PoleGame: The early years

Craig Calvert writes: 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.

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.

September, 1996

When we started to actually create things for the game, a good place to start was the background and pit area design.

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.

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!

fish

"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?

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.

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.