Task: Narrative Design Document

11.19.2013
Created for the project: Misc. on 2013 as a personal project - Skill: Level Design
Softwares: Adobe® InDesign CSx

Summary

I worked on a narrative game design and level design. This article is an example showing how I write my documentation.

Work: I designed a level and wrote a document.

I designed and wrote a document sample some times ago. It's about an adventure and narrative game with an original story and universe...

The document

It contains an overview of the design and the story, and give the details on:

  • conversation branches
  • environments : interactive objects and characters
  • Minigames: pick lock, combat, complex object observation

You can find it there.

I wish you good reading.


Task: Boss fight: Teal'c VS Khufu

11.15.2013
Created for the project: Stargate:Unleashed2 on 2013 at Arkalis Interactive - Skill: Game Design
Softwares: Unity 3D Microsoft Word

Summary

In the last chapter of Stargate: Unleashed, Teal'c is fighting Khufu, a strong opponent.
Work: I designed the boss fight

Into the lion's den is the last chapter of Stargate : Unleashed Episode 2. In this big level the player has a lot of revelations and finishes on a big fight between Teal'c and Khufu, a massive opponent. I was in charge of designing it according to the storyline given by the author.

Concept

At the begining it was said I had to work on something epic but trying to avoid adding features because of the deadline.

I started to think about a way to design a generic combat. The best way was to use the tap and sliding quick time events and also, because in this part you are fighting a boss I wanted the player to feel it this way.

So I decided to create this kind of patterns a boss can have and added a healthbar on both character to make a comparison and add tense for the player. To sum up the design, the fight uses randomly chosen sequences of QTEs with different ratio. At first, Teal'c will try to hit his opponent. If he succeed, Khufu looses some health, in the other case, the boss just block and try to counterattack, giving the player a last chance to acheive another QTE to save his character from the death.

Anyway, if he is alive, another sequence is chosen. Maybe Khufu will attack Teal'c and the player will have to block or will see the healthbar decreasing. In anoher case, maybe he will have to make several combos. If he fails Teal'c takes one more hit.

A second part

After, I added a second combat part, like an evolution of the boss. When the player reachs the bottom of Khufu's healthbar, the second sequence starts with Teal'c losing his weapon. In this position the boss becomes harder but the sequence is more like a cinematic showing a more epic combat helping the player feeling the tense of it.

Designing the moves

With the help of other colleagues we made some captures of the most important moves to give the most information we can to the animator. After defining more content, we recorded some videos.

In the first combat, the characters had to go quickly from one move to another if the player succeeds or not.

For the second part, it was something more epic, showing a perfect ending gratifying the player a lot.


News: New section : My hobbies

03.15.2013

A new section concerning my hobbies is now available in each web page bottom.

Actually, it contains some songs I composed for Supinfogame last year projects on 2009.I will post more songs later, performed alone or in bands.

Have a good listening,

Vincent

Go to my hobbies section


Created for the project: Misc. on 2012 as a personal project - Skill: Game Design
Softwares: Character Maker Adobe® Flash CSx

Summary

This game concept is one of my personal projects. It comes from the common belief that playing a flash game during the spare time disable the feeling of the player. In order to knock this idea, I chose the 'survival-horror' genre that really implies the player in his game. My design is oriented on the feeling, but the game stays a flash one.
Work: Creating the concept and developing the prototype.

At the same time as my teacher work at Supinfogame, I develop on new technologies I never used before. To do technology watch, I decided to design create little personal projects. By the way, Epic Zombie Survivor was born, a flash game on the theme of the day.

The intention behind Epic Zombie Survivor

The main interest behind this concept is to make the player feel the characteristic frightening of a "survival-horror" in a game conceived as a "Flash" formated one.

Concept and design choices

In order to keep the game unrevealed publicly since the end of the development, please contact me for more information.

The artistic direction and the universe

The game takes place in a american metropolis comparable to New York and its districts: Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island. It shows the wounds of zombies invasion; many traces reveal the horror of the scenes taking place in the city streets. We hear the silence now, any sound being able to alert the living deads.

The game orientation is pixel art. This kind of graphic designg allows to symbolize the landscapes and to focus on the murky details. It offers a reading comfort to the player, give an 'independant game' style, and allows younger players to play a survival horror: 12 years and older.

With pixel arts, landscapes are also made of shadows and lights that strengthen the game ambience (doubt feeling, claustrophobia) and generates gameplay (zombies hidden in the dark, game elements teasing...)

To the right, the first landscape in the game:

Development Technology: Flixel

To prototype EZS (Epic Zombie Survivor), I decided to use "Flixel" flash game engine. Using it is pretty simple, everything is here to create a two-dimensional game: sprite managment, collisions, tile-based levels, path finding, etc. It is optimized for the pixel art and makes game development faster.

Prototype

The prorotype is under construction. To test it or to have more information about it, please contact me.

Some pictures

sceneSample.png

News: Portfolio online!

04.03.2012

Well, all is done, some details to tune then my portfolio is now online. The opportunity for me to tell you I'm currently looking for a job in videogames creation.

Have a good visit,
Vincent