Psyche & Fear Level
A unique mechanic of Distorted Delirium is that when in
the inventory screen, the player will be able to view a level /gauge which
indicates to them just how badly damaged Lianna's psyche is at that stage in
the game. A simple way to describe it is
by saying that this level visually shows the mental stability of Lianna.
Previously in my blog I posted a draft
copy of the mechanics, in this post was a section on the psyche gauge and how
it works so I'm not going to repeat
myself here unless necessary.
Designing the Psyche Level Gauge
My group were a little confused at first when I was
trying to explain and describe how the psyche and fear works in the game, after
reading my mechanics section they understand. However, in this time I was
already designing possible ways for the player to view Lianna’s psyche in game.
I knew that I wanted it to be a physical “level” where
the player could clearly see how mad they are. As you can see in the inventory
designs I posted previously my thought process was to have some sort of “bar”
which would “fill up” as Lianna’s psyche raised.
The next factor
you can see in the early inventory designs is that I wanted to have Lianna’s
fear represented on screen as an actual word. (Fear,
it’s stages and words have been described earlier in the blog, please refer to
ingame mechanics).
So, with those 2 basic concepts in mind, a bar meter for
psyche and text based fear description, here are my concept designs.
#1 - Initial Idea
The first thought that popped into my head was to have
the fear word pop up in some sort of “magic 8 ball” style in a camera lens. I
thought this linked the fear nicely to Lianna as a character. I then also
thought about having the “bar” for the psyche wrapped around the lens which
would “fill up” around it as Lianna’s psyche got worse.
#2 - Quick Concept Mock Up
#3 - Brain Practice
After this concept mock up, I had another idea. As
psyche is directly related to the brain, I figured having a brain as a part of
the design was crucial. So, this is when I decided to do a quick study of a
brain.
#4 - Applying This to my Design
I then looked into how I could incorporate my brain
study into my previous design. I decided that Lianna’s lens reference could
emerge out from the centre of the brain to indicate the fear by text and then
the brain could form the outer edges of the “bar”.
#5 - Mock Up Concept
#6 - Adding Colour
Thinking I loved this solid concept, I put it into
Photoshop and added colour and textures. I added coloured highlights at the
edges of the “brain” to indicate how the player would visually see their psyche
getting worse. The colours would ascent from green, mild psyche damage, to red,
extreme psyche damage. The fear word would change in accordance to the colour
highlighted around the brain.
#7 - Pushing the Concept Further
I showed this to my team who said they thought it was
clever, however I think we all agreed it wasn’t strong enough as a design. So,
I went back to the drawing board. Sticking more with my original “bar filling
up” idea, I went back to basics and designed the psyche so that there could be
a bar which would fill up the worse the psyche got. I felt this gave a clearer
indication to the player of how Lianna’s psyche damage was.
Still keeping the lens and brain idea I decided to try
and incorporate them both into one design focused around a bar meter. I was
looking at my brain study and saw the small part which elongated itself down
from the brain. I think this is where the spinal cord joins up with the brain
and cleverly saw an awesome link. I pulled this section down and if formed the
“bar” which I sought after or the design, but it also kept in with the brain
theme. The awesome link was that it could be seen as the spinal cord between
her brain and body (the camera lens). The spinal cord is crucially important to
our body and if broken can do us great amounts of damage, I thought this linked
in well because the bar was the representation of how badly Lianna’s psyche
was.
#8 - Final Design
So, as you can see there is now a clear “meter” bar
which can be filled up. It is split into 5 sections as these 5 sections
indicate when Lianna’s fear will change. Fear is then represented through text
appearing in the lens situated at the bottom of the bar.
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