Game design Document

Okay so this module is probably the one that I find the hardest. With this Game Design Document I have really had to think and rack my brain for the content of this game.

This document was so scary to look at and there is definitely a look of work that needs to n=be done on it still, ill have to come back to it over the next couple of days.

The GDD made me really think about how the story of the game is going to work, the characters, the music and the theme of the game.
With the game being RPG based, there is  lot that can be done.

The main theme of the game is based around the aesthetic of Halloween. I would have liked the game to have a slightly softer spooky look to it but with the aesthetics of unity and my very, very limited knowledge of games, let alone game design, we'll have to work with what we've got.

Here is a link to the GDD which will be edited over time

I really hope that I can do this idea justice, but it really will need more work, a lot more.

signing off
-AK

Image of town found on tumblr

Game Idea research

A representation of my emotions going through the thinking process

Carrying on from last weeks post about some game idea brainstorms, this week I have whittled the ideas down to just one that I will work on for the coming weeks. This took a lot of thought, research and consistently annoying friends and family over the past week, trying to get them to read my ideas and get some feedback, or figure out which one they like best.

I've decided to go with the game idea called Tomb Town. This idea was the most popular;lar when it came to asking friends and family, many people loved the idea of traveling around the tow and forest as well as all the collectable items.  Honestly I'm not too sure if this idea was also popular because everyone is in a spooky mood due to halloween being literally around the corner. Either way,  I'm happy with my choice ( wether I will be able to say that in a couple of weeks, is something we will have to wait and see)

This week, I was trying to come up with different game mechanics and three ways that the game could work.


Basic RPG

The first idea that I came up with was a basic RPG structure. This is the structure I suggested in my brainstorming post, and also what is scribbled about in my design notebook... it's everywhere!
For this idea, the players character would travel throughout the town, collecting items that they can trade for coins or use in future quests. There would be tasks that NPCs can give the character, in order to move through the town or area. Some NPCs would be more difficult to find then others. 
Throughout the town there are houses, shops and other buildings you can explore, learning the lore of the town and about the final skeleton wizard.

A tutorial by jimmy vegas that I think would be useful!

Level based 

This would be similar enough to the RPG, with collectable coins and items, there would be certain tasks that have to be able to move on to the next playable level. Certain tasks would also lead to side quest levels, levels that aren't essentially but do increase your knowledge or are just for fun!

Achievement based

For this idea, there would be a set amount of tasks that have to be completed before the player can move on. Each task would add more to a fillable task bar, which when full, adds an extra area on the map. 
With this, there would also be a set amount of items that have to be collected and also if a task is not completed correctly, the player would have to repeat the task.

Out of all of these ideas, I think I would be able to flesh out the RPG idea more then the rest, including elements of the level and achievement based game.

signing off
-AK

Image:
found on boredart.com

Games GDD

This week we learnt some more about how to design rules, along with other components of board games.

When it comes to board games or card games there is a lot more to think about then what you would first, well, think. I for one was shocked at the amount of detail. Having been selling lots of card games and board games, it is a real eye opener to red about the design process that goes into everything from the game pieces to the way that the games name is displayed on all sides of the box.

Components

    Components are those things that make games much more enjoyable for the player. This includes everything from

• the height of the pieces,
• size of the playing pieces on the board
• to the shape and colour

that makes each piece distinguishable from each other.

    From board games to card games, these, although are not 'essential', make the players experience much easier and lot more enjoyable. In an article by Greg Aleknevicus, which you can read here, Aleknevicus make reference to a game called, 'Schotten-Totten' , each card has the same image on it but the suits are distinguished by colour. This is a poor design, due to a lot of the population dealing with some way, shape, or form of colour blindness, so all the cards begin to look the same colour. It is also harder for the regular player to quickly distinguish the suit.

Another point that Aleknevicus make in his article is about indices and icons on game pieces.

These are used in a lot of different games such as Darkon, where there are vortex pieces and also gold pieces. In this game Darkon, these two pieces look very similar so it is very common that a player will pick up one piece thinking it is another.

This can be avoided by making pieces different sizes, having very different colours or very distinguishable designs.

The Box

This part of the article was very interesting to me, having spent the past 11 months of my career trying to display different boxes, from Lego, to board games like chess and monopoly and also many, MANY, decks of cards.

Listing the name of the game on the side of the box is essential. This catches the consumers eye as they are walking towards or by, drawing them to pickup the box and investigate. This also helps the retailer to have a display of these boxes, especially around Christmas time. Having the name displayed on the side allows us to stack up these games in piles and they are still recognisable.

Back of the box pictures are also important. This is what the player will go to when trying to learn how to play the game, usually without reading the rules first. This photo should always be of actual events from the game as well as enticing, so the player will want to well, play the game.

Rules

This is one of thee most important parts to designing any game. The rules from your game must be stated clearly and easy for all players to understand. They should state what can happen in any situation, like what to do in the event of  tie, what to do if a player runs out of money or cards or when the cards should be reshuffled.

Using examples is always an effective way to explain a rule hat may otherwise be hard to understand.

***

Other things to include in your game are, a list of all components - including all game pieces. This allows the player to easily determine what pieces they may be missing-, some extra pieces if possible or a service where the player may be able to buy extras, such as counters or refile sheets.

It is also a good idea to support your game online, with a FAQ page for players to find out information, if they do come across a situation that they are not sure how to play. Although most board games do not have official FQA pages, there are many forums and blogs, like this Monopoly FAQ page for example.

I really enjoyed learning about this type of game development this week, I has changed how I will look at board games for the foreseeable future.

Signing off

-AK

images

Monopoly cat found on pinterest

Side view of game boxes found on pinterest

Unty Tutorial 02

This week's tutorials (By Jimmy Vegas) focused mainly on refining certain parts of our graphics and placing a cursor on the gameplay canvas.

I really enjoyed watching the tutorials, because it really showed how easy it can be to create a good looking game, with just some other basic knowledge of code and adding textures
The first tutorial helped with making collection graphics and adding audio and script. I found this really interesting because I plan on using a lot of item collections within my own game that I will be making.
I also like that he taught us the code on how to make the objects rotate, giving the game that next layer of detail.

I did however find the coding difficult to understand at first. Although I have some experience with coding for websites, so HTML and CSS, C# was something that I haven't even heard about before I started watching these tutorials. I find that the layout of this code is slightly similar to CSS coding layout, so it took me a little while to switch my brain over to learning this new code.

Learning to add water and walls was also something I really enjoyed learning about. Again like the gem, I found it good to see objects and pieces of terrain that I want to use in my own game, being explained simply. The fact that you can change the way the wall looks and even the length of your shadows is really helpful.

The second video was about raycast and cursor. I will definitely have to go back over this Video because i didn't really understand the purpose of the ray cast, but being able to place the cursor on the gameplay was very helpful even from a game developer point of view. This made it much easier to be able to tell what way you were going to move and ill really improve the UI of the game.

Signing off
-AK

photo found on pinterest

Game Elements: what they are made off!

   

Games are made up of many different things, but the key elements to a game are the formal elements that build up the skeleton framework of gameplay.
These formal elements include things like;

• Players
• Objectives
• Rules
• Resources and resource management
• Game state
• Information
• Sequencing
• Player information
• Theme, narrative, backstory, setting
• Games as systems

    This week I will discuss three of these elements that I have learnt about, that I did not already know, or ever really think about.

Players

    Players are a very big part of gameplay. Designers and developers must always take the player into consideration.

They must also think about how many players the game supports; single player, multiplayer, teams , 1v1, team v team (v team).

Things like this contribute to the way that the game is payed, how many rounds and turns on each round, is it turn based or is everyone playing at the same time?

Sequencing

    Depending on how many players there are in a game, sequence can then be decided. A lot of games, like your classic board games are turn based. This is usually in a clockwise fashion but this has developed a lot over the years. Some games take turned based on who is winning  or skipping the first player to eliminate the 'first player advantage'.

Other games are turn based but the players draw at the same time and often write things like actions down or turn action cards and the like.

Games as systems

    Changing even just one of the many formal elements in a game can change the game entirely. They greatly influence user experience.

Although this is turn, systems can sometimes change as new information is obtained, but changing one formal element has an effect on all other elements of the game.

    Due to the game working this way, you can describe it as a system, everything effects everything else, and some elements are not possible without other elements.

    -signing off

      Ak

image found on pineterest

Feedback Thoughts

   

The first article I read this week was about 'Silencing the critical voices in your head' by Sabina Nawaz.
    I really enjoyed reading this article for many reasons. The first being, Nawaz talks about how we can get very bogged down in our thoughts and the negative comments we receive on our work. Recently I have found myself doing this more and more, zooming in on the bad things, rather then focusing on the compliments that we receive on our work, the praise for a job well done.
    Sabina Nawaz's writes ' we need five good voices for every one bad voice'. I found this very heart hitting. I felt like I had just been slapped in the face with realisation. Studies show that negative comments stick in our brain much longer and stronger then positive comments do.
   Nawaz's plan for overcoming these critical voices is a very practical one and something that, after some thought, I have seen in my everyday life from the people that I look up to and aspire to be like. These people range from lectures, who will ask you what you found helpful in an assignment, workshop or lecture, to my manager in work, who asked what really helped when I was being rained in, some that she could apply this to the future when she has to train in new staff.


    The second article I read this week was called 'Seven ways to crush self-doubt in creative work' by John Spencer
   
    Self doubt is definitely something I have struggled with my entire school career, having never been very good at taking tests, I began to doubt that I could every actually do the work, because all of the grades I came out with at the end of learning were not usually on the upper side of the scale. I doubted that I actually understood what was going on, and I began to doubt my ability to learn.

    I have noticed that this has carried over into my college education, when I sit down to do assignments and start to believe that I will not be able to finish them, even though the point is to learn as we progress through these assignments.

    Spencer addresses almost all of these points in his article, writing about how to avoid falling into this pit of self doubt. The first way is to stop comparing yourself to others. This is definitely something I have found myself doing. I can clearly remember spending an entire morning for a pitch just the other day, wondering if my pitch was as good as others, if the way I was presenting it was the same or up to scratch in comparison to others. Now that I am aware of this, it is something I can work on in the future and hopefully try and avoid.

    Another point John Spencer makes in his article is about avoiding perfectionism. Perfectionism ha always been my downfall. Although, having studied art for 5 years, I understand the process of creating things with mistakes so you can improve and make the final piece better, I still end up trying to perfect things as I go along. Even as I write this post, I am thinking about another assignment and shooting down ideas because they aren't perfect, even though they aren't supposed to be! forgetting about making things absolutely perfect is definitely going to be something I am going to have to work very hard on.


    I have always enjoyed receiving feedback but I always find myself fishing for the negative things, rather then what I've done right, and what I should be doing the next time round. I hope that having learned these new techniques, I will be able to believe in my work more ad understand that the feedback is to help me, not put me down!

    Signing off
    -Ak

image found on pinterest

Game Brainstorm

   

    You have no idea how hard coming up with some game ideas was.
I didn't realise it before but I honestly do not play enough games. I will certainly have to fix that at some point.
I've come up with four game ideas, somethings that I may possibly make using unity over the next coming weeks.

Game idea 1: Tomb Town

    Your character is a witch/wizard, who has recently moved to tomb town, home to witches, wizards, ghosts, ghouls and all the ghastly creatures you can recall from your childhood scary stories.

Customise your character and make your way around the town, collecting items, coins, learning spells and gaining XP by completing tasks and quests  to help your fellow town members.

Level up and complete more difficult tasks and quests as you gain more XP.

    The final boss of the game is the 'Skelezard', an undead wizard straight out of the towns dusty old book of legends. Along with the help of your friends and fellow towns people, use your items and spells to make your way into the skelecave,(which turns out to be a huge underground castle, with an undead army) battle the final boss, and bring as much peace and tranquillity as there can ever be in a town full of spooks.

    The game is a basic RPG with the main character able to explore the town and the different terrains surrounding the town like caves and shops. The final boss is a skeleton wizard and there are other main NPCs such as witch shop owners, a man with a pumpkin head named Jack and a ghost who doesn't know what doors are.

    The main tutorials I'll be following for most of this game would be Jimmy Vegas' 'how to make an RPG' videos.

Game idea 2: Tree house climber

    Playable character is a forest elf who has lived on the forest floor his whole life. He decides he wants a better life and begins to work really hard to help people and earn money so that he can live higher up in the tree.

    The main goal of this game is to reach the top layer or the tree community. the game is based on a platformer game but with elements of RPG. There are plenty of NPCs to get to know and complete tasks for and then once the player has enough coins, they can move up the tree but through a platform based section of the game. There are different obstacles during these levels that the player must overcome.

    Different NCPs with different levels of importance. some are more difficult to find then others. Talk to these characters to complete task and increase player level with coins.

    The tutorials I would use are 'How to create a platformer game in unity' by Jimmy Vegas and also the video mentioned in game idea 1

Game idea 3: Rumour or Truth

    The main playable character is  a detective just starting out in the force. They are given different statements by their superior officer and must investigate then. the goal is to figure out if the statement is a rumour or true.

    By going out into the playable world, talking to the city people and collecting the relevant evidence and information the character builds up the needed knowledge to be able to decide if the statement is correct.

    They then must return to the superior and decide if it is rumour or truth. the correct answer earns them XP and they can level up, the wrong answer docks XP points and the player must complete the task correctly before moving on to the next statement.

    The game is a puzzle of sorts but works based on RPG.
I would use the same tutorials as stated above.

Game idea 4: Art Shop Mayhem  

    You start as a Christmas temp in an art store, thrown in the middle of the Christmas present rush! you must quickly learn the skills and techniques of the different art materials, such as the arts, clay, paper-crafts and more, to be able to provide the correct information to the customers.

each customer you help earns you XP points, and each customer that buys something brings money into the shop.

    As you progress up the levels from Christmas temp all the way up to managers positions, you build up your XP.

each satisfied customer gives XP each unhappy one removes XP.

    Some customer tasks will require the player to find the right co workers to speak to, to ask for help and to bring in the coins for the shop.

    Like the previous games it will be RPG based and follow the Jimmy Vegas tutorials.

Signing off

-AK

Art found on Pinterest

Brainstorming images by me

What is a Game??

   

A game by definition is some with 'play activity, formal rules and conflict'. From this there are many other definitions and not every single one is right but they are also, not wrong.

    Games are made up of the several principles:

-It is separate, set in space and time but separate from our world,

-Voluntary, The player chooses to play the game,

- Harmless, the user does not come into actual harms way,

-Unproductive, the payer does not earn wealth nor lose it,

-Closed formal system,

-Has an end and a means

-Representation or simulation of events,

-Decision making and

-Uncertain outcomes

    The games themselves present with these properties and are completely voluntary to play, the player does not gain wealth nor lose it in the process, all decision making is voluntary and the outcome is unknown to the player while it is effected by how they choose to play the game.

    There are still questions in relation to this though, as to whether or not puzzles, such as the Rubik's cube is a game, or role-playing games, both with multiple endings or outcomes.

    An important aspect of a game is the formal rules that they have. These make order for the game and how it should be played, stopping users from playing all actions at once and winning the game without any real effort.

Signing off

-AK

images:

Dice images found on pinterest