Wooden huts

I figured all my huts in my laketown will be wooden. Wooden little huts. But when I started drawing out some of the ideas it didn't seem to make much sense. I was so angry because no matter what I did i just looked wrong, very wrong. I am not the greatest person at drawing but usually I can get around it in ways. But it just wasn't happening this time.

I then decided that I need to start from the basics and I've looked at the structures of wooden huts. 

It was a huge help, I've collected these images just to get an idea and to make my huts look real, and believable.
I also created a moodboard of huts I liked and their features I thought of using myself.
I will have to keep looking back at this so I don't forget about anything :')

Choosing a story

Just so my environment has a litle bit of a purpose maybe an aim of the game, I needed a story. 

Also It will give me a little more guidance so I don't get lost with what I'm creating.

I always make abandoned things because, i don't know I'm creepy like that. I love making dark mysterious places, it's just my thing :') 

So I needed a reason why it's abandoned, maybe leave little hints around the place to give players a clue to what might have gone down. 

I thought of the Salem's Lot story by Stephen King. Little towns one by one are being completely wiped out and nobody seems to know why. The story takes place in Salem's Lot which slowly is becoming less and less populated.

Another story I considered is the one of Vlad the Impaler. He used to kill off little villages very often it seems.

Another thing I considered is the true story of a colony on a Roanoke Island.

"The fate of the final group of colonist's has never been determined." Simply speaking, they disappeared off the face of the planet, and nobody knows what happened to them. Scientists and archaeologists have been trying to figure it out for years and they still have no answers. 

In 1587 Raleigh dispatched a group of colonists to establish a colony on Chesapeake bay. 

Later on Raleigh named 12 assistants to aid in the settlement, they were ordered to travel to Roanoke to check on the settlers. But when they arrived on July 22 1587 they found nothing but a skeleton that may have been the remains of of the English garrison. When they failed to find anyone the fleet's commander insisted that they stay on the island and start a new colony. His motive remains unclear. The colonists feared for their lives, so they persuaded the commander to go back to England. Left behind were about 155 colonists. On August 18, 1590 another ship sailed to Roanoke but found it deserted. The men who arrived could not find any of the 155 people that were left on the island the time before. What was surprising though was the fact that there was no sign of a battle or struggle. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post of the fence aronund the village, and "Cro" carved into a tree. Apparently all the houses had been dismantled, which shows that their departure had not been hurried. Apparently someone told the people in the colony to carve a Maltese cross on a tree if anything was happening to them, not finding that they assumed that they moved to a "Croatoan Island"
Another option is that a Native Americans attacked them.
Yet another possibility is that the group was living among the group of Natives.
Some say that someone called Chief Powhatan was responsible for slaughtering the colony.
There are many mysteries around this story and I think it's a good opportunity. I will twist it to my liking so I can figure out what clues to leave behind etc.

One idea to their disappearance was obviously, aliens. It always comes down to aliens with me. I could have markings and drawings as well as altars.
Another option would be some sort of sea monster, I would have a long bridge going into the middle of the lake with an altar at the end of it. I would have the windows facing the lake itself barred to show the people feared it. I would have fun with leaving the little clues behind.
I will think about the ending for a little longer but it's pretty much between these two.

Brainstorm, Initial Ideas.

Initially, for this project, I wanted to continue exploring what I've been doing during my Dissertation. But after doing that and thinking about it, this isn't what I really enjoy doing. And I started this course because it was important to me to do what I enjoy spending my time on. I have also noticed that I do a lot better if it's something I enjoy because I simply spend a lot more time on it, I put a lot of thought into the detail and I feel that's what makes it awesome. ^^ 

So from here on I have been thinking about making another game level for this project. 

But since I have a lot of time om this I decided to make this one a big one : D

I started brainstorming on thing I could do

I considered things like big factories, with a lot of machinery and weird objects it would be an interested thing to do. 

I thought of an abandoned mall, through this I could show a variety of skills because I would have to model a lot of different things in different styles. Eg. Fabrics in clothes shops, toy shops food shops etc. 

Another idea was to do a scene out of a nightmare. In a huge toy store, would make it full of creepy toys like clowns etc. I imagined it having a distorted vision and uneven walls and things.

I thought of doing an old fashioned little town. 

I thought of making like a big building or a castle or something, on top of a snowy mountain. 

Another idea was to do a big mansion, in which you'd explore different rooms etc. 

But the last idea I've had outweighed them all.

I thought about doing a lake town, that way I could use pretty much all of the skills I have and have a chance to gain a lot of new ones.

It won't be an easy to do because there are a lot of things I have to pin down very early in the process. What time it's in, how advanced or simple the people are. This will inform what tools and technology they'll use. What clothing they wear. I will have to figure out what people will live there,will it just be fishermen and will they just live off the fishing or will they be fairly close to the land and hunt too for example.

I feel like this will be a very exciting thing to do so I quickly crossed out all the other ideas and started thinking about making my laketown.