Final presentation done

The final presentation is done and we are also almost done with all documentation. So this might be the last post on this blog.

Documentation

We are working on the various documents that needs to be finished this week. It will be easier to make the presentation after we have all the documents done, because we know then what to put into the presentation. The presentation we will probably do during the weekend. It feels good to have some time to work on the documents instead of having to do it all during the last day.

More prototype work

The flash version of Troglodyte mania is now working decently and we have done some small improvements to the God Sports flash versions as well. Soon it’s time to do some more playtesting.

More prototyping

We have started to work on the next game, troglodyte mania. So far we have had most problems with the actual game mechanics and we have tried out several variations with it. But it’s always ending up with both players doing all they can to stop the other one from winning and thus the game never ends.

The last thing we tried was to use cards in the board game prototype as well, this makes for a more luck based experience but it also makes it possible for one of the players to actually win the game. I will talk more about the prototypes when we have gotten a bit further with it. Many things will probably change with the game during the coming days.

Playtesting results

Short description how the flash game works.

A volcano is visible on the screen and it shakes to the left or right. A green arrow will appear and clarify what direction it shakes.

The player shall press the left arrow if the volcano shakes to the left and the players shall press the right arrow when the volcano shakes to the right.

If the player hits the right arrow the volcano raises a bit. Opposite happens when the player presses the wrong button.

The time between each shake decreases all the time and it will be impossible to hit the right button after a while.

The game stops after 7 faulty button hits.

The player gets a score which is dependent on how high the volcano got.

Short description how the card game works.

A timer is set to about 1 or 2 minutes.

All cards have a number on them that either raises or lowers a volcano.

All cards have a text that says what needs to be done in order to play the card.

The player who has the lowest volcano gets to play a card.

All players always have 4 cards on hand. A new card is drawn after one has been played.

When the timer runs out the game stops and the players currently doing his/her turn have lost since he/she has the lowest volcano.

Results

We have tested our prototypes for the volcano event in God Sports. Two classmates tried out our prototypes. The flash version, which basically works as a button sequence game, seemed easy for them to understand and they understood how to play immediately. The testing of the flash prototype didn’t really give us any interesting new information, but the playtest for the card game version gave more result for us to work with. Several problems occurred that we hadn’t thought of because these problems only occur when you’re playing with more than 2 people. The first problem was who should start and since all players start out with zero height on their volcanoes it is not clear in which order the first turn should go. The problem with people having the same height on their volcanoes occurred later in the game as well. Normally the one who has the lowest volcano gets to play a card in order to raise his volcano higher, but then it’s possible that 2 players have the same height and find themselves wondering who of them should be in turn.

I also happened to set the timer to high, about 5 minutes, which was to long. The game is more suited to about half that time. Like 2 minutes or less. But I blame that on the analog timer we used which makes it quite hard to tell exactly what time you set it on. Otherwise the game worked quite well and our classmates seemed to enjoy the game a bit at least. It should also be good to have some sort of indication that there isn’t much time left so that the players get more stressed when they are in turn.

More playtesting

We had another 2 classmates trying out the game during the weekend. They tried out both the flash prototypes and the board game versions. So here’s a short description on how Throw with a faithful believer works.

Short description how the flash game works.

Moving the mouse left or right moves the arm of the player’s god.

Pressing left mouse button causes the god to release the believer he is holding and thus sending the believer away as a throw.

Depending on the speed and angle the god has when he throws the believer will be thrown accordingly.

When the believer touches ground the distance is measured.

Short description of how the board game works.

A little paper figure is placed on a catapult construction.

The player hits the launching mechanism and the figure flies up in the air.

If the figure lands too much to the left or right the throw is disqualified.

The player who manages to launch the figure the longest distance is the winner.

Results

They first tried out the throwing game, board game version first and then flash version. The paper figure used in the board game version was flying too strange in the air so we decided to replace it with a ball of crushed paper, quite loosely put together. That worked better and the winning throw was about 1 meter. The flash testing went without problems and they agreed that both versions felt similar but they thought that the flash version required more skill and practice compared to the board game version which they felt was a more luck based experience.

Both of them agreed that the Create a volcano prototypes had a more similar core experience even though those prototypes differs more from each other rules-wise. They felt that they got the same stress experience when playing the volcano prototypes. One reason might be that I put a much shorter timer this time and that made the game work better, especially considering the stress factor. Their favorite prototype was the board game version of Create a volcano.

As for thoughts on possible improvements we will write about that in the more formal playtesting document, which we will put onto the blog at a later date.

First test results

We have now made 2  of the sport events in “God Sports” as prototypes, Throw with faithful believer and Create a volcano. Both have a flash prototype and a board game prototype. Each event is quite small in scope and the whole game is what I would call a casual game. We had 2 classmates test out the Create a volcano prototypes yesterday.  Most problems occurred with the board game version, but they seemed to like that prototype the most anyway (correct me if I am wrong).

Besides that we have also started to work on the design document for “God Sports”. Regarding the layout of the design document we have choosen to use these 2 books as inspiration, “Game design workshop, by Tracy fullerton” and “Game design theory and practise, by Richard Rouse III”. They both mention that there isn’t a standard format for a game desgin document, so we have built our own structure for the design document based on what we believe is suitable for “God Sports”.

Hopefully we can get most of the design document done during the weekend so that we can start prototyping our second game next week.

The first prototype is started

We have started to work on the 2 prototypes for one of the 2 final ideas. “God Sports” is the one who gets the prototype treatment first. For the second idea Annakaisa gave us the choice to choose from “Troll mere” and “Troglodyte mania”. Which idea we will choose depends on how much time the prototyping takes for “God Sports”. “Troll mere” will probably take up much more time to do prototypes on than “Troglodyte mania”, so most likely we will choose to do  prototypes for “Troglodyte mania” in order to maintain our schedule.

For “God Sports” we have decided to do a flash prototype and a board game prototype. We have the flashversion running now and it’s somewhat playable. Lots of bugs, but its gives a feeling for how the game could feel like when finished. The sport event we have implemented so far is “throw with faithful believer”. We won’t do all 5 events for the prototype, that would take up to much time.

Mid-project report

So as the topic suggest we’re about halfway through the project. The 100 ideas are done, following with 20 which got a refinement; half of those have been made into PowerPoint presentations which we will present to Annakaisa.

What we have left is to do some background research on 5 ideas and then continue with making prototypes for 2 of the ideas. As we have stated in our project plan the background research shall be done by Friday. Then we can finally start making the prototypes and do some playtesting.

Just to remind all of you what our project is about, platform independent game ideas. This means that we will take the ideas as far as possible without specifying a platform for them. We’re already starting to notice the effects of this while working with some of the ideas. It’s really hard to develop an idea in finer detail when those details often go into specific platforms. This also restricts our design as we can’t choose exactly how certain things should be resolved. On the other hand we hope it’s going to go better to develop these ideas to several platforms than, for example, having to convert an existing game from one platform to another. We will experience this when we start with the prototypes because we are planning on doing 2 prototypes for both final ideas. Of course this means that we are doing the 2 prototypes for different platforms so that we can do some interesting comparisons regarding playtesting and development.

When we start making the prototypes we will have to go into full detail on the ideas thereby ending up with 2 versions of each idea. The goal is to make the prototypes feel like they are the same game, even though they are played a bit different. We’ll try to make use of the ideas’ full potential for each platform we make them for.

Continuing with the 10 ideas

The 10 ideas are chosen and we have started to work on the PowerPoint presentations for them. So far 3 have been made. We hope to be finished with all 10 during the weekend or on Monday. If all goes as planned we will pitch them to Annakaisa early in the week and then continue with the background research for the 5 best ideas, which should be done by the end of next week according to our plan.

I could also mention that of the 20 ideas we made a list with the 10 ideas that we would have chosen. Of those 10 ideas only 3 matched the 10 ideas that Annakaisa selected for us to continue with. But we were a bit prepared for that, since we had guessed which 10 ideas that she would choose. We got 6 right on that list. All in all, we are happy since we are fond of all our ideas that made it into the 20 list.

All 20 ideas done

We have now described all 20 ideas a bit more, but we still tried not to go too much in depth with the ideas. This is partly because the direction of our project, which means that we can’t specify exactly what methods the players will use to perform things in our game ideas. We can’t write things like, “cards”, “dice”, “AI”, “board” and such because we want to take the ideas as far as possible without selecting a specific platform for them. Some of the ideas is easy to see how they could be implemented to a certain platform, but then we have to think harder and make the idea valid for more platforms. The easier parts to flesh out are things about the setting and story for the game idea because such things can be kept relatively intact on all platforms. It’ll be interesting to see how far we can take the ideas without specifying a platform for them when we get even more into detail on them. The next step is to take 10 ideas further, but we will wait a bit in hopes of getting a response on our project plan first.