Game Concept(s) II and Tutorial I

So, it's been nearly a week since I've had my first tutorial.

Since the disastrous weekend, some good has come out of it and that I had an idea for the first 'chapter' of my project. The scene begins with a girl seemingly talking to herself only we find that she is actually talking to a bodyless voice.  Both girl and voice seem to know each other well and have worked together before.  We find that the voice is called Raven.  The characters talk about the objective of the game coming up which is to get to the glowing object at the top of the building.  The doors are locked and cannot be opened physically, so the aim is to find another way.

Evaluative notes after the first prototype:
- Animated text looks naff, will there be another way to do some simple animation?
- Time limits
- Actions happening when a specific event is filled.
- Click games?

Notes from tutorial:
- Animation 2.5d<-- only done in AS3 so to combat my brain exploding with code, we figured that it's best to have little animations for stuff like item interaction and video 'transitions'.
- Look up the drag and drop example as it's similar in principle to the whole 'unless the condition is met, event x will happen'.
- Setting the timer is a conditional statment.
- Click games =  maybe.  I think a click game would be a good idea as it adds variety to this type of game, I don't really want to copy the Samarost type games either...

Next tutorial session is at 11:30!

TO DO:
- Prototype shape animation for drag and drop.
- Prototype animation for background.

Machinarium:
Interesting and I find it slightly eerie game to play.  Awesome artwork and has a lot of atmosphere.  Not sure how my game will compare to the maker of Samarost.

Game Concept(s) II:
There were a few other game concepts that I had in mind at least for the 2nd chapter of the game.

TUBE MAP: The idea is that for the character to 'travel' to different places, I'd use the tube map to indicate where each place is located.  A picture will pop up when the cursor is hovered about it so players would know what the place looks like...at least in the Real Plane.  In the Dream Plane however, I'd warp the map and the image it shows somehow.

Colour Palettes: The 2nd chapter will end at a cliff hanger where Raven appears in the Real Plane and the main character realises that that the Dream and Real Planes are shifting and merging into each other.  Say if the Real Plane was colourless and the Dream, colourful, the colours would start to seep in.  Or if there were specific colour palettes for the different planes, that would work too.

Mini Games: As with the click game mentioned above, I was thinking that the main character would 'awake' from the first scenario in chapter 1 and go to school and have a home economics lesson, where the player can play cooking mini games.  Mini games = yes as they add reply value from the usual point and click I feel.  The same programing could be used for different parts of the game such as in the Dream Plane, the main character would need to 'cook' something to pass a hungry ... nightmare?  Or the clicking game would be used to out run an Indiana Jones style boulder.

Well that's all the notes for now.  It's nearly 4am and I need to be up in a few hours.  I did some drawings for the main character in PSCS4 so I'll post that up soon.