More Research

So on Thursday we decided to go ahead with the Mall Cop idea. So for this weekend we have to research anything and everything that can help us make a better game and hopefully allow us to hit the ground running.

For the first level, we want to stick with the Mall Cop idea, and we would like to stick with the Mall as the first level for our game. Marty has said that we should change the setting, since we don’t want to encourage shooting in a mall setting. Another example of this would be like a school or some other setting tied to sensitive issues or accidents in the past. I think that this is a place where the art and the story will really help us.

First, the story that we have at the moment is that the Mall Cop is bored at his job and he falls asleep, then he goes into a dream where he saves the world from zombies and other things that threaten to destroy us all. I think that if the player knows this is a dream, they are obviously not going to think its real in any way or form.

Second, the art style will also helps us set ourselves apart from reality. What we’ve discussed so far is that we can make all the characters look cartoony and or comical to emphasize that this is a dream. Someone also said that if we tried to make them cell shaded, it might also get the idea across that this is not real, something similar to the look and feel of Team Fortress 2.

Notice how the way that the models are made, we can obviously tell that they are not realistic at all; they also kind of remind me of the The Incredibles. If we can create our models to look something like this, then we should have no problem with the mall setting or anything else that we have planned.

Another thing that we would also like to do is something similar to what Metal Slug does in their games, we can have hostages throughout the level and it will be one of the tasks of the Mall Cop to save them. In exchange we might be able to get power-ups from them as well as bonus points or other things that we might want to add to the game. This would also add to the story that the Mall Cop is a “hero.”


One thing that I'm also going to try and look into is a game called Left 4 Dead, which is a FPS zombie game that takes place in a mall. I want to see what they did and how they did it, but I just hope I won't have to buy it. If I do end up buying the game, it will be in the name of "research" or at least that's what I can tell my wife. :P


That's all for now, thanks for reading.