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.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
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.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
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.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
With this in mind we began assigning tasks to complete, considering game play, and used a scrum board to assist us in tracking tasks.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
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…
As part of our Visual Story course at Carnegie Mellon’sEntertainment Technology Center we were split into a number of semester long teams. Our first task was to come up with a name for our studio, and then to create a short animated studio logo.
Development
In considering our studio name we brainstormed a number of ideas:
Funk films.
Pumpkin Productions.
Sleepless Studios.
Overdrive Productions.
Overclocked Studios.
Overworked Studios.
We settled on Pumpkin Productions for two reasons:
It was the easiest concept to visualize.
As Halloween was approaching our team liked the idea of an evil pumpkin.
At this point our team started on concept designs. With our first concept we had two considerations. Firstly was that of color, which given the subject matter was a pumpkin, we felt orange would be appropriate. Secondly was that of shape, which we based off how a pumpkin looks like.
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.
The rules to create these portraits was simple. Each person was given a different colored pen, and was allowed to make single strokes one after another. Any hesitation resulted in having to stop drawing, and choose a name. The name was created by taking turns writing a single letter.
The following is what Charlie and I created.
Improvised Portraits
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
We very much enjoyed making these memorable characters! Try out this exercise yourself sometime, its loads of fun!
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.
As part of Building Virtual Worlds we were tasked to complete the marshmallow challenge.
The marshmallow challenge has teams build a tower out of a number of materials:
20 sticks of spaghetti.
One yard of tape.
One yard of string.
One marshmallow.
We completed the challenge with a height of 29 inches, and though our tower may not have been the tallest when measured. At the end of the day it certainly was the tallest left standing.
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.
So on a dreary Sunday morning we set off for the main university campus, got on a bus, and traveled to the lower Youghiogheny River.
When we finally arrived, we were dropped off at the outdoor office of our guides, The Laurel Highlands River Tours (imagine the following picture but grey and rainy).
On confirming our reservation we promptly collected our gear, ran through various vitally important safety measures, then began rafting. The experience required working together with ones raft cohabitants, and though we ‘frequently’ faced trials and tribulations, we always pulled through in the end.
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.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
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 14/15th of August is Pakistan and India’s Independence day. As part of the celebration a bunch of Carnegie Mellon (CMU) students planned to paint CMU’s famous fence in both nations colors. Some friends and I tagged along to help out, and be a part of the old CMU tradition.
Melding music and game play is an interesting area of game development which games such as Crypt of the NecroDancer, Beat Buddy, and Guitar Hero, have explored. Whilst exploring my own shamefully large collection of untouched games on Humble Bundle I happened upon the game 140 which makes its own contribution to this area.
With lead designer Jeppe Carlson, (co-designer of the well know title Limbo) 140 was created by Carlson Games. Paraphrasing Jeppe, he describes 140 as an old school platformer, where the challenge is in syncing up your moves, and jumps to the music controlled elements.
After a short time with 140 I thought to briefly note my impressions of the game.
Disclaimer – This is not a thorough review, but notes of an impression based on approximately 20 minutes of game play. Everyone is fallible.
Impression Notes
On launching 140, the first thing that hit me was its minimalist art style. Its distinctive color scheme made it easy to identify puzzle patterns, and game elements.
In 140, music is at the heart of its game-play with appropriately pulsating background, and game elements used with rhythm based mechanics to make interesting puzzles.
140 relies on players exploration of controls as I noticed no traditional tutorial which can be fine. Although some helpful information based on monitoring of the game state is good e.g explain to jump or move if a player hasn’t moved for a long time.
Like other titles in this area 140 suffers slightly from issues of repetitive music. This issue I believe essentially stems from player progression which is something hard to control. I felt this game handled this issue well by splitting music into short levels.
The difficulty of the game quickly ramps up, likely making it less accessible to the casual gamer. On the other hand though, this meant 140 presented more challenging puzzles, which is delight for some. It’s good that the creators of 140 realized the game difficulty, and employed frequent checkpoints through out the game.
140 bravely deviates off a more traditional pattern of game mastery by transitioning to a hail shooter from a rhythm based platformer at the first boss fight. I found the hail shooter boss encounter to be a disproportionately high increase in difficulty from the challenges before. The encounter left me frustrated (maybe I just sucked bad). Perhaps an easier encounter, or a series of checkpoints through the boss encounter would have been preferable.
Raph Koster said ‘noise is patterns we don’t understand’, and so it felt appropriate that the ‘death blocks’ were static noise. 140s creators took this concept even further during the first boss fight as static noise breaks down into music.
First Boss Fight
Like other titles in this area of game development, 140 suffers from issues of repetitive music. This issue I believe essentially stems from player progression which is something hard to control. 140 tackled this issue well by shortening levels, and splitting up music into those levels.
I liked how the levels key (item objective) was innately tied to the next level through music. When hearing the keys music was excited thinking about how it would later manifest itself as a mechanic.
Conclusion
All in all I enjoyed 140, being a nicely designed little gem it was a happy little surprise. Budding game designers should definitely give it a play as its a game well focused on how to meld music, and game-play.
The central area of the Total War interface receives the highest attention from the player. This post will look at a number of the elements that appear there.
Total War Encyclopedia
There are many pages within the encyclopedia. A look at one page gives a good understanding of the user interface (UI) element given the consistency used throughout the encyclopedia.
The scroll bar (Dark Blue) is not themed, resulting in it looking quite out of place. Perhaps this area was not given as much priority which is understandable as perhaps players don’t use the encyclopedia so much? From my experience I didn’t, and that is a sign of good game design.
The designers used the encyclopedia icon next to the UI elements main title (Red) likely to subtly have a player associate the image with the words Total War Encyclopedia.
The cancel button, and the navigation buttons are grouped together (Green) in the top left. For this area the designers have used the Main Menu button for the Home Button in the encyclopedia, they rely an understanding of ‘importance’.
The use of bread crumbs is good for players to quickly backtrack when navigating (Yellow).
The on hover underlining used for the main page categories is more link like (Light Blue).
There is a further reading tab located at the bottom of the page (Orange) which makes sense since the read is likely to look there. At the bottom of the page, the left and right topic options are displayed based on related topics in the manual.
For the main article they used topic headings, text descriptions with images, and icons which prove to be very helpful (Pink & Light Green) in conveying the point of the article.
The Bottom Left/Middle Area of Shogun 2s Campaign Map User Interface is an elegantly designed, helpful popup filled, context sensitive area that displays key information about a players Navies, Armies, Agents, Construction, Recruitment and Battles options.
The UI element as a whole is thematically suited to the time period, incorporating a Japanese battle banner, appropriate color scheme, and style to complement the rest of the UI. In addition a neat feature of this UI area is that depending on the context of a players selection this UI area will change. For example when a player clicks an empty space on the campaign map it is hidden, if an army is selected army information will appear in the form of a Tab.
All these design decision make this UI element a screen space efficient, compact, informative, aesthetically pleasing part of the campaign map that ‘fits’ well into its surroundings, and help build the experience of a general during the Sengoku Jidai..
Army Tab
Army Tab
The Army Tab displays information related to the selected army. The UI element is made up of a Dial and a Banner.
Dial
Army Tab Dial
The Army Tab Dial can be broken up into the following sub-elements:
Red – Clan icon.
Teal – Army leaders name.
Dark Blue – Arrows allowing cyclical cycling through units of the same type, in this case army.
Purple – Army leaders image.
Yellow – Disband button.
Green – Chat.
Considering this element:
The layout of the dial is interesting being somewhat symmetric, and the dial art asset has a shine at the top of the dial which may attract a viewers eye.
The Purple and Teal elements are not necessary, but are welcome as a thematic elements for a player.
Functionally the Dark Blue, and Yellow elements allow a player to quickly jump from army to army, and disband them if necessary.
The other side of the campaign map, the bottom right, features a stylistically similar dial.
Banner
Army Tab Banner
The Army Tab Banner is jam packed with vital information that can be broken down in the following manner:
Orange – Used for unit replenishment indicators, where a:
Green circle with a + means units are replenishing.
Green circle with a red slash means are not replenishing.
Skull which means units are suffering attrition.
Light Green – Unit experience.
Dark Red – Unit portrait with color coded background (Radious’s mod added this I believe).
Dark Green – Special Attributes e.g Accuracy, Improved Armour.
Yellow – Unit Rank.
Purple – Unit Strength. If the unit is being replenished a dark grey area will appear with a visual indicator of the new strength at the next turn.
Teal – Unit Type Icon.
Dark Blue – Recruitment Tab. This only appears when a general is present in the selected army.
Looking at the banner in totality, all the information fits neatly, and succinctly conveys a lot of information to the player with great use of clear icons in a consistent format.
Heading home from Switzerlands snowy alps after my school ski trip I was exhausted. Our flight had finally reached London, and we had some time to kill before our onward journey. Some chose to sleep. I chose to shop for games.
On shelves crowded by the ordinary, Black & White glinted at me. Painted with wondrous scenes of mystical grandeur I was unable to resist its sirens call. I scoured my pockets, hoping I had enough left from my spending spree on grossly overpriced bobbles, and delectable Swiss confectioneries.
Little did I know buying Black & White was to be an investment of a lifetime.
Black & White turned out to be one of the best games I’ve ever played, and its not an ‘objective’ best I’m referring to. When I say best, it’s because of the joy, and experience in that time and place which can never be recreated; no matter how advanced the graphics or sophisticated the A.I.
Finishing Black & White, I eagerly anticipated its sequel, going so far as to reach out of my introverted childhood and send Lionhead Studios an email as news of Black & White 2 trickled across the net.
I wish I still had that mail; alas a lost memento.
I recall asking about features. Would there be creature armor? What would it be like? Would there be more types of wild animals? What would their behaviors be?
If I could meet the boy who sent Lionhead that email, I’d have chastised him for his priorities, and compelled him to seek forgiveness for his god awful writing. Yet, more importantly, I’d also have given him a smile and a pat on the back for his sporadic naive bravery.
Can you believe they replied to that little boy? An intern actually went round their office with his questions. They took the time to reply to an email asking ‘silly’ questions about ‘silly’ details. They sprinkled a little color into a child’s imagination.
A small gesture, I’ll always be grateful for.
Again it seems that time changes everything. Yet I’ve quietly kept wishing for more Black & White games. Now I guess I’ll put that wish away on my dusty shelf of dreams.
I’m not sad though, as I’ll exchange one wish for another. Now with your talent unleashed, perhaps I’ll again meet an incarnation of you?
Recently I’ve been playing titles from Warhammer 40Ks Dawn of War 1. I’ve returned to these games multiple times now, and I have wondered why? My conclusion is that its the well designed battles.
Dawn of War 1 has taken many hours from me, and with this piece I think I’ll take something back.
Factions
Given the rich history of lore, previous video games, and an existing tabletop game there is plenty of meat for a game designer to sink ones teeth into during the design process.
By the end of Dawn of War 1 Soulstorm there were nine playable factions with varying mechanics. Each faction had a distinct identity, strengths and weaknesses. One faction I will briefly look at is one of my favorites, The Imperial Guard.
Imperial Guard
Known as the Emperors Sledgehammer, The Imperial Guard are neither the Super Soldier Space Marines nor the Mystical Eldar Warlocks. The Imperial Guard are the common human, seemingly weak in strength, and spirit among the denizens of the universe.
Yet only seemingly.
In Dawn of War 1 the core of the Imperial Guard are its Guardsmen. Imperial Guardsmen are numerous, and cheaply replaced. They are initially weak, their morale easily shattered facing slaughter at the hands of heavier infantry units. Their limitations can however be overcome.
With thematic enhancement options such as propaganda, decrees, equipment upgrades, and squad leaders. Guardsmen can be significantly augmented to become fierce fighters able to withstand, and even overcome opponents they were initially unable to.
Perhaps I’m reading into it too much, but I enjoyed how its designed that the common human with determination, equipment, training, and leadership. Can unlock their potential, can rise up, and defeat their enemies.
Over the past several months I’ve been busy applying to Masters programs in The United States of America. Pondering ones fate whilst waiting is at times nerve wracking, but the wait has been worth it. I am happy to say that awhile back I was admitted to The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon!
After some serious consideration I believe that a practical focus on game design is exactly what I need. Therefore I intend to attend Carnegie Mellon for a two year Masters program come Fall 2016!
So fingers crossed! By August I hope to be doing a Masters in Entertainment Technology at The Entertainment Technology Center in Pittsburgh!
The format of this piece will be a description of Elfen Lied Episode 1 Scene 4 with a to scale time line with emotion sections plotted with the following [itg-mediatip href=”https://somegamez.com/project/elfen-lied-study/attachment/episode_1_time_line” mediatip-type=”localimage” mediatip-content=”{&aquot;url&aquot;:&aquot;https://somegamez.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/episode_1_time_line.png&aquot;,&aquot;id&aquot;:2917,&aquot;link&aquot;:&aquot;https://somegamez.com/project/elfen-lied-study/attachment/episode_1_time_line&aquot;}” mediatip-link=”undefined”]Key[/itg-mediatip], where [itg-tooltip style=”color: #ca3c08; text-decoration: overline underline; font-style: italic;” tooltip-content=”<p>High Emotions refer to Emotions that connote ‘happy’ like feeling e.g Joy, Surprise and Love.</p>”]High Emotions[/itg-tooltip] are plotted below the time line (black line) and [itg-tooltip style=”color: #ca3c08; text-decoration: overline underline; font-style: italic;” tooltip-content=”<p>Low Emotions refer to Emotions that connote ‘sad’ like feeling e.g Anger, Fear and Sadness.</p>”]Low Emotions[/itg-tooltip] are plotted above.
Following this there will be a number of pie charts in the following format. Pie charts on the left are [itg-tooltip style=”color: #ca3c08; text-decoration: overline underline; font-style: italic; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21.8182px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;” tooltip-content=”<p>A sum of the number of occurences of a category of emotion.</p>”]Totals[/itg-tooltip] of the scene, and pie charts on the right are [itg-tooltip style=”color: #ca3c08; text-decoration: overline underline; font-style: italic; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21.8182px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;” tooltip-content=”<p>A sum of the time spent during the episode on each category of emotion.</p>”]Screen Time[/itg-tooltip]. Lastly the raw data for this scene will be presented in the form of a table.
The first episode of Elfen Lied is indeed an interesting ride. As viewers we are introduced to a scene of violence and Horror,and though we find a glimmer of Joy, it serves only to fuel the Disgust and Rage we feel towards the one responsible for Kisaragi’s gruesome death.
The following scene shifts gear by employing a number of different emotions which creates significant contrast with the previous scene. Relief, Surprise, Sadness, extended periods of Cheerfulness are evoked with such methods as soothing music, nature, natural light, and the introduction to a more ‘normal’ world with ‘normal’ characters. Yet even then we sense sadness behind a veil of normality.
The bottom right UI element is located in a circular image that suits a dial design. It balances well the circular dial located on the opposite side of the campaign map page. The UI element can be split into two major parts.
First is the management dial which contains the vast majority of this UI elements functionality. Secondly is the resource pane which includes an overview of the most important resources used in the game, money and food.
Management Dial
Management Dial
Blue – Technology.
Green – Turn.
Purple – Clan Management.
Red – Finance.
Yellow – Diplomacy.
The UI element is compact, containing a number of icons that are representative of their function. There is though a small risk of accidentally hitting the turn button given its size and position.
Diplomacy (Yellow) uses a bowing person which appears to be an envoy.
Clan Management (Purple) uses a Clan flag which is the best representative of a Clan, and since the image is used in many other places in game the player is familiar with the image.
Finance (Red), uses an abacus looking instrument which is a tool used for accounting, as well as images of the currency to associate the button with in-game money.
Technology (Blue) uses a picture of a sword and another item representative presumably related to technology.
The turn button (Green) reflects the season as well as the year written clearly in black.
Management Pages
A standard used throughout the management pages is the location of the help and exit buttons. The help icon is located on the top right, and the action buttons are centered at the bottom of the page. Perhaps the help button would have been better located on the top left to coincide with the position of the help button on the main campaign map page.
Clan (Purple)
On pressing the purple icon a clan management page opens that has a number of tabs.
Summary
The summary tab is the default tab that opens. The page includes several clan related thematic elements namely the clans symbol (Blue), the name of the daimyo and an in game image (Green).
