Week 6 – Intentional Design of Digital Assets

Explore the exercise we did in class in more detail:

Choose a number of types of intent, i.e. emotions or underlying assumptions, that you might convey

in the presentation of content. For example: this is important to you, this is important to me, this is

boring, this is sad, this is exciting, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emotions for

examples.

Select any type of content, e.g. updates on a news site, and speak the content to a partner while

trying to convey one of the emotions/assumptions/intent. Look for visual content that generally

conveys such intent, e.g. Stop signs for urgency, etc.

Observe and note down the production methods you used/observed to convey the intent, listed with

the intent and the type of media. For example:

Intent (make someone feel or understand ...) Production (make it sound, look, etc...)

Important to me. (or audience) Strong, clear, well enunciated

Bored Slow pacing, even volume, maybe almost monotonous.

Happy Quick pacing, variable pacing, varying volumes and tones

Terror Quick pacing, Loud, Blury and dark

Unhappiness Slow pacing, with not too much light, the volume is low

Vulnerability

Worry

Fear

Then play with creating a character convey particular types of intent through changing the visuals

and audio associated with it, based on your dictionary. For example footsteps intended to sound

Important, Bored, Happy, etc.

Week 7 - Artificial Intelligence / Prac #7 Playing Pacman, Ghosts Psychology

As seen on Lecture, every Ghost in Pac-man seem to have its own psychology but behind that, what could seem a human way of thinking, ghosts are controlled by AI (Artificial Intelligence), specifically by a Finite State Machine (FSM).

Every single ghost has a different behaviour

While playing Pac-man, before reading the Ghost Psychology webpage; for me, it seemed that every ghost was moving randomly, but after 2 o 3 games, I realized that some seem to be chasing you all the time, so when I read the document things become clearer for me, not completely but I realized that most of the times I was caught by the Pink ghost (Pinky) that had a "Chasing behaviour" while the red ghost (Blinky) seemed to move randomly most of the times but moved really fast. For the green ghost (Inky), it seemed to be that sometimes it moved randomly and sometimes likely to follow Pinky; and for Clyde it seemed to be that he is the most stupid of the four ghosts, moving randomly and slow, sometimes he was able to catch me but he moved in the opposite way.

As a conclusion, when playing about 10 games for us the 4 ghost behaviours are:

Pink Ghost (Speedy/Pinky) The smarter, seems to chase you all the time

Green Ghost (Bashful/Inky) Seems to follow pinky sometimes

Red Ghost (Shadow/Blinky) The fastest, but seems to move randomly

Yellow Ghost (Pokey/Clyde) The most stupid, he just moves around randomly.

It is said that, if you get to understand completely their behaviour, you would be able to play perfectly this game.

What we learned is that, its is important to set a human bevaviour for the characters involved on the game and controlled by the computer, otherwise it would not be fun.

http://www.webpacman.com

Concept for our game.

Team 5, start filling in the google doc with your ideas. I will flesh out the concept there more but you should have enough to work with.

Prologue
The start of the game begins in a scenario King battling a hoard of orcs/monsters who are attacing the kingdom. The king isis well established with weapons, armour and special abilities. This is to show the player what the king is capable of and to develop him as a powerful and honorable leader. This scenario also serves as a tutorial level as it is easy for the king to bring down big monsters. This idea is influenced from prototype.

Once the King has defeated the monsters a cut scene shows the King being praised by his kingdom. The king has a twin brother who is bitter against the king and plots to kill him. The king makes a narrow escape, losing his abilities, his weapons, and his memory, to a distant land. The evil brother almost destroys the kingdom and the lands around it as he tries to force people to respect him.

Main Campaign
The player plays as the king stripped of his weapons and abilities. He also starts off with no goal or purpose as he has lost his memory. This allows the player to explore a little bit. After a set period, perhaps 1minute and 30seconds, or enough time for the player to be abit familiar with the surroundings a hoard of bandits begin to attack. The king travels back to the kingdom and fights more monsters along the way. He also gains good favor from the another race by helping them. The other race rewards him and he gains their alliance. The king finally returns to his kingdom more powerful than before and overthrows the evil brother.

What we need to work on from here are:

The details of the characters.

The details of the main campagin, such as the monsters/quests etc.

More details to the story line

It can be noted that the concept of the story is an adaptation of The Lion King / Hamlet plot.

Prac #1 Playing Munchkin

MUNCHKIN is a role game played with cards.

Players: 3 to 6
Ages: 12+
Preparation to start the game: less than 5 minutes
Duration: 45 to 60 minutes

At the beggining of the game you start being a normal human at level 1 without any class. The objective of the game is getting to the higher level (Set at the beggining of the game) Every player has to defeat monsters with the help of special guns, knives etc. Use the equipment found in the dungeons in order to win the game.

There are different types of cards:
Monsters, Curse Trap, Monster enhancers, Class, RaceHelpers, Treaseures etc

There are differents types of Munchkin. To refer to:
http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/

WHAT WE LEARNED.

We realized that, as seen on the lecture; The games are made of:

Objectives
Players
Procedures
Resources

At the beggining the game, it started very slow because nobody knew how to play, but as the time passed by, everybody started to understand and have fun.

We realized that if the understanding of the rules takes too much time the game can become boring and people wouldn't be interested on it. But if the rules are not that difficult to understand, then it becomes interesting and make people get hooked up.

Points made while playing and watching the game being played:

- Alot of confussion about rules/gameplay
- Takes a while for players to learn and understand the rules of the game
- Players can work together during the process of the game for an outcome
- It is a game of choice, (choose your own path)
- Players stratergise the use of thier cards
- The length of the game is determined by the cards the players are given
- 6 player game
- There are lots of rules to remember!

Week2 - Elliott

This week I explored some small webgames on http://armorgames.com

http://armorgames.com/play/4264/colony

http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle

http://armorgames.com/play/1443/the-last-stand-2

http://armorgames.com/play/3638/the-arrow-of-time

This game was incredibly annoying with the tutorials. You had to click a dozen times just to start playing.

Week 1 - Elliott

Prototype

Reasons why prototype is a successful game.

1. The game mechanics are new. They allow the player to roam the city with super human destructive abilities such as spewing out tenticles or body slamming tank.

2. The game throws the player straight into the action, extreme action. This also doubles as a tutorial level

3. The "Web of Intrigue" means the story line evolves at the pace that the player is interested in it.

The downfalls.

1. The game doesnt show the player what powers are available in advance. This lead this had an element of mystery it was mostly a negetive thing as certain abilities were needed to destroy a boss but I had no idea they existed.

2. Once fighting a boss it is impossible to escape in order to build up more powers. This meant that I got trapped on a boss level.

Poker

I think Poker was a successful game for 3 reasons:

1. Its a simple game, making it scalable. Players can play a long game or a short game.

2. It allows players to play with their own style.

In the poker game is was obvious that people used different strategies. Player1 took a very mathematical approach to the game. Player2 attempted to read the other players.

Player3 played ruthlessly betting every round in order just to be playing and doing something. Player4 played more cautiously than the rest.

3. The element of chance bridges the gap between skill levels. For example in a game of chess with an experienced and novice player, the experienced player will constantly win. However in poker even novice players will occasionaly win a hand against the more experienced players.

The rules of the game led to some twists. For example Player2 folded when they had a straight. They had overlooked the straight as they were concentrating so much on the other players.

Welcome team! (Jim, Elliott, Augustine and Alex)

Hello Guys! This is the blog for the Games design course