Week 2 – Project Proposal/ Description/ Plan

Project Plan

“To Bee” – Game Name

Project Members

• Hisham Jarad _{^{MA Game Design}}
• Sophia McPolin _{^{MA Game Design}}
• Michaela ‘Mesha’ Bruckner _{^{MA 3D Animation}}
• David Edwards _{^{MA 3D Animation}}

Project Description

A 3D simulator-like unity game/experience, focusing on the key role bees play on sustaining nature. Players will traverse an artistic 3D world disrupted by a natural disaster, restoring it to its former beauty via pollination.

Genre: Adventure Art, Idle game.

Target Audience: Unspecified, mass audience. All genres and ages.

Game essentially inspired by the ‘Flower’ game.

Notes on game plan so far (mechanics explained by Hisham included):

• Barren land (due to natural disaster), bee pollinates and restores land →
  greenery and life (animals).
  o Natural disaster = Volcanic eruption? Hurricane? Wind?
  o Animals = Deer, birds, and other bees (…for now).
• Bee pollinates via hives (hole in the ground?), circular motion of restoration.. Enlarges from hive point and other bees (animated) exit into outside world.
• Title screen similar to TLOU, close up of a flower, and scenery in the
  background – all in game engine, and main bee flies around.
  o Only bit of UI are: Game Title, and press ‘_’ to start
  o Once game is started, screen fades to black (or pans down into
  underground – still black) → hear the natural disaster occurring; winds
  or fire, etc. → screen pans up from ground and bee appears →
  introduced to barren land with one distinct flower in front of player
  (player can only move forward to flower, for this tutorial part) → once
  interact, player is free to roam.
• Flowers have particle systems exerted out; similar to TLOU spores, to
  resemble pollen.
  o Bee flies over/through pollen (maybe an animation to show it’s
  interacted – a flip, etc.), and bee enlarges (in a bouncy way).
• Different music for barren and restored land?
• Player controls direction and altitude/height of bee, but never sees the front of the bee.
  o Bee movement is attached to camera rotation for more effect.

First Meeting

While we have been conversing through an online message format frequently we decided to meet online to iron out a few concept details on Monday the 24/01/22. This blog post reflects the progress we have made so far.

Aims:

• To build an immersive game space, where players change the world through interactions.
• Emphasise the surreal visual aesthetic, by including vibrant colours and a consistent theme of game assets

The Animators Roles Include:

During the meeting, the team discussed the necessary animation that would be included:

-The Title Sequence

• Text.
• Background animation- that sets the scene.
• Bee flying around.

-Flowers (kind of flower/ colour = experiment with).

• Untouched, unpollinated – idle, blowing in the wind.
• Wobble- just been pollinated.

The flowers will have a particle effect that can be done in Unity (by the games designers to show that it has pollen to pick up.

–The Bee

The 3D bee model should have legs and fur that move with different animations.

PERSONAL NOTE, Check with team. Does the bee need another animation where it flies up at the start of the game/ end of the title sequence.

• Flying.
• Enlarge/ pop when collecting pollen (Mario-like after eating a mushroom). – games designers may do this.

-Swarm of Bees (same models as player bee)

• Coming out of the beehive.

-Spider on a Web

• Walking slowly around the web.
• Spiders web blowing in the wind.

–Rags or Other Items on Tree

• Simple decorations blowing in the wind.
• Other small simple things that show that is is windy.

–The Deer/wild dog Animations

• Run cycle on flat ground.
• Run up/down hill. (maybe inclination of angle needs to be done in game mechanics.
• Idle (not necessary).

Looped animation of all of these? (Then GD’s will put it on a track to change direction and location specific to the terrain).

-Grass blowing in wind (games designers decided to do it in Unity).

Primarily we need grass blowing in the wind. I could do this with alpha maps in Maya and animate them manually. Or use Xgen in Maya to generate the grass and animation, however, I have not figured out how to export this to Unity since this is more like a simulation

-Other Extras Animations May Include

• Flying birds in the sky. (looped and duplicated with different positions).
• Western style tumble weeds.
• Clouds moving quickly due to the wind. (make tests or can be done in unity).
• Small insects (not necessary as will not be seen clearly).
• Smaller animals (rabbit?)
• Fish swimming.
• Dead fish floating?

Things to show a windy environment.

Research

Game References

The video game ‘Flower‘. Our concept and game mechanics are very similar to this game. While our game style will be different in terms of theme and art style, similarities (thus far) can include how the player’s objective is to improve the wildlife landscape and they need to move between flowers in the field to do that.

Or ‘Journey‘.

This game is beautiful, mostly I think because of the aura that the player is immediately emerged into. The mise-en-scene and cinematography arranged provides a very atmospheric and serene experience. It would be nice if this was something that could be achieved with our game also.

While all of these aforementioned references are of a certain style or concept that we want, the main artistic style inspiration that we had in mind is ‘The First Tree‘ (David Wehle, The First Tree).

Natural Disasters

Adding a natural disaster to the game gives a theme of the concept with more substance. As well as this, it provides the player/character with another an objective or obstacle within the gameplay.

Mostly focussed on natural disasters that would affect the visual qualities of wildlife, that over time would eventually changing the plant landscape.

I made some research about which natural disaster, suitable for wildlife and plant landscape (Heyck-Williams, 2019).

Extreme Heat Waves/ Mega Fires

A heat wave is a period of increased air temperature and humidity. This can especially indicate changes in the climate.

The effects of a heat wave can be displayed in our game in the form of:

• Brown and dying plants e.g. the flowers, grass and trees
• A dried out water hole.
• Perhaps a fatigued bee and slower movements. A target for the bee could be to find water as well as pollinate the land.
• Fires and smoke.
• Sizzling visual effects. Waves of heat that effects the players sight like in deserts.

While these elements seems easy to portray, it will require much before and after scenery objects such as dead trees being brought back to life. This may need to be done by the animators, which will add to the work load. While this heatwave theme may be nice visually, it may not be a preferable theme to choose. I will look for priority of suitability elsewhere.

Hurricanes

The energy that feeds hurricanes comes from warm water, and climate change causing ocean temperatures to increase. The wind does the most damage, as picked up objects collide with stationary ones. Varying wind speed/strength determine the damage level, as well as the landscape contents.

The effects of a hurricane can be displayed in our game in the form of:

• Altered animations that show a greater wind strength and wind noise.
• Destroyed objects/buildings/structures.
• Greater air resistance in the players movement.

The wind theme gives us the clearest theme. There shouldn’t need to be excessive work to align with the theme by increasing wind strength and noise in the animations.

Algae Overloads

Algae overloads or ‘red tides’ happen when a microscopic plant-like organism grows out of control. This occurrence is hazardous to sea life and human health (What Is a Red Tide? NOAA SciJinks – All About Weather, n.d.). Some of these algae produce harmful toxics, chemicals that can kill the sea life, then the fish eaten by humans make them sick.

• There could be lots of lakes covered with green algae. A beach with a red tide
• Hazards such as trying to find a food source when toxins are everywhere.
• Dead/ sick sea life and land mammals. Sick prey will give toxins to the predators.

The main character may have to be a small quadruped animal in this concept. So that there are hazards such as the prey on the food chain that contains toxins. The food and water itself pose a danger while sourcing food is the challenge.

Algae overloads are not commonly thought of as a natural disaster, and would present a unique quality to the game. However, this is not very interesting, it would need personality in the scenery and character to be presentable to the player.

Droughts

“Prolonged droughts diminish food and water resources for wildlife. They escalate slowly and their damage is not immediately visible. They are not as dramatic as other natural disasters, however, the whole ecosystem is impacted with drought. Droughts can lead to increases in wildfires, insect outbreaks, forest diebacks, and altered rates of carbon, nutrient, and water cycling. The stress of incomplete recovery (from droughts) could lead to widespread tree death and lower the amount of carbon the land can absorb, fuelling a positive feedback lop and making climate change, and thus droughts, worse” (Heyck-Williams, 2019). The ‘symptoms’ of a drought could be depicted in-game by:

• Barren, dry land.
• Dead, starved animals walking slowly around or corpses lying around Animals eating other dead starved corpses (too graphic?).
• Birds picking on/ eating on dying animals.
• Dead/dry trees, without and leaves.
• Slowed player movement when fatigued and lacking intake resources.

Floods

Warmer air can hold more moisture, meaning heavier rainfalls. A constant upsurge in rainfall, overflowing rivers, and frequent landslides lead to a horrific catastrophe. The main hazards of floods include contaminated water, unsafe food, unsafe living conditions, spread of disease, mosquitoes and malaria, leakages of poisonous material and gas, exposer to moulds etc. The dangers of a flood’s aftermath is a threat to one’s health and safety. Floodwater is generally contaminated by various pollutants like sewage, human and animal faeces, pesticides and insecticides, fertilizers, oil, rusting building materials etc (Zalke, 2020). Ways that this can be depicted in-game include:

• Leakage of poisonous material or gas.
• Electrical currents.
• Sharp objects or debris that are carried in the floodwater.
• Insects – mosquitos.
• Floating Faeces- as well as nowhere to do your business (other than the water).
• Unsafe food or water.

This theme path seems like a good choice to do. We can decide on many hazards and obstacles that influence the gameplay style. However, this also means that we would have to change our game concept that we have now. Droughts can have the rejuvenation goal in the game, but a game about floods would be more oriented around the hazards. We could have a health bar and damage done to the body. As well as challenges to overcome such as the terrain or resources to maintain the player’s character. This is a great concept, but not the one we would want to go for without changing our whole concept.

Bee Smoker

A bee smoker is a metal contraption that keeps bees and beekeepers safe from getting stung. The smoke calms the bees and prevents them from releasing the pheromone called Isopentyl acentate that alerts other bees to get ready to attack by masking the pheromone (Salkeld, n.d.). As long as the bee smoke is not too hot, it does not harm the bees, cool to the touch is safe for them.

This bee keeping concept can be adapted into a hazard/obstacle in the game, or one of the ‘disasters’, although it is mad-made and not natural. The smoke could be coming out in a large quantities from smokers around the environment. The bee player must avoid the smoke or have their vision, senses and communication with other bees impaired. This seems like a simple concept to add as a hazard quickly. A game about bees will obtain an enhanced theme if we added more bee themed game mechanics, such as bee smoke as a hazard. We can think about whether or not to add this.

To BEE or Not to BEE Studies

Bee appearance and behavior may be related, genetic study reveals – BIOENGINEER.ORG

Art Style Ideas/ Plans

I collected a board of images on Pinterest to help me decide what kind of art style we will go for. (728) Pinterest I collected various versions of art style, detail, realism and colour scheme.

The First Tree

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The image above is from the game ‘The First Tree’. The fox character is low poly but smoothed. Simple design and straight forward material, without much detail. The same goes for the environment. While discussing with my collaborators, this is exactly the style that we are going for.

Pastel/crayon colour scheme. I like how each part of the environment has its own colour scheme. The open field, in image 2, has a more yellow high key lighting. the colour scheme is green/ brown/ yellow which repeats through the trees and grass. Whereas image 3 has a darker green theme. Image 4 has paler colours throughout the scene and a contrasting colour for the hills in the background. I appreciate this idea and the colour schemes present, they work well together. Especially Image 4, which has paler autumn colours. I will think about these colours going further in my project.

Flower

Colour Scheme

The way I can imagine the game now, I can see it with pale/ old chalk colours (like the ones below), and like the fourth image from ‘The First Tree’ game.

Game Name Ideas

I collected these name ideas for the game’s title.

• Broad Field
• Poor Little Bee
• Poor Little Insect
• Promise the wind
• Promise with the wind
• Flow
• Wind River
• As the Wind Blows
• All along the Wind I Run
• Falling Wind
• Falling Fields
• Open Blinds
• Voices in the Wind
• Surface of the Green
• Nate Core (Nature’s core?)
• Wind Strider
• Cross Wind
• Zella Valleys (Zella Definition: happy blessed)
• Bless

References

Company/individual developer (Release year) Title of game [Video game]. Publisher OR DOI or Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

David Wehle (2017), The First Tree. David Wehle.

Heyck-Williams, S., 2019. Climate Change, Natural Disasters, and Wildlife. [ebook] NWF, pp.1-7. Available at: <https://www.nwf.org/-/media/Documents/PDFs/Environmental-Threats/Climate-Change-Natural-Disasters-fact-sheet.ashx?la=en&hash=DFC7F87116E03583B1F81B3A64CB88FEF55039BC#:~:text=Natural%20Disasters%2C%20and%20Wildlife%20CLIMATE%20CHANGE%2C%20NATURAL%20,skies%2C%20and%20toxic%20water.%20Many%20natural%20disasters%20are> [Accessed 25 January 2022].

Naughty Dog (2013) The Last of Us [Video Game], Sony Computer Entertainment.

Nintendo EAD (1985) super Mario Bros [Video Games]. Nintendo.

Salkeld, A., n.d. Why Do Beekeepers Use Smoke? How It Affects Bees | Buddha Bee Apiary — Buddha Bee Apiary. [online] Buddha Bee Apiary. Available at: <https://www.buddhabeeapiary.com/blog/why-do-beekeepers-use-smoke> [Accessed 28 January 2022].

Scijinks.gov. n.d. What Is a Red Tide? | NOAA SciJinks – All About Weather. [online] Available at: <https://scijinks.gov/red-tide/#:~:text=A%20red%20tide%20is%20an%20event%20that%20occurs,be%20hazardous%20to%20human%20health%20and%20sea%20life.> [Accessed 25 January 2022].

Thatgamecompany (2009) Flower. Sony Computer Entertainment.

Zalke, T., 2020. Most common health risks of flood disasters. [online] MedClique. Available at: <https://www.medclique.org/environment/health-risks-hazards-floods-disaster/#:~:text=Most%20common%20health%20risks%20of%20flood%20disasters%201,and%20after%20a%20disaster%20or%20traumatic%20event.%20> [Accessed 28 January 2022].