Exercise #9: Far Cry Map*

March 24th, 2014

This is where I would have placed my image of my team's far cry map. That is, if the console we were working on didn't crash and lose our save data...

I couldn't help but think how heartbreaking this must feel in the actual video game industry.

I feel that this was going to happen sooner or later. But, in a way I think it may be a blessing in disguise. Because I've learned early on that, in the future, if I ever work on anything at all, I need to back it up. Maybe even in several different places.

Technical Description:

Prototype Specs:
Map for a 1st Person Shooter
2 Opposing Strips of Buildings
Middle Obstacle (Ship)
(Spawn Point) Forest before Town Entrance

Visual Description:

If the Map we made were still in existence, it would have looked as followed. The map was simple. Our team thought of creating a map with two opposing towns. Kind of like a western movie with saloons and bars. In the middle of the two strips of buildings was an empty plane of sand. It was quite funny actually, as the map started of as really simple. What made the experience very memorable was what our team did with the mistakes we made. Because our team was unfamiliar with the controls, we at times would indent parts of the map on accident. In this case, one of us accidentally indented the middle between the buildings. So now, this area meant to be a barren center for shoot outs to occur was now in conflict with this bulge in the ground. As we tried to fix it, we found it much more interesting to work around it. What we did was actually add things to the hole. We first added water. Then added a boat. Then removed that boat and added a ship. So we had a ship in a small pond next to the sand. It made no sense at all. We definitely let our imaginations get ahead of ourselves. But we decided to keep it. I think this event was the catalyst that set off the rest of the map. After that we got more impulsive and ambitious. We put a Huge tree in the middle of an apartment project. We added machine guns to the ship in the pond in the middle of the sand. We added dirt bikes. We added a forest next to the town. At this point our imagination had no bounds.

This map we made no longer was grounded in reality. And it was all a product of that one mistake. Though in the future, we must give ourselves limits, I feel that this was a very therapeutic event because it allowed us to let go of our mental limitations and let our imaginations flow. This was an important event for me because in the last few years, I feel as if I have been holding back my creativity with my overly-critical views on reality and fantasy. It made me learn that in order to be creative and create new ideas, one must grasp the fact that if the program in which you are using is not bound by limits, then neither should you be.