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PoleGame: The early years
Here are some of the first draft, conceptual sketches made to help
flesh out the look and feel of the PoleGame. Notice how many things in these
sketches never came to be, but they helped us to understand where the game was heading. |
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These are two different versions of possible "Choose your
discipline" screens. Guess which one would've taken WAY too much time, and was
tossed. In the end, my idea sucked (sniff) and Robby's won the day. Way to go
Roberino! Mental note: Rob must die |
| This was a test for a highscores screen that in the
end was not needed. I mean, honestly baby. Oh how we suffer for our art. |
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When we started to actually create things for the game, a good place
to start was the background and pit area design.
September, 1996:
This was our vision of The Pole Game. You know -- we might
touch it up a little. But this was what would become our masterpiece. |
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February, 1997: Craig takes a keen interest in
the gaem, and begins looking at how to bring the pit area to life.
"Well done" says the stoic Robert, and Craig finally feels
understood. Many a late night were to come from that encounter, and eventually drive
the creators to near insanity.
Well, not really, but maybe a little silly!
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"You know," we thought, "those trees need tweaking."
So like the keeners we were, we pulled out the Corel CD and picked our favourite trees out
from over 50 photos. Yup, these trees are from mountainsides and valleys the world
over. And they're masquerading as the trees outside the pit near Kingston, Ontario,
Canada. How keen were we?
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September, 1997: Craig officially became
Artistic Director, and this is what he had to work with. He'd already done the work
on the crowd, and would soon redo or touch up just about every graphic you see here.
Notice the pit water is a far cry from the final version, but the game on the
whole is taking shape. |
This shot illustrates a couple of things --
first, how fabulously Adrienne portrayed the female ArtSci character. And second,
how much work Craig put in to fixing the lighting of every photo. Compare this to
the shot of Adrienne in the pit above. |
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February, 1998: Beta 1 Screenshot.
With the exception of a static George Dyke, most of what you see
here ended up in the final version. The "see-through" colour is still
powder blue, though. Notice the "holes" in the Phys 114 Exam icon. |
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