More Landscape Generation

More tests of the landscape generation.

Pixel Drawing -> Painted Landscape

The first version turns this little pixel drawing:

Into this:

See it go here (brush version) and here (square version).

A pixel drawing is used to try to save on workload (less information needed in a pixel drawing) and file size.

Photo -> Painted Landscape

The second version takes a photo and repaints it.

This photo:


Is turned into a painted landscape like this:


See it in action here.

Landscape Generation

Looking at ways of generating the visuals of the landscapes without needing to handpaint them all.

Getting the computer to generate landscapes in a painty style is actually pretty easy and effective!



You can see functioning examples here:

• Generating static images
• Generating constantly moving images (with same brush)
  
• moving images (with simpler brush)
• moving images (with square brush)
• moving images (with square textured brush)

Final Presentation

I've added a section for reference images too! Grab it here!

Also, another concept of the avatar. Trying to make a space suit that looks both practical and stylish. Mostly by making it a mid-century overcoat with a helmet:

3rd Draft Presentation

The file for the 3rd draft of the presentation is here. It has an extensive storyboard of how a puzzle might pan out.

Some questions to ask the class:

- Do you need a connection with avatar?
- Does a story matter to you in games?
- Is simply exploring a space enough to keep you playing?
- Does the interface in it's current state make sense?
- What part seems like the most fun; puzzles, building machine, piloting machine?
- How long should it be?
- What machine pieces should there be?
- Should there be combat?

And another concept drawing:

Series of 5 images

The series of 5 images for the final class assignment.

Draft (?) Presentation

You can grab the presentation file for my concept here.

EDIT: figured I might as well put the first draft here as well for the look of the thing.

Landscapes

Some concepts for the new enviromental puzzle-based Mechanised.

Update: A concept of the build mode interface. Same as the interface outlined in the previous version of Mechanised, but the sidebar with machine parts is no longer needed. The machine can only be built with parts that are found in the world.

Mechanised Rewrite

I figured out a way to make the Mechanised concept more focused on what I want it to be about, a lot humane, and probably more fun to make in the long run.

Now I just need to churn out enough materials for the presentation.

Synopsis

Mechanised is a puzzle game where the player designs machines to traverse the environment. The player is given complete freedom in how they solve the puzzles, within the physical constraints of the game. The puzzles are not structured as tetris-style challenges in quick thinking, but are more engineering endeavors, such as 'get to the other side of this chasm'.

The machines are built from a limited supply of parts that the player finds scattered around the world, so the player must be careful what they take and what they leave behind when they move on to the next challenge.

Treatment

The player's avatar in Mechanised is an explorer who's space ship has crash landed on alien planet. The ship, and it's cargo is scattered across the planet. The explorer lands on the surface in his escape pod.

The player must explore the planet. To do so they build and modify a machine to traverse the landscape, using the scattered part of their space ship. Eventually the player will find a way to escape the planet, and the game's focus will change from simple exploration to finding the specific parts that can be used to escape.

There are no real villains in the game world, only the planet's landscape and it's wildlife. Most of the wildlife is just background detail. Some of the wildlife will attack the player or their machine, though fighting these creatures is not the game's focus.

When the machine is being controlled, the players avatar must be inside the escape pod, which also serves as the machine's hub. Once the machine is ready to be controlled, clicking on a power source or a switch will activate it, and in turn the machine parts that are connected to the engine or switch. If the power source that is connected to a wheel is click, the wheel will start turning. If the power source is connected to a rocket engine, the rocket will fire. If the power source is connected to both a rocket and a wheel, they will both activate!

When not controlling the machine, the player's avatar can be moved by the player clicking where they want the avatar to move in the game world. When controlling the avatar, machine parts can be collected and brought back to the machine. Modifying the machine is also possible when the machine is not being used.

When modifying the machine, the rest of the game world will grey out, highlighting only the available machine parts. A circle will emanate from the escape pod/machine hub. This shows the maximum size the machine can be built to (about 2/3 the size of the screen). Machine parts can then simply be dragged around using the mouse. When a machine part is selected, it can also be rotated by click on a wheel surrounding it. Machine parts can be connected together to take power from part to part and perform special functions.

References (i'll flesh these out in the morning)

- world of goo
- tower of goo
- samurai movers
- armadillo run
- bridge builder
- commander keen
- crayon physics
- tri-achnid
- cortex command
- knytt stories

Machine Parts

Map Ideas

Here's an idea about what the map view could look like. The semi-3d look is inspired by Kriegspiel (the folks who made the computer version are being sued by the widow of the guy who designed the physical version as I write, so grab it before it goes. Ironically the guy who designed the board game, Guy Debord, was a Marxist), but I'm not sure of it's practicality. It doesn allow for the machine to look the same in both battle and map mode. Then the screen can zoom into the the machine when a battle is intiated, which should again help in tying the map and battle modes together.

An idea!

A good way to combine the strategy & battle game modes is to have a limited number of power supplies. Thats these things:

Players then use the power supplies to build the battle machines that they need... but the power supplies are also needed to power the factories that build and maintain the machines. So players can design the factories with defenses so they are like fortresses. The factories and battle machines are considered pretty much equal then in the strategy game mode, and the strategy and battle modes are tied together much more nicely.

Interrogation Questions for Morlock Tales

This is the homework interrogation of an idea. For the Morlock Tales game idea.

Character

Who is my character/ are my characters?

The characters are a small group of survivors from an apocalyptic invasion of the world. The characters are hiding and fleeing from the enemy force. The strength and number of the enemies is such that there is no point fighting them... the characters must simply keep running, and trying to find the magic bullet that will turn the tide. The characters are varied in their utility to the player, but all are valuable.

Some characters:

• Leader: The leader has the most well-rounded abilities, and could be considered to be the player's avatar. The player must protect the leader, but use their stronger abilities wisely to help the rest of the team.
• Defender (x2 maybe): The defenders are the strongest in combat, and best at defending the other characters from the oncoming assault of enemies.
• Medic: The medic can heal other characters if they are hurt, and generally lend a helping hand.
• Scientist: The scientist can develop new technologies that will help the characters battle the enemies more efficiently.
• Survivalist: The survivalist is most adept at finding food and other supplies that the characters need to survive.

How will our character interact with other characters?

The interaction between the main characters is the focus of the game. The characters must work closely as a team, as each has different abilities, and losing one member will hurt the rest greatly. The kind of interactions the main characters have a profiled in the list above.

Within the environment is other wildlife that will not pose much danger to the main characters, but can be used for food or for other purposes.

How will our character interact with environment? Why?

The character's interaction with the environment is very important, as it is their only only ally against the ever encroaching enemies.

Physical characteristics: What do they look like? Small/ big/ etc. What do they need to be able to do? Health.

The characters will be quite small on screen, so they must be very iconic in their designs. However, iconic designs lend themselves to cuteness more than serious subjects, and the idea of an invasion that is impossible to fight is quite shocking. The iconic nature of the characters could be a bonus or a danger... but it basically comes down to how it is pulled off, and how they work in the context of the rest of the imagery.

Environment/ Location/ Space

How does it effect character?

The game environment provides a stage for the characters and the enemy, defines specific challenges and acts as a frame for the gameplay, but it has no real effects on characters.

Scope of our environment?

The environment is quite large in scope. It does not need to be carefully designed, since feeling like a real, natural place is more important. Because of this, much of the creation of the maps the player will travel through can be handled by the computer, and created in bulk.

Is the environment background? Or key to the events?

The environment is essentially background Though it does define the play space significantly, what the player makes of it is more important. The environment's main purpose

Does light/ dark matter in the environment? Does it change things?

I think the player will have enough to worry about without needing to worry about the effects of shadows and lighting on the gameplay. Any light & dark areas would be purely for emotional & aesthetic effect, and have no direct gameplay effects.

Interactive

Will the space be controllable?

The player cannot directly control the space, only the handful of characters that they are in charge of. I think it would be appropriate for the position of the 'camera' to be defined by the characters. Forcing the player to always be looking at their characters makes the focus of the game literally on the characters. It will also create a more claustrophobic feel, which is appropriate for what I am trying to achieve.

Will the user feel as though the space stretches beyond their experience of it? How will this happen?

The visual design of the environment is very important in making the space seem larger and more varied than it really is in gameplay terms. Basically, it comes down to inserting little visual stories and asides that are tangential to the actual game... so that the space feels lived in and loved.

Does the user feel that they move through space?

Moving through the game space with the characters is one of the focuses of the games... constantly being on the move, or preparing for the next move. The sense of progress through space is very strong, even if it is a stage-like flat space, and not a true 3D space.

Answers to questions

These are answers to the questions generated in last week's lesson.

How does interface work?

This is one of the most difficult challenges of the game design; making an interface that is streamlined and usable while being flexible enough to let the player design any machine they can imagine.

I think the best way to keep the interface streamlined is to find most important aspect of creating these battle machines and designing around that. The designing of the machines is essentially about transferring of forces, but there are various ways to approach that.

One, more realistic approach is to have a lot of different forces that could be used for different machine parts. Each part could have one or more inputs and outputs. For example, an engine could have inputs for fuel and heat, and output angular motion. A gatling gun might have inputs for angular motion and bullets, and output bullets at higher velocity.

A simpler method would be to have only a single generic type of force that machine parts need to function. This allows for the actual way that the machine is going to work to be more transparent to the player, rather than forcing them to worry about how to convert coal into angular motion into directional motion. Instead of force converting parts, there could be machine parts that increase the power of the force that goes through them, or splits it in two, allowing one power source to control multiple devices.

The second option is more appropriate. It allows players to build machines with a purpose, rather than worrying about technical details.

The interface needs to let the player complete these tasks:

- choosing machine parts to place
- placing machine parts
- rotating machine parts
- connecting the machine parts together

These will be achieved as follows. In the machine designing view, there will be a section on the side of screen on which the currently available machine parts are visible, divided into categories of devices for movement, defense and attack, or something similar. The machine parts visible on in this section are draggable into the main machine design screen, and draggable from the main screen back into the parts list.



Once in the main screen the parts can be freely moved around but will pop into place if the mouse is let go while the part is overlapping another part. When clicked without dragging, the part will be selected. When a part is selected, a ring will appear surrounding it, which can be grabbed to rotate the machine part. Also when selected, a circle will appear over any input and output points on the machine part. A filled circle shows a filled input or output, and clicking it will remove the connection between that part and the one it is connected to. An unfilled circle shows an unfilled input or output. Clicking and holding on an unfilled input circle will show all unfilled output points that the player can connect the part to. Letting the mouse go over the output point that the player wants to will join the two machine parts.

Game world? Seamless world/two games? How does battle game tie into world game?

I don't think that the different parts of the game can be tied together perfectly. There are some ways in which the connection between the game modes can be tightened. There are essentially three game modes -- designing machines, battling machines and the strategy section where the resources to create machines are gathered.

In the strategy game mode, each town the player controls will have a factory that can create machine parts. Thus the more land the player controls, the quicker they can build machines and create the parts to repair old machines. When the player creates a battle machine, it will become a token that can be moved around the map, be used to attack enemy's lands and defend the player's lands.

The battle mode is initiated when the player's land that is being defended by a machine is attacked, or when the player attacks an enemy position.

Story? Is there one? How does the world work? Linear story?

I don't want to create any kind of detailed storyline... I think a more procedural, gameplay based approach would be better. Giving the player the goal of finishing the game or overcoming the more close at hand challenges is usually motivation enough, without needing an artificial MacGuffin to collect or destroy.



However, the moral position of the player may need to be modified with a storyline. Waging war simply to gain control of land and power is not exactly morally virtuous. In this case, it may be preferable to have the player fighting to destroy and mad scientist who wants to force the entire world into mindless servitude. Though making the player *not* morally virtuous is also an option I'm quite willing to explore... so I'm still not sure about the actually sure of the game's storyline, or lack thereof.

Conlusion: You need one right?

In the case of the game events defining the story, and not the other way round, the conclusion will occur

Strategy game on map? Mission-based?

The strategy part of the game will take place on a two-dimensional map, behaving much like a traditional wargame.

Is world linear? Or freeform.

In the case of the strategy game section being a 2D map, the world is a more freeform construction. The player is free to concur the land as they wish.

Does player have avatar? Or just behind a mouse cursor?

I feel that the player's connection to the world and to the game is stronger if they have an avatar that is part of the world. I feel that the game is best if seen as a lot of fairly equal mad scientists fighting for control of the world.

Gravity - does anybody need it?

After discussion with Seb & Heather, I feel that using gravity in the battle view (and thus a side-on view) is more fun from a gameplay perspective, and adds more tactical depth while keeping the battle machines constrained.

Setting/time period?

Using a steampunk type setting is most appropriate for the game design. In the reality of a steampunk world, crazed inventors building battle machines designed to crush their foes is just normal everyday occurrence. A steampunk setting also allows for fun designs of machine parts, and for science-fictional twisting of physical reality if need be.



Does terrain effect game? Is it deformable like everything else?

In the strategy game mode, the terrain will have effects... Such as mountains creating areas that are more easily defended, seas making passage impossible, etc.

I don't think terrain needs to play such a significant part in the battle mode of the game... Just controlling unwieldy machines and trying to not let the enemy crush you is probably challenge enough.

Enemy? Intelligent? Do they have machines as well? Are they monsters? Little men?

It would be ideal to have the enemy be an equal match for the player. Also, the player wants to fight on equal grounds with the enemy... they want to build a battle machine that will subvert the weaknesses of the enemies battle machine, not build a battle machine that will be tested against something completely different, like little soldiers or such.

AI for strategy games is essentially a solved problem, so that shouldn't be too much fuss.

The AI for the battle game mode may prove a little more difficult though. I think the problem is made much easier by the understanding that the enemy AI doesn't need to understand *how* to create an effect, just the effect that it desires (destroying the player), and the set methods it can use to achieve that, such as moving around with rockets, or shooting it's gun. The AI doesn't need to be inventive, just interesting to play against.

Physical puzzles as well?

Probably not. Would make a nice addition, but acts as a distraction from the main game.

Will I add a sandbox mode? Random battle type thing?

Yes. Once the core game systems are done, creating a random/quick battle mode for players who don't want to get involved in the main game is easy.

How will you give player drive/motivation?

I don't think there needs to be too much external forces to motivate the player. For players who get enjoyment of games from winning, playing to beat battles and win the final game is enough. For players looking for something more creative, the sheer joy of building machines and using them to smash things is enough for me at least, and I suspect many other people enjoy it as well.

Group Concept Interrogation

• Name: Heather
• Concept synopsis: Girl raises fish from dead. Hilarity ensues.
• Project type: Story-based animation
• Next steps:
  • Develop idea more thoroughly.
  • Interpret ideas / criticism.
  • Pairdown the brainstorm
  • add more zombies.

• Questions:

  • How does it conclude?
  • How does the fish die?
  • Is it a fish? Something else?
  • Is there a moral?
  • Mother? Is she a witch? Hopped up on anti-depressents? Stoned?
  • Is mother depressed? Stressed?
  • How is mother negligent?
  • What does fish want? Why kill mother? To thank girl for raising it? Is it angry for being raised from fishy heavens?
  • Why does girl raise fish from dead?
  • How does she raise fish from dead?
  • Does fish grow in power? Mutate?
  • Does mother turn to zombie? Happy ending? Funny ending? Sad ending? Shocking ending?
  • is there a cat in this animation?
  • What is the meaning of life?

• Name: Sebastian

• Concept synopsis: Man is in supermarket and stalked by crazy killer for his pimple.
• Project type: Story/random violence based animation.
• Next steps:
  • Work out solid structure to hold it all together.

• Questions:

  
  
  • How will structure work?
  • Why does guy have massive pimple?
  • Why does psychopath care about pimple?
  • How do the supermarket staff react to their co-workers deaths?
  • Do they even notice?
  • What specific people does the psychopath kill in order to spy on guy?
  • What’s with the cutaways of puppies, anyway?
  • Why is the guy content with the pimple?
  • Does he know he has a massive pimple?

• Name: Sebastian

• Concept synopsis: Employee video goes wrong when the idea employee breaks down and kills.
• Project type: Story/random violence based animation.
• Next steps:
  • Break down causes?
  • Look into your heart and see if you could be bothered animating car driving and good handshake form.
  
  

• Questions:

  
  
  • How long is the buildup going to go for?
  • How will you handle it?
  • What elements of being a good employee will you show?
  • What exactly does he do when he freaks out?
  • Why does he react the way he does to his wife’s death?
  • Is it his wife’s death or something that makes him freak out?
  • How long is the freakout part going to be?
  • How do you handle the narrator?
  • How do you handle the breaking of the 4-th wall/killing of narrator?
  • Why does he kill narrator, anyway?
  
  



• Name: Isaac



• Concept synopsis: Build machines! Use the physics engine and parts to create battle devices.
• Project type: Flash Game
• Next steps:
  
  • Work out how to make AI.
  • Work out metagame / strategy game.
  • Interface design,
  • tied with overworld.
  • economy design
  • list of parts!
  
  
• Questions:
  
  
  • How does interface work?
  • How does it tie into world game?
  • Game world? Seamless world/two games?
  • Story? Is there one? How does the world work?
  • Strategy game on map? Mission-based?
  • Does player have avatar? Or just behind a mouse cursor?
  • Is player part of world, or god?
  • Gravity - does anybody need it?
  • Setting/time period?
  • Does terrain effect game? Is it deformable like everything else?
  • Enemy? Intelligent? Do they have machines as well? Are the monsters? Little men?
  • Linear story?
  • Is world linear? Or freeform.
  • Physical puzzles as well?
  • Conlusion: You need one right?
  • Will I add a sandbox mode? Random battle type thing?
  • How will you give player drive/motivation?
  
  

Collated Project Pitches

Here is just all the pitches together for easy reference:

Morlock Tales

Players guide a small group of characters through a map that is constantly collapsing. At it's core, the game is still a basic strategy game, with the player setting goals and orders for the characters he controls. Players can create bases, and the characters he controls need a constant supply of food or other resources, thus must hunt other creatures for food and craft new weapons, etc. The game differs from other strategy games in that there is no guarantee that their bases will survive for long.

A slow moving threat (be it a zombie army, lava, whatever) is moving across the map, forcing the player to keep the characters they control moving. But just moving across the map forever is not an option since some of the tasks (cooking, crafting, something like that) need the characters to stop moving. The player must hop from outpost to outpost, keeping one step ahead of the encroaching force.

Corporate Physics

This game represents the way corporations work through a highly abstract physical metaphor.

The player controls a corporation, which is represented as a series of components that can be connected together a various ways. Each component serves a specific purpose. Having more more employees in a component increases it’s visual size, it’s effectiveness and the amount of capital the player must keep streaming in to keep the company afloat. Some components are:

• Administration provides a large number of tabs onto which other components can be attached.
• Production creates widgets.
• R&D increases the cost at which widgets can be sold to consumers.
• Warehouses allow widgets to be stored.
• Sales acts as a vacuum cleaner, which sucks up consumers can pops them out the other side with less money and in possession of a widget.
• Marketing acts as a magnet, drawing consumers towards itself. The marketing component can be placed to draw consumers towards the sales component.
• Legal acts as a cannon that can be used to attack other corporations, knocking them out of position.

Consumers are represented as little dots, which respond to forces exerted by the corporations. A consumer slowly grows in money, which makes the effects of corporations’ marketing and sales beams stronger, but being sucked up by a corporation’s sales component reduces their money.

Players must balance the need for growth with the dangers of growing too fast and not being able to support their employees. Growth is encouraged by pressure from competing corporations… if rival corporations outpace the player, the player will be crushed by rival corporations legal attacks.

Of course, this is all pie-in-sky kinda stuff. I don’t think I can really make the kinda AI that this would require, and without the AI it all falls down.

Imperialist Caretaker

This game attempts to simulate a simplified overview the issues faced by the imperialist caretakers of a conquered country. The main issue faced is the maximization of profit gained from the inhabitants of the country while avoiding revolution. This involves a careful balancing of education levels, quality of living, taxation and your military presence.

Basically, it's Sim City with higher stakes. In Sim City if you fail to balance your city correctly, the citizens will just leave. In this game, the citizens will riot and destroy your factories or fight a gorilla war against your soldiers.

The game will be quite simple though, with only a few types of buildings: factories, schools, houses, and military bases/barracks/checkpoints, etc. This will keep the scope containable, and the system through which the citizens are controlled quite transparent and able to be manipulated by the player.

Mechanised

Players use a toolset of parts to design battle machines. Design of the machines is entirely in the player's hands... there are no set slots where parts must go. Instead, players can place parts anywhere on a blueprint-style view. For rockets or guns or wheels to function though they must be connected to a power source, of which the player has a limited supply. Each power source is tied to a different trigger button on the keyboard or on the screen. When the player holds down a trigger button, the battle machine components that have been connected to that power source will be activated.
In this example when the player holds the 1 trigger, the two rocket engines will fire, shooting the machine towards the enemy and battering them with the shields the player has placed on the front of their machine.

I'm unsure if gravity is a good or bad idea for this game. If it was ignored, players could have much more freedom in their designs, and in the way their machines work. However, the inclusion of gravity reduces the play field to essentially one dimension of movement, two if the player invests specifically in vertical thrusters... which makes the AI design a simpler task, and also focuses more importance in the machine design, rather than the player's piloting skill.

Music Fight

Music Fight is a strategy/rhythm game in which the game levels are defined by the music that is playing. Players must lead their soldiers across the horisontal landscape of the level which is created by analysis of the game's music. Enemies must be defeated, and difficult points in the landscape must be traversed.


The player's soldiers have different abilities, which are colour coded depending on the abilities type (melee attacks are red, ranged attacks are yellow, defenses are blue, etc). While the song is playing, the game detects points where instruments or pitches are particularly loud, and triggers 'beat blocks' of colours depending on the instrument which triggered them. The beat blocks slide across the game screen, and when they are over a soldier that has an ability of the corresponding colour, the ability is enabled. To actually use the ability the player must click the beat block.

Other than triggering an ability to use, the player has no control over the soldiers. When they are told to attack, the soldiers will find an appropriate enemy to attack without the player having to give speficic orders. This is made easier by the essentially one-dimensional play field. Having a traditional 2D playing field like in most strategy games would make the very control scheme too constrained for the required complexity of input.

Visual Research: Rhythm Games

For my visual research, I'm looking at the way different rhythm games display the song, beats and game elements, and what elements I could use or improve on for my Music Fight game idea.

Audiosurf

Audiosurf generates a race track based on the song that the player specifies. The player must collect coloured blocks that are scattered along the track, and build groups to same-coloured blocks to score. The placement of the blocks is effected by the intensity of the song, as is the shape of the track.

The specific design of the track is not made by a level designer, but by algorithmic analysis of the song by the computer.

The game's visual design is quite nice, with abstract 3D forms spinning and pulsing in time to the music. Each track ends with the player flying towards a giant octopus-type construction that waves its arms with the music.



Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero attempts to simulate the playing of a rock song by the player. The player must hit notes represented on the by different coloured points or lines moving towards the bottom of the screen, using the buttons of their guitar-shaped controller.

Aside from the dots and dashes moving along a guitar fretboard, the rest of the game represents the music rather literally with shots of a 3d rock band playing along with. But since the game is attempting to simulate playing a rock and roll song, this representation is sensible.



Dance Dance Revolution

Dance Dance Revolution is one of the most famous rhythm games, and it's influence is certainly visible in Guitar Hero, which I wrote about above. Like Guitar Hero the player must simply hit the notes moving down the screen, though in DDR the notes are hit by stamping on the large buttons of a dance pad, not a fake guitar.

DDR's representation of the music is even more simple than Guitar Hero's; it just shows the song's music video, with the game notes transposed over it.



Rez

Rez takes an approach to rhythm games that allows for more player creativity. Different actions in playing the game, such as targeting or shooting enemies will trigger different musical sounds. The levels are designed so that when played the player creates a song of sorts.

The graphics of Rez use quite abstract 3d forms in an interesting style, but are quite similar in their function to other 3rd-person shooters; an avatar, controlled by the player, and enemies and other elements of the level that must be traversed. Unlike previous examples, there are no distinct beats to hit.



Patapon

Like Rez, Patapon also allows for a more creative approach to rhythm games. The player controls an army of little creatures that are given orders by hitting the correct sequence of buttons, which make different drum noises. The buttons must be hit in time to the beat, so the player makes music while giving orders to their soldiers.

The graphical style of Patapon is more illustrative than previous examples. Like Res, the beats to be hit are not represented on screen, but are only shown after they have been played. The players soldiers are shown as flat characters that perform the orders given to them on screen. Like Rez, the graphics do not respond directly to the music. Rather, the music is more defined by the actions of the on-screen characters.

Pitch Draft: Music Fight

Music Fight is a strategy/rhythm game in which the game levels are defined by the music that is playing. Players must lead their soldiers across the horisontal landscape of the level which is created by analysis of the game's music. Enemies must be defeated, and difficult points in the landscape must be traversed.


The player's soldiers have different abilities, which are colour coded depending on the abilities type (melee attacks are red, ranged attacks are yellow, defenses are blue, etc). While the song is playing, the game detects points where instruments or pitches are particularly loud, and triggers 'beat blocks' of colours depending on the instrument which triggered them. The beat blocks slide across the game screen, and when they are over a soldier that has an ability of the corresponding colour, the ability is enabled. To actually use the ability the player must click the beat block.

Other than triggering an ability to use, the player has no control over the soldiers. When they are told to attack, the soldiers will find an appropriate enemy to attack without the player having to give speficic orders. This is made easier by the essentially one-dimensional play field. Having a traditional 2D playing field like in most strategy games would make the very control scheme too constrained for the required complexity of input.

Pitch Draft: Mechanised

Players use a toolset of parts to design battle machines. Design of the machines is entirely in the player's hands... there are no set slots where parts must go. Instead, players can place parts anywhere on a blueprint-style view. For rockets or guns or wheels to function though they must be connected to a power source, of which the player has a limited supply. Each power source is tied to a different trigger button on the keyboard or on the screen. When the player holds down a trigger button, the battle machine components that have been connected to that power source will be activated.
In this example when the player holds the 1 trigger, the two rocket engines will fire, shooting the machine towards the enemy and battering them with the shields the player has placed on the front of their machine.

I'm unsure if gravity is a good or bad idea for this game. If it was ignored, players could have much more freedom in their designs, and in the way their machines work. However, the inclusion of gravity reduces the play field to essentially one dimension of movement, two if the player invests specifically in vertical thrusters... which makes the AI design a simpler task, and also focuses more importance in the machine design, rather than the player's piloting skill.

Book cover for class exercise

(But done out of class because I didn't have my tablet at school).


After making this I looked at the book's Amazon page. My cover is more fun I think, though it looks like I've focused on a similar idea (dude with his ghost).

Concept Dev. Class 3

Overview of timeline

• wk4 presentation of 4 ideas
  
• wk5 assessment & pairing down of ideas
  
• wk6 hand if of workbook
  
• wk7-8 presentation of more detailed concepts
  
• wk9-13 individual consultation

Concept Presentation (week 7-8)

In document form and presentation:

• synopsis
  
• developed idea of themes and intent
  
• draft of treatment/description
  
• idea of visual approach
  
• general description of research
  
• storyboards/other development
  

Visual Literacy

• Develop relationship between theme and visual style.
  
• Consider how the visual style effects the way the audience will understand the idea.
  
• The connection between style and concept should be strong and believable.

Pitch Draft: Imperialist Caretaker

This game attempts to simulate a simplified overview the issues faced by the imperialist caretakers of a conquered country. The main issue faced is the maximization of profit gained from the inhabitants of the country while avoiding revolution. This involves a careful balancing of education levels, quality of living, taxation and your military presence.

Basically, it's Sim City with higher stakes. In Sim City if you fail to balance your city correctly, the citizens will just leave. In this game, the citizens will riot and destroy your factories or fight a gorilla war against your soldiers.

The game will be quite simple though, with only a few types of buildings: factories, schools, houses, and military bases/barracks/checkpoints, etc. This will keep the scope containable, and the system through which the citizens are controlled quite transparent and able to be manipulated by the player.

Concept Development Assignment 2: Inspiring Article

The article!

The article is an analysis of the actual weights of the new set of ‘social sins’ introduced recently by the Catholic church, and the distinction between ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ sins in Judaism and Islam.

Because I think about game design a lot, I find arbitrary rules fascinating when they are brought out into the real world and applied people’s real lives. Religion, especially Catholicism and Judaism are wonderful examples of this. Also interesting is the way in which rules can be rewritten ‘mid-game’. Before last monday, stem-cell research was not an actual sin, now it’s on the same level as lust and gluttony.

The article makes me think of two things:

• A game where the only way to gain points is to commit sins... but if your character dies before being forgiven by your priest all points are lost. So the points you gain must be 'banked' before they are safe.
• Also, a game where rules can be arbitrarily changed at any moment.
  

Rust Mollusks

top: Adolecent Rust Mollusk, below: Adult Rust Mollusk, right: Dude with a big hammer.

Was too damn hot to think of anything original so I drew some pictures for the Morlock Tales pitch.

The creature is a rust mollusk. They feed on fungus in damp underground caves. Their metal shells are grown from minerals absorbed from the ground, which they will also specifically seek out. Veins of iron can often be found by the congregations of adolescent rust mollusks jostling for the best feeding spot. When their shells are fully grown, adult rust mollusks retreat to quieter and darker pools to feed and raise hatchlings.

Pitch Draft: Corporate Physics

This game represents the way corporations work through a highly abstract physical metaphor.

The player controls a corporation, which is represented as a series of components that can be connected together a various ways. Each component serves a specific purpose. Having more more employees in a component increases it’s visual size, it’s effectiveness and the amount of capital the player must keep streaming in to keep the company afloat. Some components are:

• Administration provides a large number of tabs onto which other components can be attached.


• Production creates widgets.


• R&D increases the cost at which widgets can be sold to consumers.


• Warehouses allow widgets to be stored.


• Sales acts as a vacuum cleaner, which sucks up consumers can pops them out the other side with less money and in possession of a widget.


• Marketing acts as a magnet, drawing consumers towards itself. The marketing component can be placed to draw consumers towards the sales component.


• Legal acts as a cannon that can be used to attack other corporations, knocking them out of position.

Consumers are represented as little dots, which respond to forces exerted by the corporations. A consumer slowly grows in money, which makes the effects of corporations’ marketing and sales beams stronger, but being sucked up by a corporation’s sales component reduces their money.

Players must balance the need for growth with the dangers of growing too fast and not being able to support their employees. Growth is encouraged by pressure from competing corporations… if rival corporations outpace the player, the player will be crushed by rival corporations legal attacks.

Of course, this is all pie-in-sky kinda stuff. I don’t think I can really make the kinda AI that this would require, and without the AI it all falls down.

Pitch Draft: Morlock Tales

Players guide a small group of characters through a map that is constantly collapsing. At it's core, the game is still a basic strategy game, with the player setting goals and orders for the characters he controls. Players can create bases, and the characters he controls need a constant supply of food or other resources, thus must hunt other creatures for food and craft new weapons, etc. The game differs from other strategy games in that there is no guarantee that their bases will survive for long.


A slow moving threat (be it a zombie army, lava, whatever) is moving across the map, forcing the player to keep the characters they control moving. But just moving across the map forever is not an option since some of the tasks (cooking, crafting, something like that) need the characters to stop moving. The player must hop from outpost to outpost, keeping one step ahead of the encroaching force.

Character development assignment

Step 1

A person I know: my buddy Joel

Their qualities: opinionated, conservative, confidant, funny, personable, loyal

Step 2

A scene from life involving the person.

While at Port Fairy folk festival last weekend. Joel and another friend have decided that they are going to talk in cockney english accents for the whole night. There’s a stunning looking girl sitting near us, and Joel decides to talk to her… in his fake cockney accent. But as soon as she answers his questions he realises that she’s actually english. Joel quickly backs out of the conversation.

After the band we are watching finishes, Joel follows the girl out of the auditorium and asks her on a date. She agrees, and luckily doesn’t recognise him from previously. Later, we find out that she’s the pianist from one of the visiting bands.

Step 3

If he was:

• weather: a rainstorm at night


• an animal: basset hound


• a household object: dinner table


• a machine: a hammer


• a place: the sea

• music: that one song by Led Zepplin that goes WOMAN WOMAN WOMAN


• a color: bright orangey-brown


• a font: Bookman Old Style


• a fictional archetype: animal house style frat boy

Step 4

Braid art process

I really love the recent series of posts that David Hellman has made on his blog describing the process he went through while designing the graphics for upcoming indie game Braid.

Part 1 shows use of early abstract paintings to quickly describe ideas and capture moods.


Part 2 shows the iterative process of designing the graphics for a single scene.

Also, if you're not aware of David's old comic, please fix the situation.

Concept Dev. Class 2

Read article about growing up in China and desire for Tang - discussion of various themes contained. Shows that everyone finds different elements. Also, pokemon cards are similar; as children they were prestige products that were unaffordable for most. Now with hindsight they seem mundane, even worthless.

Assignments

Week 4: present 4 ideas with synopsis. It's a pitch. Specific ideas, but doesnt need to be a fully detailed proposal. A few paragraphs for each idea.

Week 8: present a more solid proposal for the single idea that you intend to tackle.

Discussion of scope: 3-4 minutes for linear media is a reasonable length. More is possible, but 10 minutes is overkill. Quality, not quantity.

Why a solid idea should be made in concept dev. class: Doesn't take time away from production, avoids design by committee.

Review of last class:

Design generation: list on blog. Also, try introducing random elements to mix things up if you're stuck. Try asking 'what if'. Personal experience... can be dangerous. Be aware of your perspective.

Focus: what is your angle? What is the 'vehicle'. Representation.. how do you show your idea? Show, dont tell. Can you present events that demonstrate your theme, rather than just showing theme directly? Allow audiences to 'put things together'. Not throwing themes in audience's face is much more interesting for them. Respect for your audience's time.

Visualisation/metaphor: Decide on visual form... use visual metaphors as well to tie to themes. Provide metaphors to give audience a way in to your work, make it more concrete for them. Also, metaphors provide for a shortcut to save time.

Synopsis: A short statement 1-2 paragraphs that introduces the reader to the most important aspects of your proposal in condensed form. This can be broken up into a more literal description of the project and a description of themes and underlying intentions. The reader must understand the basics, the details can be extrapolated from that later.

Homework

Finish class task: using a description of a person you know, write a scene from life that illustrates/demonstrates their personality. List a bunch of objects that the person would be if they were that object. Create an image of that character using a few of the objects listed as inspiration.

Research task: Non-fiction starting points... find an article that you find interesting as a 'starting point' about concept development. Write a paragraph that explains what you find interesting and why.

Lil Aliens!

Inspired by how much Onolungian Salad Zakkers made me laugh in the class on tuesday, I made this!



(click on the image or here to see the flash app. Click on the alien to make a new one)

A nice improvement would be to use the alien's name as the random seed for it's appearance. So then I could type in 'Onolungian Salad Zakkers' and see what they actually look like.

Also, here is a wallpaper of lots of silly lookin', randomly created aliens:

Will Wright

This for a Concept Development assignment. It got a bit wordy, as things I write tend to do.

Behind Shigeru Miyamoto (designer of Mario, Zelda, Metroid, &c., &c.) Will Wright is possibly the most well known game designer currently working, and with good reason too. Will Wright’s first hit was SimCity, first released in 1989, which allowed players to design and maintain simulated cities. This spawned a line of similarly-named games exploring similar themes: Simulation of real-world systems, and giving the players a lot of power to be creative in the manipulation of these systems. Will Wright’s second major hit was The Sims in 2000. The Sims again attempted to simulate a real-world system, this time suburban family life. It appealed greatly to ‘non-core’ gaming audience (women, mostly), and is credited with expanding the audience for video games. The Sims is still one of the most highly selling games of all time. Will Wright is currently working on the upcoming game Spore, which simulates evolutionary biology, social evolution and space exploration.

Will Wright’s creative process involves detailed exploration of everyday but complex ideas. This is something not usually seen in games, which are often explorations of more outlandish and simple concepts. The ideas that he explores are also taken from experiences or concepts outside of games. The Sims was created from the initial concept of giving the player a dollhouse where the dolls were alive. The main inspiration for Spore were taken from Drake’s Equation, which was an attempt to mathematically determine the number of civilizations in our galaxy. Will Wright’s game designs are also usually created over long periods of time, working with small teams. The Sims was first pitched by Will Wright in 1993, though actual development did not begin on it until 1995, five years before it was released. Spore has also been in development for more than five years. Much of this development time is spent on small throwaway prototypes to test specific concepts that may or may not be used in the final product. Will Wright’s creative process involves gathering ideas from external sources and iterating until they work.

Articles:
Innovation, design
Prototyping

Video:
Will Wright at NASA

It's another blog!

Because the world needs more! More more more!

This will be my blog for concept development class, plus maybe other school things.

If you want to see my 'real' blog, it is at here: http://isaacwilliams.net/

Exercises from 1st Class

About a Record

I have always loved my dad's record collection. A lot of it is really fun! My dad has all the Smiths records, all the Morrissey records, all the Split Endz records. So I guess he's a tragic for tragic 80's indie rock. Which is great, because he and I are both now tragics for modern tragic indie rock.

A few years ago I started going through all of Dad's records that I want to be able to listen to, playing them back into digital format. Lying on the dusty lounge-room floor with laptop uncomfortably balanced on my brother's guitar amp, a long analogue audio cable going from the headphone jack on the record player to the mic-in on the computer. Once the record was played back into the computer I would painstakingly cut up the tracks into individual mp3 files so I can actually listen to them. My friends would call my blasphemous: 'Intentionally subverting the purity of vinyl'. I called them irritatingly nostalgic luddites. While it may be nice every so often to lie on the loungeroom floor and play out a record in it's entirety, the reverence for rituals associated with an antiquated technology is just silly.

The entire process was mostly pointless anyway. The songs were taken from 20-year old, often listened to records, played out on a record player of the same age, to the headphone jack, down the cheapest variety of audio cable I could find, into the analog mic jack in an aging laptop and finally converted to mp3. By the time they reached my mp3 player they were almost unlistenable. So I just ended up downloading the albums my dad has on record from bittorrent. Just keeping up with the times.

About An Alien!!!!

The cold black desert stretched on as far as the eye can see. The gritty dark surface an unsightful blight on which no life could have ever survived. And yet there are some signs of life. Massive, semitranslucent beings tower through the rifts of the desert. At dusk their gargantuan cries echo between the dark peaks: "Whoororororororo!! Whroooororororo!". And lo, the black desert rumbled from their cries. On the third day one of the massive creatures trampled towards our camp. It moved so fast that we could not escape. I stood in front of it, waving my arms and yelling "Stop!!!! Or I shall be trampled to death by your spiked mass!". To my surprise it did not listen. I was stompled to death. I died. I was both astonished and astounded, as well as being slightly constipated.

I continued my trek across the desert. A giant spire, shooting up into the sky, millions of feet. The ancient groan of twisting steel ripping through the night air like a chainsaw through a bathtub of baby Onolungian Salad Zakkers. It sounded exactly like Rolf Harris' first album: "Whoororororororo!! Whroorororororo! Whroorororororo!!". My cranium was turned inside out! Luckily, one of my shuddering assistants was nearby to pour me into a soup bowl.

With impunity!