Industry Practice: Character Story and Question Ideas

 Industry Practice: Character Story and Question Ideas

Before the next session, I wanted to create the story for my character, as well as the previously discussed idea of key questions the player will ask them that will help decide the outcome of them at the end of the game.

Before starting on the story for my character, I created a list of key facts that I need to consider as I write the story.

- The game is ONLY 10 minutes.
- This is for one character out of 5 that exist within the game (excluding the main character). That means around 2 minutes or less will be spent on each character. 
- Themed around depression and hopelessness.
- Answers shouldn't be based around instantly making the patient feel better. Instead, should point them in the way of recovery.
- Try not to overlap with the other patients in terms of the condition discussed.

An important thing within the industry is to have a plan and workflow for each specific part of a project that will be tackled. For me, I think an important part of this workflow is idea generation, and creating a list helps me with that in this instance. With this list, I wrote the initial draft of the character story. I wanted to keep it short to fit the length of the game.

The Jester feels his life is a showcase of losing everything, his job, his future, his loved ones. His time is now a bottomless void, where all his hobbies went to die and any hope quickly fades away. Any attempt to help him previously has been met with a pessimistic response, with him often describing his own situation as "deserved."

Whilst writing this, I used an online document by Mark Zimmerman and Lena Becker, titled Depressed patients who do not believe they deserve to get better: Prevalence, clinical characteristics, and treatment outcomes (National Library of Medicine 2023).

For the questions directed from the patient to the player, I wanted to create a diagram showing the map of dialogue for my specific character. After discussing it with my group, Faye was using a Miro Board (RealtimeBoard, Inc. 2011) to record their dialogue steps. I wanted to use a similar format to make it cohesive as we discuss with the group, so I went the same way.

I made the dialogue tree, which can be viewed here.
With this done, I was ready for the next group meeting session. Overall I feel I am handling my own responsibilities well, as well as doing a good effort of communicating with my team.

References: 

RealtimeBoard, Inc. 2011. Miro [online]. Available at: https://miro.com [Accessed 6 February 2025]

Mark Zimmerman and Lena Becker, 2023. Depressed patients who do not believe they deserve to get better: Prevalence, clinical characteristics, and treatment outcomes [online].  National Library of Medicine. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36716464/ [Accessed 6 February 2025]

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Toolkit 3D - Character Sculpt Project

Image
 Toolkit 3D - Character Sculpt Project Research and Thumbnails For the 3D side of toolkit, our project was to create a character from one of many briefs. With a specific style and inspiration I am already fond of, I chose brief number one: the Cybernetic Samurai. Looking at the brief I have chosen, it states that the character needs to be " A fusion of traditional samurai armour with futuristic robotic enhancements, glowing energy veins, and a mask that combines human features with mechanical parts." This is a lot of specific details to unpack, so I created a diagram of the different features that I could add to as I research. By treating these different sections as whiteboards, I can research them individually so that I have lots of ideas I could add into the thumbnails.  As usual with 3D modelling, I started with researching specific styles to use as inspiration. Style Research To start with, I began by looking at games before individual artists. I first looked at Bomb Rus...
Read more

Toolkit 3D - In-Engine 3D Character Modelling Process

Image
 Toolkit 3D - In-Engine 3D Character Modelling Process This blog will include the timelapse, and timestamps referring to said timelapse with explanations. I normally take screenshots as I work, and annotate those, but I feel that I want to try a different method of documenting my process since screenshots can be disruptive. Firstly, as a refresher, my final design for my character is below. Normally, I would bring this into the 3D software so I could have the reference there, but I opted not to do this. I find references in ZBrush to be disruptive more than anything towards my workflow, and I prefer working with the reference in another monitor whilst sculpting, rather than it being in the software. Here is the timelapse, which I will reference when giving a timestamp and explaining my process. STEP 1: CREATING THE MESH The Body For this model, I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone a lot more than last project. Last time, I heavily relied on Blender, only really using ZBru...
Read more