Thursday 15 November 2012

BA4: Game Design Document #31


Designing the Inventory (continued)
I recently finalised the layout for the inventory so yesterday I started putting it altogether for a screen shot example. As I had created both the psyche and health illustrations, I felt it was time to create the final asset. 

#1
Sketching the layout with a pencil on paper. 


#2
Blending the Psyche gauge into the black background and adding textures to give it depth. I also added rough guide lines for the other areas I needed to include


#3
Adding the heart/health illustration and placing it in position. I then started work on the borders for the item grid and text box. I found an amazing font on http://www.fontspace.com/kats-fun-fonts/kr-deco-frames which gave me borders instead of letters. I placed these into the screen shot and textured them with a wooden effect. 

 
#4
Next I moved onto texturing the heart and rib cage. I did two versions, one where I kept the gaps between the ribs greyish from the original sketch and the other where I blacked out the gaps so that it appeared to merge out from the background. I showed Stacey (Olive unfortunately wasn’t online at the time and I needed a quick decision so I could carry on with the design) and she said she preferred the black version so I went with it. 

  
#5
Next I moved onto designing the batteries which the player would see on their inventory screen to inform them of how much battery power their flash light has left. I wanted to keep the design simple so that the player would recognise what it was instantly. As the game doesn't give much in the way of tutorials, having the battery as a more universal symbol rather than something metaphorical we don’t run the risk of the player not putting two and two together to realise this is the battery for their torch. I then placed an example of the battery onto the screenshot of the inventory. 

  
#6
The final component of the inventory is the illustration link the player can click to view Lianna’s journal. Her journal is where clues, facts and findings are “stored”, as well as the map. There will be a shortcut to the journal from the keyboard in game but this is just another way to access it. After designing it and creating it in Photoshop I added it to the design. To finish off my design, I increased the canvas width and height to make it appear as if cantered on a widescreen monitor as well as adding example text to the text box. 

  
Texture References
I do have a small texture library but unfortunately nothing which I could’ve used for this work so I used le internetz to find some and, of course, the right thing to do is reference them, so here they are! (Click to view the website)

 
 




 

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