Sportswheel Redesign Asset: Betting Chips and Font

    Here are examples of the initial chip ideas I've produced for my sportswheel redesign. The theme is a kind of 11th/12th century archery setting, so I did a bit of library research into some of the the styles of the time, found a few examples of tapestries from the time as well as illustrations which helped me to begin settling on colour palettes and general styles. I also found some examples of 12th century coins which I thought would be pretty much ideal to use as betting chips for my sportswheel theme. To the right is an example of one of the coin styles I found which i used as a reference and template to create my own chip vectors. You can see a few similarities between the two like the rough, uneven edge and text around the edge of the coin. Even though these are initial designs I think I'll probably stick with them, maybe change the colour of the bronze coin to a different colour to avoid confusion with the gold one.

    I may need to change the values shown on the coins to match the amount players are actually betting on. Apart from the chips, I also have to produce the archery target (sportswheel), shoot button, archer animation and background. Which won't be to difficult, I managed to knock these up in an hour so if the rest of it is as simple I shouldn't have any problems. Also I've just remembered I had to create the text used on the coins, which again was made using pictorial reference from the books I picked up. In the image below I've shown the original research, a font that I made just using the found font style as a guideline and then the vectors which I used on the coins:

    The font is slightly cartoony which I wasn't really aiming for, however it fits with the general style of the coin so I don't think it matters too much also text isn't going to be a massive part of the final game so I decided to let it go.

BBFC Post (Rated 12A)

    Before I got to the BBFC lecture I was admittedly slightly curious as to how an hour and a half talk could be made on age certificates, I was expecting someone explaining to us how the age classifications work in film and games and not too much more. However I thought the subjects covered and the way it was presented was really well done. I hadn't really thought about age ratings previously apart from the odd occasion when you see a 15 film where there's a one off graphically violent scene and you come of the cinema thinking "Cor that was a bit heavy, that should have been an 18!", so it was interesting to find out from someone who directly decides the age certificates how it works. There were a few cool facts I picked up which i previously didn't know about, for example cinemas have the right to show films with a different certificate to the one the BBFC has decided on.

    Another thing that I found interesting was that the games industry have been fighting for rights to have games age classified independently of film, arguing that 'games and film are two completely different media'. Thinking over the texts we've been advised to read whilst on the course and also it's my personal opinion that this is the case, film and videogames are whilst similar in some aspects i.e. theres a degree of narrative, usually protagonists or some kind of main character involved, there's a strong importance for visual content in both... they cannot be considered essentially the same. However with regards to age certificates, I think the talker did a pretty good job of justifying why they can be rated by the same guidelines. He admitted that what you see is what you get with a film, everyone sees the same thing, however with a videogame, people don't always share the same experience, it's partially down to the player what kind of content they are exposing themselves to. An example he used which is this in a nutshell was when playing Grand Theft Auto (pretty much any of them), players have the CHOICE to pick up a prostitute in a car that they've stolen, do whatever with them, kill them afterwards and get their money back and then perhaps put a few bullets in the body, watching blood spray over the pavement for some kind of sadistic enjoyment. This is a pretty dark example however I think why he used such graphic imagery was to emphasise the fact that with games like Grand Theft Auto; severity of content in terms of violence/level of trauma is subjective. Another player could just have easily bought a car perfectly legally, and driven about sight seeing whilst abiding by speed limits and having general good manners. Either way the content still exists and the possibility for these pretty grim incidents are there. It sort of goes without saying that because of this kind of content, GTA's are 18's. Now if this happened in a film, it would also get a certificate 18. The point I'm slowly making is that regardless of whether this kind of content is obvious... it still exists, the mechanics are there to carry out these actions, meaning that the designer has deliberately decided to allow this kind of behaviour. So as long as this is the case, whether a games designer has allowed for players to kill prostitutes in such a graphic way or whether a writer has included a scene depicting the same thing in a film, that both media can be age rated by the same set of regulations.

    These leads on to topics like, what is considered offensive/acceptable, what may be influential to younger audiences in films/videogames? Which again is subjective to the viewer/player. I was reading Kayleigh Mizon's post on her blog, the link to which I'll put at the end of this post, regarding a boy of young age shot and killed his mum thinking she would respawn, this was in relation to whether 'violent' videogames are considered damaging to young minds. Could it not be the case that boy could have just as easily watched a film or cartoon where someone falls a long distance only to land with a comical 'BONK" and a sore head, causing the boy to go and throw himself off a cliff? The Coyote and Road Runner cartoons spring to mind when making that example. The reason I mention this is just to support the arguement that again content is subjective, what one person may consider OK, another may not. A more stable minded boy of the same age could have played the same games that that boy did and carried on life as normal. I'm going slightly off topic here but I'm just saying that it's hard to give a film/game an age certificate that everyone in the world will be completely happy with.
    So just to end this post I've decided to give myself a little test to gauge whether I've grasped the age classifications about right. The talker mentioned Manhunt, a game that was extremely controversial when released due to it's graphically violent content. So I was wondering how someone would go about redesigning (or I suppose it's more a case of reskinning) the game to make it acceptable for each age category. To do this I've got a little Youtube clip of Manhunt showing one of the various execution's possible in the game, watch this first (if you're not too easily offended) before reading my adaptations: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEDQgoFb07g

Rated 18: Man sneaks up behind goon strangling him with a baseball bat, whilst blood spatters over his shirt, then proceeding to aggressively whack his head in causing his head and brain to explode.

Rated 15: Man sneaks up behind goon giving him a knock on the back of the head, causing him to fall to the ground, not necessarily killing him and showing no blood.

Rated 12A: Man sneaks up behind goon and giving him a dead leg which then leads to a Scooby-doo-esque chase seen in which the goon chases him waving his fist angrily.

Rated PG: Man sneaks up on less menacing goon without tattoos, perhaps wearing a nice brightly coloured shirt, giving him a cheeky slap on the bum before apologising afterwards and making friends.

Rated U: Man and goon run together with expressions of intense happiness on their faces, in a flowery field, dressed as muffins, jumping together and cuddling then proceeding to sit down to have a tea party with plastic cutlery. Followed by more cuddles and friendship. Possibly rename the game from Manhunt to Manhug.

    I think I'm about on the mark here, let me know if you would have done anything differently! I think the 'U' version might be a bit heavy actually, containing elements of homo-eroticism, which might be hard for a 4-8 year old to handle and cause offence to their parents...

(http://kayzsblog.blogspot.com/ <<< Kay's blog)

Animal Frenzy Progress Update

    I thought I'd change this post to an update on how we're getting on since my last Animal Frenzy Progress report as a fair bit has been developed. Basically now we're at the stage where we are starting to create all the assets for the game, which includes more animal vectors, environments, sounds, scripts and any interface elements needed. Each group member is working on a different task, I'm still producing animal vectors as there's still quite a few to do and I've just written a draft version of the script for our Europe level which is what we are all focusing on at the moment. Our milestone at the moment is to have all of the assets ready to go and start scripting by tomorrow, currently we've got enough animal vectors and I've sorted out a task bar for the bottom of the screen which we can use for now as well as the script however I'm not sure whether some of the other assets needed are complete.
    Just referring back the the vectorising process, I'm comfortably bashing them out now, I've got my head round Illustrator and have sort of made a template on how to make them based on what Dan explained to me as well as a few tricks I've figured out in the process. Here are the vectors that I've produced so far which were done in preparation for tomorrows deadline (excluding the whale):

(Click the image for a bigger picture)

    Another aspect of the game that has been sorted since last time is how the animal choices were going to be displayed. We initially had the idea of animal icons but were unsure on how to show them in a way that would be obvious to a player what they were but also without taking up too much screen space. So we discussed the idea of simply having the heads of the animals in small icons so here are a few examples of the icons that may be used. Basically all they are are two different sized/coloured circles with a section of the animal tucked in between. The create the slight border overlap which you can see I just cut a the section of the animal that was overlapping and pasted it onto its own layer on top of the others and moved it about until it lined up. There's probably a better way of doing it without having to do that but it seemed to work ok for now.  If you can figure out what animals they are then I've done my job!

(Click the image for a bigger picture)

    On the level objective/mechanics issue we were having, that has also been resolved. We took a few hours in one of the group meetings to just sort it out once and for all what was going to happen and produced a new level structure. What we came up with was a sort of alternating level objective scheme, where one level would simply be place the animals in their right environment and the next would have an objective which would change the mechanics slightly and with it a new objective. For example putting out a bushfire on the Australia level by clicking on fires to make it safe for the animals before proceeding to start placing them. This reduces the amount of vectorising we previously thought we had to do whilst also keeping the varying level objectives in, it will still be a fair bit of work however on a manageable scale.

    That's really all there is to report, everything's going fairly smoothly at the moment so I can't see any reasons why Team Frenzy won't succeed!

Animal Frenzy Asset: Whale Vector

   (Click the image for a bigger picture)

This is my first attempt at vectorising for Animal Frenzy using Illustrator CS5. I started with a scanned drawing and began creating shapes to create the components of the whale like the fins, tail, eye and body. The middle image is showing the outlines of the shapes used which were then filled with colours and gradients to create the final image on the end. It was important to keep the different sections of the whale like the fins and tail as separate objects as when they are imported into Flash they can be moved about and animated. I won't be uploading images for each vector I do and spamming up my blog but I might post at the end of the vectorising process showing all of them together, this is just to briefly explain the proccess. I'm quite happy with my attempt, just about 25 more to go!

Animal Frenzy: Animal Concepts So Far

 Just a few of the animal designs for Animal Frenzy to be vectorised, more to come soon.

Thoughts on Prisoner Dilemma and It's Implementation

    Earlier we were discussing our notes on chance and skill from the Challenges for Games Designers book and we covered something called the 'Prisoner Dilemma' which really interested me. This was in the midst of talking about dilemmas in games in which a player is forced to choose a path from several, all of which will damage them in some way. I think this makes a nice change from the ordinary 'choose the strategically 'right' option in order to win the game'. Giving a player a decision in which there is no obvious clear answer I think introduces other non-game related factors into the experience, for example morality or personal preferences. Just referring back to my risk experience, there was a dilemma I faced during my table-sized international conquest in which I had the choice to pull back some troops from a country that was inevitably about to be taken by an opponent with far superior numbers to me or keep them there and thus weakening another region which was also at risk. I think when a player is faced with unavoidable loses they begin to react in different ways, some might keep the ultimate goal in mind and choose the decision which they consider least damaging to their progress, some might begin getting reckless due to a sense of lurking defeat, I for example starting getting sentimental over which country I prefer (in the example of risk) and which troops I liked best, which again I think is a really nice feature of a game, when a player has to begin getting emotionally involved in the experience.
    The famous Prisoner Dilemma example used in the text book was this, two players must either choose to cooperate with each other, often meaning a minor penalty to each, or both defect incurring a major penalty to both, or if one chooses to betray the other by defecting whilst the other is willing to cooperate, then the defected is rewarded (materially, perhaps not morally) and the cooperative player is then punished. I played a videogame recently called 'Kane & Lynch 2", which is the videogame equivalent of this. One of the online multiplayer modes puts this problem into practice, in this mode one team play as the 'robbers' attempting to shoot past the cops, break into a bank, grab as much money as possible and then proceed to the getaway vehicle which leaves after a certain amount of time, whilst the other team plays as the 'cops' attempting to protect the cash. I wasn't a massive fan of the game for a few aesthetic reasons, however this game mode kept me investing hours into it for a lot longer than I would ordinarily put into a game which I didn't like as much as this one.
    This game mode works for numerous reasons, initially the struggle is the shootout which occurs whilst proceeding to the money stash between attackers and defenders, however it slowly becomes apparent that players from your own team are attempting to race ahead in order to begin grabbing money before you, turning into into a race against allies and beginning to create a sense of rivalry. Once the cops have been killed they then respawn near the getaway vehicle, awaiting the robbers' escape. Players are then free to begin looting the bank. A nice touch implemented which is worth mentioning is the amount of money that a player has taken is indicated on screen, allowing everyone on your team to know who has the most dosh. This is where the Prisoner Dilemma comes into play, attackers can then decide to cooperate with each other in fighting off the next wave of cops and each gain a small cash bonus for making it out with other players or alternatively they can decide that they can take down a fellow team member and escape with their as well as their own loot. It would be common for a player to appear loyal, assisting team members to the getaway van only to put a bullet in their back as soon as it arrives.
    This is why I particularly loved this style of dynamics, players are challenged initially by more twitch based mechanics in shooting past the cops, which then gradually develops into a more cerebral game, using knowledge gained from previous rounds on player behaviors and weighing out your chances and the possibilities of success, which then turn back into twitch mechanics.
    Playing this game mode with the same seven/eight people for a few rounds certainly creates a lot of tension when alliances begin to form and people become wary of greedy players. I was playing a round the recently where paranoia had set in so bad, that players were backed up against the wall, each pointing their gun at each other without the balls to shoot due to fears of becoming branded as 'The Traitor', whilst waiting for the getaway truck to turn up. The time limit aspect of the game mode also contributed significantly to the drama and tension of the game, causing players to make quick decisions before the getaway vehicle drove off, often resulting in people making rash decisions that come back to bite them in the arse in later rounds, this consequently created a great sense of relief when you were sitting safe and sound in the van being taken away to safety.
    Just to round this post off, I'll just echo what I previously mentioned that the Prisoner Dilemma is such a good tool to be used in a game purely because it varies from some of the standard dynamics that players experience in attempting to progress towards winning, it's just a nice reminder that it's not just about racing to the finish but making vital choices, which emphasises that games are just as much about creating an experience as well as achieving victory, I feel anyway.