Music of the Past

In my game “Music of the past!” you have been transported to a music studio in the year 1957. You will encounter several musicians who were rising to fame at the time such as Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, and The Beatles (who at the time were still known as The Quarrymen). 

Room Layout:

1. You enter the studio lobby where you are greeted by an intern who gives you instructions to take a burger from the new burger joint McDonald’s (opened in 1955) to Frank in the next room. 
2. In the next room, you enter a recording room where Frank Sinatra is in the booth recording. If you take a burger to Frank as instructed, you will receive the mission of the game and get more details from the record executive in the room with him. Your goal is to take a guitar to John Lennon and Paul McCartney who are in another recording booth.
3. In the next room, you will come across Johnny Cash who is recording his hit single “I Walk The Line.” You will receive more instructions that you must also retrieve a cymbal for Ringo Starr. 
4. In the 4th and last recording room, you will find John, Paul, Ringo, and George in their recording booth and you can talk to each of them. The record executive with them will then give you further instructions to collect some signed records as a promotion to hand out at the show.
5. (4a) In this room you will collect the records, as told by the executives.
6. In the last room, you will be transported to one of The Beatles' first concerts where they will play for music executives and you will distribute their records and enjoy the show to complete the game.

Scott McCloud Inspiration:

Scott McCloud and his book was obviously the main inspiration especially in transforming real life into an 8-bit game. I think one of my best uses of abstraction in the game is when I was designing The Beatles. Since they are widely known for their looks and their instruments it was important for me to be able to portray them in 8-bit fashion. For instance, I gave them each the instruments they are known for, and for John Lennon, I gave him “eyes” to represent the glasses that he was widely known for. However, when I was making the avatar for the game I wanted the player to see themselves as McCloud talks about in the book. (p. 36) I made the avatar a very generic human form because the player should feel like THEY are the new intern and they should be able to see themselves in this generic-looking character. In the time frames section of the McCloud book he talks about the things that we see happening at the same time, obviously can’t be happening at the same time. (p. 96)  In the last two rooms of my game, we see The Beatles in both rooms but clearly, they can’t be in two places at once. That’s why I chose to use the “wavy” transition when you go from between the two rooms so that it feels like there is a passage of time between the two and you aren’t just walking between rooms. 

Theme park readings/videos inspiration:

I took the most inspiration from the Pixar lessons that we went through throughout the semester. One of my main focuses when creating this game was making sure that the world and the visuals along with the story were all cohesive enough to transport the player into the world of the game. I think I relied most on level design, which we learned in the Gamemaker’s Toolkit video, for my world because I used the objects and the design of the rooms to immerse the player in the game and transport them back to the era of the ’50s-’60s of music. I tried my best to replicate what a studio would look like back then with a jukebox and acoustic foam on the walls and even down to the 8-track recording systems and sliders that were used for analog recording in that time. As we learned about in the article about the Incredibles and how they used real-world inspiration, I too took inspiration from the real world. I used to work in a recording studio that still had one recording room that was built in the past and capable of analog recording. I used my knowledge of that real-life studio to try and replicate those things to make it as realistic to the time period as possible.