Monday, 26 September 2011

ideas for Carnival Shooter : The Weird West

As i work on my carnival shooter i have to come be interested in a genre known as the 'Weird' west which is a combination of the Western with another literary Genre usually horror , occult, or fantasy. 

iv come to be interested in three games from this Genre and one book source which are

Games:
Red Dead Redemption : Undead Nightmare
Darkwatch
Silver-Load

Books:
Deadlands RPG
High Moon Comic

the most common aspect of these games and book is that it deals with Horror or Occult into the Main-stream wild west with Dead-lands RPG and Undead Nightmare being a few of the best examples of which i enjoy. with undead, werewolves ,vampires and other legends and  folk tales come to life in this genre.

Red Dead Redemption : Undead Nightmare . Developed by Rockstar San Diego

A DLC ( downloadable Content) for Rock-star's western epic Red Dead Redemption which is set later in the game where overnight a  Plague of undeath ravages the Frontier animals and people become blood-thirsty ravaging monsters. even thought this is an open world game i do enjoy it and it inspires me to do similar work mostly involve adding zombies and other creatures of the night into my carnival shooter.








Zombie running in the Wildness of > Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare 








Darkwatch: Curse of the West  . developed by High Moon Studios
DarkWatch is the Story of Outlaw-Turned-Vampire Jericho Cross who is trying to find an End to his Curse when he unleashes an Ancient Vampire on the Old west causing the Dead to Rise and he himself is bitten and doomed to become one of them if he cant stop it. Darkwatch is one of my favorite FPS (first-Person Shooters) being that its highly Detailed in both environment and characters as well as the shooting mechanic used. The reason im adding this is because the dark toned landscape and environment has inspired  to go into games design i love how its presented and hop in someway to work this into my own game.

< Darkwatch is inspired by both horror and western movies, its mostly remembered for its remix of the Good,the Bad and The Ugly song by  
Ennio Morricone.








Although made in 2005 Darkwatch's graphics were ( in my opinion) really detailed ad smooth witch you can see in this screenshot the look of it is amazing with how well done its been made.




















Silverload . Produced by Vic Tokai


A very old game i recently discovered though by today's Standard's it is outdated and old i have a soft spot of it as its old and a very good  with very good graphics and interesting story coupled with gore and horror makes it one of my best. The starts :The game begins just after a wagon caravan has been attacked by werewolves, who ended up stealing a man's only son. As the Clint Eastwood inspired anti-hero cowboy you agree to go to the town, find the child and return him to his father. As you venture into the town picking up various objects, interacting with the locals, and finding a safe place before the werewolves come to eat you, you soon realize that this once God-fearing and prosperous silvermining town has become a cursed den of vice, ghouls, vampires and werewolves.




although poor in quality this is the only image of gameplay i could find that would work showing you the dark tone of the game as the player investigates a hanged corpse in a graveyard just outside of town.
























Books: Deadlands RPG .Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Deadlands is a genre-mixing alternate history roleplaying game which combines the Western and horror genres, with some Steampunk elements. It was written by Shane Lacy Hensley and published by Pinnacle entertainment Group.  


this RPG (role-playing game) is something i discovered over a year ago or so i do rather enjoy reading about the stories and information about the locations, the creatures, the characters and the roles people can play out in the Weird West.

The canonical, basic setting is referred to as the "Weird West" due to the juxtaposition of the Western setting with the horrific and fantastical elements of the game. The history of the Weird West is identical to real-world history, up until July 3, 1863. On this date in the fictional universe, a group of American Indians from various tribes, led by a Sioux shaman known as "Raven," performed a ritual in an effort to drive out the European settlers. This ritual created a conduit to a spiritual realm populated by powerful malicious entities known as the "Reckoners." The events surrounding and immediately subsequent to Raven's ritual is known as "The Reckoning."
The Reckoners feed on negative emotions, particularly fear. Sufficient levels of fear in the population of a given location allow the Reckoners to begin subtly altering the environment of that location: the sun shines a little less brightly, trees become stunted and "evil" looking, rock formations take on the appearance of corpses or monsters, and so on. The more powerful the fear, the greater the environmental changes.
Deadlands features a unique way of creating playing characters for the game. Instead of spending character points, or randomly rolling dice, a character's abilities are determined by drawing cards from a standard 54-card poker deck (jokers included), which determine the character's Traits (their basic attributes). The game also uses Polyhedral dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20) which are referred to as the "Bones", and a set of red, blue and white poker chips.











High Moon .Zuda/DC comics                    
High Moon is an award-winning werewolf western webcomic series, developed in 2004 with a debut in 2007 as a part of Zude, DC comic' webcomic imprint. The first season concluded on July 8, 2008. Season two ran from August 16 to November 25, 2008. Season three began its run on February 9, 2009.
Created by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis High Moon was part of Zuda's initial launch in October 2007. In November 2007, High Moon was awarded a contract with DC Comics, where the strip was serialized on Zuda.com. Scott O. Brown is the production artist and letter.
This comic book iv been looking at is really good the style and way it is drawn is amazing, the story,the characters everything is well done and interesting as you can see by the drawing of the character Matthew Macgregor and the other comic panels below.
In the first series, a bounty hunter, Matthew Macgregor, investigates a series of strange happenings in the Texas town of Blest, where drought has brought famine and hardship to most of the town and surrounding ranches. Additionally, the nights are haunted by Werewolves. While Macgregor, a former Pinkerton detective, seeks to uncover the town's secrets, he tries desperately to keep secret his own past steeped in witchcraft and the supernatural. The second series finds werewolf-hunter Macgregor in Ragged Rock,Oklahoma, investigating a series of murders following a bizarre train robbery, and finds himself caught in a vendetta and confronting a technological monstrosity. In series three, Macgregor helps a young woman and finds himself amid two warring factions in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  


Tuesday, 13 September 2011

Initial Design ideas

Carnival shooter: a small time casual game that i like its easy and simple to do just point and shoot i like this idea and will use it as the base-work of my own carnival game I'm also thinking about adding the style of the game into my own which will help it look nice for my Audience on the web.
as you can see the game is simple yet colorful in its depiction of a modern take on the classic carnival shooter which i do like and might use for my carnival game.


the shooting mechanics are also very nicely done and easy to use with just a mouse which i also might use for my game.




^ a screen-shot of Carnival shooter.


Alien Humanoid: a new-grounds side shooter that is rather popular i like its style and how it works the difficult and how its drawn also works for me in that i want something to look appealing to my Target audience but also have a level of difficulty and maybe a bit of gore to keep it interesting for gamers both new and old. Also the way the game is drawn is amazing and fun and i will do a-bit more research into it in a later post for more info on the game.











in all i want my game to be fun and interesting to a wide range of people something that can be fun and difficult for all i also plan to add a timer and a few other ideas but for now I'm happy with this

Develop Initial Design Ideas

Location: Swampy Carnival/rundown Grounds
I want my game to be dark and scary like a Halloween the background could be the fairgrounds run down and shadows moving about in the dark as you play thought i don't want it to be to putting off for most people so it can be open to a wider audience and Im also thinking of adding some clowns like the ones in the splatter-house Remake ( see research for picture) and giving it the style of the 1988 splatter-house.
                        A screen shot of a zombie clown from Left 4 dead 2 which was released in later 2009.


Characters/creatures that i will use in the game: Clowns/zombies and monsters
seeing as this is a Halloween themed game i plan to add to creatures that the player must shoot in order to gain points as iv said before i'd liked to add Clowns based of the splatter-house series but also id like to add sludge monsters,zombies and other creatures as a homage to Goosebumps and zombie movies so that people can recognize and enjoy it.
                                         a screen-shot of Splatter-house 1988 gameplay.


style and gameplay: what iv learnt is that the most important is time Management  the player will have a short time to shoot the creatures before they can get close enough to attack at which point the game is over. i would like to style it in homage to the classic horror games of the 80's and 90's as well as Carnival games in general. 
                                            A illustration of the Stagger Inn in horror-land.

Final : id like to present a working carnival shooter that will be interesting to all kinds of people but at the same time scare them i really like the idea myself and adding the styles of Splatter-house Goosebumps maybe adding some of Alien Humanoid will be interesting to see how it comes out and i do like the idea of using some of my favorite hobbies to do my work with new ideas and detail iv never done

Research into games and Imagery

Splatter House series - Namco
A Side-scrolling Beat-em up game of 1988 the style of game play is both interesting and fun, the style is interesting in my research because the graphics are 2d and would look good a carnival shooter game i am mostly interested in the 1988 but i do plan to use abit of the 2010 remake (clowns and style of a carnival level in the game) for my carnival shooter.

<< Splatter-house 1988 note the side scrolling graphics












<< Splatter-house 2010 Clown loading screen  which inspired me to use the Halloween theme for my game.






Goosebumps- R.L Stine
a series of books iv always been fond of the books are an influence for me because they are both scary yet suited to children and adults alike they also have a nice idea for a carnival game ( welcome to horror-land series) that i might use in my own game. 

the books of horror-land have a Carnival theme to them which i like. the major difference in the two books is that the Horroland book has a more cartoony look then the original first print book.

















Alien Humanoid-Newgrounds
Alien Hominid (released as Alien Hominid HD on Xbox 360) is an independently developedconsole video game released for Sony PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube in 2004 through publisher O~3 Entertainment.
i like it for its style and how its like the classic side shooters i might use this style in my game.


< Cover-art for the arcade port of Alien hominid

Carnival Shootout


Graphics: Carnival Shooter (http://www.flash-games.net/game/2888/carnivalshooter.html)
.Simpel grahics (detailed enought to look intresting to people) maybe cartoonish or hand drawn/low end grahics to help run on older computers.

The Graphics are easy and simpel but very cheerful and colourful they to be made using a texture program and placing them in game using flash player.
Gameplay: Simpel point and click interface (pointing the cursor over a target and pressing the right mouse buttion to shoot) note: i might use a cursor or a realistic Iron sights of a gun.

My idears:
.Halloween Carnival game/Horror Theme?
.Possibely gore/blood but only mild (13+)
.power ups and bonus's for kills (to keep game intresting)
.simpel to use control/easy to remeber

Influences:
Splatterhouse ( all 4 games)
Carnival Shooter
Zombie Erik
Goosebumps welcome to horrorland
Comparing:
.Casual games                       .Hardcore games
. Standard to poor graphics      .Highend and detailed graphics
.Point and click/puzzle/ shooters    .Animated 3d games ( shooters etc)
. can fit into any Genres                 .Split up into different kinds of Genres