Off The Map: Off our rockers

So we have finally started the off the map competition and I am really excited! We need to win!
The brief is to create a game/environment surrounding Alice's adventures underground. The topics are Oxford, Underground and The Gardens. 

It was a rocky start at the beginning but we have done a lot in a week. There has been a few issues with evenness in our group; lets just say we have no concepters or engine people but we do have 3 environment artists and 3 character artists. So as you have realised I'm not best pleased that I have been given the job of engine person; I love engine work but I am just not very confident in being able to produce all the amazing ideas our team has come up with. Luckily my team is willing to help me and there is lots of other peers willing to lend a hand. So I will still be able to do alot of modelling and texturing (that being my speciality).

In this first week we all have been concepting and brainstorming to try and come up with some decent ideas for our game; and we have decided on a book/paper feel side scroller. Here are a couple concepts to explain what I mean. 

These are just a few quick photo-bashes to show what each of us see in our heads. We are still in the process of deciding what way we are going to go, for example are we doing it all book like but having it get colourful towards the end? or are we having the foreground realistic and the background paper cut-outs? We are still having some issues with this but we should hopefully clear this up next week. 

In my eyes this concept is perfect and is beautiful but I need to see what the rest of the team think.

I have also been working on the mechanics of the level here is a couple sketches I did to explain the pick up system we were going to have.

Unfortunately after trying these out in engine I had a few issues with picking up a second object; after you had grown or shrunk you couldn't pick up another item. This caused lots of confusion which meant I had to find another way to get the mechanic to work. Luckily a couple peers helped me out with some new blueprinting which means that when ever you press 1,2 or 3 you will either get small, big or normal sized. I still need to hook this up to when you pick up an Eat me cake or a Drink me potion but it should be a lot easier now. I have also been testing out pop up elements, such as animated trees; when you walk with in a certain radius they will start to pop up in the background. This will add an element of fun into the game.

Looking forward to updating you,

Cheerio for now.