first chapter of narrative along with the character style that myself and James have agreed upon. Below is version 1 of the first chapter.

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Now that our official term time is done I'm hoping to get a headstart on next semester's project. Myself and James had a catch-up meeting where we discussed smaller details and are fleshing out more of the narrative which is giving us both a better sense of what we're doing. I'm currently writing a full document on storyline, character profiles, narrative options, visuals, animations, cut scenes etc. to give us a foundation document of the whole game to work from. I'll separate these out into prototypes, mockups and  formal documents later. James is looking into technical work like looking at making asset lists, using adobe after effects for the animations and designing the outfits of the characters, doing some amazing research on pinterest for mood boards etc. Overall I'm really happy with how the project ideas are coming together so far. Myself and James have a very similar idea visually and gameplay-wise of what we want to achieve and I think that is really helping us to make effective progress so far.