Story: To smoke or not to smoke! That is the question! Control a jammer’s good or bad conscience, and convert their brain waves to help them make the “right” choice! The game is about two sides battling to gain control, the neurons resist the attack themselves and the player gets a limited amount of time to conquer all they can.
Design Challenge: To design a game that captured the concept of Waves as dictated by the theme of the 2017 Global Game Jam.
My Contributions: I directed the design of the project as well as assisted the lead programmer with tasks such as adding the neuron layer on top of our atom system. As well as programming the user interface surrounding the game.
As part of Jesse Schell’s Game Design course at The Entertainment Technology Center we required to analyze and ‘improve’ the game of Hopscotch.
The goal of the game is to complete Hopscotch Toss the fastest.
In Hopscotch toss there are two teams which compete against each other on a standard Hopscotch board.
Both teams have two players, a jumper and a catcher.
The catcher stands at the final safe square on the Hopscotch board
The jumper at the start of the Hopscotch board
The jumper throws out three markers:
When a marker is thrown the timer begins
If a marker misses a square the marker is placed on the first square
The jumper begins playing hopscotch with the aim of collecting and throwing markers to the catcher one at a time.
If the catcher drops the marker the jumper must return to the start
Once the jumper reaches the catcher who must have three markers in hand, the jumper turns round and continues playing Hopscotch.
When the jumper reaches the start position reverse jumper and catcher roles. Now the second round of Hopscotch Toss starts.
First team to complete two rounds wins.
Development
Part 1 - Analysis & Brainstorming
What makes a hopscotch a good game?
Simple to understand rules
Requires little equipment
Trains limb coordination
Easily extensible to multiplayer
Clear win state
Gamifies natural hopping movement
Low skill entry barrier
Immediate feedback on game state
Problems with the game your design might try to solve.
Not friendly those with physical disabilities
Can become boring due to its simple rule set
Primary mechanic is jumps
A static game space
Minimalist Aesthetics
Has no story
Does not incorporate elements of modern technology
Tests the body but not the mind e.g recall of facts, events etc.
Brainstorm 50 ideas on how you could improve Hopscotch
Blindfolded
With someone on your back while playing
Jumping only when music is playing
During a handstand
On a climbing wall
With multiple tokens
Whilst singing
Where you start with no squares and draw one turn by turn
Three legged
On stairs
Backwards
Eating icecream
With two people at once
With only one square
On a board with tiles that turn in a pool
Played using your fingers
On a trampoline
Interplanetary
Over Skype in different countries
Where you cant jump in squares based on a coloured dice, or coin?
Story based, and where marker was thrown player has to participate in a story event and if they lose they dont get to score a point by playing a round of hopscotch
Edible, where a player can eat one square but has to make another one with provided food
Where the game space drawn from star constellations
Meta – smaller hopscotch games feed in a larger one. Two people play against each other in each mini game, and the winner moves forward on one square on the board till they reach the meta game marker and return as in a normal game
Color coded special square events which if a person steps in they have to do like shout a word, if they fail they have to go back to the start
Place the marker not by a throw but by a dice roll
People are put into teams based on costumes
The person has to do a dance move when spinning round at the end
The person has to do karate punches on each jump
Throw the marker again when it is picked up
Two people have to mirror each other on different games
It is attached to another game that based on your speed gives you more points/ progresses more in the level
In VR with rivers of lava
Where each item rotates round and one has to jump from square to square
One player throws the marker and stops at that position. Then throws the marker forward again. The next player jumps to the position of the last player who jumps to the next place the marker is now at. The process continues until the marker has been returns to the beginning.
Competitive, two games of hopscotch, the marker can be thrown onto another hopscotch game to make it harder for them to complete the round
On a dart board. Objective is to hit the center of squares avoiding the one other player threw the marker dart at.
Three legged – two people tied together play
Relay, where the marker has to passed from game to game.
Players stand in Hopscotch squares and pass the marker to other players to complete the game.
Where the panels light up and one must jump only on lit panels
On the moon
On a single wheel cycle
With sword fighting battle rounds per block, losing sends you back to the start
Complete Hopscotch in a tiger cage before the tiger is let loose in it
With a slide at the end of the game
There are two markers and those are the only ones that can be jumped in
There are markers on every square and winning is jumping and picking up as many as possible in a given time.
One person is continuously jumping and another person throws a marker and tries to have the player jumping fall on that marker.
On a keyboard one has to press the 1-9 keys in the same pattern, and avoid the marker square set by the computer.
Part 2 - Selection
From your list of ideas select three and describe them in more detail
Based on number 25, 39 and 48
Picto Hopscotch – Hopscotch is played in the traditional American school yard manner except for one difference. Each row has a picture associated with it. When the player jumps on any square of the row they must shout out the picture. If they do not the player has to go back to the beginning again.
Relay Hopscotch – Two hopscotch play spaces are set up. One person from each hopscotch space begins playing, and completes a game and gives the marker to an awaiting second player who plays a game of Hopscotch. First team to complete both hopscotch games win.
Hopscotch Toss – Two teams play Hopscotch competitively. Both teams have a jumper, and catcher. The jumper plays hopscotch and collects the markers and throws them to the catcher. The team with all the markers in the catchers hand and jumper at the end win.
Part 3 - Improvement
Hopscotch Toss
An Attempt at solving problem 3 by introducing throws
The goal of the game is to complete Hopscotch Toss the fastest.
In Hopscotch Toss there are two teams which compete against each other on a standard Hopscotch board.
Both teams have two players, a jumper and a catcher.
The catcher stands at the final safe square on the Hopscotch board
The jumper at the start of the Hopscotch board
The jumper throws out three markers:
If a marker misses then the player rethrows
When the last marker is thrown the timer begins
The jumper begin playing hopscotch with the aim of collecting and throwing markers to the catcher one at a time.
The team is fastest to get all the markers in the catcher’s hand and the jumper at the end wins.
First Loop
The first iteration of gameplay showed me various areas that needed more detail and consideration. Useful moments that occurring during my playtests were:
Instructions should be short and concise otherwise they bore playtesters. So I should better prepare my rule for fast and easy digestion.
Great design moments had laughs or confusion which immediately drew my attention to areas of the game I needed to work on.
Playing the game exposed rules that I needed to clarify such as how to handle drops, fumbles of the jumper, missed throws.
Bad
I did not consider adding the throw to the timed phase of the game. Doing so might add tension to that part of the game.
The catcher reported wanting to do more.
I had only one game setup at a time, it would have been more enjoyable to have both games occurring simultaneously.
Good
Players clearly enjoyed throwing markers and catching them.
The game was picked up very quickly due to its rule set
Second Loop
With the second iteration I intend to adjust the rule set to include new cases for when the jumper and catcher fumbles.
The jumper throw phase is included in timing.
If the marker is thrown out of boundaries it is placed on the first Hopscotch square.
If the catcher drops the marker the jumper stops moving until the catcher picks up the marker and returns to the safe zone.
Playtested with the above changes had the following effects:
Heightened the tension during the beginning of the game.
Made jumpers more careful with their throw. They would take safer shots, but those who successfully made riskier shots got greater rewards.
Heightened the tension during drops, particularly on the catcher as they scrambled to get the marker..
Playtesters reported having an enjoyable more fluid experience. They also made two suggestions:
The experience be ‘circular’. When the jumper reaches the catcher who has three markers in hand, the jumper turns round and continues their Hopscotch game (without the markers) instead of ending the game. On reaching the beginning of the Hopscotch board the Catcher now switches roles and becomes the Jumper, and the game continues.
The jumper returns to the start if the catcher drops the marker.
Introduction: As part of Visual Story at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center we created a 3-4 minute video with a given main character and conflict. We created For Rent, choosing a mysterious stranger and don’t touch anything.
Time: 48 hours | Roles: Director – Writer – Producer| Team Size: 5
Introduction: The Chain was our final music video coursework assignment for Visual Story at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center. Our film won a Bronze Telly Award in the student category.
Our final video was a highly streamlined effort. We first conceptualized an idea based on Ingrid Michaelson’s song The Chain. Our artist then created storyboards, and using those boards we created a rough ‘film storyboard’ with music.
Next we faced location scouting, in this regard the issue we encountered was not having a pure white background as per our storyboard. We adapted to this by finding a suitable ‘black out room’ to provide an all black background. Meanwhile we made a shot list from the rough storyboard that we had created.
With a shotlist, and locations to shoot we purchased necessary props, and went about filming on thanks giving.
As usual on set we changed the storyboard in various ways such as:
Thematic use of red
Inclusion of shots such as limited space, panning techniques
Use of props such as the teddy bear
Lighting e.g. using a sparkly dress to attract attention
After fifteen hours of filming, several hours of editing, the film was complete. It was well received by our peers and professors.
Finally we submitted The Chain to the student category of the Telly Awards.
Introduction: Missed Connection is our virtual reality team coursework assignment for Visual Story at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center.
A special thanks to the folks over at Carnegie Library for letting us film there + being awesome!
Time: 1 Week | Team Size: 5 | Role: Producer – Director
My Contributions: I was involved in various aspects of the project, primarily:
Location scouting.
Arranging equipment, props, and conducting team meetings.
Building our second Lego storyboard.
Directing our final film.
Development
Learning from our last assignment we went into this project prepared to plan properly. We began with an idea of a love story in the library. Following this we created a Lego storyboard, and script.
Introduction: Developed on the Oculus Rift with PS Move, DinoRancher had guests play atop a Triceratops armed with an electric lasso. The goal of the guest was to shepherd a herd of Stegosaurus to safety, protecting them from danger.
Story: You are a DinoRancher armed with your electro lasso and trusty trike. Travel across the desolate wasteland, and protect your herd from those nasty predators!
Design Challenges:
Herd behavior
Enemy types
Environment design
Integration of the PS move into Virtual Reality
Trike movement system
Design Goal: To create an experience that made the guest feel like a cowboy travelling through the desert protecting a herd of dinosaur from predators.
My Contributions: As producer I arranged meetings, delegated pending tasks, and contributed creatively. In addition as a programmer I was responsible for setting up the games environment which included, asset preparation, level design and developing agent behavior.
Introduction: Developed on the CAVE with Makey Makey, NoseDive had guests play in the CAVE environment using airplane controls we constructed using Makey Makey.
Platform:CAVE, and Makey Makey in Unity 3D | Time: 2 weeks | Roles: Programmer – Game Designer – Producer | Team Size: 5
Story: Our game had our guests take the role of make shift pilots thrust into having to fly a plane to safety through a terrible storm when the captain has become incapacitated.
Design Challenges:
Adapting to the CAVE environment.
Creating an authentic flight simulator experience with an easily understand story.
Design Goal: To create an authentic story of saving the day through the game we created.
My Contributions: For NoseDive I was producer, designer and programmer. Being producer involved scheduling and coordination of our teams artist, programmer and sound designer. In addition I assisted my fellow programmer with environment and Unity prop setup.
Introduction: A Playroom was a developed on the HTC Vive. A virtual reality device that allows a guest to walk around a calibrated virtual reality space with hand held controls.
Platform:HTC Vive in Unity 3D | Time: 2 weeks | Roles: Designer – Producer | Team Size: 5
Story: The setting of the game is in a play room where the guest encounters a ghost boy who needs help in-order to ‘move on’.
Design Challenge: To design a game for naive guests, conduct play tests, and make three predictions of what the guest will do all whilst having the guest ‘feel free’.
Design Goal: Round 2 of Building Virtual Worlds was indirect control round. This required we build an experience that felt free, and was intuitive enough for a guest to play from start to finish without any instruction or guidelines.
My Contributions: I analyzed, and designed the guests interactions as well as wrote our main non playable characters dialogue. In addition I conducted play tests which gave us invaluable feedback which we used to further develop the experience.
Development
Interaction Design
I focused on interaction development by first analyzing what we currently had. From that I wrote a draft story design which was a rough version of what we would aim for. Our current gameplay was clearly a linear story experience, and I believed we could achieve a greater sense of freedom by allowing a player a choice of what game to play.
From this notion I created two different interaction models.
Interaction Analysis – Development Diagram
I then met with the team, presented my two plans. We choose plan 2 which I further developed into a more detailed version.
Interaction Analysis – Component Breakdown
Audio would play a vital aspect in driving this interaction model therefore I worked with our sound designer on a script for the game which we iterated over based on feedback (script documents).
Playtesting
Once the various audio cues, and interaction model was implemented we went about play testing the game. I conducted play tests with over fifteen naive guests which included an audience of fellow students, professors and non-students. This feedback was then used to polish elements of our experience.
Sample Play Test Feedback Form
In conclusion we correctly predicted each of the three interactions, and the guest understood our story, all with no guidelines or instruction from us.
Full Story
We began our project with brain storming, and research into the platform on which we were developing. We came up with several ideas including:
Darkness– Use light to guide the guest through a street.
Space Exploration– Explore the universe, and pick a planet to colonize.
Dreaming – Flying a plane, flying elephants, flowers turn to buildings (freedom from constraints).
Empty Room – Furniture place (guide them to a correct place).
Having difficulty grappling with the concept of ‘freedom’ we spoke to a member of The Entertainment Technology Faculty Jesse Schell. After meeting with Jesse Schell we honed in on an idea of a ghost boy which we would help in some manner through objects around him.
Next we thought about location, which was first a storage room due to it making sense to have many object, we then changed to a play room as it offer the potential for a ‘warmer’ environment for guests to feel comfortable.
After creating a basic room with a simple number of interactions which included:
Playing catch.
Place a train on the train track.
Hide & Seek.
Give a hug.
We had a prototype ready for interim.
Interim
After interim our two main points of feedback were
Make the boy and game generally less ‘creepy’.
To develop our interactions.
Less ‘Creepy’
Point 1 was a significant design challenge which we tackled by investing time into solving by:
Making our main game character look more human like.
Soothing music.
A warm game atmosphere.
A friendly, light and clear character voice.
Interaction Design
I decided to tackle point 2 by first analyzing what we currently had, then writing a draft story design which was a rough version of what we would aim for. Our current game play was clearly a linear story experience, and I believed we could greater the sense of freedom by allowing a player a choice of what game to play.
From this notion I created two different interaction models.
Interaction Analysis – Development Diagram
After meeting with the team, presenting the two plans and convincing them of the need to carefully design the experience, we choose plan 2 which I then further developed into a more detailed version.
Interaction Analysis – Component Breakdown
Implementation
Audio played a vital aspect in our experience so I worked with our sound designer on a script for the game which we iterated over three times based on feedback (script documents). In addition to audio we used a number of other techniques including:
Lighting – To direct the players focus.
Meeting the Boy
Color – Brightly contrasting objects such as with the yellow train on a blue chair, and a red book on a beige floor caught the players attention.
Train & Puzzle
Uniformity – A suggestive picture fragment was placed in the frame, and other similar looking puzzle pieces were placed around the level.
Puzzle Placed
After implementing these features with a new interaction model we went about play testing the game. We conducted play tests with over fifteen naive guests which included an audience of fellow students, professors and non-students.
Based on the feedback we received we continued to polish elements of the game. The end result of our work was that not only did we accurately predict each of the three interactions, but the guest completely understood the story behind our world all with no guidelines or instruction from us.
Introduction: Multi is a game built on Game Maker for Windows using Game Makers scripting language. Players control a character who traverses a series of levels in a platformer style game play.
Platform: Windows | Time: 3 weeks | Roles: Programmer – Game Designer – Artist – Sound Designer | Team Size: 1
Design Goal: The primary ‘design goal’ with this project was to further my design skills whilst practicing level and mechanic design.
Design Challenges:
Creating levels that were interesting to play with the mechanics I created.
Difficulty design.
Teaching players how to play.
Audio which included, character, and environment sound design.
Made the majority of art assets (character art and animation taken from a game maker tutorial)
Collected audio that suited the game play from free sources (credits bundled with Multi).
Conducted play testing with younger audiences which I believed would be interested in the game.
Download:
Follow the link below to download a .zip file containing the game. When the download is complete, unzip the file then have a look the read-me and, then run the .exe file to play the game.
Story: Jam-O-Draw was inspired by the classic etch-a-sketch game.
Design Goal: We wanted to create a multiplayer artistic experience with a fascinating reveal.
Design Challenges:
Adapting to an unfamiliar platform.
Creating an aesthetically pleasing experience using visuals and audio
Having the user interface during the experience be responsive and informative.
My contributions: My primary role on this project was as producer which involved making creative contributions, arranging meetings, coordinating our artists, programmers and sound designer to create the game in a timely manner. My programming responsibilities included assisting my fellow programmer with development, and preparing the game environment and assets.
Introduction: Seize the Sky was built during Building Virtual Worlds at Carnegie Mellons Entertainment Technology Center. The world was constructed using Oculus Rift, and Leap Motion. Using these technologies we put our guest into a virtual reality space with an ability to use a natural interface in our world.
Story: A mighty giant heads towards a town with murderous intent. A country side boy notices, and cries to Zeus for help to defeat the giant to save the city. You are Zeus, save them all!
Platform: Oculus Rift + Leap Motion in Unity 3D | Time: 2 weeks | Roles: Programmer – Game Designer
Design Goal: Our design goal with Seize The Sky was help character A (the boy) who is afraid of character B (the giant).
Design Challenges:
Incorporating a satisfactory use of Leap motion.
Achieving our a sense of character A is afraid of character B.
Level design.
Game-play design.
My Contributions: As the lead programmer on Seize The Sky I made large contributions to the code base for this project. I also took an active part in the design process with working with the team to develop various aspects including game play, and level design.
Development
Iteration 1
The development process started with being assigned teams. In our first team meeting we made clear our skills, started brainstorming ideas, and kept good development processes in mind.
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During brainstorming we tried using several appropriate methods, such as gesture centered brainstorming (due to our use of Leap Motion). Finally we had five initial ideas:
Help mend relationship between characters.
Play piano to make baby sleep.
Use light to guide a character home.
Keep animal safe growing to adulthood.
Hold characters hand to guide them.
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With our initial ideas we further boiled them down to three concepts with the following reasoning:
Concept one was hard to conceptualize compared to our other ideas which seemed simpler and more clear.
Concept five could be incorporated into concept three.
Creating sketches of each concept we then sought out the advice of our professor Jesse Schell.
With Jesse Schells feedback we went with concept C, because we wanted to explore squeezing in Leap Motion.
We then began further conceptualizing the idea with sketches, and research into the capabilities of Leap motion and Oculus.
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With this in mind we began assigning tasks to complete, considering game play, and used a scrum board to assist us in tracking tasks.
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On the technical side we used a NavMesh, and simple A.I. to run the behavior of the Hunter and Deer. The behaviors of the two agents were essentially:
The deer always moved to nearest tree that has an apple.
The Hunter patrolled around fixed points, and if it came close enough to the deer it began chasing it.
The result of our hard work was the following.
We then received feedback at interim, which sadly wasn’t good…
Our task entailed selecting footage from a number of videos, namely:
TN Parkour: First experience with editing & storytelling.
Stranger at the Door: Easy but more storytelling elements.
Anesthesia: More story(scary) with effects.
Unleashed: More challenging with Green Screen, VFX.
I chose to edit TN Parkour. With this video I attempted to create a music video of with cuts at beats, and attempted to tell a story of friends meeting up to do Parkour and ultimately feeling some sense of accomplishment at the end.
Building Virtual Worlds at Carnegie Mellon University starts with each student being assigned a role in Round 0. Since I have a Computer Science background, my role was that of programmer; this entailed I build a world that employed a number of basic features in Unity, such as:
Loads models and textures.
Play animations.
Use intervals, lighting, collisions, and multiple scenes.
When considering the world, what I noticed was the amazing talent of the artists and musicians around me. It occurred to me what a shame it would be for their work not to be seen. I decided then that my virtual world would be a gallery of other peoples work. My first task was then to coordinate of assets with artists, and sound designers.
Creation
Artists were initially required to create animated lunchboxes, then dragons, and sound designers were required to create music for a clip of game play from a previously made world. I decided to meld the two by attaching audio sources to several of the artists assets that would constantly play music made by our sound designers.
In our Visual Story course we were tasked to take pictures demonstrating various visual concepts. Our first assignment involved composition, namely working with the following concepts in photography:
Balance
Filling the Frame
Frame Withing a Frame.
Lines.
Patterns.
Rule of Thirds.
Shapes.
Below are the pictures I took for each category with a little why for each.
Some of the following photos did not successfully capture the category, but I included them anyways because I enjoyed taking them.
Balance
Balance is a tricky concept well explained at photographylife.com. Essentially when I took my photos I focused on creating photos with two points of focus and symmetry.
Design Goal: To create an aesthetically pleasing well balanced Japanese style decorative painting.
My Contributions: As the designer of this project I researched, and drew the initial sketch of Pursuit as well as painting and supervising the whole of the way through.
Development
Pursuit started with a need for decoration, a desire for an oriental style painting, then a theme of the pursuit of ‘something’. Next a sketch with notes on elements that formed the foundation of this project.
Pursuit – Initial Sketch
Considering what I wanted, I paid Kuwait’s arts shops a visit for canvases. On finding said canvases I collected the dimensions of what was available.
Canvases
Using those dimensions I created my desired layout with Google Sketchup, which I then printed to scale on A3.
Pursuit – A3 Layout
With a layout I began the process of a creating a more detailed sketch, starting with drawings of more detailed items based on research of images reminiscent of Japan. Images such as Matsumoto Castle, the Cocoon Tower, Torii gates, wave styles, clouds, and villages.
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With a solid idea of various details for the painting I sketched up a detailed draft of Pursuit on a to-scale A3 layout.
Pursuit – Detailed Sketch
Once the detailed sketch was complete, I next created a digital copy by scanning the document. Using the digital copy and a projector I traced each section of the painting onto its respective canvas.
Meanwhile we constructed a easel to hold every canvas in the correct layout. In addition I thought it wise that before the first brush stroke, to create a colored digital image to help in visualizing the final product.
The purpose of this project is to further my understanding of good UI design by studying various elements of Shogun 2s User Interface (UI) used in its Sengoku Jidai Campaign Map.
This post will serve to discuss the Campaign Maps UI layout, and be an index post in a multi-post project of non comprehensive personal observations of Shogun 2s User Interface.
Disclaimer: The User Interface (UI) is not quite in its Vanilla form due to having the Steam mod by Radious installed at the time of the study.
Shogun 2 Campaign UI
The focus of this piece will be mostly on the 2-D elements of the interface such as menus, tabs, pop-up, and icons NOT the ‘3-D’ campaign map itself. So lets start with the general layout of the the Campaign User Interface.
General Layout
We can abstract Shogun 2s User Interface into an approximate layout with the following areas:
This short piece details a brief study on the emotional makeup of the anime Elfen Lied’s first episode. To aid this endeavor I will be employing some lite statistical techniques and scientific methodology.
Please note that this is very much a subjective piece, being simply a personal study for the purposes of furthering my own understanding of how this experience was crafted.
I grouped the Primary Emotions, and their respective Secondary Emotions into High and Low categories. Where High connotes happy like feelings and Low connotes sad like feelings as follows:
High = Love, Joy and Surprise. Low = Anger, Sadness, Fear.
With a shotlist, and locations to shoot we purchased necessary props, and went about filming on thanks giving.
