Sunday 7 October 2012

SS1: My Plan and Research

In this project, I have quite alot of different things to acheive in this project. I will not have enough time to make my game into a game App on phones or tablets but I will be creating a board game.

I will have to look into Game Principles that would help me improve my game idea basics, learning its flaws, cause and effect, art style, sturctures, etc... Concept art, board game design structures will be created.

As soon as I am all set and ready, I will be building the board game and have people test it out and ask feedbacks. improvements will be made near the end of the week of building it.

As soon as the game is complete, I will be filming people playing the final product and make a simulation. I will be adding 2D character animation interacting with the footage and there will be scenes with 3D layout of the board game. If I have extra time I would be making a game trailer.

When creating a game, I should be thinking about:

Pieces- Elements that seem as though they might make sense as markers to be moved around on the board or as score keeping devices.

*The game itself must have the board game itself, pens with different colours (black, red, blue, green) this could be a multi-coloured pen or erasable marker. and a calculator to estimate the scores and life points.

PatternsAre there combinations of things in the content that seem to go together? Are there combinations of things that when put together become something else or take on some additional meaning?

*There are combinations of using different kind of weapons which can be unlocked by walking over it or defeating the enemy. some of these upgrades the weapons strength and might cause effect to either the player or enemy like boosting health or decreases health every turn.

Paths- Map, are the progressions of events in the content that could be thought of as paths? is there a physical place in the content that one can move around in?

*The map could be anything the designer wants it to be on the board game, but if this was an App, players can design it their own way. Once the player unlocks a weapon, it upgrades the HP and makes the other stages a bit harder to play by having strong enemies and harder maps with traps.

Probabilities- Do some things in the content happen by chance or happen outside the control of some on dealing with that content?

*The hero only gets to move and dodge, but the villain cant, Both can use different kind of attacks depending on what design of weapons they got and upgrades.

Prizes- What valuable is in the content area? what do people strive for or try to acquire?

In the map there are visible areas where you can unlock weapons, all you need is to walk over them, this will give you a better weapon damage and effect to kill enemies. Other way to unlock weapons is to eliminate a stage boss and you unlock its power effect and attack.

PrinciplesWhat general statements can you make about how the world of this content works? What IF-THEN statements can you make that relate one content element to another?

*In my game design, I plan to make it a 2 player game, the hero and the villian. but this could also be a 2 heroes vs 1 villain for the board game. If i developed this into an App, I could make it 1 v 1, 1 v computer, 2 v 1 or 2 v computer. this could be an awesome coop game online to play with friends and could be a turned based game like "Draw something" 

During my research, I came across this useful principle of a board game structure movements

Content Structure

Game Structure



Movement Through
Space or Time



Movement Along a Path

Journeys, Quests
Finding something lost
Making a discovery
Proceduresgetting a degree
Processesdigestion, making laws, designing a course, photosynthesis


Obstacles



Blocks on the Path

Physicalmountains, rivers
Bureaucratic
getting a visa, filling out applications
(You can make getting past the obstacle contingent on a specific dice throw or possession of a particular card)




Shortcuts & Setbacks



Jumping Several Squares

Jumping ahead 
Marrying into money.
Hiring someone instead of doing it yourself.
Getting an early promotion.
Moving backward
Stock market crash
Getting fired
Getting divorced


Decisions, Choices



Branching Paths

Go to college or start to work?
Get married or stay single?
Launch a new product line, buy a company that already makes the product, or focus on your other products?
Go to the peace conference or continue to wage war?


Varying Risk



Risky Paths

Some choices lead to a chain of events that are more risky than others.
For example, deciding to invest in stocks versus putting your money in CD's.
If one path is meant to be riskier than another, put more squares on it that require turning over a card that describes an undesirable event. Or more squares that might send the player back to square 1.
To compensate for this enhanced risk, make the path shorter, or let it also contain more squares that lead to the opportunity for desirable things to happen.


Elements with Differing Power



Pieces with Differing Power

People with differing political clout
Countries with differing military or economic power
Chess: some pieces can move in more directions or over a greater distance.
Backgammon: two pieces together cannot be captured, but one piece alone can be hit by an opposing piece.

Goals, Prizes

Valuable Pieces, End Squares

Interim goals and prizes: Money, quality of life improvements, votes, popularity.
End goals: Treasures, a corner office, a peaceful prosperous life.
Interim or gradually acquired prizes can be represented as play money or tokens that look like valuable things.
End goals translate to the final stop in a race game.


Changing Conditions



Changing Board

Pre- and post-revolution. Suddenly the rules change.
Stock market shifts from bull market to bear.
Your ally becomes your adversary.
The climate shifts and suddenly it's difficult to be a carnivorous, 50 ton lizard.
Build a two-layer board with a number of holes in both layers. To simulate changing conditions, rotate the upper layer so that some former holes are now covered up and new holes are uncovered.
Othello: pieces are white on one side and black on the other. When a row of white pieces has a black piece on each end of the row, they are flipped over and become black, which affects other pieces nearby.


Mathematical Relationships



Lookup Tables

If you raise the price of your product from $40 to $50, your sales will decline by 10% to 25%.Rule book, telling what to do based on a given roll of the dice or other conditions.


Random or Uncontrolled Events



Randomizers

Things that are out of the player's control or which are practically unpredictable such as....
weather
daily stock price changes
the behavior of other people
Use a spinner as part of the board or as a separate piece.
Chance cards that are read when you land on a chance square.
Dice (can be 6, 10, 12, or 20 sided)
Lottery results from the newspaper or TV. (used in a Mario Seabra simulation played at several sites simultaneously... the lottery numbers were used to set up the initial conditions of the game so that all players were operating under the same conditions.)



Here are some favourite artist research I've made and composited on Photoshop

JIM DINE

I have researched about Jim Dine because he is one of my favourite artists, I love his sketches, it has a grungy feel to it which looks modern an natural. I love his mark making which is very expressive and shows depth and contrast of the objects he is drawing/ Painting. I sometimes sketch the same way he does because it looks very loose and free, very good for rough sketches to get my idea down. Maybe during the animation, I might add some grungy effect on the background of my trailer to add details to it.


DAVID FOLDVARI




I have chosen to research about David Foldvari because I liked the use of type merging with the illustrations which shows movement through out the image. It would be amazing to have the text animated coming out of the illustrations, this would be ideal for title sequence and key words for my game trailer. I also love the use of minimal colours which fits well with my game design. I wanted minimal colours so it is easy to identify the players movement on the game with a completely different colour.