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.

HW 8 Animation

This is a basic demonstration of a window opening so that the character can crawl through it.  The character is shown moving towards the window as the window pane rotates open.  The window appears to be on a recessed area of the wall, due to the way I adjusted the scaling, giving the recessed area a shadowed appearance.

blender file

For my team project I redownloaded everything that is still usable for our game (everything but the ant and skull, which will likely not be used), since my drive got corrupted and lost everything in that folder.

HW 7 Game Mechanics

1. Is the space in your game discrete or continuous?
   The team game is continuous. Player movement is confined to an island that contains obstacles, but the player moves around freely within those confines in order to accomplish the ultimate goal of reaching the escape point.  However, there will be nested spaces, for entering buildings.
2. How many dimensions does your space have?
   This space is three dimensional, with the player being able to move his or her character in all non-obstructed directions.  The character will be walking around the island, but will also be climbing up or jumping over objects.
3. What are the boundaries of your space?
   The boundary of this space is set by the edges of the island.  All game play will take place within the confines of the island and its harbor.
4. How many verbs do your players (characters) have? What are they?
   Players have approximately 9 verbs.  These verbs include walk, run, jump, climb, pick-up, hit, light (on fire), shoot, and drive.
5. How many objects can each verb act on? What are these objects?
   Walk, run and jump are specific to the character, and the character may do this on the ground, on an object, or off of an object and onto another object below.  Players can climb onto tables, chairs, benches, stairs, windowsills, cars, and roofs; and pick up usable items, such as guns, torches, flash lights, sticks, and water bottles.  Players can hit other characters, doors, and windows; light sticks and torches on fire; shoot bullets at other characters, windows, and locks; and drive boats and cars.  
6. How many ways can players achieve their goals.
   The ultimate goal is to escape the island by finding the location with a usable boat.  Players can find multiple paths to get to the final destination, including backtracking to find usable items.
7. How many subjects do the players control? What are these subjects?
   My team has discussed three; having a pet or animal side-kick that can be used for self-defence and fetching, a boat that is used to escape the island's harbor, and possibly a car to drive.  
8. How do side effects change constraints.
   In this game, the player has to decide when to pick up found objects and when to befriend or fight off an animal.  The side effects of these actions build or remove constraints later in the game, mostly in terms of self-defence.  With a gun or animal companion, the player is more likely to avoid or survive an attack, and so will not need to find a way to get out of the attack occurring in the first place, possibly leading to a shorter route to the main objective of finding the escape boat.
9. What are the operative actions in your game?
   Players can walk, run, jump, climb, pick-up, light (on fire), hit, shoot, and steer a wheel. The player might also be given the ability to swim.
10. What are the resultant actions in your game?
    Players can move around in the scene, gather items for future use, break through doors and windows, fight off opponents, gain light in the darkness, and drive boats and cars to change location. If the player is given the ability to swim, it will be used to move locations and to collect items in the water or located across the water.
11. What actions would you like your players to do that they cannot presently do? (based on your current knowledge of Blender)
    I would like for players to be able to build their own map of the island with notations of where they left objects, where they came across opponents, and additional notes to themselves about those objects and opponents.
12. What is the ultimate goal of your game?
    Escape the island with the item that the character originally went there to retrieve.  That item has not been determined, yet.
13. Are there short and long term goals? What are they?
    The long term goal is to escape the island with the required item.  Short term goals include finding that required item and surviving each night. 
14. How do you plan to make the game goals known and understood by the player?
    The purpose of the game will be introduced as part of an intro-video, which can be skipped past, showing the arrival to the island, a discussion of item that needs to be retrieved, discussion of the risks involved in retrieving that item, and the loss of the arrival boat.
15. What are the foundational rules of your game?
    The game ends when either energy or life percentage reaches zero. There is no play area to explore outside the confines of the island and its harbor.
16. How are these rules enforced?
    Game play does not continue once energy or life gone.  The player cannot climb over the walls of the island, and cannot swim or drive a boat past the pre-defined edges of the harbor.  
17. Does your game develop real skills? What are they?
    The main skills developed or used are resource management, planning, problem solving and memorization.  The player will be provided with the opportunity to collect a limited number of resources to assist in navigating the island maze and fighting off opponents, requiring a combination of all four skills.
18. Does your game develop virtual skills? What are they?
    The game develops movement skills in making the character jump over or drive around obstacles without becoming entangled or blocked by them, fighting skills in fighting off opponents, and escape skills in figuring out ways into and out of buildings and outdoor obstacles.
    
    For my team work this week I downloaded several buildings that matched the appearance of Hashima Island.