Date Run! - NPC's

Heey!

Here is a quick summary of what I've got up to this week.

This weeks weekly sprint I created a lot more artwork for the NPC's in the game, and also I did a few coding tasks as well.

Code The Quick Timer Events
Relevant To The Action

In this task I did quite well. I think it was over-estimated as it only took me half hour to complete. I had to  edit the ActionBar symbol and change the static text relevant to what they player has to press i.e 'JUMP' I then had to change the Key codes in that class.


Code Continue Button For
Highscore Screen

In this task I had to access the Main AS file  to add a new private variable '_highscore' which adds a 'new' HighScore screen to the stage. I then had to add this in the '_gamestate.push' in the correct order equal to what I declared it as in the HighScore AS file.



Rework art of NPC's To
Look More Polished

This task was a lot of fun, I like to create what I want and in the end I made a guy who likes to Busk on the street. I also did a little animation of him strumming the strings on the Guitar. I'm getting quicker at drawing characters as I have found a good was of getting the main features of their face by just using shapes. I think his legs could be a bit better especially in the animation.

The skateboarder was a bit of a disaster. His face looks a little strange but he doesn't look to bad from a distance. I think this could be a good moving obstacle, A dodgy looking teenager not afraid to knock someone over on his skateboard. What I found difficult on all the characters was some parts of their body needed to overlap some parts of the equipment. So I to use many layers on the same object.

My final NPC I created was a chilled out Rastafarian. The most difficult part was drawing the bench and his hair. But I like how his shorts are oddly shaped, it gives that relaxed feel to him.

Other tasks were to play test the game and find bugs and make a few iterations. And my last task was to create the sound effect for the timer when its gets to the last ten seconds it needs to make the player panic slightly. So what I did was made a ticking noise which speeds up at the end and I also added some eery background noise to it. Overall I like my drawings and got a chance to do a bit of animation aswell.

Grand Poobah

In this session we played a game called 'Grand Poobah' which was actually a really fun lesson. The object of the game is to accumulate the most points. Here are the rules:

• Starts with a deck of cards being shuffled 
• One player starts as the 'Grand Poobah'
• The game is played in rounds
• The Grand Poobah takes a number of cards from the top of the deck equal to the amount of players in the game
• They then distributes the cards, one to each player any way they like
• The cards represent a certain amount of points and a certain amount of votes:

Points

Red J, Q, K = 10 points

Red A-10 = 1-10 points

Black A-K = No points

Votes

Red A-K = 1 Vote

Black A-10 = 2 votes

Black J, Q, K = Three votes

• The Grand Poobah keeps score of how many points each player gets 
• Players vote on who they want to be Grand Poobah in the next round
• The Player with the most votes wins the election. If there is a tie then the candidate closest to the left of the Grand Poobah wins.
• The player who gets to 70 points wins the game.

The dynamics of the game really makes it work. When you are the Grand Poobah you have to choose who to give the cards to and as the game goes on you try to make these decision as strategical as possible, to benefit you, or which might benefit you in the next round. It is easy to create alliances but just as easy to make enemies.

A massive component in the game is the negative feedback loop, this is very dominating. We found while playing its best to keep in between the middle and lower scores so that you do not rush ahead as other opponents choose not to give you any more points. When players do have less points they get a benefit from the opponents by collecting the highest scored cards. This stops people from getting bored of the game but is implemented too much which has an affect on the overall sense of achievement when you have the game handed to you, and is frustrating for the players that are taking the lead. This is very illusory as the games mechanics are not being changed but the players perception of where they are in the game is still manipulated.

The Dramatic Ark of the game has an undesired effect, instead of it sloping down it has a massive drop which i do like about the game and i think is different from other games. The game is unpredictable, players do not know who is going to win until the last move, and the instinct of the player to find a pattern is almost useless.

Iterations

We only made one iteration to the game. We did have a few more however unfortunately there wasn't enough time to implement them all. The one we did put into the game was adding hidden energy, these were 3 cards that players receive at the start of the game and they could use them instead of the ones they would get at the start of each round. You could only use them once and are hidden from your opponents.

We found this didn't really add much value to the game, it didnt make it more enjoyable to play and it kind of made the game a little unfair, for example i had all points which added up to 20 so i knew i only needed to get to 50 points an then as long as no one won within the next three rounds then i would win, and some people only had black cards which are no points.

The idea that i came up with at the last minute was only letting the Grand Poobah look at TWO of the cards that are drawn from the deck. No one else would be able to see anyone's cards until they are dealt out.
The Grand Poobah now can either gamble to take one of the cards he's seen or take one of the hidden ones for himself. From the two that he has seen, he's also able to choose who to give them ones to. I think that will give a good element to the game and will make the player feel less in control and hopefully dull down the negative feedback loop slightly but will not get rid of it completely because i also think it needs it.

Conclusion 

I think this is one of the most enjoyable games we've played, and i also think there is a strange connection with this and the fact its difficult to find a pattern to use to play and feel that you have more chance to win, which is partly due to it being luck based. I wish we could have iterated more ideas that were floating about but its difficult to because you have to finish it to really grasp the drama at the end. 

The British Museum

Hello everyone!

Last week we went to the British Museum to experience the history and culture of people who lived many years ago. We were specifically looking for old games that have been around for thousands of years. One of which I was excited about seeing was the Royal Game of Ur which we actually have to Iterate for one of our Modules.

A bit about the Game:

           Two players have 7 identical pieces each. Pieces are described as being 'At War ' along the central route of the board, but then turn off their own side to exit. There are two types of dice that can be found which were displayed in the museum. One was  tetrahedral dice, this is a four sided dice and had two corners were marked. Each player had 4-6 dice which are thrown which would determine how many spaces they could move. The second type of dice which were found was a stick dice. These types of dice are found at the Indus Valley site dating back the to the 3rd Millennium BC. On the stick are scores 1,2 and 3 which were shown by concentric circles and 4 is shown by cross-hatchings.  It is a race to the finish and players can knock out their opponents pieces if they land on them. There are also 5 rosettes and if landed on meant another go. 

We also saw the Senet Game where the pieces can be stored inside the board. The rules of the game are in some debate but historians have made educated guesses of how to play. 

There are also a lot of Chess Games at the Museum with all sorts of designed pieces  different from modern day chess. 

The rules of the games and for many other things, typography are written on the tablets made of clay and are indented which must have been very intricate work. 

There were many other things that can be seen there, and one thing I found really interesting because I love space was a mechanical device called an Orrery which illustrates the relative positions and the motion of our sun and all the planets and moons that revolve around it. This is a well known teaching tool used in lectures and demonstrates Copernicus's theory that the earth revolves around the sun. 

I enjoyed most of my time there, viewing all the real old games and how historians believe they have developed over time but it did get a bit tiresome in the last bit of the day as there are only a certain amounts of pots you can look at. However it was a really good day out reading about so many different cultures. 

Date Run!

Hello everyone :)

My Group Project is coming a long really well. This week i was assigned mainly coding tasks but also some artwork for one of the obstacles in the game. My tasks took a bit longer than originally estimated but that was due to some difficulties with some parts of the code i was having trouble with.



Create Digital Art For
The Traffic Lights

These were fairly simple to draw. I Originally designed them in Photoshop but decided to redo them in Flash because the image quality seemed better. I am using the pen tool more often which i believe am getting better at. The pole is just a box with two gradients on the bottom layer. I used the pen tool to make the shape of the light covers, and for the little men in the pedestrian lights I made some stick men and drew round them. I then created a glow effect which had to be different on four frames for the states of the traffic lights in the game (Red, Red + Orange, Green, Orange). The Pedestrian Light worked exactly the same way as the Traffic Lights, as it is extended from that class, meaning that it to had to have 4 frames, 2 of which would be useless but had to be there.

Code Timer According
To The Level Stage

This was tricky to begin with but after some unsuccessful attempts to get it to work I realised where I was going wrong.  I had to create another variable inside the Timer class, this would be the level time which had to retrieve the correct value for the current level map.The current level map would be in the Game class under '_currentlevel'. This had to be displayed in a string to get the whole  address of where to look for that level and then to find the values of the time.  The problem I had was displaying it correctly which I now realise I need to use 'getDefinitioByName'. 

Code the cars to

Stop/Go According

To The Traffic Lights

Firstly I had to get some sort of thing to move, I realised we'd already made some cars move in one of the scripting lessons so I based my code around that. The Traffic Lights then needed to have different values for each state the lights are in so that the cars can find that information and apply it to one of its functions. It seemed easy enough to begin with but I did get stuck, mainly on certain functions in the traffic light class, which I created a loop when I didn't need to as I could just use the game loop inside the Game Class. I also had a few other problems with adding event listeners and adding things to the stage but Gav was there to help me out. 

Create Sound Effect For

Winning Screen 

I created some sound for the game. I used a program called Reason which is a powerful Music production and recording program, which my friend helped me out with. I think it sounds good and I think I can use some elements of it to create other sounds aswell, one being the lose screen, or some other sound which indicates the player has done something wrong

The Game is already on the Waterfront Games website at http://www.waterfrontgames.com/game/index/48. There is still along way to go to make it fun but I think there is a lot of potential. I think when we add more obstacles and choices and as the maps get more exciting it will improve it vastly. There is hardly any aesthetics at the moment which is understandable while we are trying to get everything to work. I'm also really happy with how things have gone so far within the group.

Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design

Chance and Skill

Bibliography

In this session of Critical Games Studies we were given a task to compile some resources which included two full length books, two articles and two contributions to a book for a particular topic of our choice in relation to Game Design. We used the ‘summon search tool’ which searches through their entire catalogue, and also we used another tool which lays out a bibliography in the correct format which is called ‘RefWorks’, this is really helpful.

I based my topic on Game Storytelling and here is my bibliography.

Crawford, C. (2005) Chris Crawford on interactive storytelling. Berkeley (Ca.): New Riders.

Jenkins, H. (2006) "Game Design as Narrative Architecture" in Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. The game design reader: A rules of play anthology. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. pp 670 - 689.

Juul, J. (2005) "Games Telling Stories?" in Raessens, J. and Goldstein, J. Handbook of computer games studies. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. pp 219-226.

Rouse, R. (2005) Game Design: Theory & Practice. Plano: Wordware Publishing. pp 202-226.

Spierling, U. (2002) 'Digital Storytelling', Computers & Graphics-UK 26 (1) pp 1-2.

Wei, H., Bizzocchi, J. and Calvert, T. (2010) "Time and Space in Digital Game Storytelling", International Journal of Computer Games Technology 2010 1-23. Available at: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/2010/897217/ 

Liars Dice

After discussing our thoughts on the reading 'Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics' written by Mark Le Blanc we started to analyse the game 'Liars Dice'.

The game works best with about 5-8 players.

The basic rules of the game are:

• Each player starts with 5 dice.
• Players roll all the dice but hides their values from their opponents.
• Each player bids on how many dice have been thrown altogether.
• Example: A player bids there are six 4's that have been thrown.
• The next player decides to either call their bluff or bid higher. The bid can be a different number but the quantity needs to be the same or more.
• Example: After a player bids there are six 4's. The next player can call their bluff or say something like seven 4's or seven 2's
• If a player calls their bluff and their wrong and in fact there are six 4's (or more) then the player who called bluff loses a dice.
• If a player was bluffing and they were caught out then they lose a dice. 
• The goal of the game is to be the last man standing with as many dice as possible.

Understanding the rules comes much quicker while playing the game. After playing a few rounds there is a clear balance of uncertainty and inevitability. The player is unsure of what dice are out there and whether the bid exceeds or falls short of the actual number. The players don't know whether the bid is wrong, and it is inevitable that each round will end eventually concluding the game. 

The dice is the 'ticking clock', as more gets taken away the game speeds up. And at the end, calling a bluff comes much sooner because of the fact there are less dice. 

As the player keeps more dice their knowledge of whats in the game increases which is a tool also used in other games called 'Fog of War'

To extend that feeling of uncertainty we played the game without asking who had how many dice. This hidden information can give players clues so they only way of know now, of how many dice are out there, players need to pay more attention. 

The real drama in the game comes from uncertainty and the secrecy of trying to bluff your way through. There can also be quite a bit of strategy involved. If someone has only one dice left and you are trying to get them out, you need to know where your opponent will stop. So that they don't bluff you, but enough so the following player bluffs them. Very fun game to play!

Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics

Real Time Strategy

RTS BoardGame
In this lesson we used what was discussed from the reading 'MDA - A Formal Approach to Games Design and Games Research'. Games are different from other media in a way that is unpredictable for the player. Each component of MDA can be described as a lens and that the players view the game in a different way to the designers. Where they work on the mechanics which in turn leads on to the dynamic systems and further on to the aesthetics experiences the player receives, the player is met more towards the aesthetics first, then building onto the dynamics and operable mechanics. 

The task was to iterate an RTS board game. After reading the instructions the game was simple. 

• The board is filled with hexagons meaning there are six directions you can move.
• The player start at the ends of the board
• Each player receives four cards 
• Move - Move two spaces any direction but must stay facing the same way. 
• Move & Turn - move one space, then turn left or right 60 degrees
• Turn - Turn left or right 60 degrees
• Fire - Fire in a straight line 
• Everybody puts one card down and reveals it when everyone takes their turn at the same time
• An order of play. players made they're move starting with the ones who picked 'Move' then 'Move & Turn', 'Turn' and then 'Fire'

After we play tested it the first time with out any changes we found that it was impossible to kill your opponent because of how you move first before you fire. And the game was quite boring and went on for a long time with nothing really happening. However players were constantly thinking where to go and what the opposition might do next which is a good basis of an RTS game. 

Our Iterations 

Firstly we had to fix it so that it was easier to get caught out and be killed. We did this by  changing the order of play so that players 'fire' first.

We also added obstacles which made it a little more difficult to kill someone, but made the players think more on which way they should go. After play testing these iterations there were still something missing, choices that the players make were limited.

After a heavy discussion on deciding what mechanics to add we came up with adding guns. Players would be awarded with a certain weapon by moving across a space with an armory. This meant that they picked up a card and it would say what weapon they would receive. 

Weapons:

• Shotgun
• Sniper Rifle
• Rocket Launcher
• Machine Gun

You started off with a pistol which only fired in one direction along five spaces. 

Here is diagram of the capability of the weapons we implemented.

After play testing this it made it much more enjoyable apart from the person who didn't get to grab any weapons (i.e. me). This was because there wasn't enough spaces for everyone to grab one each, so for one person it was a race. It made the player think more strategical and more about what weapon your opponents have. 

Other iterations which i think would be good and could create more aesthetics and dynamics would be giving the player health, with the weapons conflicting different amounts of damage. This would create a battle and for the player to decide "should i stay and fight or should I run and escape my death". If this was to be added then there would need to be a way of replacing your health for another battle. this could be achieved by either collecting health are being awarded it after you have killed an opponent. 

Overall it is quite difficult to create an RTS with a board game but it can be done. There needs to be more rules than other board games for it to work and have no problems, and once you have the core mechanics in place its important to not over complicate them.

Snakes & Ladders

From the Article we read on Formal Abstract Design Tools we made iterations on the game Snakes & Ladders to identify where the game could be improved.

The game originally has little perceivable consequences. The whereabouts of consequences are known, but when they will happen remains a mystery, which is decided by the luck of the dice roll. There are no intentions, the game is completely at random and the player makes no choices. There is no story apart from the players journey from start to finish, which is different to the Indian version which is completely story driven.

Our first iteration was based around giving the player a choice. The player would roll the dice, if it would mean they land on a snake, the player would make a decision, to move on to the snake and challenge it, or choose to move backwards by the amount on the dice. If they decided to challenge the snake, a dice would be thrown for the snake and one for the player. The highest would obviously win. Most times you would challenge it, unless moving backwards was worse than where the snake would drop you.

In our second iteration we actually got rid of challenging the snake but we added cards instead.
Instead the player starts of with 4 cards which they pick up from a deck of 1-6. They would then be able to choose the card they want to move that amount of spaces.
You would need a card in your possession to move up ladders and also be able to block the snakes ability to slide down the board.

I did come up with another idea where the player could use the ability to bluff their opponent by choosing to have their card face down. But that would have made it much too complicated but would have gave the player a feeling of anxiousness.

We were then asked to create a story within the game and we ended up deciding on implementing two types of characters. One was a Fireman who could climb ladders and fall down snakes, and another would be a Snake-whisperer which can climb up snakes but falls down ladders. To make this fair we would have to make sure that the ladders and snakes were evenly distributed.

Other ideas we thought of were to be able to drop tokens at the bottom or top of the snakes and ladders which would make them unusable. However it is important to keep play testing our ideas and with that idea and many others there just wasn't enough time and we would have lost the concept of the game by adding too many features.

Conclusion
After adding different components and play testing them we believe the game was more enjoyable and interesting to play due to it being more competitive and the player has more to think about than just moving by the roll of a dice. I think also allowing the player to bluff has more of a challenge but it needs to be more refined to use with the other mechanics.

MDA - A Formal Approach to Games Design and Games Research

Gamasutra - Formal Abstract Design Tools

• Church starts by asking simply “what is a modern computer game made of?”
• Design, Art Audio Levels and code.
• Describing how they work together to create a synthesis. Audio is mentioned, which is important from other types of games. You can say the same about the code however I believe that you can define that as the mechanics of the game, like rules.
• Without these disciplines working together, he describes how the game would just be a CD full of data, but no experience.

• The main problem which slows down development and evolution of games in general, he describes, is having the lack of design vocabulary meaning the game designers can only discuss whether the game is fun or not and then the analysis stops there, in contrast with other professions sports/health with more technical jargon

• Design vocabulary today is essentially specific to individual games and genres. (giving examples how this years RTS games are built on from last years.)
• Leads to a conclusion that a shared design vocabulary would be very useful. Formal Abstract Design Tools (FADT) is an attempt to create a framework for such a vocabulary and a way of building that process.
• Breaking down the phrase we have:
• ‘Formal’ which implies a precise definition and not just saying something is ‘cool’.
• Abstract – to focus on an underlying idea not specific to one particular game. For example a ‘Giant Slaying Sword’ is not abstract because it focus’s on a single game. Instead, describe the general notion that a magic sword is based on – a mechanic for delivering more powerful equipment to the player.
• Design and tools are self-explanatory, Design being what we’re intending to do and the tools that we’ll be using.

• Gives examples of how FADT is used in Mario 64. Or rather breaks down the game using FADT.
• Players are encouraged to form their own goals. For example how players can choose which world to enter and the amount of stars they can collect. This is a good way to empower the player.

• The Tools that are mentioned in the article are Intentions, Perceivable Consequences and Story.
• It’s good to have both Intended Goals and ones that are different from level to level. The player can implement a plan to the current situation in the game and the understanding of game play involved.
• Perceivable consequence – ‘a clear reaction from the game world to the action of the player.’ This tool is often used in RPG’s with a plot or where the character can develop they’re abilities. Saying that there is a consequence implies the player has made a choice.
• “Because of X, Y has happened”
• Some consequences can be less direct for example a player could decide to stay at an inn, but the designers might not want them to stay in town too long consequently the player could get ambushed. This type of consequence is not perceivable by the player.
• The player will also know where they went wrong and make more choices.
• Creates the emotion of rage.
• Story -
• Binds events together (either player/Designer driven)
• Drives the player to complete the game.
• In a story driven game. You need to pull back the player control and then designer has to control potential outcomes.