Final Week

As this semester starts to come to a close and the final week before our capstone presentations are underway every team begins a crunch time rush. Working the labs we see that most of the teams are present throughout the morning into the next. We as well are working on our pitch which all teams are critiquing with one another in an effort to help everyone out.

As we work on our final pitch we also need to make sure every piece of the game is in, even if its extremely basic. This is one of the criteria when moving forward we need to put in every feature that will be corresponding with our final product if we are to move forward. I believe that our game has a decent chance to move forward because it is something that has never been done to our knowledge and to our classes. This is also a large risk, what if that is a reason they are worried about letting us move forward. With this in mind it seems that it could go either way. We have had the same types of reviews in both faculty reviews as well as peer reviews during testing. The negative to our game it seems that it has a love hate relationship which doesn't allow for us any sort of middle or wiggle room with the sway. We need to perfect the pitch. However the day before the pitch we were told that it could be no longer than 12 minutes. Previous to this we have been told 15 minutes is were you need to be. This forced us to cut out a lot of material. This hurts the overall presentation for our group drastically. It also is a bit upsetting that we have been receiving updated information the day of or before something is to happen. Dates and times seem to change right before and some people have work because we are students and it tends to cause conflicts. If we were in the work force a last second meeting change to a half hour earlier where we were just showing up wouldn't affect us drastically. However working and being in school and all free time going to work the half hour earlier being told 3 hours before does hurt many individuals. Not only our group, but many feel there is a lack of communication this year and many things are not understood or told to right before it matters. This has a large impact on how we as a group feel and its not as positive as I would have liked.

Week 11

As we come closer and closer to the end of the semester we are really forced to make a push on what is needed and what can be shown in an older form to be reformatted next semester. The goal is you have everything you want next semester, but in a more basic way so we can get everything in our vertical slice of our game.

As well we were attempting stage 3 this week which we passed, that felt very good and raised our teams morale. For the presentation however our group was quite lucky that we work extremely well together and have no problems with a lot of long group meetings. Devon our designer was sick and unable to present most of the design slides. I stepped up and gave the presentation for the stage. I was also not forced just to read each slide and put the class to sleep because we have worked in groups so often. I was able to take a slide know what it meant and how our group wanted it and give them explanations from how I saw it which may be a little different, but still in the same direction as we needed it to be. So even with this last second swap as I said we passed.

Now we started looking forward to the pitch and realized that we didn't have enough time in a day to do everything we wanted. Of course everything we want in the long run is hours among hours of polish and very little basic stuff to add. This works well overall, we were able to take what needed to be finished by next Saturday night(2 full days to bug fix) As well as what we could polish if the time arises. With all of these we feel a hundred percent belief that everything we need will be in the game to go on the Monday of presentations. Key points will be polished and in final states. As well as what we are uncertain of how they will finish for example the dreamlike blur will be raw, but still have the desired visual affect.

Week 10

From our meetings we have decided that we need to create a better method to dull out the surroundings and focus on the player and his followers. With this we came up with a plan to create a dreamlike affect now. The rest of the world is blurry except for the position around the player. This entitles that the players sphere of blurriness will shrink and actual view will get larger as the player gains followers.

As we can see this gets the point across slightly. The center is a rectangle with no blur and as you go out it gets blurrier. Next step would be to create a Radial Blur effect. Not only this, but we would like the only spot of color in the world to be that in your sphere. Similar to a sphere of influence which is a strong factor of our game. We have begun implementing a tutorial level with speech as well. This is what we would like testers to play in the coming weeks to see how our game is received. The only problem with the testing sessions are the players are forced to be there. We also get skewed data by people not really caring about helping our project out. They see the online reviews and questions we ask as school work that they don't really care about. Our project needs a higher level of testing. Devon had a meeting with Professor Wehr and he agreed that the normal testing sessions would not give the results we would like to see. This worries me a little because although I believe we have taken great strides. The testing sessions although most received well done feedback. A lot of the feedback seems just to be answers to questions they testers had to us the developers and worded as they understood it maybe after getting their questions answered

Week 9

On an amazing good note we passed both stages and our group is overwhelmed with joy at the moment and this has come as a blessing to our group. This week we took back from the hard gritty work and starting coming up with different scenarios for our game and figuring out where we want to go. Overall this has been good for the project we believe. We have currently changed the top down view to closer to Isomeric view. When I look at the new view it shows off a lot more without taking away from using the close up camera if we went first person with this game. We also had time to talk about formation of the followers. We have it where they will wait and follow behind the player as he walks then regroup around the player in the form that we decide to go with. This allows for the player to squeeze in smaller places with the AI more worried about just following as they can and then regrouping to their proper locations when he stops moving. The other way is we want them to stay as close to their formation at all times as possible. This will allow the overall shape to always be just about the same except they will have collision avoidance and go around objects and than move back into their proper position over time while moving with the player.

As we bring these two options to the class we would like to see not specifically what someone wants, but why they feel it will work better with the game or what it brings to the games table. If someone feels that staying in formation will make the player feel limited on where he can move even if he knows they will do avoidance and tends to make him take longer paths and we will lose players from a design perspective we will have to look at that. In the same way though if that is how testers would tend to play with a large group in their formation than we could really go in depth on how we design levels and try and figure out paths players will take with certain size groups. We could use that data to place the opponents who will eventually have followers in locations the player will primarily go when they have a large group.

However with the people always following behind we would like to know how this affects the path choices of the players and testers as well. Would they choose players where they can funnel the people behind them or will the still take places which have a larger area so the followers still tend to have a large amount of space. These questions are what we primarily focused on this week as a whole. We hope to implement both as two prototypes this upcoming week and than run testing sessions on both and see what players receive better.

Finally we have started too look into greater depth on how to give a proper reaction to the player following a questions as well as some balancing issues that have aroused. With our game being so psychologically based as previously stated. We have run into many concerns and questions about how the system works. Right now it is extremely strict to the charts derived from numerous amount of research and spreadsheets that my designer Devon put together and I helped complete the math functions to figure it out. With this it tends to be easier to lose followers than to gain. This is not specifically what we want the game to entitle. The players running around getting a follower than before gaining another the lose the one they have. We know people will leave groups if they don't like whats answered while the groups are smaller. As the group gets larger the group mentality starts to kick in which we will add in. Yet getting a group larger than two or three we have seen has gotten significantly harder since we added the lose people feature. It takes three questions after they have joined before they even think of leaving. Yet it has been taking 1-10 questions to get some people to follow us and we know which 4 numbers they might pick. This has lead to some concerns. Leaving them up to solely what they would pick will make moving forward with this game difficult and we need to find a way to balance the game play and the psychology. This is how we have come to end our week.

Week 8

In our class we got a good amount of positive feedback on our changes and where we wanted to go with the "game". I put quotes around game because right now we have a player interaction with stereotypical people, and that is where the game ends. We needed to start thinking of ways for the player to have to move on from one stage or level to another and what they would need to accomplish in order to move forwards. Something that Professor Mayer said was we were going with masks and bodies. We could require a certain base amount of types of masks, and you would need the minimum to move forward. This would allow players who just want to advance at the minimum to move forward at a specific time, as well as allow players to take more time to try and gain all followers in order to move forward. We also started to play with the difficulty of gaining and losing followers. We are working out how we want to achieve this. We have it based of the psychology, but not hundred percent because it would be too cut and dry and made the game extremely difficult to get a well rounded diverse group.

As this week looks like it is coming to an end we are getting ready to present for both stages one and two. Although we have well developed plans and a presentation we have sat down and gone slide by slide as a group we are still a bit nervous going for both stages. We don't know how often is been done or how well its normally received. Also we have a lot to talk about with both presentations and we need to get it all done in a concise matter. We do believe that we will be able to get both stages which will lift a large burden off of our shoulders and will allow us to breath for a week as we regroup and figure out the overall goal of our game before week 12.
We as a group still have a lot to figure out and with us figuring out our final concept so late and starting with a base and less game mechanics in order to get to this point we have sat down with a hammer and chisel and just been going to town with the game getting as many pieces of art and mechanics that make this prototype we are going to show playable and have had less time developing the overall outcome goal by the end of the semester. We have a lot of dreams at where this game can and we believe will go, but we haven't had time to discuss alternatives to the way we have been going so far.

Week 7

As we moved forward with the game influence we have narrowed what we want influence to become and we started to build a layout of an initial level. My personal job this week was to take into account our Designer Devon's statistics based off of our 24 different archetypes of people we want in our world, and give them proper percents. Whether it be which numbers on the scale they would pick all the way to what percentage of questions correct you needed in order to gain or lose a follower. All of these were based off of a variety of psychology research that the group has been putting together. Overall from the research the four largest factors to determine everything we wanted in the game, without having to create too many archetypes were Sex (M/F), Self-esteem level(High/Low), School(Diversely Educated/Singularly Educated), and Age(Young/Middle/Old). These with the variety of combinations gives us a total of 24 different types of people the player will encounter. Each have similarities and difference based off of which traits will be different.

Now know we were going to have so many different types of people, but the difference could be as simple as just Male or Female we decided to create masks and bodies. Each one of these has slight features that represent a specific selection type. This way a same body with a different mask would just be changing one feature. This allows us to create x bodies and y amounts of masks but we can have each body type with each mask. This allows for less overall created art to have one of each type.

We also decided to keep it top down and started to figure out how we wanted to show off the masks during play time. Due to the mask and body the player would need to see both. We decided to hold off til next week to figure out exactly where we wanted it to go, but we all needed to come up with a plan on what we wanted for the meetings this upcoming weekend.

Week 6

After this most recent presentation our team overall took quite a bashing. With this in mind we still held our head high, but we decided to take a couple steps back and brainstorm some new ideas to see if we just jumped onto a wagon of two games too quickly in an effort to move forward. We also chose to have a lot more group meetings throughout the week and less work outside on our own. This overall went very well we came up with many different concepts that we all wanted to go forward with. Each team member was required to come in with at least one concept and we would vote and than move forward with those two games. Devon and I both had games that moved forward to attempt to get better details, game play and a more developed concept overall. This started going very well, we had a first responder medic game as well as a semi-horror/ thriller game. With this we started to do both paper prototypes and basic movement and levels in Unity. We chose to meet with Professor Ferguson on Monday to go over everything. This meeting brought about a whole new view of our game concepts and allowed us to feel much more comfortable. We went in with two concepts that we liked and came out with a different concept using the thriller game, that we wanted to really push. With the meeting we found out the medic game would have a very large scope and more research than the last 5 weeks would allow for us. The final game we call influence, which is a game that use Likert scales and using them to collect followers.

Our concept is to keep it as abstract as possible we want the player to decide who he is and why he needs followers. This allows every player to take about a different view of our game and make it what they want. Also you will build up a group that will eventually become the new "you" to say as you progress into a larger world looking for more and more followers. This is the same life or size concept as our previous comet game. As your influence grows so do you, but instead of it being you your followers become so attached the group becomes the new you. People who will never leave you no matter what your decision will be. You will go through and face other people with groups and be asked more specific questions that are one side or the other and no in between which will dictate a stronger push and pull than the rest. Overall we feel a lot more confident and ready to attempt stage one again next week. Depending on how far we get we might go for stage one and two and a week.

Week 5

As this week moved forward we decided we wanted to attempt stage one in a hope to move forward into our capstone semester. We went with our Arena game as the one we want to move forward with, we thought that the mobile games development cycle would be a bit short if we wanted to move forward with the game as well as once we started getting the game play finished, because it was meant to only be played with the accelerometer that would be about the end of the difficulty going with it. Always has fine tuning, but movement and than some physics onto the ships and we would either have to add a bunch of features or one feature that as we looked at it we didn't want to end up doing that. So with the arena game we thought had a lot and we figured in the long run would be a better game for the development cycle.

We thought about AI vs Networked with the required four players and came to a conclusion that networking this game with my background with programming would be much less of a risk. Also we were debating whether or not we wanted a camera similar to smash, with the zooming and moving. Our professor is really pushing for it, as we came to the conclusion that our game is more based on the whole map awareness because there are no fighting people will want to see traps at all time not jump across map and accidentally hit a trap as the camera zooms out. With this we decided that it might have slight movement, but not close to smash, because our game is not based on fighting.
After this I had my faculty review with Professor Lawson, about both game. He feels that no matter what our group should create basic AI which makes sense, it allows rapid testing without the need to have testers when we are adding various game play mechanics and features. Overall going into the presentation we had a very good feeling about what was going to happen, we however missed one of the discipline reviews and a mobile testing session for our comet game. This meant we couldn't pass, but we presented anyways. We got a lot of well thought out feedback and immediately had a meeting to discuss what we needed to do to move forward in the weeks to come.

Week 4

When we presented they agreed the prisoners dilemma wouldn't work with our game play style, but still gave us some valid points that we would like to move forward with. We knew however we really needed to go to the drawing board and work with the players. After this week we have realized the three we have now plus a points system a charge system wouldn't all work together and we had to figure out what we wanted with the game. During the next 3 days we all needed figured out what we saw the game to be this way when we had the meeting we had 4 views of the same game and we could figure out which parts each person kept and start throwing out ideas none thought necessary. First to go was the extra point system. We had no use for it, and it didn't really do anything yet. We had purchase power-ups coming up soon based on class type, but it was more of something we thought wasn't necessary at all. We also took out power-ups too. We than moved forward and realized that the neutral guy seemed to had the short straw and didn't fit in. This is when we realized the the Brute and the Savior were directly opposing each other, but needed each other to work. This is when we changed the game from a survivor to a challenge based game.

We figured each role should have a different goal to win. This being the Brute now instead of pushing wants to short out peoples suit and make their charge 0. The savior wants people that their suits have hit 0 and wants to give them a charge of some sort that brings them back into the game. So we worked on two more people that had a similar relationship, they do the opposite yet they help each other be able to do their task more often. So we came with a sponge and a shield. The sponge works like a leech it gets close to an opponent and steals charge from them, and the shield would be able to shield a player and in return take some of the charge lost that the player would be dealt while the shield was on him at a fraction of what would be done to them. This we felt worked in a similar way as the others and together all 4 roles helped and hurt each other. This game us a strong learning outcome which was "In a competitive world we all have our own goals and self interests. However, working together and depending on one another is what allows us to reach those goals" With this we had a very good feeling for our game and wanted to present our new two character types and see what the class liked. I went ahead and dealt with the background of the game which was platforms and traps. Using the skeleton code I created two traps a shock trap that shorts your suit for a semi- random time, and in effect a burning trap that decreased your charge at a constant rate while you sit on it. Also I worked with recharging, by grabbing charge from all platforms. This allows players to keep getting more charge while running around the map. When a platform is drained it changes from gray to black. This will force players to run around the whole map to keep grabbing charge instead of staying on one side which would reduce the length they could stay alive.

Week 3

This week our concept for the arena game overall got bashed, there were mechanics they liked, but still a lot of questions. How those three roles would work in a game play and whether of not they could be balanced between the three. We were also told to look up prisoners dilemma and see if that could fit into our game concept. The basics of the dilemma tend to be used for when two suspects are brought into interrogation with no communication between the two of them at all. That initially brought some questions for our group because we wanted this to be a game you could play with friends and family close. Even all on one couch, there would be communication between you guys right away. We still moved forward with it and did the research. It went on about how, ratting on the other and the other saying nothing gave the person who ratted the best outcome and tended to get out with community service(depending on crime) and the other got charged with the full crime. If neither talked they got a lessen charge, but still quite decent time. If they both talked then they both got reduced times and plead guilty and made deals. So overall the best decision would be to talk for yourself because you have have no clue what is going on in the other room. I continued to work on the prototype and flush out what we had already because it was alright, but needed some fine tuning even for the prototype before we moved forward. Since the idea was changed a lot I was told to make more skeleton code than anything else.

Week 2

After the week two presentation of our games we went back to the room to work out our concepts. They really liked the idea of the space mobile game, but like us were unsure of were it would go. They also thought the arena game was very confusing and kept asking why. Why are there traps in the arena and why are they in there at all to start. With this we delved into the arena game to get a better understanding ourselves of why they were in there, and what they were doing. We met for a little over two hours a couple days after the class and started to spit out ideas. We came up with a hazard suit competition, by huge companies trying to prove their suit was the best. This pushed us in the right direction. Then we tried to figure out some game play issues. We came up with a weight and type system. We had 3 character types; Brute, Savior, and Neutral. Each had abilities that would be useful. We also started adding a coin system and a charge system for concepts ideas for game play. At this point we had a timed survival game where the brute would be pushing people around, the Savior would be picking people up who's charges have been hit at 0, and the neutral would just be avoiding traps. I went ahead and got a game that used controllers which is how we wanted the game played, and started with a prototype of charge and pushing between the players based on sizes I gave them.

Week 1

After our first capstone class we went to a meeting room and started to figure out two games that we thought we could move forward with. The first game idea that was liked was a comet or meteor game where you would be avoiding obstacles for some goal. This was still very basic idea, but we figured we wanted to move forward with it and try to see what we could do. We decided that the game fit with mobile and wanted to use the accelerometer for the motion. My first project was to get Unity Mobile set up and working with a nexus. This worked out well and I had a cube that would move on the screen with the accelerometer by the end of the week.

Next idea was a basic arena game, the mechanics were very flawed and convoluted to start, we figured we would pitch the concept in a basic state and see what the class said about it. There are robots of some sort and they are in an area with a bunch of traps that they are avoiding. This is about as far as the concept moved to start.