Meg and Mog HUD
The brief for this project was to create a HUD and GUI for a fictional 3d adventure game based upon the Meg and Mog childrens book, Meg on the Moon. The game is intended for young children in the same age group that the books are written for.
This brief also required that there be some level of interaction within the final menu system as well as possible showing in-game footage with the HUD in place. This posed a series of questions about how best to implement the requirements for the project, the first being what medium would best be suited to show the HUD as well as how to show the 3d environment the game required.
The first step was to research the genre of childrens games and to see what elements I would use in my creation of a HUD and GUI (see research Log).
The information that I gathered from my research was that in the design for a childrens game there needs to be a common style that is reflected in all aspects of the game. This means that the menus and the on screen assets need to all have the same look and feel so that none of them stand out as different to each other. I also felt that with the Meg and Mog books having their own unique art design, that the menus and on screen assets should match that design sensibility as close as possible. It would have been possible to redesign the characters and art from the books completely but I felt that as the game was aimed at children who would be fans of the books that this would be a redundant task.
I also gathered from my research that the design elements for a childrens game need to be based on a graphical element as often as possible instead of text. This makes the game accessible to an audience where the level of literacy cannot be assumed.
My first task after completing the research was to look at creating the 3d environment for the game. I considered creating the environment in a number of programmes, such as the Unreal Editor, UDK and 3Ds Max 2011 but having little experience in these programmes I felt that I should seek and alternative which i found in the 3D game engine Unity. After finding a suitable engine, I used the Meg on the Moon source material to find a setting that I could recreate with the same visual flair that is found in the book. I decided to recreate the surface of the moon as the book uses some very striking visuals that I thought would look good replicated in 3D and would also making an interesting game level.
After several experiments I eventually created a version of the moon’s surface in the Unity engine that I was happy with. This bright yellow surface featured a large amount of creators, each with an orange interior, and a purple sky. This terrain piece, I felt matched the aesthetic of the source material whilst also giving a solid environment in which to stage a childrens adventure game.
After creating the terrain that I would set my HUD against I looked at creating an interactive menu system that would be at the start of the game. After my experience in creating a similar menu for my Harry Potter GUI, I decided to use the same methods by using Flash to create a series of menus that the user could navigate freely around. My research had shown that the best types of menu interfaces are those that combine a pleasing aesthetic value with an ease of use and understanding. I chose to use material from the books themselves as the art work for the menus and used a text that was both colourful and cartoonish for the menu buttons. I felt that this choice made the menus easy to read whilst also staying in line with the Meg and Mog artwork. I also made sure that the menus were as short as possible so that they were not confusing to young audiences.
The next part of the design process was to create the HUD elements themselves so that I could place them into my Unity level. I began this process by deciding what assets the game would require there to be. With it being a childrens game, the HUD would be required to need very little explanation as well as showing all aspects important to the game. As this game was fictional with no set gameplay I decided that before I created my list of what assets the HUD would need, I would also create the gameplay elements that would need a place on the HUD.
I decided upon a simple collection mechanic where the player has to collect stars and also mechanical parts for Meg’s ship. These mechanics would require the HUD to have graphics to represent the Stars and Ship parts that the player has to collect and also counters on screen so that the player can see how many of each that has been collected. The Star counter would feature a single counter that increases by one number every time a Star is collected, and the Ship parts counter would feature a counter that showed how many parts had been collected out of a set total.
In addition to these counters I also felt the game would require the following;
· A health bar
· An icon to represent the number of lives
· An icon to show what character the player was playing (Meg or Mog)
· A map icon pointing to the objective
· An icon to represent a health pack
After deciding upon what icons I would need I then sketched out my ideas on paper first so that I could get a sense of what would work and what wouldn’t.
After these preliminary sketches I then recreated my chosen designs in Photoshop. My final designs were based upon the original artwork of the Meg and Mog books using the characters themselves where possible. I chose to use the artwork for Meg and Mogs heads as the in-game portraits and to also use the character of Owl as the games objective indicator (mini-map). The icons for the ship parts and the in game health packs were also inspired by the original art work, with the ship parts looking like minature versions of Megs ship and the health packs look like a stylized version of Meg’s witches cauldron. I included the mechanic of a health pack and a health bar as I felt that while there is a trend for the use of regenerating health in a lot of modern video games, the use of a health bar suits the age range the game is designed for as it gives the player an accurate representation of their health as well as introducing new young gamers to the concepts of risk and failure in video games. I also chose to represent the players number of lives with different icons for each character; a hat for meg and a cat’s paw for Mog.
To present the final images I chose to show each item individually and then a mocked up screenshot with the HUD in place and the in the in-game assets present.
I am happy with the final results as they show a game HUD that has the relevant information without being too cluttered. The assets I have created are all of the same design style so that none of them clash with another and they are also clearly visable on such a colourful background. This is an important element when considering the age group this game is aimed at.
