Mechanics, Gameplay and Levels

The mechanics are very simple. You control a circle that is used to select interactive objects. A is the interactive button while B loads up the city view so you can produce buildings and units and see stats. Pressing Start loads up a menu of Options including Help Options, Graphics and Sound Options and a city view showing who is winning and by how far.
 
The aim of the game is to win by any means. There are 4 ways of doing this; by capturing most of the capital cities, by having the most population, by having the most gold or by researching all the technologies. To do this you need to expand your city, fight enemies and capture other cities and think of strategies to produce the most science or gold.
 
The player will encounter a specific order of levels. The environment for the level will be randomly generated islands. Each player will have their own colour to show their territory. Here is a very basic image of this made in Sketchup and edited in Photoshop:

 
Level list 

Lost Kingdom

Units: Tribe people, big animals, machinery constructed by wood/bamboo, leaves and rope

Cities:  1 tree-house, 3 tree-houses, town of tree-houses

Environment: Tall grass/straw with exotic plants

Water: Normal water

Spooky Forest

Units: Ghosts, Skeleton, Wolves

Cities: Scary – Small crypt, haunted house, dark castle

Environment: Dark land with dead trees

Water: Misty swamps

Candy Land

Units: Gingerbread people, machinery (such as catapults) made by sweets

Cities: Gingerbread house, small gingerbread castle, large gingerbread castle

Environment: Sugary/pink land with gummy trees

Water: Chocolate water

Space

Units: Astronauts/Aliens, UFO’s

Cities: Space colonies

Environment: Purple land with crates and weird space-like plants

Water: Red water

Underwater

Units: Seamonkeys/Mermaids, Piranhas, Sharks

Cities: Underwater Colonies

Environment: Sand with sea plants

Water: No rivers/lakes in this level

Carnival

Units: Clowns, Elephants

Cites: Carousel, Small Funfair, Large Theme Park

Environment: Dirt ground

Water: Normal water

Art

Using Photoshop and a font I downloaded called Gretoon, I made a simple cloud logo for the game. It's not the best looking logo but I'm happy with it and it shows the type of art style I'm looking for.

After creating the logo, I went on to make the Front End. I made my canvas 1920x1080 as a good represtentation of widescreen. I used the same font on the menu options but this time I didn't edit the stroke, on the logo, I had to make each letter seperate so every letter had it's own stroke. As the logo is clouds, it seemed obvious the make some big hills and have the background as a sky. I struggled with the hill shading but it was needed and looked odd without the shading.

 



 
I then turned the Front End into an A4 background for my document. I adjusted the canvas size and the sizes of my layers to create the page. For the first page, the logo is big and centred (as I had trouble adding a .tiff to Word), for all the other pages the logo is in the top right corner. Having a background makes my document look a lot more professional and it was very easy to do, it only took a few minutes to adjust the Front End image.

 

Sketches

Here are some concept sketches I made for the game.

Lost Kingdom

 
Candy Land

These two show some units and city development for the Lost Kingdom and Candy Land level.

I like how the city develops and it's also interesting and amusing for each theme as it is not normal to see a collection of treehouses or a huge gingerbread castle.

Here is an example of the UI for viewing a city in production mode. You can select an option at the top to build units, buildings, roads, change resources and see stats. This will be in a bold cartoon style like the rest of the game making it look easy to use and not complicated.

Game Concept Document Idea

For our last document we have to think of a concept for a game. Struggling for ideas as I haven't played many action/adventure games recently mainly just The Sims and Forza Horizon, Pete suggested I think of a god game. I looked into this and liked the idea of doing something a bit different, but I haven't really played a god game and kind of don't see the point in them..

I do like a similar genre though which is turn-based strategy games. Trying to think of new ideas for a turn-based strategy game though was hard as it has all been done before, but while researching, I did look into construction games a little bit like SimCity which reminded me of when I was a kid and I loved playing Theme Park World for PlayStation. Thinking more and more about Theme Park World inspired me to create a different strategy game with unusual environments that would be fun and appeal to children. Thinking about gameplay I thought it could be simplified like Civilisation Revolution so anyone can play it and I also wanted it to be available on multiple platforms as snobby PC-only rules of pretty much all strategy games, I think, turns people away from the genre, even if they have a good PC.

Unique Selling Points

·         Interesting Levels
·         Simplified Gameplay
·         Available on multiple platforms

Skyrim Game Mechanic Revised

After getting our feedback and being told to give different departments their instructions to create the mechanic, I revised my mechanic into a final document, somehow managing to squeeze it all onto 1 A4 page,  as apparently games developers aren't capable of turning pages so all the mechanic instructions had to fit on one page.

My mechanic features 3 different assets that you can climb on; a rope, a ladder and a collection of rocks (to be placed on the side of a rocky cliff). The 3D assets need to be modelled low poly (so no rivets in the rope, this will be in the texture). The only asset to be animated is the rope swinging, the animators need to focus on the character climbing up, down, on and off each object. These animations also need to be slowed down and sped up, if the player is wearing heavy armour or if the player sprints towards the object, they will climb onto it quicker. There needs to be a different sound for when the player climbs each object and for when they land on the ground or rooftops after dismounting. The programmers have also got instructions for when to play each animation depending on whether the player is wearing heavy armour or sprinting and which object it is they are climbing. They also have other instructions for the AI. The players follower will follow them up the object but enemies will not follow but instead equip their bows and fire at the player. You can still pause the game and load the inventory while climbing but cannot use combat or magic. You can jump off however.

Game Mechanic Feedback

The class exchanged their game mechanic ideas and we gave each other feedback on them.

I received feedback off Josh C who said my mechanic "would enhance the gameplay in skyrim and it seems like a very obvious feature to include in a third person adventure game". He then went on to say "Could there be other uses for the mechanic such as swinging across ledges or climbing trees to retrieve a specific fruit for a quest" I wasn't a fan of this idea as it would probably change the game too much and reminded me of puzzles in LEGO Lord of the Rings and Skyrim isn't really about puzzles (except the odd quest). He did mention AI though and I hadn't really thought about what the enemies would do or the players follower if they were to climb something. I decided the follower should follow them up otherwise they could die if left alone with enemies, but the enemies should instead back up and equip their bow to attack the player.

He also mentioned I need to add instructions to Artists, Animators, Programmers and Sound Design which was something we hadn't had chance to add yet and needs to be done for the final document.

I gave feedback for 2 very similar mechanics Sean came up with. I think my feedback was good and constructive but after emailing it to him, I remembered I am his classmate and felt like I was rather harsh. I heard him mash his keyboard with frustration while reading the feedback.. He came up with the idea of the screen going white and the player having trouble shooting while someone shot them in Call of Duty 4. It was a good concept and realistic but it would take some of the fun away from playing if you couldn't easily fire back and he didn't state if the players run speed would be affected, as I'd much rather run away than stay there and get pelted. The other mechanic was pretty much the same thing but occurred when the player is in close range of a grenade exploding or any sort of exploding projectile, it reminded me too much of the Stun and Flash Grenades.

Game Mechanic

We had to choose a published game and create a new mechanic for it. I struggled thinking of a game to focus on at first because during the last 3 months, all I've played is LEGO Lord of the Rings for 8 hours a day and forgot what it was like to play other games. I eventually chose Skyrim and thought of 2 ideas for it. One was to shoot a target (not an obvious red and white circle target) and then water or snow (dependant on area) will rush out to quickly remove enemies. I did think the target idea was very Legolas style though in LEGO Lord of the Rings so I chose to use my other mechanic. I noticed there is no climbing ability in Skyrim. Yes you can walk up mountains, but you cannot actually climb anything and I thought this could be an interesting mechanic.

If you could climb, you could get to new areas, camps and caves that have special loot, that you couldn't get to if you can't climb.
You could also quickly escape enemies which would be useful if you were swarmed, eg. in a city if you have commited a crime.
This would also make Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests easier as you could get to objectives in a different way, hide from people if needed and also escape if you were seen stealing or killing someone.

There could be specifically placed small rocks on rocky walls that you can climb, not making them stand out too much but so they look slightly different so the player knows they are climbable.
Also wooden ladders and ropes hanging from rooftops can be climbable to get to the top of rooftops.

The mechanic could be programmed so that players wearing heavy armour or have low stamina cannot climb or climb very slowly, whereas players wearing light armour and high stamina climb things with ease.

Level Design

We were tasked with creating a new level for an existing game. I couldn't choose a recent game I've played as London 2012 and The Sims aren't adventure games, Skyrim would've been impossible to think of a good quest and Lego LotR is not out yet, nor could I think of any levels it is missing. So I reverted back to LA Noire even though it was quite a while since I had played it. I did research some aspects of it and played a few cases to get my head up to speed with it though. Before that though I planned out the basic level idea and areas.

I remembered that while playing cases from the Homicide desk, all the cases focus on the murder of one person so I thought a mass murder would be interesting. I thought about the idea of it being in a theatre, inspired  by the tragic massacre at a cinema in Colorado during the first showing of The Dark Knight Rises.
Thinking about it more and more, it seemed to fit as a good, interesting case in a 1940's theatre, showing Superman (1948) which was released a few months after the games time (set in 1947) but this was the closest match I could get and film was unrelevant anyway.

The case starts in the cinema, you need to find evidence here which includes a bullet, a smoke grenade and a piece of torn clothing. You can then progress to the gun shop. Including the gun shop in the case seemed like the only way of identifying the suspect as no-one knows who he is or what he looks like and he was in and out very quickly so he hasn't left much evidence to go off. Collecting a bullet to try and identify him seems the only way. When you're at the gun shop, you need to speak to the shopkeeper to find out he was using a Sturmgewehr 44 and that he sold one recently. Checking the log book and finding this gun will tell you the possible suspects name and address. Now you need to drive to his apartment. Your partner Galloway will keep the man sat on the sofa while you check the apartment for evidence. After finding the gun, a ripped coat and a gas mask, you have enough evidence to interrogate the man and arrest him.

I used Google SketchUp to make the levels and then added a key of where the evidence will be in the scene, including misc items that are there to add realism and do not help the case.

Theatre

 
Gun Shop

 
Apartment

After finding all the evidence you can interrogate the man and arrest him.

Interrogation Questions

1.

Phelps: “Why do you own an assault rifle Mr Brown?”
Brown: “For protection, in case someone tries to break in.” (Lie- 7.9mm Kurz Bullets)
Phelps: “We found bullets for your gun at the scene of a crime, a gun like this is not used for protection.”
Brown: “I wanted something powerful. It wasn’t my bullets at the scene, plenty of people have this gun.”

2.
Phelps: “What’s with the gas mask?”
Brown: “I kept it from the war” (Lie – No 77 Grenade)
Phelps: “We found a No 77 Grenade at the scene, a gas mask would be suitable equipment to use      with that don’t you think?”
Brown: “Probably but doesn’t mean I was there, I just have this as a keepsake.”

3.

Phelps: “How did you get that tear in your coat?”
Brown: “It got caught on a rail when I was walking to work the other day” (Lie – Ripped piece of clothing)
Phelps: “You’re lying, we found the ripped piece at the theatre and there is gun residue on the sleeve. Mr Brown, I am arresting you on suspicion of manslaughter. Cuff him Galloway.”
Galloway: “Don’t worry, we’ll fetch your comics for ya ‘cause you’ll be stuck in the cell for a long time pal!”

Beard Game Design

In the 2nd week, I was assigned to work in a group with Nathan, Liam S, Liam R and Rob W. We were tasked to create a game design in 2 weeks which could be anything as long as we could make a paper prototype of it.

We talked for quite a long time about making a fantasy/sci-fi turn-based strategy game. After making some good mechanics, we realised that it would probably be too complicated and not very fun to play a paper version. So we started from scratch again.

We decided to do a completely different approach which is a single-player side-scroller. Liam R was trying to think of random words to get an idea going and someone said Beards. We then went completely mad with the idea of beards having the main character as a beard and the levels also being different beards. We then changed the levels to adapt a story. A man goes to a barbers and has his beard chopped off. A lice in the beard realises what's happened and progresses through 6 levels to find the man and put the beard back on his face. In order, the levels are; barbers, street, home, park, pub and police station.

We have all pitched in different game mechanics which were perfected by liam and liam and we are each tasked with a level to think of over the next week. As I am one of the level designers, I have pretty much already made the entire home level, featuring a living room and kitchen.


These are our graph paper levels:

Barbers

Street

 Lounge

Park

Pub

Police Station

 Our game stretched across  most of the side!

Game Board Design

In groups, we had to create a game concept that will work on paper to try and see if the game will work before spending/wasting a lot of time making it digitally.

We had to use Orange in our game, whether as a theme or just a small thing, which made us have to think hard about our game ideas to try and incorporate Orange. The colour or the fruit, not the phone network. Don't let a mobile phone spoil your game.

After much discussion, confusion, arguing, blood, sweat and tears, we used my idea of having the game in segments like an orange. If you slice an orange in half it will look like a circle separated into segments which is what is what our board looked like. It also had several layers in the circle as well with the aim of trying to get to the centre of the 'orange' or escape the 'orange'. The main mechanic of the game was when you roll the dice, rather than moving your marker, you spin the layer you are on around clockwise or anti-clockwise.

After making and playing the game we realised it was unplayable as it would take forever to get to the centre or out of the orange. So we added doors in between the layers that the player had to get through and made the mechanics a little easier so as soon as you land on a door you can go through even if its not your turn, but you can also fall back!

We also added good and bad cards that you can pick up if you roll a 1 or 6. These help you get through the game, for example switching your marker with another player or having another player miss a turn.