week 8 - demographic

Demographics - B00219590

Right now, for our pitch, we are looking at demographics and wondering what is best for our game. To decide this we looked at the basics of what our game is , Its a sci-fi RPG with a deep and mature story being a main part of the game, with this in mind we have decided that the main demographic will be men aged 18 and up, there are a few reasons behind this decision:

With this game we want to create a story with depth, we want the characters to be fleshed out and we want the player to not only identify with the character they are playing but we want the player to see the player as an extension of themselves into the game world. Knowing all of this we feel that players  under the age of 18 will not fully appreciate the story  that we hope the game will have.

The reason that we have chosen men as our main demographic is simple, there are more male players with a xbox or PS 3, now this isn't the only reason for our decision. There is also the fact that studies show that the male gamer prefer games with fast paced action and from a first person perspective, which is exactly what our game is all about. Of course the gender doesn't really mater in  the whole scheme of things, female players will enjoy the game just as much as males will

The age rating for the game will be 16+, we feel that since the game will not have over the top violence or too much strong language there is no need for a higher rating, however this may be changed over the course of development 

week 7 -Controls

Controls 

Here we have a layout of the way we want the controls to be, its been difficult to get a the right balance of features and usability. We have borrowed some of the layout from some games with similar gameplay themes, such as skyrim with the dual wielding of weapons and the menu mapped to the directional buttons. I feel the control layout is intuitive and would be easy to grasp for people with experience in these types of games, the controls however may daunt newcomers to this game type but I hope they would be able to understand them with out too much effort.

week 6 - User Interface

User Interface 

Overview

This week we looked at user interface, more on how the game will look while playing rather than the menus. As the game is from a first person viewpoint and we want it to be as immersive as possible, I wanted the UI to be as minimal as possible this will allow the player to be totally within the game while playing. To achieve this kind of immersion we will have to cut down on screen objects that aren't necessary for our game and reduce the size of any that are.

Details

We looked at what UI game objects the player needs on screen for them to understand what's going on, this is what we found: 

- Crosshair, in the center , for aiming. 

- Health bar, for a graphical view of how much life the character has.

- Compass or Map, to let the player determine where they are in the world and where they have to go.

- Ammo and Weapon indicators, to allow the player to tell what weapon they are holding and how much     ammo it has left. 

These are the essential items that a UI needs for the game to be successful, especially in a RPG such as ours.Here is a list of how we are going to set it out:

1. The crosshair will be very simple, a dot for melee weapons and a cross for ranged weapons.

2. The health bar will run along the top of the screen, but only appear when the player is under attack or if there health is really low.

3. There will be a compass at the bottom of the screen but it will be much like the compass from skyrim or fallout where it is unrolled into a rectangle shape. This will tell players where to go and give the player a sense of spacial awareness. 

4. As the game will feature dual weapon holding there will  a ammo and weapon indicator at the bottom corners of the screen giving a readout of what weapon you are carrying and how much ammo is remaining 

Ideas 

I have a few ideas of a how we can make the UI even better : 

1. The UI slightly changes when the player puts on better armor. example. when the player buys a better suit of armor the UI is changed in certain ways such as, customizable color, the ammo and health readouts are graphically displayed in a better way and may be damage detection is more precise.

2. May be the user could arrange their UI the way that they want to, like they could move the health bar to the bottom and the compass to the side.