Spike's Digital Media Blog

  Today I mainly focussed on creating the branding guidelines for my app, so deciding the logo, typeface, colours used etc. I used this website, Red Ketchup colour picker to derive the numerical values for each colour I used from the Hex value in order to create consistent, documented colours for my brand, Ditu. I've also added a Navigation bar to my Figma wireframe. I'm unsure whether or not to use it yet or just swipe between pages as discussed in previous blogs. I think the navigation bar is better for now as you won't have to swipe through loads of unnecessary pages just to get to the ones you desire to. In addition to that navigation bar a search function may also be necessary to quickly locate certain dates, tags and timers too in the app. https://redketchup.io/color-picker Look at my Branding Guidelines (Work in progress)

  Today we discussed separate group activities and we all gave ourselves tasks which range from gathering stock sounds, concept art for the main enemy, creating fences and lampposts and making the geneal map layout, which I did. I made it on google draw as I planned to do it collabaritively but this made it quite blocky as the tools on the site are limited, either way I can refine it later in photoshop. We also began whiteboxing the level - checking the size of the level, how long it would take to complete, the others began creating models for fences, buildings and other misc objects and we also got basic movement coded into another test level. We are still working on getting Github desktop to work properly and sync all of what we have done so far.

 After realising that my original logo in my previous logo was too similar to Dolby's and slightly too angular on the letter 'D' itself so I altered it to look less akin to that. I also began prototyping and wireframing in Figma, I made an animated fade out for a splash screen while the app is loading too. I'm also consolidating whether or not to have a menu with icons on the screen or just swipe between pages with a 'hamburger' menu because of the current amount of pages aside from settings. Maybe this is indicative of me lacking functionality, maybe not. 

 Today we attempted to implement our project into Github but it is currently not saving properly so we will have to work on that as we develop other aspects such as 3D Models and level design. In the meantime we returned to blender and practiced by making some boulders for the environment which we shall use, especially at the end of the level which will require the player to scale a mountain. Jimmy also made this flashlight which we shall use for the game's stun feature. I'm glad I chose him as lead 3D model design because this model is very detaile and the result of 4 solid hours of work. Nice one Jimmy! Next up is making a full game design document outlining all our aims and fixing the github so we can start whiteboxing and planning level design.

  Our current Game Concept is a First-Person Survival Horror based around a monster that freezes from Flashlights. We currently don't have a design for the monster. Media products which I'm inspired by are: - Outlast:  (Official website) https://redbarrelsgames.com/games/outlast/ -Silent Hill:  (Official Website) https://www.konami.com/games/silenthill/gate -Slender the Arrival:  (Official Website)https:// www.slenderarrival.com/ These games all cultivate an otherworldly, disconnected feeling in their horror atmosphere and have monsters that chase the player throughout the game as a main mechanic. So far the team as we know it is me as coding/ map design, Nyssa for textures/ models, Jimmy for textures/ models and Mo for concept art and programming. I worked on a survival horror game too last year and I didn't add any sounds to it, which are very much part of the experience for creating ambience, or in a Jumpscare so I wanted to give the genre another shot and thankfully th

  Before beginning the Project it's good to find out how I would work with my Team. I found out I was an INTJ, which is likened to a tactician or a strategist or a planner. We all did the Myers-Briggs test and found out we all fell into the introvert category, which means we may struggle voicing our opinions and coordinating as a pitfall for our group. This is important to recognise early on so we can eliminate possible roadblocks early on. We had a short discussion after entering our group, Me, Jimmy, Nyssa and Mo. We concluded that we wanted to do a First-Person horror game based around a monster who freezes when flashed by a light in the Unreal Engine, this suits our previous Game Experience as we all made first person games and 3 of us have used Unreal previously. We also have experience with enemy pathing too which is really important for making the game scary and the main challenge effective.

  Today I decided on my App's function and the Logo aswell. The name Ditu is a shortened way of saying Day to day, which was chosen for the app because it's an all-in-one scheduling, countdown, calendar app in the abscence for an all in one function built for phones which has each separate function as a separate app. Ditu centralises all of these features into one. The two Ds meeting represents the name but also a Journal or a Planner and if you want to go really far, say it represents a second way of living out or planning your Day. The next step from here is wireframing the app and seeing how it all fits together. The font I used was also originally verdana which I then smitched out to a bold swiss because there was too much empty space within the Ds and the 2 was too angular, the swiss one was too actually but I curved it out after converting the text to a shape.