Saturday 5 May 2018

idea

I started my game environment idea by looking into kit bashing as a method of creating the environment. Kit Bashing is where you take pre existing objects or parts of pre existing objects and put them together to make new things. After talking to Phil who point me in the direction of a few animals that kit bash, as well as suggested to think of 3/4 environments that could be used within the game.
 
So looking into animals that use things to build other things, I looked at beavers, ants, birds and caddis flies. All these animals use items in there surroundings to build with. Beavers with building dams if the water is not deep enough to keep them safe from predators and their lodge entrances ice-free. The fire ants which are found in wetlands, sort of kit bash using them self link together to build living rafts to keep the colony afloat during floods. The larvae of the Caddisfly use silk to make protective cases, which are often strengthened with gravel, sand, twigs, bitten-off pieces of plants, or other debris. They have also been used be artist who have given them pressures materials to build their cases.
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Beaver dam
 
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Caddisfly case (made of stone)
 
Putting all this together am looking to push the aspect of kit bashing being part of the game. The bases of the game would be to select a race and a starting area.At the moment I've landed on 3 environments, a forest, a beach and a juke yard. Each area has it's own advantages and disadvantages. For example a forest area will have lots of wood to start off with, animals, fresh water, vines, ect. Where as a beach area will have sand, stones, fish, shells ect. To win the game you have to collect resources to build up your base and defences. Once ready you would have to destroy the remaining teams.
 
I am now looking into survival techniques of ways to create shelters, fire, water storage, trap ect, that will give me some examples of way of objects found around to can be put together to create useful things. So I started looking into how to build shelters in different environments such as the desert, forest and snow environment.

So looking at the how to build a shelter in the desert, you started by finding an area that has a natural dip in it. If this is not possible you have to dig a rectangle hole down a few 3/4 feet, a size that you can fix in laying down comfortably. While digging down place the sand you dig out on 3 of the sides, leaving one of the smaller sides open. This adds height to the hole through creating banks around it. At this point you would need either some cloth or a tarp that you can place over the hole, as well as some rocks that you could place on the cloth/tarp on the outside of the banks to keep it in place. When reading about this I was thinking the hole and cloth shelter could be adapted as a possible hiding mechanisms. By building multiple shelters in a big hole and building a support structure, wooden planks could be place on top of the supports and covered with sand for camouflage. This could also allow defences to be place on top of the planks. I also looked into how to get fresh water in desert like conditions, not too sure if it will be involved in the environments yet.       

Desert survival shelter
 
There is multiple ways to build shelters in a wooded area. A lot of these basic shelters are built like bird nets, using sticks and branches through weaving them together to make the structure. One of the most basic shelter is a built by weaving sticks and twigs together to make two A shape frames, which is tide together alone one side of the A. This allows the frame to lay on the floor with two sides giving support and the sides connected together is facing up wards. Then by weaving more sticks and twigs that have leafs still attached on to the A frames to build up the walls. The walls can also be built by getting larger sticks, a placing them onto the side of the frame to give even more support and more sticks for twigs to go around. This method is really effective and can be used to create other shelter shapes.      

 
 
Leaf hut