Mockup's Tweaked

I've tweaked my designs slightly from before, I've tried to make them a little clearer and the chat box is less transparent so you should be able to see it on every screen.Ive also experimented with a white stroke around the nav buttons instead of black. I'm aware there may be too much colour in my designs, and perhaps I was trying to copy dizzee too much so I may have a look into dumbing them down a bit. Chris seems to have it pretty nailed and Liam's is very clear.

Draft Screen updated

We had another talk today and it seems we're all heading in the same direction in terms of both style and mechanics. On Friday we'll bring to the meeting final drafts of the style and the lists of game mechanics we have, compile them together and discuss what's good in each and then choose a final theme to go with.

After some feedback today I also changed a few of the things on mine. There's still a few things missing, but I've tried to make the text more eligible.

Mockups

We decided to each go away and come back with some designs on what the game should look like. I've done a kind of promo page, a page to show items and a page to show jobs. There isn't all the detail that would be in the finished game by any means but it gives an idea.

I have been heavily influenced by Dizzee's album art using the same bright colours and fun graphics etc that he uses. They are still in quite a raw state and would need tweaking to make the more usable, the chat for instance would be quite hard to see on some screens.

There are a few different versions, I have made one where the nav buttons are semi transparent so what ever colour page you are on will show through. I have made another with colour coded buttons, jobs for instance is purple to match it's page colour scheme and items/inventory is yellow to match it's respective scheme.

For the items/inventory page I've made a slightly different version where instead of a badge type emblem to display a item in this case it's a microphone I've recreated the wheels of Dizzee's "Bonkers" video. This may work with some changes but it might be a bit too much going on, so the simpler badge format may be better.

When I made the wheels it gave me the idea that we could have the dream truck type thing from his bonkers video at the bottom of the page as if its bouncing a long the road (animated) and behind it, it could be dragging the info ticker about your friends.

I don't currently have working internet at home which is making it difficult to upload work and means a lack of resources.

Fans?

What we haven't really talked about in the meetings we've had is the concepts of fans and fan bases. I was thinking we could have fans as a requirement for somethings and they can also add to your score. The thing it, do we have fans as other people who follow you, a bit like mafia war's 'mafia'? Or do we have as a collective type thing, every job you do you get a chance to get new fans, different jobs have different % chances of getting fans and the amount you get. Albums bring in a lot of fans and maybe even the more fans you have the more imediate money you'll get from an album or single release?

For example, you bring out an album and straight away that brings you in £10,000 an hour. We could change it so if you have more fans it will bring in a lump sum of money to begin with.
1000 fans and you get £10,000 then another £10,000 an hour
10,000 fans and you'll get £100,000 then another £10,000 an hour.

Obviously the amount an album brings in would differ as well but this is just talking about fans.

The other method, like I said, would be to have a mafia war structure friends list, using your friends as your fans. You can choose whether or not you want a limit on it, and you could require certain jobs to have a certain fan base. EG doing your first concert gig requires 2 fans (2 friends), you could also use them in rap battles to give yourself an advantage, like a morale booster etc. The other problem that arises here is the fact that you're forcing players to get other friends into your list before you can do the jobs, or people with more friends have a better chance of beating you in a rap battle. This could get extra people playing but it could also force the player away he/she can never win a fight or are restricted from a certain job.

I personally like the first idea, but I also think we need a reward for the player bringing more friends into the game because it is good marketing. Maybe a cash reward or a "unique prize" reward, which isn't game breaking or even changing, but it lets them 'brag' about it.

First Draft of game

I've done a quick draft of what the jobs screen would look like in the game. I've also incorporated the chat screen and the other options including the facebook connect info and the top stats bar. I'll try and get some more screens drawn this week and also a list of all the jobs and items which could be incorporated into the game.

Meeting

Had a good meeting today. We have pretty much sorted out the mechanics of the game now, these will just need tweaking and adding to over the course of the project. We've aimed to make them simple but still fun and addictive to play and promoting Dizzee's image at the same time.

We're now going to go away and each come up with design ideas for the look of the game, we've already done some of this but now we have some content in mind we can make a better go of it. By next Friday we need to have the mechanics finalised, which is done and also a final design of the game.

Meet n Greet

Done a draft on what the login screen could look like if the player hasn't signed up yet. It's not yet finished and it's hard to get good images without buying stock photos. The idea of the meet n greet screen would be to entice the player to play the game, show him the rewards, the gameplay and the unique features.