Game Design Document

Image from Pixnio

For this weeks project assignment I had to create a Game Design Document using the website Dundoc.

Dundoc was easy to use and already had a template for a game design document that I could use to create my own, using this template I filled in the information necessary and relevant to my game idea.

Here is a link to my Dundoc game design document- https://www.dundoc.com/project/5847

As the weeks goes on I will be adding onto this document with updated information on my game concept and idea as I create my game.

My First Game Design: Unity Tutorial 04

Image from DeviantArt 

This week we went back to using the video tutorials from Jimmy Vegas with three more videos to watch.

The last video we watched went over how to create a cursor so that the player could see where their character was looking at all times and in this video we are shown how to put text instructions for the player underneath the cursor for a period of time. These instructions tell the player what button to press to perform an action. We are also shown how to place a little extra flare to the original cursor by putting rectangles around it on each side to form a box around the cursor.

These elements are then turned off so that they're not being displayed all the time before creating a C# script to make the text and extra cursor appear when the cursor hovers over the gem and make it so that when the button is pressed the gem is collected and a sound is played to let the player know they collected the gem.

In the second video tutorial he shows us how to add more things into the environment wich was explained to us in the first few tutorials we watched weeks ago. The rest of the video is dedicated to adding a weapon to the game and animating it, teaching us the basics of animating in Unity. But before we get into animating the weapon we must first contain the weapon within a cube to make the animation of the weapon swing look more realistic. The animation process in Unity is all about key frames and where you want your object to be on which frame.

The final video shows us how to create a C# script to make sure that the swinging animation doesn't just loop infinitely and to add a swinging sound to the weapon when the animation does play. The script makes it so that when the player presses the left mouse button the weapon swings and a swinging sound is played. This script can be used in the future if you choose to add more weapons to your game.

Games GDD

Image from Pixabay

This weeks reading focuses on the smaller more look over aspects of game design, the physical presentation, especially in board and card games. These are not concrete "rules" for designing games merely suggestions as this article says. Though many of these suggestions sound like common knowledge for a board game some games look over these small details.

First we must focus on the components of the games such as the tiles, cards and the board. Each tile should be its own distinct colour and should be distinguishable from one another so that people know which piece is theirs as many people suffer from some form of colour blindness. As for the board part of the game if there are spaces for the player to put their tiles on then they should be bigger than the tiles themselves to avoid the pieces being disturbed too badly if there's more than one tile on a space. In the same vein the starting tile should be clearly marked and printed in a different colour.

When it comes to the box and packaging of the game the design can be very important because it gives you the first impression of the game inside therefore a good design can really sell the game. The name of the game must be distinct and eye catching and it should be printed on the side of the box as well as the front. The sides of the box should be printed vertically and horizontally so that the boxes can be displayed both ways on a shelf and still be legible, this would greatly help shop owners.

The theme of your game should work with the rules that you create for the game and the rules for said game should be clear and concise. Don't write intentionally vague rules that the player are meant to interpret for themselves, if the player wanted to make up their own rules they would just make their own game. The rules you do create should be blind tested on people who haven't had the game explained to them by the designer and only have the rules to go on to see if the they answer the fundamental questions. The rules of any game should answer the most important questions about the game.

The things that usually get overlooked when making a game are the small things that may seem unimportant but are actually some of the most important things. One should always test their game with others.

Game Vision Statement: Single Saviour

Image from Flickr

Introduction

Single Saviour is a first-person fighting game for the PC that uses the Unity engine to place the player  into the role of a young boy in medieval times battling his way through monstrous beast in order to find the source of these creatures and stop them from tormenting his village.

Description

You are a young peasant boy from a small village that has been tormented by monsters for as long as you've lived, tired of seeing the people of your village living in fear you decide to venture out into the woods surrounding your village and find the source of these terrible beasts with the small sword you got from your father and the support of the village members.

Along the way you see and defeat many strange and terrifying creatures, when they are slain you realise you can take their weapons or anything else that they may have from them and use it to your own advantage.Many of their weapons have added strengths to them, such as extra sharpness or poison on the blade. You then use these weapons to defeat even stronger beasts as you advance into the forest, following the path of destruction they left behind, you hope it will lead you to the source of these monsters so that you can stop it and save the village you grew up in.

As you follow this path and slay these creatures you find yourself becoming stronger and you also begin to notice a pattern in the behaviour of the monsters. Some of them seem to be afraid of certain things, you're sure of it, if you can figure out what each monster is afraid of maybe you can use it against them. You figure out that some of the weapons you've gathered seem to harm some of the monsters more than other weapons.

After following the path and making surviving the onslaught of beast it leads you eventually to a large cave in the side of a mountain, you hope that the source of these creatures in the cave and that you have become strong enough to destroy it, whatever it is.

In order to make this game I will be using the Unity engine and because I am still new to this engine I will need to use tutorials to figure out how to create the monsters and the AI for said monsters in the game. Luckily there are many tutorials out there for the Unity engine, on youtube like this one which I found very informative and even on the official Unity website here. Unity also has an assets store that you can download creatures models from but you do have to pay for them and there are tutorials teach you how to create free models. I will also be using the Jimmy Vegas tutorials that I have been writing posts about for the past few weeks in order create the terrain and some of the script.

Key Features

I hope for this game to have:
-Open world exploring
-Multiple monster designs
-One on one combat
-Weapon upgrades
-Level ups

Genre

This game is a 3D adventure, first-person fighting game similar to the game Zelda but a lot more simplified. The game will be set in medieval fantasy times in an alternate reality where monsters exist.

Platform

I think the game and its mechanics would be best suited to the PC platform.

Target Audience 

The target audience for this game would be teenagers from the ages 14 onwards.

My First Game Design: Unity Tutorial 03

Gif from Wikimedia Commons

The tutorial this week was not a continuation of the video tutorials we had been using the past few weeks but it was instead a written tutorial on how to build a moving clock in Unity. This tutorial goes over many things that we have already learned form the first few video tutorials that we've seen, the main difference in this tutorial is the coding that it goes over.

The first half of the tutorial showed us how to add objects into the scene and how to manipulate them into the clock face and other extremities which we already knew how to do from previous weeks. I did this by placing the objects and setting the scale of them to the specifications of the tutorial.

Later in the tutorial it explains how to rotate objects on the clock face along the Y axis 30 degrees and  use this to create the hour indicators on the clock face. To create the arms of the clock we can use the same approach and at the end of that we have our finished clock face, next we're shown how to animate the clock.

This were the tutorial goes in depth into the code that makes the clock work. The tutorial shows how to use C# script to make the arms of the clock move around the clock face and how to make the clock tell the time, though the coding can get quite complicated, going into things like floating-point values,  I managed to complete the clock and make it work. I thought this tutorial explained how to create a C# script and code the clock very well.

Games GDD

Image from Flickr

Games are very different to books or television shows because the consumption of games is unpredictable in comparison to the consumption of books and television shows. MDA breaks down this consumption of games into their components, rules, system and "fun" and their counterparts, mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics. This article explains that designers and the players both have a different views on these components and it is important when designing a game to take in both perspectives.

Aesthetics is all about what makes a game "fun". When describing a game it's best not to use that word and instead use more directed vocabulary. Sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression and submission are several words that can be used to describe a game. For example The Sims would be described using the words, discovery, fantasy, expression and narrative.
This vocabulary helps to define models for gameplay which help describe gameplay dynamic and mechanics.

Dynamics work to create aesthetic experiences, an example of this is challenge which is created by things like time pressure and opponent play. Using monopoly as an example we can make our discussion of dynamics as concrete as possible. In monopoly as the leaders become more wealthy it has more negative effects on the other players. As this continues the dramatic tension and agency disappear and the players who are not in the lead lose interest. Using aesthetics and dynamics we can come up with ways to keep these players interested, maybe rewarding the players that are behind or giving the player in the lead more obstacles.

Mechanics are the actions, behaviours and control mechanisms that players have in the game. This combined with the  games content, the mechanics support overall gameplay dynamics. Adjusting those mechanics can help to fine tune a games overall dynamics. Lets use our monopoly example again. Applying changes such as bonuses for poorer players or penalties for richer players could keep the players behind the leader interested for longer.

Moving between these three parts of MDA helps us to develop techniques for iterative design and improvement and help to control undesired outcomes.

Feedback Strategies: Feedforward

Image from Pixabay

Feedback can be both negative and positive but all feedback should be constructive to the work and the person that is getting feedback. Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback goes into detail about this.

Feedforward is all about changing the future and not dwelling on the past, the advice that is given is to help the person in the future, so it's showing them what to do right instead of telling them what they did wrong which people find much easier to accept.

Feedback is often taken personally no matter how it is delivered and many people find it hard to accept, where as feedforward involves no such personal critique since it discussing the future and so people find it easier to take on the advice and it would be more helpful then someone praising them in order to soften the blow of critique, this technique is known as compliment sandwich and most often doesn't work.

Praise is all well and good but as is explained in The Difference Between Praise and Feedback praise can also have a negative effect on developing children in the long run. That's not to say that you shouldn't praise your children, there are just more constructive ways to go about it.

When one is giving praise it is best to praise the process rather then the finished piece, for example, telling a child that they must have put a lot of work into their painting instead of just saying that its a nice painting and that they're very talented.

However even this form of praise can be tricky and it would be even better if parents would engage with their children by asking them questions about what they've been doing or pointing out one thing about the finished piece that they can see the child improved on. For instance, if the child plays football and the parent goes to watch they should ask the child what their favourite part of the game was or remark on how they can see that they have been practicing their kick.

Giving feedback and praise are good things, they can help people grow and learn, but only if done right and the right way is often the harder way. But this just means that the outcome of said praise and feedback will be even greater.

My Game Idea Research

Image from Wikipedia Commons

Last week I brainstormed four potential game ideas that I could create for my final project for this year. This week I have picked one game out of the four that I liked the most and researched deeper onto the mechanics and development of my game idea. This article explains a lot about some of the things I plan to add into my game.

My game idea is that of an open world fighting game. The player controls a character who lives in a village that is terrorised by monsters and the character must try and find the source of these monsters while facing a multitude of beast along his journey.

The main area that the character will be exploring is the forest around the village where most of the monsters come from. I hope to put a map into the game so that the player doesn't get lost or stuck and knows how to get to the next area of the game.

The character starts out with a small weapon and throughout the game as the character kills monsters they collect parts that they can use to create better weapons to defeat stronger monsters and enemies. There will be a variety of enemies with different abilities and appearances, from these enemies the character will have the ability to learn new moves based on the enemies skillset. This also mean that the player will be able to form strategies to defeat the enemy based off its attacks and its weaknesses.

The character and enemies will have a health bar displayed and different enemies will have different amounts of health. As the character moves through the game and gets stronger by defeating enemies they will also add on to their health bar in order to make sure that they have enough health to defeat stronger enemies.

The game will start with a tutorial for the player to explain the dedicated buttons, what they do and . The player will have three main buttons, one to attack, one to dodge and one to block. Depending on what weapon the player has equipped at the time the attack will be different and cause more or less damage.

The game will end once the player has found their way to the boss of the game. The player will have to use all the skills they learned from previous enemies to conquer the boss and beat the game.

My First Game Design: Unity Tutorial 02

Image from Pexels

This week we had two more unity Tutorials to watch and follow along with. The first was 20 minutes and the second was 16 minutes. These video carry on from the three video tutorials from last week.

The first video begins by showing you how to put sounds into the game and assign them to an object. Using script the video also shows how to make sure that the sound doesn't play on a loop as soon as the game starts and instead only plays when the character collects the gem/object. The tutorial then shows you how to place a box collider around your gem and make it whatever size you need to fit it around the gem.

After that the video moves on briefly to explaining how to add water into your game so that you can make a little lake if you want, to do this lower part of the terrain and then using the water asset that comes in unity to fill the dip in the terrain and create a small lake.

In the last part of the tutorial we are shown how to add more realistic textures to the game by creating a wall using a cube and scaling it into a wall and adding brick textures. The video then explains how to make the texture look less gritty and finally before the end of the game we are shown quickly how to add shadows into your game.

In the first few minutes of the second video we are shown how to create a cursor so that the player can always see where the characters focus is on the screen. This is done by creating a canvas and then scaling it down to an appropriate size on the screen, the canvas can have textures and colours added to it depending on what type of game you're creating.

The rest of the tutorial is dedicated to breaking down and explaining Raycasting or Playercasting. The video breaks down the beginning of the code that is needed for Raycasting. Raycasting is a way of defining how far away an object is from the object it's looking at, for example how far away a character is from the wall they're looking at.

This weeks tutorials were very interesting if not a little bit harder to follow then last weeks. hopefully next weeks videos will be just as interesting.

Discussing Game Elements

Image from Wikipedia Commons

This weeks readings went more in depth into the vocabulary of game design by discussing how to analyse a game and figure out what makes it fun and the types of tools there are and can be used to create good games. This links in with the post I wrote about last weeks reading, which was about the lack of vocabulary that there is to help explain games without using comparisons to other games.

Most people when asked about their opinions of a game will either say that the game was fun or that it wasn't fun. This does not help designers to pinpoint what makes the game good however, most people don't know how to explain the elements of themes that they like or dislike because they lack the vocabulary. Some of the things designers can look at while making a game include players, how many players can a game support and how does it effect gameplay, objectives, what is the goal of the game and rules, the rules of the game.

Formal Abstract Design Tools (FADT) by Doug Church goes over some of the tools that designers use to create games while using examples of real games such as Mario 64 and Tekken to help in explaining these tools and how they help the player have fun in each game. He begins by explaining the types of things that fall under "formal" "abstract" "design" and "tools". This article doesn't go over every tool but it does go over a few good ones that will get the players enjoying your game and it gives an overview of the ideas behind FADT.

Mario 64 , which is used as the first example, has an element of open-ended exploration while also having a clear direction to the goal of all areas of the game but the player is allowed to decide which path they want to take first through the worlds, usually starting with the easiest path first.

The game also has a set amount of controls that always work in that set way. Because of this the player knows what they can and cannot do in terms of gameplay, and while there is different environments to explore and conquer the player does so with those set controls. This means that the player can look at a situation in the game and formulate their own plan using these controls, allowing the player to feel involved in the game.

This lead to two tools under FADT, intention and perceivable consequence. RPG's often use the perceivable consequence tool, often not in a clear cut way, but RPG's also use another tool under FADT, story. The story is revealed through the characters interaction with the world and other people in it. The game may lack the player involvement if the designer chooses to priorities story over perceivable consequence, which works for some games but not all.

These are some of the tools discussed in this weeks reading. These tools are there to help game designers create good and enjoyable games and to help players understand what it is they enjoy or don't enjoy about the game.

Feedback Thoughts: The Fear Of Mistakes

Image from Pixabay

Feedback is a tricky thing, when receiving it or giving it. People often don't like hearing feedback because it can be negative feedback and people don't like feeling like they've failed, which is why many people don't even try in the first place.

People are afraid of making mistakes, of being wrong and it holds so may people back from their true potential because they won't try. They see mistakes as a bad thing because that is what we're taught. But as this article Making Good Art explains and as Neil Gaiman says we should be making mistakes, we should be making many mistakes "because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things". Mistakes are how we learn, making a mistake allows you to look at the situation figure out what not to do in similar situations in the future or the figure out what went wrong and work to fix it for next time. Making mistakes is important.

But why is it we fear making mistakes so much? Most likely because we fear the rejection that might come with it. Rejection has been proven to cause actual pain even if it's only emotional, this is because it's been wired into are brains since people lived in tribes. It works as an early warning sign to warn us when we're in danger of be ostracised from the group which back then would have been a death sentence. This site Why Rejection Hurts So Much explains it much better and also talks about how to work past rejection.

All of this links in with Growth Mindset which I wrote about before and how we need to look forward to the challenge of a new task, including the mistakes, instead of worrying about the end result or the feedback. After all feedback is meant to help us understand what we did right or wrong and what to work on for next time.

Game Brainstorm: Four Ideas For Fun Games

After our first unity tutorials it's time to look into creating our very own game. Of course one can't create something without first coming up with ideas, that's where brainstorming comes in. I began by researching the different types of games and that lead me to this page that explained the different types and was very interesting.

While creating my own game sounds exciting I know that it will probably be harder than I think, so I have come up with for ideas for games that I have always found fun and yet may be easier to create than a game like Skyrim.

Image from Pixabay

Puzzle Game

Puzzle games have been around for years and the reason that they survive the test of time is because they're fun, simple and effective. The goal of most puzzle games is to make the players mind occupies itself with finding solutions to sometimes complex puzzles. However a puzzle doesn't have to be complex to be fun. 

There are many different types of puzzles, mechanical puzzles such as jigsaw puzzles or rubiks cubes, logic puzzles like sudoku or grid puzzles, and that's just to name a few. I found that this website explained all the different types of puzzles very well.  I would like to possibly create a puzzle game that starts off quite simple and works its way up to more complicated puzzles. 

The goal of the game would be to either escape somewhere, like an escape room game, to solve puzzles to collect clues or to solve puzzles to gain points. Like most puzzle games I would like to add a hint system so that the player never gets really stuck because the frustration of being stuck might lead them to not completing the game.

The drawback of such a game would be thinking up enough creative solutions to the puzzles especially for puzzles that I am not particularly good at, for instance sudoku.

Image from Flickr

Fighting Game

Fighting games are very popular in recent years in one form or another, Super Smash Bros, Mortal Kombat and plenty more games like them have the same simple and fun mechanic that everyone seems to enjoy. You pick a character form a menu of different customisable characters and then beat up an opponent or they beat up you. Playing with friends adds an extra layer of fun.

I would like to create a similar game, however the player would not face off against one other opponent, the player instead would face off against creatures. The character would start off with a flimsy weapon and slay monsters and other beast to gain coins they can then use to upgrade their weapon to face off against harder enemies.

Keeping the game interesting may be hard especially with how repetitive beating the same enemies over and over again can get, so coming up with a simple story for why the player must defeat these enemies could help with holding interest. The Legend of Zelda games or good example of what I'm talking about though they do have a lot more in the games than just defeating enemies. 

A simple story would be that your character lives in a land that is overrun with creatures that do harm to others and you are part of a group of people who fight back against these enemies so that the people of this land don't have to suffer anymore. This article that I found online goes more in depth into why people like fighting games and what makes a good fighting game.

Image from Flickr

Endless Running Game

Endless running games are all over the app stores of every phone, for example the popular temple run game, they're all quite similar in so far as you play as a character who is moving in a straight line usually away from something, avoiding obstacles and gaining points and sometimes brief power-ups.

The big difference in these games is the design. Each one of these games has its own story, characters, obstacles and power-ups. Some of them are simple 2D with few power-ups and obstacles and some are more complex with lots of animation and characters, both of them are equally as fun. These types of games, while simple, are effective in keeping people entertained.

For my game I would like to make it 2D and a side scroller with a simple character design and obstacles. I found good video tutorial on this type of game on youtube. I could use the skills I learned in illustrator to create my own simple designs for my character. In my game as you ran you would collect gems or coins in order to gain the most points.

Image from Wikipedia Commons

Platform Game

Platform games are similar to running games as there are tons of them out there and that there are ones with both simple and complex designs. However platform games are not endless.

These games tend to have levels with different layouts to each one and it is all about the jumping mechanic, unless the character is given a helping hand in the form of a rope or a boost then it is the players challenge to judge the jump just right so as to get their character to the next platform without the character falling. Many platforms also have enemies or obstacles in them that are there to make it more difficult for the player to complete a level.

Some platform games also double as rhythm games, for example geometry dash, where the player needs to jump to the beat of a song to complete the level.

My idea for a platform game would be a simple vertical platformer with the character jumping upwards from platform to platform. The theme would be space with the character jumping form star to star and sometimes catching a shooting star to move up more platforms. Possible enemy ideas could be aliens that attempt to knock the character off the platforms.

My First Game Design: Unity Tutorial 1

Image of Unity logo from here

This week we had our first look into designing our own games. I used three video tutorials made by Jimmy Vegas to learn how to do the basics of creating your game environment.

In the first video he started out with showing us briefly how to set up our new project and then taught us how to bring a range of 3D objects into a scenes such as cubes and spheres, and how to change the properties of those objects so that they could become pillars or so that one couldn't pass through the other in the scene using the collider. Briefly at the end of the video he showed us how to bring in your own terrain and then how to manipulate it by raising it into bumps like hills.

Image of Unity screenshot by me

In the second tutorial he went more in depth about the terrain and how to make it look the way you want. Jimmy shows you all the different types of terrain tools that can be used to create mountains or valleys by raising and lowering the terrain, he shows how to soften the edges of risen terrain or make it more jagged and finally he shows you how to add textures, like rock, dirt and grass, to your terrain.

The last video shows you how to add your character by basically dropping a camera into the environment that acts as the characters point of view. He also shows you how to add more detail to your environment like trees and grass. After putting the grass into the game you can change it in many ways, you can change the healthy and dry colour and how much it moves in the wind. In the later half of the video he introduces us to the scripting aspect of unity by showing us how to make a gem rotate.

These are all skills that will be essential to me when I begin to create my own game for my big project and I found that following along with these tutorials really helped me.

Opinions On Game Design

Image of game from Wikipedia

Recently I read about what makes a game and game design, there is no definitive definition for what a game is nor specific words for the different components of a game which of course makes it hard to talk about games without comparing them to other games that are already out there, as the article talked about.

Many people are trying the make words for the elements of games more common so as to make it easier to discuss games but this is not as easy as it seems. However the elements that make up a game are agreed upon, what makes a game is much less agreed upon. There are people who debate on whether things such as Rubik's cubes or Dungeons and Dragons are games, often because they have no obvious end goal.

I thought that this blog explained it very well.

Image of game design from here

The title game design encompasses many things as explained here, level design, content design and system design just to name a few but despite the common misconception it does not involve art, animation or programming. System design focuses on defining the rules of the game currently being made, how the game begins, what the players can do and how that affects them and the end goal of the game. This blog goes more in depth about iterations in and interesting way.

In order to do this the game designer must be an architect, to design blueprints for buildings in the game, lawyers, to define the rules of the game and artists. Game design can involve all these things and more. A key element to game design is iteration, iteration can help bring a game from  just playable to a likeable game, it brings the game from its original idea to the end result.

Games and game design is an interesting, diverse and complicated subject that will be satisfying to learn more about.