Game Development Updates

Earlier this week I finished my group project assignments.

I updated the start menu with the game title and written descriptions of the history of Hashima and game instructions.  I forgot that I had meant to add a background of the game story.

Start Menu Blender File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxkwWSQOFCfQdzBhekVMVFFPbDA/view?usp=sharing

I created a skysphere to represent day and night, with a full rotation (noon to midnight and back to noon) every 6 minutes.  Since existing free sky images do not work well mapped to a sphere I created one using MS Word that provided the desired appearance.

Skysphere Blender FIle: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxkwWSQOFCfQQ3BQWGtiSjZQc2s/view?usp=sharing

Sky Image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxkwWSQOFCfQQ0VqZmpaR2ZKNkk/view?usp=sharing

I also set up the night-time attack animal (a racoon from blendswap) to attack just before midnight with a quick run to collide and then retreat to its nest.  The racoon is intended to be very swift and quiet, as encouragement for the player to decide between seek shelter for the night or risking the attack.  The navigation and collision properties/logic were to be the same as one of the dogs.

Night Racoon: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxkwWSQOFCfQYlVLbmtUanFaVGM/view?usp=sharing

In addition to these files, I helped to download sound files and discuss game design issues.

HW15

Group tasks completed this week:  Exploration of the day night feature, using a sky dome and game countdown to trigger a racoon attack.

The blendswap files were all downloaded on time by the 3rd of November.  These included birds, a dog, a racoon, a snake, a mining hat, a jacket, a shoe, a necklace, a watch, a camera, and various potted plants.

The step due this week is the menu. It is is nearly completed, but needs descriptions for the tutorials and game story, and then integration into the main game file.  It has a late 60s to mid 70s looking font and colors to match the timeframe of the story.  This should be easy to complete this week.

Next week the night vs day sky and decision making programming are due.  The plan for the sky is fairly straightforward with a rotating dome that portrays morning, day, evening and night. This should be reasonable to complete by the deadline, as there are online tutorials for building sky domes. The segment portraying night will be substantially smaller than the rest of the dome.  A countdown that runs to match the onset of night in the dome will trigger a racoon attack if the player is not inside a building.  The decision making has not been explored yet, so it may or may not be a reasonable timeline to have both completed by the same time.

Group tasks

This week I have downloaded blend files to use in the game to represent items lost by the father, such as a shoe, a jacket, a locket, and a picture; and animals such as a pitbull, birds, and a racoon.

HW14: Indirect Controls

Players of this game feel like they have control due to the ability to move around the streets of the small island.  However, this does not provide complete control.

Constraints

The island provides a constraint to where players can walk their character around, but simultaneously provides the feeling of an entire environment to explore.  The view is limited to ground level, preventing players from seeing the entire layout of the island, which would easily provide an impression of how small it is.

Goals

The goal of the game is to rescue the father, which must be accomplished before the health meter runs out from enemy attacks or running out of food.  This is what drives the player to traverse the island with purpose, instead of freely wandering around exploring wherever they feel like and taking as much time as they would like.

Interface

The game is designed to be simple to navigate through basic keystrokes and menu items.  These are chosen and designed to provide minimum distraction from the game, allowing players to concentrate on their tasks and goals rather than being distracted by menu buttons and complicated keystrokes.

Visual Design

The island is set up to have the layout of the real Hashima Island of Japan.  Players will get to navigate a place they may never have a chance to go to in real life, and the visual design of the streets and buildings is intended to be realistic enough to add to this interest, while maintaining a game-like feel and simplicity.

Characters

The player interacts through his or her character with the character's father, and animals that may be friends or foes.  The goal of saving a relative will hopefully give players a feeling of having accomplished an intimate task if they complete the goals of the game. The interactions with animals provides choices to be made, regarding the type of interaction they player will have with them.  The player can choose to fight or befriend a dog, and must figure out ways of defending him or herself against other attacking animals.


Music

The music in this game is used to give the feeling of being alone in an abandoned area.  The focus is on natural sounds, of the surrounding ocean, animals, and the noises that the player's character would make by walking around or driving the boat.  The sound of the main character walking will serve as a reminder that the player is in control of the character's movements.  The sounds of animals will remind the player that he or she must be aware of the dangers that animals present and the choices that must be made to avoid being hurt by them.

HW11 Interfaces

1) Describe the user interface in your game.
The game is in third person view, with the scene taking up most of the screen space showing the avatar walking around the island or driving the boat.  A health meter is shown as a bar across the top of the screen, and a menu of options, such as exit or pause game, is shown as a bar across the bottom of the screen.  The player uses computer keys to tell the avatar where to go and what to do, and the mouse and mouse-button to select menu items.

2) What role will the interface play in your game.
The interface will provide information on health, risks, and navigation.  Health is indicated by the health meter, but risks and navigation will be based on seeing the scene around the avatar. 

3) Intuitive interfaces give a feeling of control. How easy (or hard) is your interface to master?
The interface should be easy to master, even for players who are not familiar with other games.  The health meter and menu items will always be visible on the screen.  The player will not be able to see the whole layout of the island at one time, but figuring out how to navigate around the island is a part of the game play.

4) Will your players have a strong influence over the outcome of the game? Please describe? If not, how can you change this?
The player will have a somewhat strong influence, because they will either complete the task or fail.  The time to complete the task of retrieving the father will be limited, so that they player does not feel like he or she does not face a challenge.

5) Players like to feel powerful. Do the players of your game feel powerful? How could this be improved?
The player should feel powerful thanks to having control over where the avatar travels throughout the entire, but small, island. However, most of the buildings cannot be entered, which a more elaborate game could allow to enable the player to feel even more powerful.

6) What does the player pick up and touch?
The player walks around the island and rides on a boat, but can also pick up items, such as a flashlight, mining hat, jacket, locket, water bottle, gun and knife. The player can also touch animals and the father that she or he is in search of.

7) Does the interface map to actions in the world? How?
Yes, the keystrokes will guide where the avatar moves to within the confines of the island and harbor, and will be used to control movement at either basic speed or double speed.

8) How does your interface let the player see, hear and touch the world of the game? Could this be improved in order to make the game world more real to the player's imagination?
The imagery of the island around the avatar, the sounds of the ocean and animals, and the ability to move around objects but not through them, will provide the aspects of seeing, hearing and touching the world of the game.  A virtual reality version of the game would be more real to the imagination, but impractical for this course.

9) The ideal interface is invisible to the player. Does your interface cater to the players desires? What are these desires?
The player is hopefully going to want to explore the island while trying to find the father, and the interface will allow that to happen without much obstruction.  The keystrokes will allow the avatar to be moved in the desired direction and with two choices of speed, which will hopefully make the fact that this transfer of information is through a computer to be inconsequential to the enjoyment of this exploration.

10) Can your interface be used without the players thinking? Is it natural?
The player will need to know what the keystrokes are for doing what he or she wants, which requires thinking.  We will try to make it feel as natural as possible, but using arrow keys for directional movement, and keystrokes that are common among other games.

11) Assuming you can do what you want, how would you make your interface more natural?
Utilizing verbal cues for the avatar's movement and actions, and for pulling up menu items, might seem more natural, at least for some people, but not necessarily for everyone. Many more speeds of movement than just two would make the interface feel more natural.  Having the avatar change to a sickly color as health runs down, instead of using a health bar, might also be more natural, but more difficult for the player to gauge actual health levels.

12) What kind of feedback does your interface present to the player? What do the players want to know? How does the interface relate to the player's goal? Will it help achieve that goal?
The interface will allow the player to see when he or she is putting the avatar into the presence of danger or running low on health.  This will help  the player to achieve the goal of successfully navigating the island to retrieve the father, by allowing the player to prep for these threats.

13) Is the interface feedback continuous? Why or why not?
Feedback is continuous because the visuals of island scene and the health meter are continuous. However, the player is not given updates about actual proximity to the father until he is actually in the scene.

14) Please describe the concept of interface modes? Does your game have multiple modes? Please explain (Lens #60).
The interface has multiple modes, or things the player can be doing through the same keystrokes.  There will be an option to use items, such as the water bottle or weapons.  Holding a weapon while moving around will work as an attack for defense purposes. This simple mode change is not expected to hae any major drawbacks.




Contribution
This week I helped with group planning and to update the game notes.

HW10 Game Menus

This blend file shows the main game menu displayed when players first start the game.  It gives the player the option to start playing the game, read instructions, read about the real Hashima Island, or exit the game.  Harsh's boat scene was appended as a new scene, so that players would go to that scene when they select play.  Animation was set on the exit button, so that it moves to the right when moused over and exits the game when clicked.  Blender activated the first button whenever any button other than exit was selected, when each button was set to be activated by clicking the left mouse button, causing the player to enter the game regardless of the button selected.  This was corrected by changing the game logic sensors from left mouse button to mouse over, but the reason for that problem has not been discovered.

Blender file:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxkwWSQOFCfQTVY4NjcxY0x0eWM/view?usp=sharing

Video:

Images:

For my team's game, this week I worked on collecting and writing up a history of Hashima Island to provide as an optional read in the intro game menu.

HW9 Balancing

Escape from Hashima is a single-player game based on the story line of a man trying to retrieve his father who was accidentally left behind after the island was evacuated.  Since the island is small, the game is designed to take place over the course of an evening, night, and morning in game-time, or not more than a few hours total in real-time.  The player competes against the computer to find the father and leave the island, with limited resources and limited, but replenishable, health.  While there might be a scoring system to allow the player to compete against himself or other players to maximize his or her final score, this has only been loosely discussed by my team.

Fairness comes into play through the difficulty faced opposing the computer controlled opponents.  Stray dogs may attack, and a released pet raccoon may steal supplies.  Although the mechanisms for how this will occur have not been finalized, we plan to make the outcome dependent on a combination of collecting appropriate defense items, awareness of what is going on in the game, and fighting ability.  No one item or skill will be required in order to achieve the desired outcome in a fight.

Adjusting difficulty level would be the easiest way for our game to balance challenge vs success.  The first level, driving a boat, is short and requires a completely different skill set from the main focus of the game.  We also want to make the most difficult level be the act of finding the missing father, with the final level of returning to the boat to be fast and easy.  This means that difficulty will not increase with each level.  However, it would be simple to reduce or increase the number of animal attacks, length of night vs day, or add storms or additional opponents.  A haunted version of the game would be an interesting heightened difficulty level.  For the purposes of this course, we will most likely only create the one basic difficulty level.

Our game’s most meaningful choices will be the path taken around the island, which items to collect, and whether to fight off or befriend a stray dog.  If the player chooses to explore an area of the island that the missing father is not located on, the game will take longer to complete, which will introduce more opportunities to face opponents.  The number of items that may be carried will likely be limited, so the player will need to balance a need for food, defense, and shelter.  The decision to fight off or befriend a stray dog will change the game experience.  Not all dogs can be befriended, so it is a health and life risk to attempt to befriend.  However, dogs can be used as defense, for finding objects, and for finding the missing person, especially when combined with other found objects such as the father’s found jacket.  The game can still be won, regardless of which choice is made, but the easiness of completion, the time balance, and the general experience of gameplay can be made radically different.  However, we will attempt to prevent any choice from becoming a dominant strategy by not giving any one choice too much power over the game’s outcome.

Our game uses both head and hands, but is more focused on the head.  The first part of the game, driving the boat to the dock is mostly based on a physical challenge.  Also, the opponents faced while on the island will be fought with fighting skills, in addition to the foresight used in collecting defense items.  However, most of the game will be based on making decisions about what items to collect, learning one’s way around the island for the search, and anticipating danger.  For this reason, it is designed to be more appealing to those who enjoy a mental challenge more than perfecting the muscle memory involved in steering and fighting.

There are multiple forms of punishment in this game.  The health meter will prevent the player from doing whatever it is that he or she wants to do without consideration of the character’s needs, and will terminate play if the character’s needs are not met.  Failing to collect items will work in a similar manner, by not allowing players who fail to collect any defense, food, or shelter items to survive.  The player might also find that certain obstacles will require collecting enough of certain types of items before being allowed to pass, although what these obstacles and items will be haven’t been finalized.  Items will also deplete, meaning that each item will be given a set number of uses, ranging from once to unlimited, depending on item type.

Players will be given a sense of freedom by the fact that they can wander around any non-obstructed parts of the island, but will still have a controlled experience.  The father that the player is trying to find and the opponents faced will not simply be sitting and waiting in one spot.  Actions that the player makes will act as unseen triggers to the placement of the father and opponents.  There may also be additional restrictions placed on movement across the island for the last part of the game, basically adding obstructions to the landscape in order to lead the player back to the boat docks without wandering around lost for a large amount of time.

We expect that a big part of the appeal of our game will be its setting on Hashima Island.  Since this is a real place, and is of popular interest as an abandoned city, we want to make the layout of the game island match the layout of the real island.  Simply having the same types of buildings on the same spot as they are on the real island should give players the feeling of exploring the real place, even without fancy meshes that mimic the true-life look of each street and building.  This will be heightened by offering the chance to read information about the real island and its history in the menus.