Creating HUDs

I have never worked on creating HUDS until now, and it is harder than I would have imagined. It is difficult to create something that permits for the necessary functions, while simultaneously leaving enough room on screen for the player to see what they need to see.

Writing for FrankenCorp

As previously mentioned, Meridian transformed into FrankenCorp in order to avoid the already vast space travel market. I have been tasked with writing interesting scenarios for the player to advance through in order to gain better equipment, and better deals on commodity body parts. My favorite part of doing these tasks is the creation of a flavorful character quote at the beginning of each mission to characterize both the world and some of its more notable inhabitants.

I also created a cyber-punk looking monitor set-up to house the writing, as seen below.

Meridian and A New Setting

This week I was fortunate enough to end up working on Brielle Porter's game pitch, "Meridian. The original idea was for a turn based space trader game, however as we have been told by the higher ups that this setting has all of the originality of robots and ninjas, we have decided to work on a new setting. While I was a little disappointed that we will not be working with the infinite wonder that is outer space, I must admit that there is always a certain amount of challenge and fun in working within a new restriction.

Once we have picked an idea to move ahead with, I might share my own and potentially what we have decided on. Unfortunately I know a small portion of my vast readership may be made of Arthur Slugworths, and I must therefore proceed with a modicum of discretion. My apologies to the many loyalists among you.

That being said, Buckminster Fuller had some interesting ideas.

Cheers to the loyalists, and the future of Meridian!
-Brett Patchin

The Pitches

At this point around two thirds of our class has pitched their game ideas, myself included. I will not say much on those of my classmates apart from how the quality ranged from fairly high to feeling thrown together at the last second. Unfortunately my pitch was on the lower end of the spectrum due to a asinine assumption that people would somehow garner complicated unspoken features through my constant repetition of the highly descriptive use of "umm....".

The main failing occurred in the presentation of this portion of my pitch:

The game is divided into two parts, the investigation round, and the accusation round.
During the investigation round players can move about the randomly generated house and find evidence towards who the killer is. However during this time the murderer is also able to attack the players, and move any evidence he believes might draw suspicion upon himself.

The problem here lies in the discussion of the investigation round and how I did not mention how this is conducted through actual gameplay. Putting forward that this would all be done in real-time via first person exploration would have made it seem more intriguing. As it stands all I have stated is a very overly general idea of what would occur.

Thank you again for reading,

With apprehension aplenty,

Brett Patchin