Different Version's of Maps.

I've started and completed the Points of Interest and Item's map, and plan to do a Wildlife map, and Cave systems map. I've also completed some write up to help support the Points of Interest and item's map, including locations and explanations of what certain items do. It's the same scale as the Natural Geography map so the distance is the same.

Write up:

Points of Interest and Items map notes:

This is a list of some of the items and points of interest we’ve decided we want in the game, certain items have uses and some are useless, and almost all of the points of interest are from the film and have been left behind from Chuck Noland just slightly altered

Items:
FedEx Debris
FedEx Packages
Wilson
Ice skate
Ice skate spear

Points of Interest:
Tree Statue
Caves
Waterfalls
Cave Paintings
Amelia’s Crashsite
Help Sign
Rivers

FedEx Package Contents:

Useful Packages:

1. Leather Pointed Shoes

2. Walkman and CD’s

3. Playing Cards

4. Arts and Craft’s Kit

5. Ladies Clothing

6. Jar of Boiled Sweets

7. Poncho’s

Useless Packages:

8. Broken GPS (Reference to the director)

9. Smudged – Island Survival for Dummies.

10. Slinky

Western and Eastern Islands:

They will both have small caves inside the rocky outcrop, with an air pocket inside so the player will be able to swim underwater find the entrance and get inside and find certain items inside such as, Mushrooms, Moss and other rare hidden items that could spawn inside a closed of moist cave. The Eastern island will have a FedEx Package inside and the Western island will have a FedEx package just north in between it and the main land.

Amelia Earhart’s plane crash:

Disappeared on June 2^nd 1937 (Age 39) and was announced dead 2 years later, she disappeared over the Howland Island whilst she was attempting the first solo circumnavigation of the globe. Amelia was already renowned for solo flying across the Atlantic Ocean, and she also held many other awards for aviation.

She flew a custom Lockheed Model 10 Electra plane and has had many pictures next to it; her spouse was George P. Putnam.

We’ve decided our island is the perfect location for Amelia’s plane to of crashed on, she will be on the southern island with her plane crashed and she will have died on impact and have all of her equipment left on the southern island, she will be near a FedEx Package.

I plan to do the Wildlife map when Luke's research is completed and the cave systems map on Thursday or before Thursday. At home I'm going to start work on both maps and do some more concept drawings for things we will need to model.

-Adam

Sketchbook update

 I have taken some pictures from the file josh linked in the previous post and printed them out. We then all put the pictures in our sketch books and wrote a brief description of what is in the screen shot and why they are good for us to use as reference.

Here are a couple of the piuctures that all of us stuck in to our sketchbooks.

 -Ryan

Third attempt..

My third attempt at the water, I'm going to leave it for now and work on everything else.

- Josh

First and Second attempt at pixel sea

I started this yesterday morning but forgot to post and then touched it up a bit yesterday night and today, I'm still not 100% happy with it though so I may change it again.


                                                                         First attempt

Second attempt

- Josh

Map continued..

I've fully completed the map now, including a key, scale and a section of information explaining how big each area of the map is individually in length and width. We tested the size of the beach in CryEngine, having one half of the beach as 1 mile long. The results were quite shocking from one end to the other constantly sprinting it took about a day and a half (in-game time) to reach the end. We knew straight away everything had to be scaled down, So we decided if everything got scaled down to about 33% of the original it would probably still be big enough to let the player have enough content, without boring them with constant sprinting.

The map I drew was a basic natural geography map, it shows the size and scale of the map and how the areas are split up and a small section between each area that would be a transition e.g. the beach and jungle we'd have the sand right up to the edge of the trees with some palms coming out onto the beach to not make it look like, there's a block of sand and block of trees. Also some of the rocky areas around the coast of the island have some parts big enough to be explored, I've included three mini-islands one with a small jungle and two with small rock areas that will have caves.

I plan on drawing up another couple of maps, one for points of interest and where key parts of the map will be e.g. a waterfall or a clearing in a jungle, and another for where items and key resources will be, which I will draw in the near future and post here.

-Adam

Developments on Gameplay

We all spoke to Drew on Tuesday (20th Sept), and decided a few things about the game didn't make sense, or just didn't work well enough, so we decided to change a few things. I wrote down notes from the conversation and there is a few things we have definitely decided to change.

Conversation with Drew:

- Change to the main characters story, from a local fisherman on a small trawler because the open sea would be too deep for the size of boat we were thinking about, we've decided to make him a solo sailor circumnavigating the world, he's already been at sea for 90 days, and checks in every 12 hours. A storm hits and the character is swept overboard and his boat carries on the way it was headed and he had only just checked, he had his life preserver on with his basic equipment. After 12 hours passed he didn't check in, but because of how far the boat had travelled in the storm, chance of being found in a search is very low. The main character wakes up being washed upon the shores of the island.

- Basic equipment such as; a Knife, his life preserver, cigarettes, a Zippo Lighter, a GPS, Flare, Glowsticks, Whistle and a Flashlight.

- Coconuts that have fallen from a tree and left out in the sun ferment, and if drank make the player drunk, the more consumed the more drunk the player gets, this will be a good way of teaching the player they have to think about what items they are getting, and how they are using them.

- We want the intellect and originality of the player to be a large part of the game, and make it so if you do something in a clever way, and a way that makes sense it's easier, an example of this would be if a player found out that coconuts ferment, they would know they need fresh coconuts from a tree, so they would have to find a way of climbing the tree to pick the fresh ones out, if they decided to use no items to climb the tree, it could start a mini-game that makes you have to balance, whereas a player that would create a harness some how to support there weight, they would be quickly able to climb the tree with no obstacles.

-Adam

The Map

After Luke drew up the draft map, and we all decided on where everything on the island is from the film, and expanded the island slightly, I took the map home with me to draw up a larger size map (A4).

I've just completed the map, and wrote out the key, all is needed is to decide the scale of the map. I've also wrote notes from all the conversations which I'm going to finish typing up by the early hours of thursday.

-Adam