Making a beautiful Apocalypse : Part 1 Planning

Hello world? So first things first I would like to introduce myself. My name is Samantha and this is my first blog post :D I am not really much of a writer but, very excited to give this a go!

I recently joined a Mentorship with Leonardo Iezzi (I cannot believe my luck) It is probably the biggest project I could have possibly decided to do...but fkit here we go! All or nothing right?

So enough yipyap lets talk about my project

My first work was to come up with a theme... what was I going to make?

I have always wanted to do something post-apocalyptic, I love spending time in worlds like Dying Light, The Division 2 and Last but not least Far Cry 5 and Far Cry New dawn. I have always been blown away by the beauty of these worlds even though they are in less than perfect circumstances! And so from the inspiration of those games I immediately knew what I wanted to make!

• I want a beautiful apocalypse 

• I want a settlement.. a place to call home

• I want the outside world to feel scary and unsafe but, the beautiful nature should contrast the horrible state of what is going on in the world.

And I also want a challenge... something to grow and showcase the skills I learned through all the online courses I have completed. I want to challenge my modeling, sculpting, texturing skills and also learn new skills such as level design 

So very excited to dig into 3d and starting the grey box phase of my project … Leonardo slowed me down and made me take some very important steps backwards and take note of the following.

You cant just create a visual space, you need a story, the world needs a purpose

Along with the story and purpose.. I am building a game world! So my environment needs to work for my game

Once you have those things established it becomes much easier knowing how you want to move forward

Roughly an idea of what my game would be like ( I'm just creating the environment, but knowing the type of game helps to guide the creation of the world. For example, does your character need to take cover behind walls? should the player be able to climb? All things to think about, and keep in mind)

Survival game

Zombie shooter

Multiplayer (survive with friends)

Choose out of 12 characters (all have different skills)

World quests and homestead quests

Loot and crafting

Base defending

Max Players 7

The story

Group of hikers on route to a nearby ghost town gets alerted by radio that there has been a virus breakout, ground zero was traced to a bio Lab in Kansas, known to experiment with viruses in animals. It is being reported that the infected are slow but very strong. They are impervious to pain or injury and appear to be unaware of surroundings. Infected appear to have no human blood, no blood flow and they freeze quickly. Hordes have been seen moving south. They are constantly hungry and attacking at an alarming rate. The government has advised people to hunker down and reinforce buildings and homes.

The hikers have no choice but to make the small ghost town their home for the time being! They are a group of 12 hikers with varying levels of outdoor survival skills, with two of the guides being experienced with desert survival. Starting rations are limited to what they had packed for the hiking trip, they also had limited equipment for hiking with some survival tools. But nothing that would be really helpful for reinforcing a area to survive in. They needed to start working quickly and improve and improvise with what they had on hand.

The game environment takes place about a year later, everyone has settled in and made a home of the ghost town, with only 7 of the survivors remaining...