3D Modelling Update

    Just a s a brief update on how the 3D modelling module is going. I started to make use of my research and began making some canopic jars as models for our Egyptian Digsite level. These will probably be scattered around one of the burial rooms. They're faily low poly counts as they are only small objects in game and I am trying to optimise them in terms of poly counts, so I'm going to spend a good amount of time on creating nice texures for these to compensate.
    Below are just some preliminary sketches of my simpler adaptations of the real life canopic jars. I do these because it helps me to plan ahead what I'm going to create in 3DS max. Below that are the models without textures and the wireframe versions so you can get an idea as to how many faces are used. From left to right, the jars are based on an eagle, Anubis, a baboon and a human, again this wont be immediately evident from the models as they are fairly primitive, but they should, with a texture be more effective.

[Click image to enlarge]

Chapter 7: Managing Games

    There were a few points of this week's reading regarding management games that I'll mention in this post.
    Management games are focused on getting the player to take charge of multiple elements at one time, this could be things like resource management or time managent. Trefry mentioned time frequently in this chapter which emphasised to me what the integration of time limitations in management games can do to the overall experience. For example games like Diner Dash and Cake Mania, two examples that Trefry uses in the chapter, both have time management as a constant throughout the game. This adds a level of intensity that cannot be found in other management games such as Insaniqarium, forcing the player to micromanage more frequently, making it further swayed toward the hardcore gamer, however whilst still maintaining its casual elements.
    Another factor of management games that although not mechanic related is important, is a simple means of interaction and navigation. In management games players need the ability to make choices and carry out those decisions quickly, making an easy to use interaction mechanic a fairly essential aspect of these types of games. Management games that implement this well can allow players to concentrate on managing as opposed to exogenous factors like clicking a mouse or pressing buttons on a keyboard.
    Trefry, like in previous chapters, mentioned the intuitiveness that surrounds management games. I got into a slightly side tracked chat with my girlfriend just after I read the chapter about whether she reckoned that playing Diner Dash would help her should she become a waitress. Tayla is a bit of an Diner Dash fan and she studies criminal psychology at Birmingham Uni, so she had some psychological jargen to throw at me about it. Last year I read an article by Costikyan where he established that a game is "...an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players
to struggle toward a goal.” So this point isn't completely unjustified. I argued that having that cognitive strength regarding management/ time management skills or 'plate spinning' ability, would be transferable to a real life scenario as a waitress. Tayla however argued that it wouldn't be the same as in a real life waitressing job you're managing your tasks over a longer period of time as well as managing spontaneous tasks that may throw you off track. For example, once a player has played Diner Dash enough they can begin to learn all of the micromanagement tasks that run seperate to keeping the customers happy, however in real life, there may be variables that differ on a daily basis, a spilt drink or a broken glass. Also a waitress only deals with the customers a few times over the space of an hour/hour and a half, which requires a different type of mental ability to playing Diner Dash as this ventures into the realms of involving your long term memory. Apparently, on average your short term memory lasts between 5-10 seconds and can retain 7 +/- 2 chunks of information, making Diner Dash a good indication of the strength of your short term memory.
    So... I wondered if a possible iteration to Diner Dash would to better simulate the waitressing profession and have the waiting table aspect of the game to play a less central role. So maybe if placing the customers, taking their order, serving them, clearing the plates and giving the bill came into play over a longer period of time and in between carrying out those tasks the player had to micromanage themselves into completing other waitressing related tasks. This could be tasks like washing plates and stacking them away, clearing dust/dirt from the restaurant floor. I'm not sure whether waitresses/waiters actually carry out these jobs during their shifts but I'm sure there are other tasks they are assigned that could be converted into different mechanics in a game. This way players would be demanded to remember and manage their tasks/time not just on a short term basis but also their ability to remember and manage over long periods. It could also break up the repetition of carrying out the same clicking mechanic.
    Although it seems so, the above point isn't completely off on a tangent, Trefry mentiones in the chapter that adding additional tasks on top of core tasks can add additonal layers of complexity to increase difficulty for the player. He also adds that complexity should be gradually introduced allowing players to adjust their pattern of play to adapt to these new challenges.
    I don't have much more to pull out of the chapter, these were the more important points that I found.
    

Weekend Paper Prototyping

    At the weekend, Adam, Matt and I decided that making our level for the Modding module would be a fun challenge. To reiterate, our level is based on an Egyptian dig site and composed of two floors. The upper is the digsite, which is designed to be open long spaces for longer range conflict. The bottom (the focus of our paper prototype) is a an excavated tomb, which uses more confined spaces designed for concentrated battles. We felt that this would be the best floor to prototype as it would allow us to test the shapes of corridors and hallways.
    So below are the images of our development of the protoype. We have yet to begin testing the spaces by experimenting with obstacles, that will most probably take place during the week however we have all the space laid out ready to do so.
    I've done a few visualisations as an example of the kind of thing we are going to use the prototype for in our design document.

    We started by drawing out the floorplan based on our initial idea, beginning to take into consieration scale. We estimated that roughly 15mm = 1meter in game, which is a bit of an odd scaling system but we were catering around how big we could make the map on an A1 sheet.

We cut it out... Not as good as we could have done might I add, due to an old scalpel and that we were cutting on the underside of my rug...

    We had to elevate the floor as we have a section of recessed floor in the main chamber, which you can see in this image.

    I then added the staircase incline which is one of the entrances down into the tomb, you can see this on the far right of the image.

    Alongside this we added the ramped floor next to the entrance of the tomb which leads to a drop down to the outer walkways. We also added a central pillar to represent the large statue that will take its place in game.


Visualisations

    These are examples of how I expect some of the spaces to be used in game. We haven't added the sloped path down to the recessed flooring yet either, however in the final version this will be implemented.

    You can see form the bottom image that we haven't built in the slopes yet however if you refer to the map that I've posted earlier on in my blog (keep scrolling down) you should be able to see where they are going to be placed.
   So this is about 85% finished however I thought i'd blog it now as I'm going to be short on time over the next week.  After seeing it like this I'm more confident about the design of our map overall, just need to do a decent job of modelling it digitally now!
    Again if you would like to see the original floorplan it is in this month's postings, so just scroll down.

Casual Game Design: Seeking

    I've never been a massive fan of seeking games, mainly because my patience seems to wear thin whenever I'm sitting staring at the same space for one object. Trefry doesn't give seeking games an exactly shining review either.
    He suggests that seeking, like sorting and matching, is an instinctive proccess, with which I'd agree. Man has been seeking for hundreds of thousands of years, its a suvival instinct. This instinctivity supports seeking games as a solid foundation from which to build casual games. They require no explanation as all humans are familiar with the concept of finding hidden objects. Trefry points out that seeking games offer no replayability, once a player has discovered the object, or the route from A to B, the game becomes useless. Unless of course a game like find the ball under the cup is being played. However games like that require no logical thought proccess or strategy to allow the player to find what they are looking for, making seeking games fairly unsatisfactory even after completion.
    One method that Trefry suggests is trying to implement logic into seeking games to try and add a sense of accomplishment, other than just persisting to seek until you eventually complete the game. He uses a few examples in the chapter, none that I can talk confidently about having not played them, however the game 'Crimson Room' I have played. This is a game where the player is locked in a room and is left no instructions as to how to escape, they must rely on their seeking abilities to help them. Logic is integrated into Crimson Room in that the player must find an object in order to interact with another object in order to progress. For example, finding the key under the bed that will open the box on the shelf, which contains a shard of glass that can be used to cut a hole in the wallpaper. Even though this is just a glamourised version of seeking, players can begin to feel like they are using some form of problem solving, which can create an overall stronger sense of satisfaction. What's also a nice little extra to Crimson Room is that there is a snippet of narrative given at the beginning of the game, which isn't much but helps the player immerse themselves in the dilemma.
    Other than pointing out the few flaws in seeking and potential improvements to it Trefry doesn't expand much further, and I don't think much more needs to be said either. I'll finish this post with a link to Crimson Room so you can see if you agree with what Trefry or I feel about seeking games.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/games/room

Chime Review

    I thought I'd break up readings with a small post about my thoughts on a game I've recently purchased, Chime. I should start by saying that I do think that the idea behind Chime is pretty cool, I think it's a nice idea, however I was expecting more from the concept.
    Chime is a 'tetris-esque' type of game in that players place different shaped blocks in order to create squares (or quads as they're called in game). The bigger the quads the bigger the points you make. From the description so far Chime is an adaptation of tetris. However the twist that Zoë Mode (the developers behind Chime) have integrated is a mechanic that involves using sound and the players' block positioning to create different compositions. I should also say that to each level there is a different track composed by a different artist that plays through the entirety of the level.
 There is also a line that runs from left to right, sweeping across your placed blocks. As the line crosses the blocks a note is played that is in the same key as the track being played, so consequently creating a new song depending on how you placed you blocks.
    I'm not expecting you to get it from by bad description but if you follow the the Youtube link below then hopefully with my description you'll get it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B11LXvmraus&feature=related

    There has been alot of hype surrounding Chime, pre and post release, about it's synergy between music and gameplay. I would completely agree that there is a certain relation between the two, however for me music and choices made in game aren't related.
    From a musical perspective I'm sure Chime is a really cool way of recomposing songs and adding elements that weren't originally intended. Although from a gameplay perspective, after a few hours of playing Chime, I failed to see how a simple gamer like me could get involved properly with creating my own unique composition. I found that my choices in game were influenced only by the shapes of the blocks I was handed, much alike they would be had I been playing Tetris. I keep mentioning Tetris however I don't want to give off the impression that I'm undermining the efforts put into developing Chime or attempting to be flippant and having a 'Oh it's basically Tetris with music' attitude, because I'm not. I'm just stating that there is a relation between the two in that you are placing blocks to form shapes for points.

    As I was saying, my choices were influenced in the same way that they would be had I been playing Tetris. I think this was mainly because my score was cumulated based only on my block positioning, so I felt no need to focus on the musical aspect of it. The musical element was quite a nice feature, but again it had no effect on my progress or scoring. For me that wasn't really enough. I did a little test and tried playing Chime with my sound muted, and found that I placed my blocks in the same way that I would had it not been muted, which I think was the same time I started to lose enthusiasm for Chime. Perhaps this relates to what Trefry was saying about the hardcore expecting complexity from casual games, maybe my score based mentality was blinkering me from enjoying the music that I created, so perhaps I'm being too tough.

    However, personally I think that a nice iteration to Chime would be to add some kind of composition bonus, or something that would link the music to the scoring. Perhaps if players' placed blocks in a certain way that corresponded to techniques used in creating melodies or tunes in music. For example if a player organised their blocks in a sort of zigzag shape then that would create a vibrato and that would add a multiplier or maybe just extra points to you current score. Or if the player arranged the blocks to create an inclined/declining shape then that would play a melody using a scale that would compliment the song. I'm not an expert in music so I can't reel off a load of different shapes and potentially related musical techniques, but I'm sure there are other means of doing so. This for me would help to create a stronger bond between block positioning and the music that the player was making. This was the sort of thing that I was expecting of Chime originally, a way for a non-musically educated person like me to get involved in creating their own tune combined with the block placing mechanic. I understand that this game isn't solely based on composing music, however after listening to all the hysteria that followed Chime I think I felt a bit cheated into buying and playing it.

    I think the best thing to do to demonstrate what I'm saying is to play Chime, you can get it off of the Xbox live arcade and I think it's available from the Playstation store as well. Buy it if you're not put off by my review, give it a go and see if it works for you.

Play Is The Thing

    Another post based on chapter three of Casual Game Design. The theme of this chapter was 'play' and the enjoyment of it in games.
    There were a a few aspects of the chapter that caught my eye. One of the first was the emphasis on pulling out the enjoyable mechanics of a game and refining and developing it. This seems a completely logical method of creating a game that works. In doing this the designer is helping himself to discard the grey areas of his game and moving towards a product that will be as a whole more engaging for the player. Again it links in to the idea of 'killing your babies', in that a designer needs to build up an understanding of what does and doesn't work and have the ability to keep and chuck away both.
    Another was Trefry's acknowlegdment of play in every day aspects of our lives. This is something that previously I had never really thought about, yet I myself did it. Trefry gave the examples like 'How much stress can it take before it breaks?, how far can I throw this?'. This relates to humans instinct to creating some form of structured play, for example I tend to click my pen whenever I'm holding it. That in itself is play, not so much consciously or deliberately however it demonstrates Trefry's point.
    I think this is a key aspect of game design that should be tapped into more often, especially in casual game design. using play mechanics that come instincively to the player is a good method of establishing a 'pick up and play' feel to your game. A perfect example of what I'm talking about is one of the first apps that I downloaded for my iPhone, Papertoss. The game is fairly self explanatory, players throw paper balls into a bin across a room. The mechanic used in game is a finger motion used to simulate a throwing motion, which is something that we are all familar with. Within a few throws players can begin to get a feel for the physics involved, which again is exactly what you want from a casual game, a short learning curve with quick results.
   Trefry also mentioned in Chapter three about the evolution of 'casual' and 'hardcore', about how as player skill and familiarity with games grows, the boundaries for casual game complexity expand. He says something that I'm not sure I entirely agree with, perhaps due to misenterpretation I'm not sure. He states "...The casualness versus hardcore nature of a game is entirely contextual and changes as players evolve and grow more skilled..." Initially I thought that Trefry was saying that casual gaming complexity is increasing as the age of casual gaming increases, regardless of the players and their ability. However as he says 'is entirely contextual' I'm assuming he means that hardcore players who would play casual games would expect a higher difficulty than those who play casual games alone, so the complexity of the casual game is based on your demographic. So the hardcore perceive casual differently to casual gamers, which makes sense.

    He continues to break down play into catagories like Attunement play, Object play (like pen clicking), social play, imaginative, solitary play (play involving yourself, reading, collecting) etc. He also mentions that there lies a problem with simple games, in that there will liely be players with naturally stronger 'nacks' for it. For example running, there are clearly individuals who are stronger runners in life than others. The problem with running is that that is the sole skill that allows you to win and doesn't allow for other less talented players to compensate in other areas. Maybe it would be an interesting challenge to iterate the 100m sprint to give others like me a chance of winning!
    My final point about the chapter relates to a quote from Trefry that I liked saying, "Games require some level of uncertainty informed by choice..."the reason why I liked this is that it supports and arguement that I used in a discussion about how games like Magic: The Gathering are luck based games. Yes, the outcome of the game is heavily influenced by luck of the draw however it's the players' strategies based on the cards they are dealt that can win or lose the game for them. In my opinion it has just the right amount of uncertainty to allow it to be different each game but also allows enough room for choices and strategy to make you feel like the win (or lose) was down to you. Also your opponent is playing under the same rules, so the choices that you make may not always create a certain outcome that you envisaged, depending on the choice and luck of their turn, which consequently causes you to adapt your choices once again.

    Ive skimmed over alot of the chapter but I've picked out the small sections that I found most interesting.

Gregory Trefry: Responsibilties of a Game Designer

    Over the weeks that I've been back I've left my blog collecting dust so consequently I have several topics that I  would like to cover. I'll be methodical and start with what I missed first.

    The first is a reading from the book 'Casual Game Design' by Gregory Trefry regarding the responsibilities of a Game Designer. This section of the book acted, in a sense, as a list of commandments that should be considered when designing games. Trefry spoke in fair detail about consideration for the player and general rules relating to design however I've condensed the content down into less elaborate smaller sentences.

   Listen to your team/players. Prototype. Don't be afraid of chucking out ideas that don't work.

    These were the more general ideas relating to design that trefry touched upon, all of which make sense. I think the hardest to achieve out of all of these for me is the third. It can be quite difficult sometimes to abandon an idea that you feel so sure will contribute positively to the game, even when initial playtests insist that it won't. This is something that Trefry touches upon later in the book, however he suggests that iterating an idea sometimes loses to persistence in refining one. He does also mention that having the experience to make those kinds of calls is pretty vital, so for now for me iterative design proccess is the way forward.
    Trefry then goes on to discuss level design.
  
    Take into account player learning curves and skill levels. Be empathetic. Don't make it too hard. Ease the players into the game. Don't forget to challenge the player. Build levels around a core concept. Give players room to explore. Vary levels. Refine, play, refine. Playtest.

Alot of these may seem fairly obvious but all of the above are worth remembering. For me the most important two here are 'Don't forget to challenge the player. Build levels around a core concept.' Without being pedantic about the definition of 'challenge', a game with no challenge has the potential to become a very boring game. Players like to be challenged, some more than others however in every game there are different magnitudes of a struggle.
    From experience, having a core concept in a project can make or break your success in terms of producing a well polished final piece. This is an essential factor to consider, not in just game design but in every arts based subject. At time in the past I've been talking to people about ideas for a project or ideas for final pieces and just thought 'Why?'. I like to think I'm fairly open minded but sometimes I'll hear of a concept that was produced on no more than personal preference without any regard to how it's justified, and can't help but think '....that's stupid...'. It's probably bad of me to say that but, honestly, I'm sure you can think of a few games, art peices, campaigns that are, without dancing around it, shit. I know I've been guilty of it in the past at times, and know how hard it is to try and scrape together any arguements that will help explain why I'm doing something. So as a summary, by coming up with a sound idea/concept, it makes the rest of the project alot easier in all aspects.

    The rest of the article included ideas about exploration of mechanics. Not being repetitive. Progression of difficulty. Practice iteration on small games, then get bigger.

    I know that not all games stick to these guidelines however I think Trefry writes these with the assumption that the reader/game designer has some eye for design and the ability to know when and when not to consider these as responsibilties. Overall I thought the reading was a nice general topic to kick start the year with and a nice refresher of my responsibilties as a game designer.

Mod Map Draft

[Click image to enlarge]

    A rough layout of my group's map for our modding module. On the left is the tomb layout and on the right the digsite situatied on top of the tomb. We wanted two different play spaces, one which was fairly open with oppurtunities for longer ranged firefight and the other to be alot tighter for more condensed battles. This is just an initial layout with no accurate scaling to it so it will most likely change over the coming weeks.

Cucina Childrens Menu Illustrations

     I've spent the last few days putting together illustrations for a menu which is to be used in a special needs school called Milestone School. Basically the brief was to create simple images to represent the food that the students of the school could use as a means of picking what they want from the menu, which was necessary as a lot of the students have difficulty reading.

     The way the system works is that each day in the cafeteria, tiles with the food imprinted on them would be stuck to a magnetic notice board and the students would choose what they want.

     I was given a list of 38 meals that I had to create. Below are the first bunch that I produced and sent off for approval. Feedback came back and I had to make the icons simpler, breaking them down into individual foods. So instead of having an icon with quiche, carrots and beans on it I would have to create three separate icons for each of them.

     So below are the new list of 63 individual foods that I've just finished and are going to be used and set up in the next few weeks. Text is to the tiles as the teachers also eat the same things as the students do, so that's more for their benefit.  

 

[Click image to enlarge]

    I also had to create two spot the differences and a snakes and ladders board which is to be printed onto a 700x700mm collapsable box. There was no real theme established so I stuck with food as I think it might be used in the eating area. I also had to draw a top down plate of food for when there were no bowls on the box.

[Click image to enlarge]

 

Gender Segregation in Gaming

    We were looking at a few statistics last week relating to the female population within the games industry and how they are vastly outnumbered in comparison to male numbers. It was also asked whether there was a link between the number of females playing games and females working in the industry.

    I think that unfortunately there is a fair bit of stigma that surrounds video gaming with regards to the type of people that associate themselves with it, alot of people still think that only young boys play these games, however we know this is not the case. Especially nowadays where casual games, indy games, social games are all swarming the market. I remember reading an article in Edge magazine a while ago about how social networking was changing the face of gaming, it also talked about how Zynga's Farmville had managed to attract something like almost 70 million users (composed of both female and male players) in a matter of months, which is absolutely mental. I suppose this suggests that in order to increase the amount of female videogamers there should be some kind of synergy between video gaming and other more unisex fields, like social networking in order to balance out the numbers. Developers have been doing this more commonly I feel in recent years, with titles like Just Dance, Nintendogs, Super Monkey Ball etc. hitting the market, which in my opinion are female/'neutral' games. 
    Let's face it, even though stereotypes are typically something to frown upon, they do ring true sometimes. Men/boys love shooting, racing, war, blowing stuff up and women/girls generally speaking like less aggressive themes like... baking. Obviously I'm taking the piss with the last one, but on a serious note there is definately a contrast between the genre of games that males and females play. Recently I've been playing Call Of Duty: Black Ops, (a war themed FPS) a fair amount and I'd say that roughly 95% of the players I hear speaking are male, and when I do hear a female player usually this is followed by some harrassment from male players, which probably doesn't help the gender segregaton dilemma.

    Anyway I've gone slightly off track. In the article we were given to study it was reported that the jobs that women were occupying were positions relating to marketing, IT, Human Resources etc. less development orientated roles. This report was done around 2004/5 I think so hopefully since then there has been an increase in female numbers because of the industry's emphasis on opening itself up to a unisex demographic. I think in the future, females in the industry will begin to spread themselves over the more 'core' roles associated wth games development, for example developer, art or coding positions. And again this I feel will be down to gamings expanse into areas such as the ones previously mentioned. If this was to happen I think that this would be better for the industry, as it may break down the viscious macho circle that the games industry has allowed itself to get stuck within.
  

Antarctica/Rainforest Backgrounds Completed

Another quick Animal Frenzy update. Just finished the background for the Antarctica and Rainforest level, quite pleased with these two. These two backgrounds also have some animation to them. The Antarctica background has the occasional glint on certain edges and the rainforest has sun beams which fade in and then out around every 15 seconds, causing the water to sparkle.

[ Click images to enlarge ]

Fuggerbob & Dipdip: Comic Strip Preview

    I've managed to finish my Fuggerbob and Dipdip comic strip over summer which I'm pretty chuffed with. This is just a small post previewing a couple of pages from the overall strip. I may do a post soon with the whole strip on but I'm in the proccess of trying to set up an online portfolio, so if that works out I'll put it on there, if not on here. Also I'm still changing bits of it everytime I open it up, like for example I've just noticed there's no brick pattern on the wall below, which was something I meant to do. I'll probably change the title page as well at some point so it's a bit more colourful and interesting. Although on the other hand I quite the 'Mr Men-esque' style it's got going on.

[ Click images to enlarge ]

Animal Frenzy Development Essay (1827 Words)

    Throughout the development process of creating our KS1 education game; Animal Frenzy, we have faced various design issues which have caused us to make iterations to it in order improve it’s gameplay and educational quality. Using the various articles and lectures that I’ve attended alongside this development process I will be matching up this issues to relevant references to better explain the obstacles we have encountered.

    I think logically it would be best to start with the research stages of the project, where we also began establishing our objectives. Initially we were trying to create a set of tasks for ourselves, around which the concept of the game would be based. This lead us to settle on ideas linking to care for the environment, improving geographical and biological knowledge. I attended a Sculpture workshop last October, lead by Lord Roger Cunliffe, about design and how communication is one of a designers key tools. There was also a segment in the session that talked about research and investigating the roots of a subject in order to improve ones understanding of it.  This I think was a developmental aspect of our design process that we could have improved. We studied a few KS1 games however we never really took note of any of the ideas, mechanics or strategies they used in order to communicate their message. We essentially started on a completely blank canvas, using no previous found references as foundations for our concepts. With regards to the communication aspect of Roger’s session, I feel that we have achieved a decent standard of conveying our message. The ‘improve biological knowledge’ section of our specification was achieved in a few ways. Using the ‘drag and drop’ mechanic as a means of allowing the player to try and match up animals to their environments was one way we did this. Players would have to decide and select the three correct animals from a panel of eight and place them on the environment. We thought by using this simple control mechanic players could begin going through the learning process a lot quicker, ‘casualising’ the intensity of the gameplay. This is something that Marcos Venturelli testifies to in his article on Casual Game Design, stating that casual games are “games that generally involve less complicated game controls and overall complexity in terms of gameplay or investment required to get through the game”. The casual game aspect for us was an important aspect as it allowed us to better begin achieving our objectives and also cater for the ability level of our KS1 demographic.

    The ‘care for the environment’ aspect of our specification was actually implemented into the game a lot later as it was something we initially overlooked. This was achieved by introducing an extra mechanic that ran alongside the main ‘drag and drop’ mechanic within our game. We decided to include three bits of rubbish that players would have to find on each level. If players found each piece of rubbish per level then that would grant them a bonus to the final bonus level in the game. This element of Animal Frenzy, although a fairly minor iteration was something that we now realize is fairly important. On top of emphasizing the care for the environment it also began to create vague arches of pacing, an aspect of games that Venturelli also covers in his Casual games article. He mentions that “the lower and upper arches of pacing are related to the long-term relation between the player and the game, and how much time he is willing to invest before becoming frustrated or bored and abandoning play”. By introducing this long-term objective that would contribute to something more enjoyable, we hope to help prevent the player from losing interest too quickly.

    The concept of the bonus level, in which players would have to catch animals in a net, was born from the idea of segmentation of challenges and mechanics. We decided that by having a differing mechanic(s) at points during the game we can hope to engage the player for longer, which again relates back to Venturelli’s points on pacing. Even though the bonus level was at the end of the game we thought that this would act as a form of reward for completing the game. This form of segmentation, according to José P. Zagal, Clara Fernández-Vara and Michael Mateas, in their article ‘Games and Culture’ would be spatial/puzzle and also perhaps temporal segmentation.  They also mention the concept of  ‘Boss Battles’ in which “…the difficulty may increase significantly, the player might have to resort to new tactics, or there might be additional conditions or restrictions on the player’s actions”.  We followed suit with this idea, players are taken to a completely new game space to what they have seen previously and introduced to a new mechanic. After playing about with the idea of segmentation we decided that attempting to interweave this into the game more frequently would be a wise decision. We decided that creating ‘Specific Objective Events’ as we used to name them would not only help hold the players’ interest but also perhaps improve the quality of learning simultaneously as well. For example, we would have a level where players simply place the animals on screen, then the next level would involve achieving an objective specific for that level, like helping to put out the bushfires in the Australia level or helping to open an underwater clam in the Ocean level. Zagal states, “Games that use puzzle segmentation present a series of puzzles that must be solved before the next is available.” this would have been the case with our specific objective event levels, however we encountered a few problems with this idea. The main issue with it was creating an objective that would synergize with our main aim of educating children on animals and their habitats. By having an objective like ‘Help the animals build and igloo’ on the Antarctica level would dilute that message, is the player now picking animals that belong in the Antarctica or are they now choosing animals that may be best at building?

    Our first thought was to emphasize the former by having instructions at the beginning of each level reminding “Remember to pick animals that can cope in this environment!”. However after a fairly long thought process we thought it may be best to get rid of this idea for clarity, despite the great benefits that it would have probably had on our game in terms of enjoyment.

    Once we had established our main mechanic/objectives we then had to decide on how to enforce them. In Venturelli’s previously mentioned article, he mentions the idea of ‘Visible Feedback’, this is something that currently we have not addressed to the best of our ability. In his article he says, “…The key is that when the plan doesn't succeed, players understand why. The world is so consistent that it's immediately obvious why a plan didn't work.”. As it stands, to notify to players that what they did was a ‘wrong move’ is a simple popup stating “Oops! Try again!”. I think that this is far from what Church means when he talks about a player knowing ‘why’ a plan didn’t work. Given more time we could have implemented a popup with a statement for each wrong animal in each wrong environment explaining to the player why that animal couldn’t survive in that environment, which would also improve the educational value of Animal Frenzy. However, we are using popups that explain what was correct about the correct moves, so we’ve almost met Venturelli half-way with regards to visible feedback.

    I feel that whilst on the topic of visible feedback, now is a good time to talk about the perceivable consequence factor of the game, something that I feel has some relation to visible feedback. In Doug Church’s article ‘Formal Abstract Design Tools’, Church uses the analogy “Because of X, Y has happened." This is clearly a fairly pure form of perceived consequence.”, an understandably important aspect of game design. Thinking about how this could be translated into the case of Animal Frenzy, we have only just included a consequence to perceive. This would be the “move counter’, which indicates to the player how many turns or ‘goes’ they have left before they fail the level and must start again. Failing to complete the level in the specified moves allowed would forfeit the players chance of receiving certain medals awarded for completing a level in minimum attempts.

    This leads me neatly onto to explain another feature of Animal Frenzy that we again have only just implemented, the reward system. This could also double as the implementation of a goal system, giving a more significant purpose to the objectives of the game. However that said, this is the case only if the players “agree to behave as if the goal is important to them…” as Costikyan states in his article ‘I have No Words & I Must Design: Toward A Critical Vocabulary for Games’. This was our attempt at creating more “explicit goals” as Costikyan puts it in Animal Frenzy. Players who make no wrong moves can get a medal exclusive to that condition, each wrong move/couple of moves are rewarded with less glamorous medals. A small blog post I read a while ago, ‘Rewards, Doing Chores and Social Games’ by Micheal Fergusson used the term “ the emotional trigger” when referring to rewards, which means gaining personal satisfaction through accomplishing an objective. This is omething that we hoped to capture by creating these bronze, silver, gold and platinum medals.

    I’m going to conclude this development analysis by assessing Animal Frenzy against Costikyan’s definition of a game, one that I’m yet to hear defined better. In Costikyan’s article he explains a game as “An interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle toward a goal”. Animal Frenzy is most definitely interactive. It has a basic structure. As opposed to endogenous meaning, its meaning its exogenous, the soul purpose of the game, and other educational games, is to educate the player to benefit them in the real world. And finally there is a struggle, however weak it is, and there are also goals. So in it’s simplest form we’ve succeeded in making Animal Frenzy into a game, the educational richness however I think is something that given a lot more time we could improve dramatically.

Bibliography

Venturelli, M. , (2009) Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design – A PopCap Case Study, Gamasutra. [online] Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkVenturelli/20091107/3497/Space_of_Possibility_and_Pacing_in_Casual_Game_Design__A_PopCap_Case_Study.php

Costikyan, G.  , I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games. Costik.com [online] Available at: http://costik.com/

Church, D. , (1999) Formal Abstract Design Tools, Gamasutra [online] Available at:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3357/formal_abstract_design_tools.php

Zagal, P., Fernández-Vara, C., Mateas, M. Gameplay Segmentation in Vintage Arcade Games, Games and Culture (Vol 3 No 2 April 2008 175 – 198)
http://facsrv.cs.depaul.edu/~jzagal/Papers/Zagal_et_al_Gameplaysegmentation.pdf

Fergusson, M. , (2011) Rewards, Doing Chores and Social Games, Gamasutra. [online] Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MichaelFergusson/20110130/6911/Rewards_Doing_Chores_and_Social_Games.php


Note 

If that's wholey OK, then I wanted to add just a small paragraph on Story and link in the Costikyan article.

Chessboard Finished

    Finally finished the chessboard today. Decided to give the pieces a glass finish instead of a wooden one because it looks pretty cool. Really happy with the end result, despite a few imperfections in a few of the pieces.

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Joe's Icon

Completed the app. icon for 'Easter Egg Madness' as it is now called, should be released in a few weeks.

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3D Modelling Update: Chessboard Knight

    I spent about 11 hours today playing about with 3DS max and felt that it was really beneficial. I was getting frustrated with it in the first few hours as I was starting to venture away from just using the lathe tool to create my chess peices and had to start utilising other features. Like most software I've ever used, it's just a case playing about and  learning the basics, where everything is, how the tools behave and then everything becomes alot smoother.
    This is just a little update on what I spent the majority of today doing. If you're fluent in 3DS Max then that will be shocking to hear, but like I said I was learning and remembering all the little the tricks as I went. There are a few imperfections in the polygons around the 'ear' section, I may try and sort that out tomorrow with some assistance. The image behind it is what I was working from.

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    With regards to the overall progress of the chessboard, I'm about 85% of the way there. I did make all the peices today but the computer crashed just as I was finishing the queen so I'll do that again tomorrow. After that it's just making the board itself and then adding materials and rendering everything!

Joe's Backgrounds

    I was asked recently to help improve the artwork for a classmate's game which is going to be sold as an iPhone app. which is to be released in a week or two as it's an easter themed game. Below is the background that I was given to work over

 Here are the backgrounds that I produced earlier, there are three different versions; day, evening and night. These I think are going to be used as different levels:

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Animal Frenzy: Reward System

    After our weekly meeting today we decided that our game was lacking some form of reward system. Before today players would simply place animals in the right place with an infinite amount of attempts to do so until they progressed to the next level. However to introduce a difficulty curve we've iterated the mechanic so that players now only have a set amount of attempts to get the right animals. Players who pick the right animals with few or no incorrect answers will be rewarded with medals, which is the reward system we have decided to introduce. We haven't quite decided whether the medals gained during each level will be cumulated and averaged out at the very end of the game to give a final gold, silver or bronze medal or whether players will aim simply to acquire the best medals they can.

    Either way we needed medals, so we came up with the idea of animal themed medals. A platinum Eagle, gold Lion, silver Elephant and bronze Blob Fish, however the Blob Fish may be changed to just an ordinary fish. So here are the medals I've bashed out this evening for this purpose.

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...A continuation from the medals, I then created boxes for the medals to sit in so that they could popup on the screen when earned:

British Museum Trip

    I went to the British Museum today to see for myself the Game of Ur, which we have looked at a few times since the beginning of the year. I also took some time to look about at other parts of the museum whilst I was there.
    The first thing I thought was quite remarkable was the condition of the actual playing board. Considering it's getting on for almost 5000 years old, the detail that remained was in really good nick, as well as the counters. I know parts have been restored however it's amazing how even parts of it managed to survive for so long. I also found out that part of the board was used for fortune telling, which is an interesting fact, knowing that the Sumerians were using boards used for gaming to also read into the future, which also reveals something about their culture as superstitious beings.

    I didn't spend too long in the Mesopotamia area, I spent most of my time looking at the sculptures and high relief wall sections in the Parthenon zone. I thought it was pretty cool the amount of effort the Greeks put into depicting simple stories through these various pieces of relief that would have once decorated the walls of the Parthenon and other buildings. There were a series of relief pieces that were positioned around the exhibition space in chronological order depicting a fight between a man and a centaur. Each one looking like a different frame from an animation you might see nowadays. It occurred to me that this was alot of work to just portray a simple story, which is a great contrast to how easy it is to tell a story through visual media today.

    That's all really I have to report from the day! I spent about three hours there in total but somehow I've managed to condense it down into a few short paragraphs. I spent a while drawing some of the sculptures, I'll put the images below. In conclusion I think it was a worthwhile trip, I can now say I've seen the Royal Game of Ur first hand and apart from that it was quite nice to be about in London again for the day.

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Joe's Cat

    A quick post showing a few graphics to be used in a classmate's flash game. The brief was fairly simple, "Cute cat" and "Cut in half", I'm not sure why however in exchange for this I was promised some help with coding in my flash game, so I decided to go for it! Top left image is standard cat, top right is cat after after being shot, bottom left is sliced cat and bottom right is the layer to go on top of sliced cat if Joe wanted to do an animation of it's face sliding off. That wasn't asked for but I thought it might be quite cool in a way.

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Gradient Mesh Experiment: Banana

    A classmate was showing me gradient meshes in Illustrator yesterday, something that I'd never thought about using before but after having a quick play about with it putting shading on a circle I thought I should try and do something more testing. I googled 'gradient mesh' just to have a look at what other people have done with it and the first result I found was a guy called Yukio Miyamoto. This stuff he was pulling off using gradient meshes is amazing, work far better than what I expected to come up. I'll put a link to the website at the end of this post. Although it occured to me that if you can create images in Illustrator that are pretty much 99.9% accurate to real life then you might as well just take a picture... Regardless, they're still brilliant!
    Anyway I wanted to give it a go myself so I thought i'd just try and do something simple and copy from a google image. There was a bunch of bananas sitting next to me when I was thinking what to do so that's what I decided to use. Below is the result, I'm pretty pleased with it as a first attempt, I'll have another mess about with gradient meshes another time and hopefully do something more complicated...

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Link for the website:
http://www.khulsey.com/masters_yukio_miyamoto.html

3DS Max Morning Session - Chesspiece

    Another quick post showing what I managed to do this morning playing about with 3DS Max. It wasn't too complicated once I learned where all the tools were and figured what you can and cant do with them. There are a few principles that are transferable from Illustrator as well which helps, like using the line tool in 3DS Max is similar to using the pen tool Illustrator, with the bezier curves and vertices etc. After doing this I'm slightly more confident about making a chess board for my 3D Modelling assessment.

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fishmast

    I was doodling at my girlfriend's earlier and ended up drawing this thing, it's a bit odd as most doodles tend to be. Anyway I thought it might look nifty in illustrator, so I've imported it and have started to make what I'm hoping to be a poster. I'm doing this mainly because most of my drawings that I did when I was younger aren't on any walls anymore and have found their place in a dusty box in the loft now, so I thought it might be nice to have something more recent to cover some space. I thought I'd give it the name fishmast for now as it sort of looks like the top of a ship's mast... and there's a fish in it... Like my graphics tablet project I posted up a while ago (which unfortunately hasn't been developed since) I'm hoping to actually finish this and frame it at some point. I'm more optimisic about doing this as I'm spending a fair amount of time in Illustrator at the moment and I'm quite enjoying playing about with it.

    So here's the doodle and what I've got so far (if you click the illustrator version it becomes slightly crisper).

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Flash Game: Flashlight Start Screen

    Below is the start screen for the flash game I'm trying to make at the moment, Flashlight. The light switch in the top right can be clicked and animates in my flash version, however I haven't figured out how to upload SWF's onto Blogger yet. Hopefully I'll be able to get that up soon, as well as the whole game when it's done. The light switch serves as the start button for the game.

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Animal Frenzy: Europe Finished?

    This is just a quick post showing a possibly finished level background for Europe:

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Dead Bored 2

    I thought I'd just post a quick review on a game I anticipated for a while and have just recently finished; Dead Space 2.

    I feel ashamed saying this as such a massive fan of the first game, but I'm slightly disappointed. Typically I expect sequels to offer an experience which is an evolution of it's predecessor whilst sustaining the core elements of the game, in the case of Dead Space; it's fear factor and heart pumping gameplay. However... I feel that Dead Space 2 hasn't really offered much more to its players than what was already experienced in the prequel.

    Visceral have added a few new weapons/suits/items etc. but did they think that would be enough to satisfy it's players? All the way through the game I was waiting for something to happen which would give me the same churning feeling in my stomach which I felt frequently whilst playing the first game, however I was constantly met with experiences that I could have just as easily got in Dead Space 1.

    The whole necromorph bursting through a pipe in the wall routine started to get a bit old by the end of the first game, so why did it keep happening the WHOLE WAY THROUGH this game!? Could they not think of more exciting ways to create 'jumpy' moments? I know it's sort of a easy, bog standard way of getting a reaction out of players but that doesn't mean you can keep doing it Visceral!! You might be reading this thinking "I'd like to see you do better', and I probably couldn't. However I feel that being the successful company that they are, visceral could have pulled something more original out of the bag.

    Dead Space is somewhat of a horror game, we can agree on that. What works well in a lot of horror media? Not lot of light and lots and lots of creepy shadows! It's a bit of a clichéd idea however if Visceral were going to use old ideas then they might as well chuck some more in for a laugh. There were a couple of times whilst playing through where I would be walking through a hallway and the lights would go out and I'd start thinking "Ooh. What's happening here...?", but then the bloody lights would come back on again! Don't worry about me Visceral! You gave me a fekin flashlight for a reason! You give me something that will make me crap my pants and let me worry about the mess! A few fighting in the dark moments would have gone down a treat for me! A lot of the enemies were the same, there was even a section in which players had to run and stun their way away from a slow moving invincible necromorph, hmm this feels familiar... Dead Space 1 *cough*. Although they did change the way he looks so it's alright...

    In alot of older films it was common practice to create a build in tension then release a burst of shock, which is something that viewers begun to cotton onto in the last decade or so causing writers to come up with new ways of creating scares. A good example of what I mean is the old, someone looking in a half opened, mirrored cabinet, then closing it to reveal someone standing behind them trick. Over the last few years I've seen a few films use this, however changed. When the cabinet is closed nobody is there, making the audience feel a sense of relief, then moving onto the big scare. The point I'm trying to make is that, Dead Space 2 is still using the old mechanisms which people are used to, they needed to think up something new or at least expand on what they had before. Perhaps by creating the illusion of something that players may recognise from Dead Space 1 but then surprise them with something new, just like the mirror trick.

   Even though I felt that there was a lot of room for improvement, there were a few new features which did tickle my fancy. The introduction of a new ostrich-like, hunter enemy who skitter across rooms in packs, occasionally poking their disfigured head eerily around the corned to take a glance at your position before spontaneously charging out at you. This is exactly the kind of suspense I was looking for, something that I didn't learn about in Dead Space 1 and would drag me out of my comfort zone. There were one or two other bits that I liked as well but they wouldn't mean much unless you've played the game so I'll skip over those.

   Of course this is just personal preference, I was playing another game online recently and overheard a player explaining to his friend how he couldn't play it because it scared him too much, so it must work for some people.

    In conclusion, Visceral have produced numerous games which I've bought and enjoyed so I can't slate them too extensively, everyone makes mistakes. So I do take my hat off to you Visceral for the titles that gave me hours of enjoyment ...but if you look inside the hat there may be a small note reading "I'm disappointed in you...".

Xmas Break Characters Task - Fuggerbob and Dipdip

    Over the christmas break we were asked to think about two characters of our own making that could possibly be used in a scene/short story together. Fuggerbob and Dipdip are the chracters I've used to do this. They're friendly looking alien, monster... things, Fuggerbob being the big green one and Dipdip being the smaller yellow one. I'm thinking about using the John Steinbeck's - Of Mice and Men/ Pinky And The Brain sort of theme, where one is stronger but more stupid and the other is smarter but alot weaker.

    I thought about Fuggerbob having an obssesion with food, hence the big stomach, leaving Dipdip to save Fuggerbob from potential accidents in trying to get to and eat the food. That's just an example scenario but it gives a little idea on what they're about.

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