Week 14 Mike Stout - Learning From the Masters: Level Design in The Legend of Zelda

Levelflow:

·         Where the player is, where they are going, how do they get their

·         The pathway from start to finish  - it felt non-linear but actually it was not (or mostly) critical and optional paths

·         The Path from start to finish is the critical path

Intensity ramping:

·         The way in which difficulty can increase through a level

·         The relationship between the familiar and the new

·         In the critical the player must have the intensity to master this – more efficient /effective to defeat enemies

Variety:

·         Never repeat the same encounter twice – numbers if enemies, types of enemies and room layouts

Training:

·         If you want the player to progress you must allow them to develop the skills to do so.

Week 13 Building a Simple Level - Ed Bryne "Game Level Design" 2005

This week reading was to read Ed Bryne Building a Simple level. The task was to find out what the key lessons for level designs are.

There were four key subheadings in the reading that you need to follow in order to design a game level, they are: 

• 1.       Level Design Building Blocks
• 2.       What About Story?
• 3.       Putting It All Together
• 4.       Summary

Level Design Building Blocks: The basic elements of a level are:

·         Concept

·         Environment to exist in

·         Beginning

·         Ending

·         Goal

·         Challenge to overcome

·         Reward

·         Way of handling failure

The writer gives an example of Tetris and how these building blocks are used:

·         Concept: Find a place for the blocks or lose the level

·         Environment to exist in : The active play area

·         Beginning : An empty screen and the score of 0

·         Ending : The level is over when the player either creates the correct number of vertical lines (success) or the blocks pile up to the top of the screen (failure)

·         Goal : create line to overcome the level

·         Challenge to overcome between the player and the goal : The speed of descent, the type of the blocks and the number of line needed

·         Reward : the player moves to the next level or receives an animation

·         Way of handling failure : the game must be started from the beginning

What About Story: The writer explains that not all games have the need for a story so it is not a fundamental element to have a story for a game for example many big games not have any kind of narrative elements fuck as Tetris.

Putting It Together: The writer used a simple level to demonstrate how the elements work together.

Concept- The game used is Clownhunt, it is a game where you control Crispy who is a clown desperately trying to escape a maniacal ringmaster.  The Controls in the game are simple the player can move Crispy the clown left and right and make him also jump while he is moving to leap onto small obstacles and to avoid small enemies that can pass underneath.

Environment- Clownhunt is set in a circus so all elements should be thematic if possible. Colourful backdrops and cartoony graphics should be present in the environment.  They become important as humorous elements to offset the grim theme of the game. In the game there is no HUD to interfere with the environment because the game doesn’t require the player to keep track of lives, energy or other game metrics.

Beginning- Clownhunt always begins with the player on the left edge of the screen.

Ending - We need the exit to be far enough away from the entrance to make sure the player can’t reach it without overcoming some kind of challenge or obstacle.

Goal – The goal of every level in Clownhunt is the game – reach the exit.

Challenge – This is key to the player actually having fun in the level. You need to make sure the challenge is thematic, that is doesn’t strike the player as being out of place or goofy for the kind of game they are playing:

·         We need a way for the player to gain height to reach the exit

·         It is immediately recognizable by most players

·         How it works is apparent just by looking at it, so we don’t need to explain to the player how to use it

Determining the Challenge Mechanics - The best gameplay mechanics are those that need no explanation, allowing the player to simply work out to interact with them from his own observations that makes players feel clever and allows the designer to stay out of the picture while they play.

Reward – With this game the reward of it is that from completing the level you get access to the next level and the second reward will be a short victory animation.

Failure - The last critical part of the design is what to do when the player fails the challenge, luckily all of this is handled inherently. Don’t have heath so that it won’t end because of time. Don’t have a health bar so wont falling from height won’t end the level.  You should only set the players back or force them to reload or transporting them in a neutral and safe position. This is the most important rules in level design.

Week 12 Readings Writing Game Rule

Why this is important: When it comes round to someone trying your game they must ready the rules of the game, if they have been written poorly even if the game is great it puts a downer on the game because it can get frustrating for the player. Everything needs to been clearly, your game depends on it because either it will be a complete success or a flop. Game reviewers don’t take a second look at games with poorly written rules. Even from the beginning well written rules is recommended seeing as play testers also don’t like a game with poorly written rules. Advise is given to take your time when writing your rules, in the long run it can illuminate the option of having to redesign the game.

Fundamental Qualities:  There are three fundamental qualities of good explanatory writing they are clarity, brevity and completeness. It can be very difficult to get all three of these qualities, only words and pictures can help to teach the game. If it’s not a necessity for the game rule do not use the history of the game, humour and extra information about the scenario that isn’t needed.

Order of explanation: Rules should start with a summary of the game or something that represents it. If this is done well some players may be able to predict what rules will be based on the summary. When writing your game rules you must at all times avoid leaving the player in suspense do not talk about mechanics that you have not yet explained. Related rules should be closer together. The uses of bullet points clarify where one idea starts and another ends. 

Reading Aloud: When rules are written correctly, one person will be able to read your rules aloud to the other players, and will be able to play the game. If that person who is reading the rules out has to explain the rules that to other members of the group your rules have failed.

Clarifications: Have your diagram examples in italics, so that players who understand the rule just skip it but for those who don’t can use it.

Review: The best way to find out if your rules are a success is to get someone else to review them. Get a strict review and honest feedback without this you won’t be able to improve your writing. Get people that don’t know your game to read them aloud to people to see if they understand.

Finishing: Do not print your rules in an interesting font, because your rules need to be as legible as possible. With frequent revision, consideration and rewriting your game will shine through and be as accessible as possible to new players. 

Week 12 Readings How to Write Rules (Without Confusing People)

It’s important to have solid rules, a player shouldn’t be questioning what something means or shouldn’t make them unsure how to interpret something unless that is intentional. Timing is key to rules as well seeing as no one wants to spend a great deal of time reading and understanding the rules of a game.

               

There were 5 key rules to follow when writing rules, they are:

1.       Flavor first: If the game has a narrative tying the mechanics together, make that narrative clear immediately. The metaphors will be helpful in explaining and justifying the game’s logic and mechanics.

2.       Get the boring stuff out of the way: List the materials needed for the game next, followed by any pre-game instructions for setting up. If it gets wordy or over-complicated, slim it down and add an illustration or two to help explain.

3.       Begin with the end: The first rule you should give the players is the winning condition of the game. Tell them what their objective is. From a logical standpoint, all the other rules serve the winning condition, and will make more sense when described with regards to it. It also makes it easier for players to find when they forget how to win.

4.       Go from general to specific: Think of it like newspaper journalism, or an inverted pyramid. After the objective, describe the broad, overarching rules before describing the instances and exceptions. If it’s Mille Bornes, explain placing mile cards before you explain the hazards and remedies, explain the hazards and remedies before you explain the safety cards. Another way of saying this would be to explain the things that happen most often in a game first, and the things least likely to happen in a game last.

5.       Tell players what they can do, before telling them what they can’t: Somewhat related to the previous point, you should always explain the least constricting rules before explaining the most constricting. Rules explained earlier therefore become the primary rules, and the rules following are the instances and exceptions where the primary rules change or don’t apply.

6.       Finally remember to use short sentences with a low-level of vocabulary, and when necessary use illustrations.

Week 8 Post of my Royal Game of Ur Iterations

In this week’s lesson we pared up to play The Royal Game of Ur. Or task was to play through it first and then to come up with our iterations to the post them up on our blogs.

With my first iterations the first one that I had come up with that I thought would work well was name the “death square”. This “death square” was situated on the square directly after the second rosette the 9^th square on the board. What this meant was I was changing the mechanics of the game because if a players piece had landed on the “death square” which is situated the square after the second rosette the player in whom the piece belongs to would have to take that piece off the board and start over again with that piece.

The second iteration made in the game was one of at a single point on either side of the players board was a “dual square”. The dual points on the board are situated in the safe zones 3 squares into the board just before the rosette. The dual would only be activated if both players had a piece on the dual square at the same time that is when a dual would commence. The way in which it worked was each player would have a dice that they would roll at the same time and the player with the high number from rolling the d4 would win which allowed the player to jump into the middle row in between the dual zone, it also meant for the loosing player that piece that lost the dual they would then have to miss the next two goes and the winner of the dual would then have the opportunity to make progress without being caught up.

My final iteration was the easiest to come up, the reason for this was the fact that from just playing the game, it felt that the game dragged on too long and after a while got slightly boring until the time that the victor came about. The iteration was instead of the players starting off with 7 pieces each to start off with 5 each instead. This meant that the game consisted of the same amount of dice but had 10 playable pieces instead of the 14.

Week 8 Readings Players Who Suit MUDs

There are 4 approaches to playing MUDs. The 4 approaches arise from the inter relationship of 2 dimensions of a certain playing style: World Oriented versus Player Oriented.

Achievers:

Achievers are players that focus on completing a game as quickly and efficiently as possible. Achievers think of getting points and going up in levels as their main goal. The look to improve their character and look to complete personal task/goals they set themselves. Achievers are very competitive so the way in which they play their games is what they think that is the correct way in playing the game. Achievers are compared to Diamonds.

Explorers:

Explores tend to want to find out as much of the game they are playing as possible. Explores like to push games to their limits by finding things that are wrong with it like bugs and glitches and making use of the space that is available. Explorers are Spades.

Socialising:

Socialisers care more about communicating with other players then playing the game itself. They use the games communicative facilities as there way of talking with other playing playing the game. For socialisers killing is something that is only ever to be excused if it’s futile, it’s normally done as an act of revenge, or even for pain caused to a friend. Socialisers are Hearts.

Imposition:

There are players that use the games assets to cause a nuisance to other players. There player do their best to cause distress to all the other players playing the game by either killing them or just annoying them in general. The more of an annoyance that they are the more joy they get. These players are Clubs

Achievers: Acting on the world, point of playing is to master the game. Make it do what you want it to do.

Explorers: Interacting with the world, sense of wonder of the virtual world.

Socialisers: Interacting with other players involves talking but could also lead to exotic behaviour. Understanding other players

Killers: What else but kill other players?

From covering this reading, it shows that there are 4 strong types of player characters in the gaming world, yet game are NOT limited to only these 4 types of players. 

Week 7 British Museum Trip

In this week we were to go to the British Museum as a class to help out with our work looking at Ancient Games that are on view at the Museum, but at the time I was very low on funding and couldn't afford to attend the trip. But hopefully there will be the same trip going along and I will definitely attend.