Having basically finished my 3 pieces of work for my assignment I wanted to discuss how well things have gone and what I would (or will) spend time on to improve them further.
First up my DVD Inlay.
Overall I was pretty happy with the way that the concept worked. Whilst my initial idea was to have both protagonists facing each other getting high res versions of these was too difficult and so opting for both of them fighting off demons with Duke transposed into the image works well. The fact that Duke is posed very similarly to Doom guy makes it seem more plausible that they are there together.
My actual implementation of adding Duke though could use quite a bit more work. Duke still looks too bright and his right foot doesn't really seem to be standing on the demon's hand behind him. He also lacks the red reflections that are visible on Doom Guy's legs. I'm pretty sure there are things I could tweak to make this scene more believable. Possibly even increasing the saturation of the colours from the Doom picture and attempting to add some red reflections to Duke, probably using a transparency layer with red sprayed on top and at 20 to 30% opacity.
I was happy with how the Space Marine and Kittens turned out. I like the clipping masks and the oval border works well. A more defined border would have been an improvement but it is ok as it is. I would have liked a more metallic and steel effect lettering for the "Is For Edition". The greyish lettering with the embossed effect works ok in it's place but could be improved.
I was very happy with how the Doom Vs Duke Nukem title worked. Finding the Vs and then changing it to red looks really good in my opinion. My initial idea was to have a spray painted logo in yellow / gold to match more closely the colours of the Duke & Doom titles but the paint effect works really well and after experimenting with yellow and a few other colours I settled on red as it makes a stark contrast to the other parts of the title and draws your eye to it. I think it works well.
The spine was relatively easy to decide how I wanted it to look. Nearly all my PC games tend to follow the same convention of a logo saying it's a PC game, the game name and then a BBFC rating if one is applicable. The black background works nicely as the top of the front cover fades to black anyway and it appears as though the spine is a continuation of this which then in turn is continued to the back cover.
The back cover was also quite tricky. My initial idea was to have 3 screenshots with some description next to them as to what is going on in them and to emphasise different features of the game. Once I had devised the short President's soliloquy I really wanted to have it on the case which meant having enough space available for this to fit on. My design was based loosely on the back cover of the XCOM Enemy Unknown which had a similar large picture with 3 screenshots at the bottom breaking up the back of the case from a story to the game information at the bottom like the barcode, disclaimer, system requirements & BBFC rating. It also had a headline piece at the top.
I had decided early on that the headline would be "Hail To The Kings" as "Hail To The King" is a famous quote from the previous Duke Nukem games an since there are now two protagonists pluralising this quote seems particularly poignant. I liked the picture of the demon surrounded by fire and it works well with the theme of demons and hell from the front cover. The only issue with it was due to the colouring of it getting text in the colours I wanted was slightly difficult. However upon experimenting with a few options I was able to get it looking reasonably nice and still relatively legible.
The three screenshots were designed to show parts of the game with as much cross interaction of the characters and weapons as possible. Hence the first picture has the Doom guy grinning as he hands a stripper money - a famous bit from Duke Nukem 3D in level 2 of that game. The Doom grin is normally reserved for when you find a particularly powerful weapon but I was able to capture it and use the HUD at that moment superimposed onto the Duke 3D sequence. The other two screenshots were similar in concept and design. The second picture was designed around a scene in Doom where the Doom guy was firing a rocket launcher into humanoid enemies with particularly grisly results. I therefore erased the central Doom rocket launcher from the picture and substituted the Duke RPG launcher instead. Both guns have similar effects, ie they both shoot rockets / RPG's and so the effect in the Doom game is believable with the Duke weapon. The last screenshot was actually all from Brutal Doom. The familiar one finger salute from Duke is actually an option in Brutal Doom so adding it in whilst facing a particularly powerful enemy gives the impression that it is Duke fighting the enemy not Doom guy. To add to this effect I originally had the Duke HUD however on feedback from others I changed the HUD to look more similar to the Doom one, substituting in Duke's head. However given that the gameplay in my trailer shows two different HUD's this now seems a bit odd to me to have it like this. Also one of the features of my game is the ability to play as Duke or Doom so having two HUD's is feasible given that both protagonists have their own style. I might change it back to the original HUD if I feel that makes more sense.
The rest of the information on the case was relatively easy to design. The barcode always tends to be bottom right. On top of that is the BBFC certificate and information (providing the game has been rated by the BBFC) - due to legal requirements the BBFC logo had to be the size it currently is, I would have chosen to have both the barcode and BBFC box to be the same size but it works ok as is and complies with the legal requirements more importantly. The system specifications tend to be at the top of this area and I utilised a few different colours to highlight these. I think they stand out nicely against the black background and I'm happy with how these look. The company and other trademarks fill in any space between the system specifications and the legal disclaimer which take up the rest of the back cover nicely. I didn't feel like there were too many decisions to make here - the white lettering of the disclaimer on a background ensures easy legibility for anybody who actually bothers to read a disclaimer. The logo's and trademarks are already lifted from black backgrounds so they fit in nicely.
The DVD Label.
The idea behind my DVD label was to recreate the Duke Nukem Forever disc which is a stylised Atomic symbol with titles and logo's trademarks overlaying this.
Given how Doom-centric the DVD inlay is I felt focusing more on a Duke Nukem theme for the game DVD made sense. Whilst the Duke Nukem Forever background looks more 3D and metallic than mine I was relatively happy with the overall effect. It is definitely recognisable as the atomic symbol and the contrast between the gold outer ring fading to a lighter yellow in the centre and the black outer border and three thick arms work well.
Happy with the background I then had to decide what to do for a logo. Given the atomic nature of the disc a mushroom cloud with a face in it seemed to complement the theme of the disc and also references back to the president's soliloquy about Duke & Doom guy doing a lot of damage!
I didn't want to put too much on the disc itself so I just went with what were the essentials. The BBFC rating, the DVD ROM trademark, the game title, the game logo, the developers' logos and a legal disclaimer around the outer edge of the disc.
The game title was placed at the top and centred. I made it as large as I could whilst keeping the same size ratio and broke the black outer layer slightly each side which I think looks good, to see it overlayed over it.
I put the BBFC logo in line with the centre of the hub and then the DVD ROM trademark to the right of it. I decided to make the DVD ROM logo red to match the predominant colour of the BBFC logo.
On the right hand side of the disk I put the two developers' logos and underneath then the game logo. I put the developers' logos in the top black section as the logo's have a black background themselves and so they look best on a uniform black background. As I am also putting two things ,ie the developers' logos and the games logo compared to one on the other side I think offsetting one above and one below the BBFC certificate and DVD ROM trademark the other side works well and makes a better use of the available space on the disc. The games logo looks fine on the yellow part of the disc as the black outlines are visible.
The last part was to put a disclaimer around the outside of the disc. I didn't want this to be too big or go too close to the game title as the two would almost overlap one another. For this reason I kept the disclaimer to just the bottom half of the disc. I chose white as the colour as it is still legible without being too noticeable. I don't want peoples eyes to be drawn to the disclaimer over other parts of the disc.
As far as improving things goes - other than adjusting the background to make it look more 3D there is not too much I would want to change. There does appear to be some dead space on the disk, particularly bottom left and centre. It might be worth experimenting to see if there is anything that could be placed here without looking like the disc is getting too cluttered.
The Trailer.
Using Handbrake I was able to convert the movie to mp4 and the file size went from 224MB to around 15MB - suitable for uploading. Quality does suffer from the original somewhat but this will give you an idea of the trailer. It also appears to have added black bars top and bottom not present in the Quicktime version.
Whilst my initial ideas for my trailer were pretty undefined I did want to include gameplay footage and a power-up called Dekka-damage. Upon performing research on video game trailers in the series it became obvious that the trailers tend to focus on a story aspect and a gameplay aspect. I decided to also split my trailer up into two sections with the first part being the story (what has happened prior to the game) and the second part showing gameplay and release information. Whilst I really liked the idea of the Dekka-damage time constraints forced me not to include it. If I had another 30 to 60 seconds it would definitely have a section of the trailer detailing various gameplay elements and this power-up would get a mention along with the balancing (or lack thereof) information.
In order to come up with a plausible reason for both Duke and Doom guy to be in the same game together I had to incorporate story elements from both games, ie an alien attack to which Duke would respond to and a hordes of hell attack that Doom guy would respond to.
My trailer and the blurb on the back of the DVD inlay refer to both of these events happening on the same day. The trailer goes a step further and gives the date of August 29th, 1997 - Judgement Day from the Terminator universe. This date also works quite nicely as it would be a year or two after the release of Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.
Following on from the opening titles showing this date I have the video sections showing a clip from Independence Day where aliens destroy a building in a city followed by part of the Doom 3 opening sequence where a portal to hell is opened and the ensuing chaos. After this I have a three part piece which starts with the reasons that Doom and Duke get involved. Duke historically gets involved by aliens harming or stealing the "hot" women of Earth. I used a bit of the Duke Nukem Forever trailer which already showed this happening in the setup to that game. Doom guy tends to be a "wrong place, wrong time" type of story so to give it a bit of a humorous twist I portray him as an animal lover and utilise part of the end sequence of the first game where a cute bunny is decapitated. This allows me to play off this in a later gameplay sequence.
The last "reason" revolves around a famous Duke Nukem quote, "It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum....and I'm all out of gum". I display a title during the voice over of Duke saying this line with "They stole our gum"!
Immediately following this I launch into gameplay footage showing intense firefights and the backing track changes from a sombre piece to a dance track with a powerful beat. This section highlights the gameplay aspects. I used newer 3D engines for the games so that higher resolution textures and screen resolutions can be used than were originally available at the games release. This at least gives the impression that they are "newer" games than the originals.
Lastly I close by showing a shot of a phrase "You want it" to emphasise this is a game fans will want to own followed up by the game name and the release information. As this is a fictitious game I went with a completely nonsensical date of the 14/14/14. This is intended to let people know in a round about way that this game doesn't really exist in a tongue-in-cheek way similar to the humour throughout the trailer. I could easily change this to a real date if required.
I think that they story elements and the setup work reasonably well - having more time would allow me to tell a better one and to have slightly longer edits which would improve the flow of the trailer somewhat but I feel that I do succeed in setting up the back story from the trailer. I like the transition from the sombre music to the frenetic dance music when the gameplay footage starts. Overall I am happy with how the trailer works.
I believe that some of the audio transitions could be improved - mostly from the first Duke monologue to the bunny scene where the original music fades in and out. I would have liked to have gotten the original music from the ending of Doom in there with the bunny scene but it didn't seem to fit well given the short amount of time allocated to that clip. I was happy with how the dance music fades out at the end - that coincided with a dip in the tempo and the volume of the track at that point and seems to work well.
I would have liked to have found a way to remove the IGN logo from two earlier clips although due to the scene type and the moving camera I was unable to use a garbage matte on these scenes whereas this effect worked well on the static "You want it" clip. I'm sure there would be a way to blur this out somehow.
Overall I am happy with how the trailer works and do not envision too many changes to it short of maybe adding some extra scene transition effects if feedback recommends them.
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