I am back! (hopefully for good)

Hey,
Thought it might be a good idea for me to try to keep this thing going. Ill try to post once a week on something i am working on, or just something i am interested in and that i think other people will be interested in as well. Please comment on my posts and lets have fun.

Evaluation

The brief for this project was to create a game that would be distributed virally and advertise a brand or product. Once are group had come together we all went away and thought of ideas for are selves that we thought would create an immersive and enjoyable game that would fulfil this brief. The four of us all had very different ideas but the main points that all of them had in common was that they where score based, easy to learn and easy to share. After discussing each of are ideas we decided to go with a game that advertises chocolate. In this evaluation I will be analysing this game deciding how well it full-fills the key criteria of any game; the goals , challenges, interaction and rules.

Interaction in are game is very simple, with the player simply clicking and dragging chocolates onto different conveyor belts. This simplicity meant that the game was very easy to learn how to control however it did mean that as control is easily mastered other complexities must be put in place to keep the player interested and engaged in the experience.

Goals in the game are also very simple with the player asked to put the chocolates on the right conveyor belt so that the chocolates go under the correct machine. As both the interaction and the goals are very simple to achieve. Complexity comes when we challenged the player to mange multiple chocolates at once. This ended up working very well, by keeping the goal and interactions simple we managed to get the player immersed very quickly and then keeping them interested by making them do this seemingly simple task on multiple chocolates at once, as well as managing them to ensure that they don't get too many chocolates together clogging up the conveyor belts.

In are design document we have stated that the speed of the conveyor belt would increase as time would go on, however we did not get a chance to implement this into are game, I feel that adding this would have added a lounger difficulty ramp that would have increased the play time of are game. The other feature that had to be cut because of time constraints was the random events, these would happen at random and change different variables for a short space of time. Implementing this feature would help keep the game interesting for lounger play sessions as the more random element would create a grater sense of chaos.

The pick up and play functionality of are game as well as its very colourer full nature help with creating a engaging experience that educates the player of the brand. The score based nature as well as the quick play sessions make the game very easy to share and to talk about with friends, which I feel has made the game an effective piece of viral advertising.

Week 5

Although the game is still a little way from being complete, most of the code and the art had been done so it meant that game could be played by are peers and people outside of are class. The most glaring omission of are game when it was tested at this stage was that there was only one chocolate on the screen at any time. Because of this we could not test the flow and the difficulty ramp of the game with this audience, these tests where still useful in seeing there reaction to the control and visual feed back of the game.

After the game had been played there where two main things that came up as being problematic these being that the concaver belt is not long enough before the first machine, which means that the player doesn't have enough time to decide which machine the chocolate needs to be under. The other problem was that the player does not understand some of the symbol's that are used to show where the chocolate needs to go. The main offender was the wafer symbol which has now been changed.

Chocolate factory week 4.

The past couple of weeks i have been working on the coding whilst the remainder of the group have been working on the art and animation. So far most of the important coding is nearing completion. The animation and the art have now be put together and the product is starting to take shape.
As we are having are games played by out side players tomorrow it was important to get the game as playable as possible and hopefully it is at a point where player know what to do.
I will post tomorrow about the reactions of the players.

Chocolate Factory Week Two

This week myself and my group made and played a paper prototype of are game, as well as this we had many discussions amongst are selves and are tutors.

The paper prototype we used was very detailed and definitely helped with visualising what the game will look like when it is finished. However the 3D model was difficult to play and in the future a simpler 2D model would make it easer to test game mechanics.

After discussing different parts of the game with the group and are tutors we have finished the game Design document. The main part of these discussions where how we where going to display information to are players, as a group we decided that the best way to do this would be the use small symbols that would feature simple but easy to understand pictures that would relate to different machines that where on the conveyor belt.

Personality test

Here are my results for the Personality test you can take at: http://kisa.ca/personality/

'Ta-dah, your personality type is ENFJ!
Extraverted (E) 89% Introverted (I) 11%
Intuitive (N) 68% Sensing (S) 32%
Feeling (F) 80% Thinking (T) 20%
Judging (J) 68% Perceiving (P) 32%'

Heare is the Wikipedia definition of a ENFJ:

'Extraverted feeling types seek continuity through harmonious relationships and collective values. They excel at picking up on the tone of a situation and acting accordingly, adding warmth to a cool setting or turning sour into sweet. They naturally seek to know what people do well, what they enjoy, and where and how they work. They seem to have an infinite number of acquaintances from all walks of life and are always on the lookout for people in need and those who can help out. ENFJs weave and strengthen the collective fabric of social conventions and interactions. Inclusiveness is important and they are particularly sensitive to those who are excluded.

ENFJs focus on others, feeling a glow when those around them are happy, and troubled when something is amiss. They are natural cheerleaders, often expressing support, gratitude, and encouragement, and heaping praise onto those they appreciate. They take note of what is being done and what needs doing, offering their assistance wherever necessary.

ENFJs enjoy organizing group activities and tend to take their commitments seriously. In general, they are reliable and do not like to disappoint others. As team players and project leaders, they have a gift for rallying their players, focusing on what is being done right and each member's strengths. They are loyal and they expect loyalty. They carry conversations well, finding common ground with their speaker. They tend to find the correct and gracious way to respond in any given situation, no matter how tense or uncomfortable it is.

Extraverted feeling types will uphold a wide range of values, simply because shared values are what create harmony. Some will profess the importance of tough-minded logic, justice and scholarly debate because their environments have these shared values. They tend to adopt the collective values of those in their social group.'

I would agree with most of that. What do you guys think? please comment.

Paper prototype

Now that my group have decided on the rules and structure for the game we will now create a paper prototype, so that we will be able to play a rough version of are game so that we can see if any thing to be changed or adjusted.

After creating some very rough cards and boards we played about three rounds of the game adjusting the rules slightly with each consecutive game. With the first game there was some definite communication problems with the group with two out of the three of us playing not fully understanding the rules, this resulted in me winning rather quickly and two members of the group getting very frustrated. This still helped as it highlighted that a good understanding for the rules was definitely needed and I managed to win within 5minietes making that game much shorter than anticipated.

On the second play we revised the rules so that a larger score was needed and I went though all of the rules again so that the team understood them all. This second game was much more successful with the game lasting a amount of time we where aiming for this was partly due to the increased score target and the fact that as we all knew the rules we where trying to stop each player form reaching the score that would able them to win.

The third and final play though we did went very similar as the second play it went very smoothly and was very fun. These paper prototype should me that nothing is perfect and also highlighted to me that although I may understand some thing clearly it does not guaranty that the rest of the group does.

Good Podcast

Hey this podcast is by the pepole that made Bioshock, they talk about how they decided on some of the stuff that did and did not make it into that game and the others they have created. Its quite funny i thought it was intresting, hope you do to your find it at;
http://irrationalgames.com/insider/irrational-podcast/

Tate Game Part Two

After the previous idea we tried to think of another idea that would a piece of software. We ended up with some thing that would be a very different experience.
The idea is a Facebook or web game where user will be given a customizable avatar and gallery where they will be able to display works of art that will attract computer controlled visitors gaining the user an in game currency that can be spent on new artwork that will attract more visitors. The users will also be able to interact with there friends in each others gallery's trading art and instant messaging.
I fell this would work as an idea as these kind of Facebook games are very popular at the moment especially with the demographic we are targeting.

Tate Game Part One

In groups we were asked to create a product that could be sold at Tate shops around the country. As game design student we opted to create a game.
After a few false starts with some ideas that could not be developed we eventually came up with a board game idea that has potential. The idea came to the group when we started to think about are target demographic, social young males and females that have a disposable income and an active interest in art. The idea is that each player has to collect and trade famous pieces of art that will be placed inside each player’s gallery to attract visitors. The first player to reach a finite number of visitors is the winner.
Each piece of Art will be represented on a card, which will have a picture of the artwork as well as the artist, the genre (i.e. modern, classical) and the amount of visitors it will attract. If the player has three cards that incorporate the same genre or artist the player get a bonus to the amount of visitors they attract.
For a card to attract visitors it has to be placed into one of the six slots in the player’s gallery. In a single turn the player can decide to pick up a new card at random, place a card into the gallery or trade cards with other players.
This is the basic concept of the game and I feel with more time to further develop ideas it could create a very compelling experience.

The post-its of life

I feel the reason most people play video games is to escape from their own mundane reality. When in groups we were asked to think of ideas of games that where based in our own mundane reality, everyone in my group where initially stumped.

The task was for each of us to think of five aspects of our own lives that we felt could be translated into a video game and write them on post-its. The five i came up with where:

• Driving somewhere new

• Walking the Dog

• Relationships

• Cooking pasta

• Train travel

As you can see none of the above where particularly inspiring (it was really hard!), but I do fell that a couple could be developed (particularly driving somewhere new and relationships). We then put all of the groups post-its together and as a group we had:

• Mountain climbing

• Paint balling

• Air Soft

• Drawing

• University

• Running the 'Bleep' test in P.E

• swimming

• Boxing

• Cooking at a barbecue

• travailing to America

• getting drunk

• music Rock

• getting lost and finding the way home

Again Some of these are not so workable but there are some definite activity's that could be worked with. Once we had brought all of are ideas together we decided to put them together in ways that could be made in to a structured video game.

Two ideas came out of this proses the first is a game of social interaction and exploration, where the player is placed in the shoes of a tourist travelling to modern day America and the interactions with people he has whilst he is there kind of like Shemue set in America with much more emphasis on charter interaction and less on combat.

The other idea to come out of this and one that as a group we preferred is a action adventure game where the player has to guide him self and his dog home down a mountain protecting them selves from the wild animals that live on the mountain.

This task was rewarding as it mad me think of ideas that I would normal dismiss, it also should how inspiration for Game mechanics can be found in the most mundane of tasks.