Homework 12 - 2

For this week I tried to create a gateway system for my team to use when making their levels. This gateway system was supposed to be a door with two things attached to it:

1. An open/close animation that will play when anything with the property "player" (which the player object will have)

2. An empty attached to the object that will be the spawn point whenever a player comes out of the door on a different floor.

Below is a picture of the door and I managed to fulfill requirement 1 stated above:

In class we decided to scrap the idea of attaching the empty to the door object as it would be easier to implement the logic from the main blender file after all the levels (including doors) have come together from my group.

Next week:

I want to have at least 2 floors of our level done so that I can experiment with gateway spawn points and changing the active camera between floors. Basically we will start building levels.

Homework 12 -1

What I got done this week: Player-floor interaction, camera-player interaction, jumping, player direction, a few basic controls.


What I plan on getting done by next week: Gateway points, a way for the player to navigate between floors. Animations for the gateway points (whether they be doors or elevators or whatever), camera switching logic to switch between floor cameras.

Homework 11

Chapter 15

1. What is the relationship between the main character and the goal? Why does the character care about it? The relationship between the main character and the goal is the story. More specifically, our character is trying to unravel the story behind an event that took place in her town just prior to the beginning of the game. The character cares about these events because she knows for certain they have to do with why the town is vacant and the story also involves her colleague.
2. What are the obstacles between the character and the goal?  Puzzles and platforming elements. More specifically, we have several puzzles throughout each level that the player must solve before advancing up each building. The ultimate goal is to make it to the top floor of each level/building. Platforming elements include jumping, locked doors, and alternate routes the player must traverse in order to ascend. 
3. Do the obstacles gradually increase in difficulty? If yes, how? The puzzles are not designed with the intention of scaling difficulty simply because we are in dire need of any puzzles that can be easily implemented into the game engine. It really is up to each individual players ability to pick up the controls behind each puzzle and think critically.
4. Great stories often involve the protagonist transforming to overcome the obstacle. Does your protagonist transform?  Physically, no; metaphorically... no. The character remains a hallow vessel in our game and is simply a means to an end. The lack of response from the main character despite uncovering the story through diary pages gives the player a chance to use their imagination and impose feelings onto our main character which is how they would react in her shoes. 
5. How is the game world simpler than the real world?  Restriction of movement. Mechanics. Restriction of choices on what the player can do at any particular moment. 
6. What kind of transcendent power do you give to the player? If we decide on a fight as the final stage in the game, then one power is to kill in the same respect the book gives war games. You could think of the fact the player of the game can unrealistically plow through the entire game in one sitting as a sort of power seeing the absurdity of our games events taking place over a short period of time.
7. What is the weirdest element in the game story? As of right now there really is not anything wierd about our game. Once we are done getting the mechanics and building levels we may introduce weird things such as power ups and odd gateway points to jump from the middle of a level back to the first floor.
8. How do you ensure that the weirdest thing does not confuse or alienate the player? Again, this does not apply yet. If we decide to implement what I have mentioned above, it is common practice in many games to have a nonsensical save point or point where a player can return to the level select. Examples include a couch in ICO (couches that dont belong in ancient Japanese castles) and statues in Devil May Cry. 
9. Will the players be interested in the game story? Why? We are hoping this is the case. In the same fashion games like Silent Hill drop the player into the game with very little information, we are hoping the players sense of curiosity is what drives them to make the first initial steps to unfold the plot where the storytelling takes over as their main interest.

Chapter 16

1. In what sense does the player have freedom of action? Does the player "feel" free at these times? The player in our game should feel very free. We only give the player the goal that the top of the building needs to be reached with no real direction they should be going. The player should feel free to initially explore the floors that are not locked and then either find usable items (keys) by chance or get frustrated by not being able to progress and search more intently. 
2. What are the constraints imposed on the players? Do they feel constrained? The constraints imposed on the player include the parts of the building the player can not initially get into. The constraint is simply the player can not go where he pleases. They should not feel so constrained because there are still places the player can go initially which suggests a starting point to branch from.
3. Ideally, what would you like your players to do (lens #72) We want our players to uncover the truth. We do this by introducing them to the main character and the situation she is in. The player may also feel a sense of duty to help this woman after they start reading the diary pages.
4. Can you set constraints to "kind of" force the player to do it? In our game this is as simple as locking a door and indirectly letting the player know they need to unlock it in order to advance.
5. Can you design your interface to "force" the player to do what you (the designer) wish him/her to do? For our game in particular this seems difficult. Our simplistic controls sort of force the player to really interact with every object they deem suspicious in order to search for clues or items on each floor. In some sense this is our UI forcing the player to do something but it is really up to the player what order they do things in if we design the levels with multiple pathways. 

Homework 9

In the following text I will discuss each of the balances described by the textbook and how (if at all) it affects our game.

Fairness:

Our game does not have a traditional sense of fairness such that everyone in the game is working with the same things. There is no enemy in the game that is like the player so the player and obstacles are given different skills to complete their task. However, because the main obstacles in our game is imagination (how do I get to a certain room when the door is locked? For example.) and puzzles (A certain button combination unlocks this window...) the fairness is somewhat based on the player.

Challenge and Success

This affects our game very much. As our game stands, the basic jist is that the player will solve a variety of puzzles and platforming in order to reach the top of a building. We have no intentions yet of making these puzzles different upon each playthrough or adding a difficulty property set by the player to change them. This means replay-ability is low. It also means much play-testing needs to be done to ensure the challenge of the puzzles and whether or not the skill level is being upped as the game progresses.

Meaningful Choices

This also affects our game. We as the developers need to be sure the choices we provide are meaningful while still being somewhat confusing (This is a puzzle game after all). Our game is asking the player to make choices on how to navigate this building and solve these puzzles.

Skill vs Chance

Chance plays a very important role in the first playthrough of the game as the player has access to many places to explore but the obstacles in his/her way up the building can only be cleared in a specific order. The platforming element within the game may take some level of skill but we do not intend for it to be particularly challenging in that respect.

Heads vs Hands

This type of balancing probably plays the biggest part in our game. The platforming type puzzles involved are the very substance that the game offers to the player. While the player may enjoy the mindless platform traversal through the levels (For instance speed runs) we intend the users of our game application to play it for the brains involved. We may have to balance these puzzles by giving players multiple ways to complete them if we find after blind trials the puzzles are not outright intuitive. This is also a form of balancing.

Competition vs Cooperation

This has little or no meaning to our game as there only one person playing our game at a time.

Short vs Long

This is also a big balancing issue for our game. We intend to make the game such that in order to get to the top of the building, the user may need to backtrack (find keys and unlock earlier rooms) as well as conduct a thorough investigation of the surrounding every time a room is entered (check office space to see if player will have meaningful interaction). Because we see the game through the eyes of the developer, we will know exactly what it takes to complete the game which may skew the reality that it may take much longer for a beginner. Since the player only has to complete a level in order to progress the story, this at least has intuitive intervals.

Rewards

Rewards relate to our game in the same way traditional platformers do. We intend to reward the user with positive sound effects and dialogue boxes that lets the user know he is being acknowledged (on the right track). There is even talks of an alternative ending to our game if the user is diligent enough to find and collect all the pieces of something that has no immediate reward.

Punishment

The game we have in theory now does not put this type of balancing into practice. In an abstract sense we are punishing the player by wasting his time when they can not figure out how to solve a puzzle or get into a certain area of the building. The book talks about taking away powers the player has to earn as a form of punishment but at this time we do not add functionality to the player beyond the controls they start with.

Freedom vs Controlled Experience

Our game gives almost too much freedom to the player. They can walk anywhere within the boundaries of the game and even switch between levels mid-level (unlocking a door in one building may require a key found in another). There are plans for minor controlled experiences where the game takes over in order to put the player through a door or up an elevator since they act as only gateway points between floors with no real need to have the player manually traverse them. This is a type of balancing that will need playtesting.

Simple vs Complex

This I feel may be where our game falls short due to time constraints. The puzzles need to be complex enough to challenge players on their first playthrough. If the puzzles are too complex or counter intuitive then they may become innate complexities as the book describes. In the scope of the entire game, however, I feel as if the fact puzzles stand in your way on top of traditional platforming elements is an emergent complexity that most games are praised for (example ICO).

Detail vs Imagination

This type of balancing applies to our game in several ways. First, there are plans to import a lot of the scenery to give the player a detailed description of the environment he is in at all times. However, there are no plans for sound effects in the game yet. The character in the game may get subtitles or no lines at all, leaving only the diary pages as a source of information. This means we are letting the player of the game decide how they feel about the story that is unfolding and protrude that emotion onto how they think the character feels in the situation she is in. We leave a little to the imagination as well for parts that are controlled experiences since the game is not entirely open world.