Designing a Game World: Formative Submission Year 1 Game Art. (Kyle Smith)

Designing a game world.

By Kyle Smith

Introduction

Within this assignment we were given  an opportunity to develop and design a game world. We were given choice of two prompts and develop ideas within those two prompts.

Within the prompts given to us I decided to chose The Abyssal Dungeons which abyssal means depths and ocean bed. Underwater Dungeon. That's kind off cool. For another prompts I chose Artifact 2 and that's a Knife from the Congo's.

After Look around for this particular knife I found it belong to Ngombe people. Ngombe are known as water people and believe in mythical entities like Akongo and Mbokomu. Akongo is a creator god which is a deity that's responsible for creating planet earth. And Mbokomu is said to be the first women on earth. I like the idea using Mbokomu or the idea of a powerful women. Mbokomu is the daughter of Akongo. I find that coincidentally picking the two prompts that I picked was really suitable as Ngombe are the water people and I have to design water dungeon pretty much it's really suitable.

I found during my sketches I started doing more dragon sketches. Because dragons show power and danger. So I unintentionally started sketching them. But because my Prompt is based around more Congo area maybe crocodile like dragons would be suitable. I was given that feedback like the Necrolith bone dragon from War Hammer. Which I agree with. A dragon with more crocodile features would be more suitable for my dungeon.

Because my general culture is mixed with African and Water based dungeon, I have the idea using muddy yellows and oranges as when mixing sand with water you get a mud colour. The Congo environments are mixed with grass and mud. I like the idea of using sand though. Thing I noticed about Africa is that they use more rounded objects like round pillars and houses. Even when using other primitive shapes they always seem to be more rounded in it's shape like a triangle or squares. Africa is famous for it's pyramids and it's a popular tope in Archaeologist type of films like Indiana Johns, Tomb Radier and ect. So a dungeon based in the Congo or Africa would be a trope that would make sense and popular with media.

                    Warhammer ^

Dungeons are one of the most used tropes in fantasy media. Usually having some treasure and obstacle in the way. The term dungeon means unground prison usually in castles. However, dungeons in media is different usually being structures underground that could be anything and is not always linked to castles or prison cells.

^ Black Clover                                   

I wanted to start with the dungeon entrance. I feel like a dungeon underwater shouldn't be a massive entrance. The idea of making it hidden so it could feel like you could also find a dungeon underwater. I believe it makes it more immersive as a undiscovered dungeon that's not obvious to spot compared to a massive undiscovered building which anyone with eyes could point out it's there.

Because in African culture a lot of things are rounded like I stated. So making a boss arena, I wanted to make a rounded arena. It's harder than I thought to be honest to draw this. When sketching I released it reminded me of a gladiator battle arena. I thought for a second that gladiators arenas are based in Rome in Europe then found The Amphitheatre of El Jem in Tunisia. It was built by romans after conquering it's land in the Third Punic War. So linking my Idea to a already existing thing within my prompts is really good for my world building. In my opinion good worldbuilding comes from having these strange idea and linking them to real life and slowly developing place that at first seems completely strange and putting that real life element in makes you're audience investing in your world like in games, manga/comics and more.

Next I wanted to start thinking about the interior of this arena. I wanted to do the throne. So I quickly sketched an Idea of the throne. I really liked the idea of the sword placed within a mouth of a dragon. My dragon heads needs changing to a more crocodile like head rather than the typical British dragon.

I wanted to do quick sketches on the layout of my dungeon so I made around 5 rooms and maybe a sixth. These rooms are the Entrance, Cell Block 1, Gladiator room, Cell block 2. I made around extra 2 rooms but those are a lever room to open the gate to the Gladiator room from the Cell Block 1 and Stairs room but I wouldn't count that as a room as it's just stairs. I would love to add a 6th room. This room will be under the Gladiator room and that would be called the boss room. There's a lot of water within the Gladiator room as it's underwater themed dungeon and uses water as decoration like water fountains that comes from the dragon heads. You can see that sketch on my previous sketch, that would be sketch 8. in the middle of the gladiator arena is a massive drain cover to keep the water in the in the room at a minimum. My idea is you encounter a fake boss when going into the gladiator room like a version of the crocodile dragon and through the hypothetical battle you can see the someone watching above the arena and that would be the place where the person who has the most power decides on your fate. Like royalty or someone not as powerful like fight organiser. And when defeating the dragon the boss whose watching will jump down and breaking the drain cover which the player should be standing on and you fall to a massive empty space where all this water comes from. 

(A more developed sketch of the room.)

Here's more initial sketches of my props in the arena like the little step you need to walk down or the gates for the gladiator room. And the pillars in the corners of the room with the heads of the dragon you are battling. I really liked how I have developed my Ideas so far.

I tried drawing the crocodile like dragon. I really liked how 27/26 turned out. I never drew a crocodile so my first few attempts was me learning about drawing a crocodile. The first two was drawing for the sake of drawing. I didn't really think about drawing anything design wise. My thought just was draw crocodile. And then my third one looked like a wolf. I was doing the 5 minutes method so sketching anything that came to mind was my first attempt but that's when after looking at it I made the mistake and knew not to draw that and so I drew 25 and it looked more like a crocodile. The crocodile looked awkward though and It frustrated me so like with 24 I changed that in my next sketch. I started getting the crocodile dragon down a lot more with my next two. I started to add my wings for my dragon and liked this open wings. My final page, I wanted to show an idea I had for this dragon. Dragons are known for there elemental powers through out media and So with it being a water temple, I wanted to show it's elemental powers maybe after getting it to low enough health. It's wings become powered and you see this dragon stop glowing blue.

Notes:

44/100 = 56

Do some sketches about my prompt itself.