Off The Map III - British Library Trip!

James:

This week I visited the British Library as part of a an organised trip with the university, one person from each group attended and I was the one lucky enough to go so I tried to gather as much information and resources as I could.

This was really helpful for knowing what the judges at the British Library and Gamecity are looking for as well as getting a load of reference material from the original Alice in Wonderland books, all the materials mentioned on the Off The Map website were actually on private display for us so we could go in and take a look at these amazing pieces first-hand.

'The Nursery Alice' a first edition of an 'Alice's adventures in Underground' intended for more younger readers.

The judges are looking for an overall experience rather than something that is either very pretty or that plays well, ideally the submission should be a great mixture of these that really absorbs the player as well as something unique that set it apart from the other entrants.

Another aspect worth touching is architectural and structural accuracy, one of the judges in particular is looking for these aspects within the level done to a high standard and making sure historical accuracy is also kept to. Knowing this, as a group we decided to try and ground as much of the construction in real life as possible and refer to a lot of Victorian architecture books to we can construct set pieces like a massive spiral stair case as accurately as possible.

Which brings me onto my next topic, level blockouts, with the individual puzzles almost at completion it was time to try and fit them into a proper playable level. So work began at trying to create all the rooms together as one massive structure which could later be broken down into individual areas, this was done so the structures fit with each other perfectly without no weird intersection, a hard thing to do for such a complex interior.

More on the construction of the level next week.