Game Design

As we have discussed, we are intending to make yet another sequel of our find Steve series.

This version we decided to make Steve question his very own existence and try to find the answer to the question “who am I?”. We will put Steve in a situation of memory loss and help him find out who he actually was and help him rediscover his own lost memory.

Gameplay/Mechanics: wasd for movement, space for jumping, players will need to collect fragments of Steve’s memory and help him recover them.

Game art design: 3d-modeled scenes, (possibly) low-poly characters and character animations, dynamic lighting

Project management: story-line, 3d modeling scenes (Steve, Jamie), character anim (Layla), cinemachine (Steve, Jamie).

11.2: planned out every puzzle and level for our two subjects: Both Steve and Dog

Quest No.	Subject	Goal	Hint For Player  (visible animation)	Fail Standard	Alternative Win
1	Dog	Head to office	Think: Steve at his  office	/	/
2	Steve	Get out of office	Think: Outside Gate needs a card  See: Card in boss coat See & hear: Dog outside the window	1 If Steve leaves his desk more than 60s  2 Boss sees Steve in his office 3 Steve throws more than 1 irrelevant  object out of the window	/
3	AC	Turn on AC temp	Think: Temp goes up, boss removes clothes  Think: Remote in the boss drawer	/	Throw chair at AC
4	Water Dispenser	Make boss go out to pee	Think: boss drinks lots of water	/	/
5	Dog (After Steve Turn On AC)	Use Switch in Electric box to Break Street Light	See: Street Light  See: Electric line & box	Bite Electric Line and Die	/
6	Steve	Take Card Throw to Dog	/	Didn’t get the card before the boss come back	/
7	Dog	Throw Card at Gate	/	/	/
	Trigger No.	Switch Scene Trigger	A to B
	1	Dogs arrive at Steve’s office	Dog to Steve
	2	Turn on AC	Steve to Dog
	3	Break Street Light	Dog to Steve
	4	Throw out Card	Steve to Dog
	5	Open Gate	Dog to Ending

11.2: Steve Grab, Drop & Throw

• Grab and Drop: using rigidbody only instead of character controller (its collider is performing weirdly)
• Have trouble making the Handle position rotate with camera look, can only throw objects parallel to the ground.

11.6:

• Steve Home Modeling, Dog travels from home to Steve’s office building, trigger next scene

11.8:

• boss animation in progress

11.8&11.9: dog game play: break electric box

• Same function as Steve
• Route: find construction site, bark to scare away the construction worker, acquire wrench, throw the wrench to the box. Alternative: bite the electric box and die.
• Problem: the city is very big but with very few hints and interactable objects so the player might end up wandering around but couldn’t find the hint.

11.9:

• now able to throw chair onto AC (and break it)/use remote to increase the room temp, open window, and throw stuff out of the window. Getting hold of the remote control is still difficult, the remote can only be retrieved from certain angles.

Upon finishing this video I was impressed by how a mechanic that is implemented unintentionally could end up with more than just that, which is all emergent storytelling is all about. But upon further thoughts, I have come up with several points that want to make about it. 

I will admit that the element of surprise that emergent storytelling offers is quite fun and intriguing when it works at its best, like when the speaker talks about the flying slime stacks with its partner while flying makes it seems like it is rescuing its partner really sells me on implementing this kind of mechanism. Reflecting back on some of the examples that the speaker brought up, Minecraft (of course, why would I not use it for the 938741028740th time in my blog posts?) has this mechanism too where I just saw some of the villager mobs wandering into the farmhouse I built as if they were interested in my nether wart farm. All in all, I think this mechanic is really fun and cute when it happens, but for one we cannot count on this happening to make our game more interesting, and for the other, (again of course) not all game types fit this type of mechanism. I won’t be discussing these two points too far since they are pretty clear on their own.

For our find Steve 2 game, we are thinking of making it to be a problem and puzzle-solving game. With two main characters, Steve and the doggo, the player have to work in two scenes and control both of them to solve problems and rescue Steve out of the office and reunion with the dog. 

The mechanics is pretty simple, both characters have the ability to grab and interact with the environment, dog has the special ability to bark, Steve has the special ability of we are not sure for now lol, and the player should be using these abilities to their advantage and solve diferent problems.

I have been reading the article for the last 30 mins and honestly, I’m not really a fan.

The article talks about how developing 2d games are easier (“You can also make 2D games with a smaller and less experienced team”) but then keeps on talking about how it’s sometimes even harder than developing a 3d game, which seems very contradictory as for the author’s opinion goes. Also I don’t really like how the author quoted some of the people in the article, the opinions seemed to me as a little too extreme and in favor of 2d games rather than 3d games, and usually have a lot of assumptions about 3d games that are not necessarily true: “If it’s a game for the masses, you’re wasting your time, and more importantly, money, making it 3D”, absolutely not true, how could Minecraft (or even, Fortnite and Overwatch) not be an absolute demolisher of this opinion? Change my mind by all means. “3D has always been about realism and immersion”, not true either. If you searched some of the ___.io games, all of them are 3d, but none of them had any intention of realism — they are just kinda for fun (if you know you know). “Some games just work and feel better in 2D. The original Donkey Kong, Kirby, and Sonic games were always far more fun than the attempted 3D outings”, highly subjective, which I personally also strongly disagree, (look at super smash bros for example, same IPs, in 3d, also a banger).

All in all, despite I partly agree that the future of 2d games being near infinite possibilities, I really wasn’t a fan of how the author came to this conclusion.

An infinitely and randomly generated world in which the player interacts with the environments and the mobs to survive and collect items that would affect the environment in some way and unlock further parts of the narrative.

I feel like this article certainly captures the development of game design principles very well, but at the same time I feel like so many games do not follow the principles very strictly. (I’m not even gonna talk about Minecraft here because that’s an exception to a lot of set patterns of game designing norms.) For example, a lot of the puzzle games don’t fit in any of the design principles — really they are just games of very simple (or you could say very hard) but very unitary gameplay. If you think about it, it does not have the increasing difficulty, it only has one genre of gameplay, an argument could be made with it being a set-piece but it also lacks the reset of player health (or anything of that nature) every turn. 

upon further thinking: gameplay v.s. game elements

I realized the what the article wanted to convey is the principles in terms of the gameplay element of the game, while upon reflecting on what did like about the puzzle games was the art, the storyline, and the artistic design in those games, which is another element different from gameplay. That makes the argument in the article a little more verifiable.

Flow chart here:

https://simmer.io/@Steeeve/steve-s-minecraft-brickbreaker

You have to wonder — just why would people spend hours and hours of time playing games? What is it about games that people love so much that they’d rather spend hours and hours of time playing rather than doing any other things? Also why does some of us prefer one kind of game over the other?

From what I’ve learned through my researches, the answer varies among people. 

I iterviewed some of my friends who I found having a different taste than me on what they find interesting in their game playing experiences. They expressed a larger preference than i do in terms of competitive pvp game play such as 吃鸡 and MOBA games like 王者荣耀 or Vain Glory. They said what they enjoy the most in those games is the ability to connect and play with friends. Also they like the notion that everyone start the same and the one thing that determines your achievements in the game is your own ability and skills.

While I prefer more of a pve game play. I enjoy games like Minecraft and puzzle games where I can puzzle through the game mechanics myself and enjoy what I came up with. Mean while I also play rpg games but mainly for collection purposes and rarely the pvp game modes in them unless I absolutely have to. Because what i enjoy is the what I achieve in the game rather than what I achieve in comparison with the others. Also I don’t enjoy gameplay under pressure because I generally I don’t perform well under pressure. 

Honestly speaking I don’t really have a goal in terms of what I want to achieve in this course just yet. Since I haven’t had any experience on game dev and I rely heavily on fully understanding what’s possible for me to do, I think ideas will come while I explore the possibilities and learn new skills. (as a result this post will constantly be updated whenever I have new ideas.)