CS - Vladimir propp

Propp was born in 1895 to a german family, he attended st petersburg university and majored in german and russian philology, and eventually became a college teacher of german.

Propp broke up fairytales into sections, through these sections he was able to define the tale into a series of sequences that occured within the russian fairytale, usually there is an initial situation, after which the tale usually takes the following 31 functions, Propp used this method to decipher russian folklore and fairytales first of all there appears to be at least two distinct types of structural analysis in folklore, one is the type of which propp's morphology is the exemplar par excellence, in this type, the formal organisation of a folkloristic text is described following the chronological order of the linear sequence of elements in the text as reported from an informant. thus if a tale consists of elements A-Z the structure of the tale is delineated in terms of this same sequence.

CS - story worlds

Gladiator - i feel that the reason this world works so well is due to its believable nature, as we now know ancient rome was as barbaric and unforgiving as the film portrays, so its quite fair to assume that something like this could have happened,using real life characters like julias caesar helps add to the immersion.

Sleepy Hollow - Although at first glance this seems like a very typical european gothic world, upon watching you will noticed tim burton manages to create his own unique style once again but still retaining the very fairytale like atmosphere you expect from a story about the headless horseman.

what i feel makes this world so unique is burtons twist on the fairytale cliche's, he manages to keep the story very much predictabel but throws a twist in which seemingly goes against the world as a whole, combined with very stereotypical narrative for the age in when the film is set.

Fred- my idea

You play as The same fred as in the original, only this time he is in his later years, and he is unable to do all the physical tasks he could manage in his youth, turning it into a puzzle/platformer to achieve certain tasks, fred defends himself largely by outsmarting the enemies, defeating them with area hazards or luring them into traps/pitfalls, he also has the same handgun he had in the original game, however as it has aged poorly it can only fire once per level, and has a tendancy to jam, making it a last resort should you run out of tricks to defeat your foes.

he is still a treasure hunter, he is severely lacking confidence in himself as he feels hindered by his age, in this game he is searching for the fountain of youth, this search will take him all over the world, but the part i am focusing on will be taking place inside the Volca'n de fuego volcano in guatemala. where at some point in the story he recieves information on a clue to the fountains location.

Volcano research

Volcán de Fuego ("Volcano of Fire") is an active stratovolcano in Guatemala. It is close to the city of Antigua Guatemala. It has erupted frequently since the Spanish conquest. "Fuego" is famous for being almost constantly active at a low level. Smoke issues from its top daily, but larger eruptions are rare. On August 9, 2007 Fuego erupted spewing lava, rock and ash. Guatemala's volcanology service reported that seven families were evacuated from their homes near the volcano. The volcano is joined with Acatenango and collectively the complex is known as La Horqueta.

New Take

i have decided to not go with a 2D platformer after all, i see a gap in the market for 3D platformers, they were highly popular during the late 90's early 20's, and havent really been explored since then, the most recent being banjo kazooie nuts and bolts, which was a surprise hit.

i can keep all my level ideas and digging tool ideas with the change to a 3rd person platformer, and the main purpose for a change like this is to make the most out of the decline in 3d platformers right now.

Fred - original game

Fred was originally released on the ZX Spectrum, and is also known as 'Roland on the ropes', released in 1984, to sum it up, you play a man named fred, who raids lost egyptian tombs in search of valuables and then must climb to the top and find the exit, originally developed by 'quicksilva' the game has had a few remakes over time but the core remains the same.

the game isn't very deep, upon playing the whole thing had a large atari feel to it, the game seems much more focused around your point count as opposed to actually finishing it, i believe the game keeps going in a loop until the player runs out of lives, which would make for a decent casual game possibly for an iphone or online arcade stores, however, this would make it difficult to re imagine without wandering far off the original concept.

The Remake

This was the only version of fred available for me to play to try it out for myself, i found the game to be very sluggish and unresponcive, you have a gun with 6 shots max, the ability to jump but not whilst running, and climb up and down ropes, i found myself getting lost and hitting dead ends 90% of the time, there isnt much on replay value as the game just keeps going and going in the same repetetive pattern, however i really do like the collect treasure aspect, and in my re imagining the dead ends either need to go entirely, or have something special about them.

Brainstorming


ive been thinking about possible sets for my version of fred, im going to keep fred as an explorer, as this could open up possibilities for very interesting scenery, plot ideas, and level progression, im thinking about possibly having the game along the lines of, you start at the top, you follow various tunnels and caverns, with creatures to avoid on the way down, you have a bag of digging tools to forge your own paths if necessary, however doing so would run the risk of the walls collapsing, the prevent players from just digging a straight line down to the bottom.

you search for treasure, along the way you can find powerup trasures in the walls, you would access them by using your digging tools on cracks in the walls, the bigger the crack, the better the powerup, but the higher risk of caving in.

possibly fred could have a few weapons, but nothing overpowering, i want the enemies to remain a threat, i quite liked the whole 6 bullets ad thats it idea, might hold on to that.

i considered having different worlds/environments to explore, almost in a super mario style scenario, maybe to cater to the exploration mechanic, starting each world at ground level, gradually going deeper and deeper underground, eventually fighting a boss at the bottom, and then having to retrace your steps back to the surface, with some sort of danger chasing you all the way, making dead ends thoroughly terrifying, and forcing the player to use powerups wisely, as they wont return on the second trip.