That's All, Folks!

That's All, Folks!

Oh, yeah, I said I'd post a quick roundup of the year, didn't I...

Hai, mortals! The first term has ended, as has the calender year, and from what I can tell, everything's gone OK for me.

I had a bit of a dodgy period there, almost missed a deadline or two, but it all worked out, just like everything does. All of my work has been handed in; my essay, my design work, and my 3D model are all now working their way through the system and hopefully getting me really awesome grades.

This year I got my first taste of Games Design; I tried my hand at ActionScript 3 in Flash, and didn't much like it; I feel like I would enjoy it, however, if I were to learn how to use it properly. I had a go at 3DS Max, and what I've seen, I like. Looking at old games has been interesting, discovering I can kinda draw is encouraging, and iterating established games is insightful. It's been a good couple of months for me.

It's time for me to end these blogs for the calender year, mortals. I'll be seeing you again in 2013. Hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

May the Emperor's Light shine upon us all.

Very Quick Summary

Very Quick Summary

A fine morning to you, mortals.

I just wanted to insert a quick summary of what's been happening with my work so far, partly in case any of you are curious, but mostly so I can keep track of it myself.

Ok, let's go through the subjects I have imminent hand-in dates for one by one.


First, Intro to Design Methods:

As far as I can tell, all of the work for this subject is done and ready to hand in; I have a 30-word logline, a rough biography of my playable character (I may expand this before the actual hand in), a design for the main antagonistic force in the game, and a storyboard of one of the major elements of gameplay.


Next, Intro to Critical Game Studies:

The main task for this subject (other than this blog) is an essay between 1500 and 1800 words on the Royal Game of Ur and our iterations of it; my essay is currently nearly 2000 words. I kinda need to work on this, try and refine it down a bit further.


The 3-D Modelling for Games:

As of today at 1430 hours, the Titan mech model is fully assembled in the Unreal Development Kit with hand-drawn textures on every object. While the lab computers are experiencing some difficulty with UDK opening files, I managed to put the model together and take a good number of screenshots of it in a single session; these should be enough to complete the task. Now I just have to create a splash screen out of one of the screenshots, round off my design document in some way (probably a conclusion) and buy some stickers for the CD I'll put the hand-in files on.


This isn't due as a hand-in any time too soon, I believe, but I'd like to very quickly mention the current status of the Group Project game;

Don't Spread the Love (our game for those of you who don't remember) is currently just above a minimum viable product by my estimations, and now most of our work is going into refinement and polishing, as well as addition of non-critical features. This includes creating and coding in sounds, further animations, and a great deal of playtesting to make sure the game is stable. After this there will be some level coding and a few new enemies to add to the game; I think we'll be almost done after that.

Well, it's been a hectic weekend for me; a lot of (very literally) last minute work, throwing my sleep cycle completely out of whack to get the textures done, and beginning to drink coffee more regularly. I find coffee makes me somewhat hyper in a psychological level, however, so I'll be keeping my consumption to a minimum.

I'll talk to you again later, mortals. There will be at least one more post before Christmas, covering everything that's happened in the last week, and then there could very easilly be a (roughly) four-week absence from me, due to the Christmas break and me winding back down into  laziness and vigorous procrastination.

Praise the Emperor, and don't buy your dad a tie for Christmas; he won't like it, no matter what he says.

Harvard Reference System

Harvard Reference System

Well, well, look at all this attention I'm giving you mortals! All from my incompetence at keeping up with previous blog posts.

Just look at all this incompetence!

So, something I was supposed to blog about was a task of compiling a bibliography of various library items using their search engines; this would get me familiar with the Library's online tools as well as teach me the Harvard Reference System, the standard way of citing and referencing books and authors, I'm told.

Well, I'm a tad late, and I don't have the list of books and other resources I looked up, so here's a blog focusing on the Harvard Reference System to make up for that missed post.

The Harvard System of Referencing provides a format for showing the sources of various pieces of information in a separate piece of work, and for giving credit to other authors so you don't get sued for publishing part of something that's been copyrighted.

There are two primary elements to this system:

• Citations, which give references within the body of text, are given with simply the author's name and the date of published piece of work.
• References, which provide more information; citations require that references be present, usually at the end of a work piece. References include several pieces of information, laid out in the following format:

Surname, First name or initials, Year of publication. Title of article (if applicable). Title of publication, Page number within publication. Publisher.

So, for example, I might use the following:

"Bell, P.C., 1960. Board and Table Games from Many Civilisations, page 24. General Publishing Company, Canada."

Well, mortals, I'm tired, I have textures to draw for later today and coffee to drink. Have fun.

And, of course, praise to the Emperor.

Oh, Yeah... The Museum. That...

Oh, Yeah... The Museum. That...

Guess what I was supposed to do a blog post on, like four weeks ago, mortals!

My trip to the British Museum.

That was kind of an important thing, so...

yeah.........


The trip to the British Museum was a dazzling display of the kind of traffic you get in London in a Thursday rush hour. And after that it was frankly a lot of walking about and annoying immature jokes from someone who's name I'm not going to mention.

The displays in the museum were fairly insightful into various ancient games, however, and offered an interesting perspective on the origins of many still-modern games such as Chess.

Too bad I didn't take what was offered.

Seriously, you plonk me into the middle of London, tell me there's the British Museum with some interesting artifacts on display with kinda useful information, AND that there's an astonishingly good nerd shop named "Forbidden Planet", then let me lose with ten equally nerdy friends, what do you think I'm gonna do?

Se we only spent about an hour at most in the actual museum, but that hour was full of looking at various ancient artifacts such as sarcophagi and bronze-age swords. The few actual game-related items we saw were only seen briefly, I'm afraid. We kinda wasted this trip wandering the streets of London; a couple of friends in my group took photos, but Heaven forbid they send them to me!

One of the main things I remember from the trip that was actually relevant to our purpose for being there was something we looked at for about two minutes toward the end of our time in the museum. This was simply the pair of statues of winged bulls. One of these statues, however, had some ancient graffiti carved into it's base; a version of the Royal Game of Ur.

Goodness knows what they used for dice....

Well, I payed for my part of the trip, and I'm paying for my lack of attention during the trip.

This is more of a blog posting my lack of knowledge. More of a confession than a meaningful post.

Sorry about that.

I'm out! Praise the Emperor of Mankind! *Hastilly leaves the room*

Hnefatafl (Hn-ef-ah-ta-ful)

Hnefatafl (Hn-ef-ah-ta-ful)

A fine evening to you, mortals, and no, that is NOT a typo! There is (was) a game called Hnefatafl!

Hnefatafl is another ancient game, like the Royal Game of Ur. Hnefatafl originates from Norse countries, primarily Scandinavia. This game is played by two players, each playing a different side.

One team plays the "King" team, which covers twelve pieces, plus a King piece. Their objective is to get the King piece from his starting centre square to one of the four corners of the board. The regular pieces surround the King.

The other team plays the attackers. They have twenty-four pieces positioned around the four sides of the board, and have the objective of surrounding the King piece on all four sides.

Each piece in Hnefatafl (including the King) moves similarly to a Rook or Castle in Chess; they can move any number of squares left, right, up, or down. None can move diagonally. Once the King has left his centre square, no pieces can move into it; once the attacking team pieces have left their starting squares, no pieces can move into them (except attacking pieces leaving their starting spaces passing through to get out).

I very much like this game; much like Chess, it's played purely on chance, but it is played by asymmetrical teams with differing objectives, something not often pulled off well by designers.

That's enough from me for this post. Praise to the Emperor.

Pervasive Games

Pervasive Games

Top of the... evening... to ya mortals!

Right, this post (if you didn't get it from the title) is all about pervasive games. Pervasive games are games which, instead of being in their own world, as with most games (including board games, card games, and video games), crossover into real life. A favourite example of pervasive games is "Killer".

Killer is a game in which a group of people, often strangers, are each individually given a target member of the team by the Game Master; the "hunter" has all of the information they need about their "victim", and has to hunt them down and "kill" them through non-lethal means (such as "stabbing" them with a wooden spoon), whilst evading their own hunter. Once the victim has been killed, they are out of the game. Once all victims have been killed, then another round begins, where the remaining players are each given a new target to hunt down. This continues until there is only one player left. This game very much relates to The Tenth Victim, the film I blogged about the other day.

Unfortunately, due to political correctness going utterly mad, this game is banned in many public areas, including universities, though this is done privately by the university, rather than a blanket ban.

In response to this, a variation of Killer was created called "Cruel to be Kind". This involves attacking others with phrases rather than makeshift weapons. Most commonly used are "Welcome to [insert name of town or city]".

There have been some pervasive games in the past which have crossed the point of the players even knowing they're playing a game, one of the points where a game ceases to be a game and becomes a different experience altogether. One example of this was the "Art of the Heist"; the theft of an Audi A3 was staged in order to lead the curious into a game of chasing leads over the Internet as a publicity stunt to advertise the new car.

But, yeah, those are pervasive games.

Cya again in a few minutes, mortals.

Hail Emperor.

This Weekend, I...

This Weekend, I...

Howdy, mortals.

Well, this weekend has been kinda wild for me; I don't think there was a single night I didn't stay up until at least 4 in the morning. Only some of this was work related, unfortunately. So, here I am, still working on this essay due in tomorrow, trying to get it within the word limit fro over 300 words above the maximum. I also have to finish the design document for my 3D model, as well as do about fifty more textures for the model itself; I'd happily be doing that, but I'm having trouble with 3DS Max, and can only hope that Chris, our 3D Modelling lecturer, can help me work around the issue.

Meanwhile, the group project is carrying on; I managed to get some work done on the animations last night, but I still need to research and create the 8-bit style sounds.

And prom's tomorrow!

...

There isn't a prom; even if there was, I wouldn't go. Not the social type, in case you hadn't guessed.

But that's enough of my bitching and moaning (please excuse my French, it's been a long weekend), I'm going to man up and get this done today, even if it takes all night (which it very well could).

Now, on top of all of this is the blog tasks, which is what I really wanted to mention. I know I said I'd do them a few days ago, but then all of this suddenly came crashing onto me in a weird haze of Final Fantasy VI, and basically I'm going to do it today.

Right, I need to get back to this essay; I'll be talking to you again later.

Hail the Emperor!

Caillois' Terminology

Caillois' Terminology

Ohai, mortals!

So I get an e-mail today containing a bunch of topics which I should have written a blog about  over the last few weeks. A number of these I haven't done yet, so here we go; this is the first post in reaction to this.

French Socialist Roger Caillois wrote the book Les jeux et les hommes (Man, Play, and Games) in 1961, in which he introduced some interesting game terminology:

First;

• Paidea - A game which has no real endpoint, and/or in which the player sets their own goals. Minecraft is an excellent example of this. Paidea games are often associated with open-world games, in which the player can move around freely.
• Ludus - A game which typically follows a set path in a linear fashion. The goals of the game are given to the player , and once all of the goals are complete, the game is over. Many games follow this, as this is easy to create and recreate. Call of Duty is a prime example.

Next, we have some terminology which describes other aspects of games (in tandem with Paidea and Ludus):

• Agon - Competitive, such as Chess or most sports activities
• Alea - Chance, such as Snakes and Ladders
• Mimicry - Role-playing; D&D, I guess
• Ilinx - Altering perception, such as getting dizzy or taking mind-altering drugs, etc.

Games and play can combine a number of these factors, and can be placed on a metaphorical "slider" between Paidea and Ludus. For example, many modern Role-Playing Games (RPGs) combine Agon and Alea, as well as Mimicry, to give the player an interesting experience. These terms apply to much more than video games, and were originally intended for card and board games. Poker, for another example, involves Agon and Alea, but can also be described as including Ilinx, as most of the game is based on what the players can see.

So, that's a thing.

Anyway, I'll talk to you again pretty darn soon, mortals; for now, Hail Emperor!

The Tenth Victim

The Tenth Victim

A very good day to you once again, mortals.

Today, I learned about two very interesting things; this blog will cover the second, my viewing of The Tenth Victim (La Decima Vittima).

The Tenth Victim is a 1965 movie originally written and dubbed in Italian. This film is about a fictional version of the world in which violence and murder has been legalized under certain circumstances. One can become a "Hunter", which obligates them to participate in ten hunts; five as the hunter, five as the victim. As the hunter, they know everything about the victim; as the victim, they know nothing about the hunter. Once they have completed their ten hunts, they receive one million dollars (not really worth it in my eyes).

Now, this movie is a freaking masterpiece. I mean, on the level of Birdemic masterpiece, except the comedy is intentional here. Seriously, let me give a few reasons for why this is so incredible:

The justification for  legalizing hunting of other humans is that it is the pressure valve for humanity; by allowing people to hunt and kill others, wars and other general conflicts can be avoided. An actual line in the film was "If the Big Hunt had existed in 1940, then Hitler would have been a member, and the Second World War would have never happened".

Now, I don't pride myself on exceptional knowledge of World War 2, but I know enough to understand that Hitler didn't exterminate Jews to satisfy some need to kill. Hitler wasn't Dexter. The primary reason for the Holocaust was because it was commonly believed that the Jews were not only an inferior race to the superior German pure race of Aryans, but that the Jews were actively slowing down the country, and caused the loss of the First World War.

While this is hilarious (the implication that Hitler caused the Holocaust out of a blood-lust  not the Holocaust itself), this is nothing compared to the rest of the movie. The main antagonist, a female American hunter by the name of Caroline Meredith, has a deal with Ming, "the largest importer of tea into the United States", that she will kill her next target, the protagonist, an Italian man named Marcello Poletti, on camera at the temple of Venus in Italy as a publicity stunt. So, now she has to get him there and kill him, but he knows someone's coming. SO, here's her solution: she seduces him, and then, while he sleeps in the beach water-tower they're in, a truck comes in and crane-lifts them up and off the beach, and then to the temple.

Who came up with that idea???

You have to get a guy to the temple of Venus? Better get a crane ready!

Meanwhile, he had his own scheme to kill her involving a catapulting deck chair, a pool, and a crocodile. Genius.

The true beauty of this movie, however, is in the last ten minutes. So, after crane-lifting Marcello to the temple so they can have cameras on him when she shoots him, she (after some hesitation) shoots him and then says her line "You live longer with Ming Tea," (ironic).

Then, however, when no-one's looking, his body disappears.

Long story shorter here, they have a back and forth of killing each other in which neither of them dies, and then his ex-wife and mistress turn up and start shooting. Eventually, Caroline and Marcello escape, drive to an airstrip (how they drove onto an active airfield unimpeded, I don't know), and get on a plane. Guess what? It's a marriage plane, with a priest wandering around and marrying couples sitting next to each other. When they reach Caroline and Marcello they then proceed to force them to marry at gunpoint.

This movie makes no sense whatsoever; it's amazing, but there is so much random here I can't even describe it well. Just go and watch it.

I just wish it would tell us what happened to the crocodile. And Rudi. 

My best guess so far is that Rudi and the crocodile got married in a similar manner.


Anyway, that's that. The best thing I've seen all day. Possibly all week.

That's enough from me for now. I'll probably post about the other thing tonight, mortals. Until then, praise the Emperor of Mankind.

Many Christmassy Greetings, oh Reading of the Week!

Many Christmassy Greetings, oh Reading of the Week!

Happy Christmas, you grubby little mortals!

What? Christmas is still two weeks away?

Time is relative; somewhere in the universe it is currently Christmas. Go, prove me wrong. I dare you.

Also, if you don't believe in Christmas, and are likely to get worked up about it, step outside for a few moments, and come back in and sit down when you realize that I will believe what I want, that I understand that you can believe what you want, but Christmas isn't just a religious thing, and I am not forcing my beliefs on you. If anything, you're getting offended that I have beliefs myself.

I will wish you happiness at Chrsitmas time whether you like it or not.

I swear to the Emperor I will love and tolerate the heck out of you...

Anyway, I did some highly un-festive reading last night, of an article entitled Natural Funivity, from the Gamasutra website. This was written by Noah Falstein in November of 2004. It's less Christmassy where he was in the space-time continuum.

The main topic of this article is what makes games fun; it looks at this from an evolutionary standpoint. If you don't believe in the theory of evolution then, by all means, go and get a proper education. Even Christianity is picking up on it now; what's your excuse.

By the way, I'm feeling a little more satirical today, in case you hadn't noticed.

Right, the article reminds us that humans, like other animals, have certain needs and desires, including the will to survive, and the drive to reproduce. For the purposes of this article (and blog post), we will be looking at the evolutionary point of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, several hundred thousand years ago.

Today, our instincts and drives are twisted and masked by our technology and modern society (as though they're bad things - ha!). For example, the sensation of sweet tooth, or a craving for sugar or sweet-tasting foods, is born out of our ancestors' desire for fresher, riper fruits, which would have tasted sweeter; unlike modern sweetness, these were very good for our ancestors; these are still very good for us, but because we refined the taste of sugar into something even sweeter, we lust after that rather than the now spurned fruits our ancestors enjoyed (we shall call this occurrence refined sugar syndrome (or RSS), and may come back to it later).

Now, the activity of play is so built-into our psychology, and goes back so far that we can actively see it in other species of animals, such as cats or dogs; it's very common to see puppies or kittens playing with their siblings. This kind of activity helps to train them for adulthood, by making them practise fighting each other, they're more prepared when they have to actually fight, giving them a distinct advantage. It's also highly adorable, and liable to cause me to make a number of very un-manly sounds.

Humans also have this instinct, of course, and our larger brains appear to cause us to carry it into adulthood. This also bears some advantage; consider an ancient hunter who has just brought back a kill for his family; what should he do now? Well, he could possibly go back out and hunt some more, and bring back more food, but this carries certain risks, and would also have an underlying effect on the prey's population if done in large numbers. Perhaps, then, he could rest? However, resting too long will cause him to slightly lose muscle strength and hunting skills.

Instead, evolution came up with a new instinct for humans (and other animals) to follow; by practising hunting skills in a safe environment, such as in the home, the hunter can maintain his strength and skills without causing any serious risk to himself (or un-needed drop in the animals' population). Now he's always ready to hunt again the next time he must. The activity of practising adult activities and skills (for hunting, social interaction, and so forth) in a safe environment is called "play", and the pleasurable sensation derived from satisfying this desire is called "fun".

That's all there is to it. How easy and sense-making is that? We're learning right here.

This is why certain elements in games relating to human instincts are so popular. These include speed, as commonly seen in racing games, survival, as seen in, well, almost every kind of game, collecting, commonly found in most games, and social activity, like RPGs. Seven Hells, the Far Cry series (particularly Far Cry 3) is more or less a hunting simulator in many places, and those games are FUN!

I should probably also mention that the article splits different types of "fun" into categories; Physical, Social, and Mental.

Physical fun covers the enjoyment from using one's body and muscles to play, and includes most sporting activities.

Social fun is the pleasure in interacting with others, such as in a multiplayer game, or with non-human characters (or NPCs).

Mental fun is the joy found in understanding and manipulating patterns, such as in Chess or Tetris.

Anyway, mortals, that's enough from me; I'll be seeing you around. I'll probably be posting to let you know how the whole end-of-semester thing went, whether I'll still be in full-time university education next month, and wishing you another very Merry Christmas before I recluse myself in Chrsitmassy joy for some time.

Praise to the Emperor!

Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades

Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades

Evening, mortals, how goes life?

As much as I want to drop a metric ton of witty, smart-ass comments on you, I really can't think of any for once. I guess my comedic well has dried up for the time being, and the monsoon season won't roll around until it does. So, in the mean time, let's jump straight into some reading notes.

This week, I read "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players who suit MUDs", written by Richard Bartle.

According to our friend Bartle, there are four main approaches to playing MUDs (Multi-User-Domains, or multiplayer games to you and me). These four approaches arise from the inter-relationship of two dimensions of playing style:

• action vs. interaction
• world-oriented vs. player-oriented

Through analysis of a conversation of a large number of highly skilled and invested MUD players, Bartle identified the four things that most MUD players enjoyed about playing MUDs:

1. Achievement within the game context (including levelling up, completing the game, etc.)
2. Exploration of the game (including exploring both the world and the game mechanics)
3. Socializing with others
4. Imposition upon others (basically causing stress to or upsetting other players)

These could then be refined down to four categories of MUD players:

• Achievers
• Explorers
• Socializers
• Killers

Bartle then related each of these to a suit in a standard deck of playing cards.

Achievers = Diamonds, trying to find riches within the game context.

Explorers = Spades, digging around the game to find what's there.

Socializers = Hearts, trying to forge relationships with other players.

Killers = Clubs, using any weapon (literal or otherwise) within the game context to harm others.

Individuals often overlap through multiple categories depending on mood and personal play style, but most will have a primary category, and most of their actions will ultimately contribute to their resulting goal.

Bartle then explained each category in a little more detail:

• Achievers: Point-gathering and levelling up is their main goal, and all is ultimately subservient to this.
• Explorers: They delight in having the game expose its internal machinations to them. They try progressively esoteric actions in out-of-the-way locations, looking for interesting features and figuring out how things work.
• Socializers: These people are interested in other people, and what they have to say. The game is merely a backdrop, a common ground where things happen to players. Inter-player relationships are important; empathising, sympathising, joking, entertaining, listening, and so forth.
• Killing: For them, there is generally no greater joy in a video game than causing others grief. They get their kicks from imposing themselves on others. This can be "nice" on occasion (i.e. busy-body do-gooding), but few people practise such an approach, because the rewards aren't very substantial. The more massive the distress caused by the killing, the greater the killer's joy at having caused it.

How many players of each category are present is dependant on the MUD. If too much focus is placed on one aspect, then the other aspects will often suffer as a result. Also, numbers of one type of group will most often affect the numbers of others, much like an ecosystem; more killers reduces the general population of a game, and a lower number of explorer will result in fewer achievers and killers. An increased population of foxes in an area will reduce the number of rabbits in the same area, leading to fewer foxes, leading to more rabbits.

As I mentioned earlier, these categories arise by the inter-relationship of two dimensions of playing style. This is how:

                                  ACTING
              Killers                |              Achievers
                                     |
                                     |
                                     |
                                     |
                                     |
          PLAYERS -------------------+------------------- WORLD
                                     |
                                     |
                                     |
                                     |
                                     |
              Socialisers            |              Explorers
                                INTERACTING

When I saw this in the reading, it blew my mind; this made everything clear to me.

A stable MUD is one in which the numbers of types of players is in equilibrium; this doesn't mean they are equal, but that over time, the ratio of numbers of players of each type stay roughly constant. It is up to the administrators of the MUD to maintain this balance, as well as to decide where the balance should be and why.

Changing the focus towards a more player-oriented game is easy enough: simply add more ways for players to interact with other players, such as through communicative methods.

Changing the focus towards a more world-oriented game often involves the opposite of this; give the players fewer ways to interact with each other, and more ways to interact with the world. Also, offer them a larger world, perhaps making it less likely to find other players.

Changing the focus towards interaction instead of action can often involve restricting player choices of courses of action, allowing implementation of pre-determined paths.

Changing the focus towards acting instead of interacting can make a game more repetitive and boring. More than action is required to stimulate a player playing games, as these actions need to have effects.

Unfortunately, this was as far as I got with the article. It continued on for a while longer, but, well, I was tired and very much convinced that I had the main points needed.

Overall, this was a good article in my opinion. The graph was an excellent reveal for me, allowing me to make sense of what Bartle was talking about with the two plains of playing style. The format makes sense, and allows us to categorise things, as we are always so happy to do. It almost feels like a horoscope to me, some horrific, scientific horoscope that charts every gamer's location within online multiplayer games.

Oh, and if you're curious, I would categorise myself as an Achiever, though it depends on my personal goal at the time. For example, if I'm playing just to spend time with my "Internet Friends", (people who I am unlikely to ever meet in real life), then I would be more of a Socializer, but only within our group. I'm still not very interested in socializing with others. This socialization with friends, however, often includes other factors: we might go exploring together to see what the game has for us, or try to achieve a new level within the game context, or, indeed, run around killing everything we see, often including each other.

That's all for now, mortals, hope you enjoyed reading this (though I doubt you did; let's face it, I'm not a writer, and this was a long one; think of all the things you could have been doing instead of reading this). Praise be to the Emperor of Mankind!

Royal Game of Ur!

Royal Game of Ur!


Hail, mortals!

Just a very quick blog here to explain the Royal Game of Ur, and some possible iterations of it. Because apparently most of us aren't including enough content from Critical Games Studies in our blogs.

The Royal Game of Ur originates from the ancient era of th Middle East, with the earliest boards discovered in Iraq, and being dated before 2600 BC. This game involves an oddly shaped board, seven counters per player, and a number of dice. The game is designed for two players, and is played using four four-sided dice (4D4), or four-sided throwing sticks. These dice or sticks operate on a binary system; so two of the four sides are marked, and each of these marks counts as one when the die lands on it. Thus, the maximum number of moves is four, and the lowest number of moves is zero.

This is how the game plays (by one set of rules; the true rules of the ancient Egypt version are unknown):

The first player (decided by highest roll) rolls his dice and can move that number of spaces this turn. The start and end spaces of the board are on either side of the narrow "bridge" near the centre. Each players starts and ends his pieces on his own side of the board, but must move up the middle of the board to get to the end spaces from the starting spaces. In this centre of the board, passing or landing on an enemy piece will destroy it, returning it to it's owner's control, where they have to start the piece again from the start. The first player to get all of his pieces through the board wins. The Rosetta squares you can see every four spaces on the board are special squares; these give the piece immunity to attack, and allows the player another roll of the dice for another move on his turn.

The game has evolved over the millennia, and a modified version involving only five pieces per player, and where the end of the board in "unravelled", making the game faster and more exciting by extending the area of combat.

That's all for now, mortals, I may update this later when I have a little more time to research.

For now, Hail the Emperor, and never, NEVER download Babylon onto your computer.

A Very Brief Set of Notes

A Very Brief Set of Notes

Hey there, mortals, how go things?

So, I just wanted to make a quick blog, partly to get some notes about the week's reading from Rob, but mostly to kill time while I wait for my Steam sale purchases to download.

First of all is Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design by Marcos Venturelli. I wonder if this link will work?

https://learn.ucs.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-195672-dt-content-rid-353466_1/courses/IMDCGD110-12YRD/Week%20By%20Week%20Module%20Readings/Week%20By%20Week%20Readings%20Readings%20for%20week%207%20Space%20of%20Possibility%20and%20Pacing%20in%20Casual%20Game%20Design_A%20PopCap%20Case%20Study/Space%20of%20Possilbility%20and%20Pacing%20in%20Casual%20Game%20Design%20_%20A%20Popcamp%20Case%20Study.pdf


Venturelli first defines a casual game as a game which you can "pick up and play", which can be enjoyed in small bursts, and can be put down with little to no penalty. He also mentions that the complexity of the game is less important than how the complexity is presented to (or hidden from) the player, as well as noting their general family-friendliness and accessibility.

Next, he defines Pacing as the overall rhythm of the game, the relative speed at which different parts of the system are introduced. For example, how often one receives a new plant in Popcap's Plants Vs Zombies.

Some related concepts to pacing include Movement Impetus (the player's will or desire to move forward with the game), Threat (perceived danger overcoming real danger), Conflict (contest of powers), and Tempo (time between each significant decision made by the player, setting the intensity of play).

Next, possibility means all the possible actions and outcomes within the game system; all of the available moves in a game of Chess, for example, or position choices in Tic-Tac-Toe (Noughts and Crosses). Patterns of gameplay are created through a series of different possibilities being selected for their outcomes, which is where strategies of gameplay come from. By instinctively identifying patterns of gameplay, the player increases their overall chance of winning.

Possibilities directly affect the pacing of the game, and therefore the Player Impetus; by restricting the number of possibilities, the player has to think less, and will make choices more quickly, reducing any frustration and making the gameplay generally smoother.

However, reducing the Scope of Possibility too much leads to a game which is too easy to master, and which will consequently become boring faster; a good example is Tic-Tac-Toe; Tic-Tac-Toe has so few choices, the game became masterable by most children.

On the other hand, Chess has far more choices, an almost infinite amount of patterns and possibilities are available to each player. Of course, this does not mean that more possibilities make a game better, especially in the case of casual games; as previously stated, too much Scope of Possibility forces the player to stop and think, which takes away their momentum, and therefore reduces their Player Impetus.

The solution to levels of possibility is to take the problem from the "Lower Arch of Pacing" to the "Upper Arch of Pacing", or to take the learning curve and curve of the Scope of Possibility from a single or a few levels to the majority of the overall game. Again, Plants Vs Zombies is an excellent example of this; rather than having all of the Plants to play with, with all of their possibilities, the game gives them to you over the course of the entire game, so that you have time to learn about them before being given another one.

I think that's all I'll write about for now. I really like the way this article is written, with all of the terms (such as "Scope of Possibility") making a great deal of sense to me. I might have even enjoyed reading it if it didn't take me so long, and I wasn't so damnably tired at the time. Looking back now, it all makes good sense, and can be fairly easily applied from a design standpoint.

Praise be to the Emperor, I'll talk at you again next week or so.

Notes on Creating Drama

Notes on Creating Drama


Hey, how's it going? Mortals.

I'm not gonna stop calling you that soon, I'm afraid; I want this to be a casual blog, and if that means insulting, then I will insult you to your face!

Well, I was gonna try and make a "funny" title about being on top of the most recently updated blogs list in the lesson on Tuesday, but I've decided that I'm probably not gonna publish this until after the lesson. Look, it's late right now, and I don't really feel like going through the long notes I took so that I can refine it down into this post, OK? I'm tired!

So, I literally just finished reading "Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics" by Marc LeBlanc. In fact, I've so only just finished reading it, I haven't actually read the last paragraphs!

Aaaaaand done!

Now, I'm really liking Marc LeBlanc from what I've seen of his work so far; he has extremely well conceptualised and refined ideas about video games, which he demonstrates beautifully in his Taxonomy of Game Pleasures. This article also shows his obvious intelligence, and thus makes for an enlightening read.

First of all, LeBlanc outlines the MDA theory of designing and playing games:

Mechanics - what is required to play the game at it's most basic form, including rules and equipment.

Dynamics - the behaviour of the game as it is played, such as popular tactics used by the players, which emerge from the mechanics.

Aesthetics - the desirable emotional reactions of the player or players.


Next, LeBlanc introduces us to the aesthetic of dramatic tension; he first defines what dramatic tension is:

"our level of emotional investment in the story's conflict; the sense of concern, apprehension, and urgency with which we await the story's outcome."

Finally, he gives us the dramatic arc as an example of how drama should build within a narrative:

Here, as you can see, the drama of the narative builds towards the climax, whereupon it suddenly  changes direction and fades away.

Now LeBlanc tells us how levels of drama are affected in games. It is important to understand that, unlike traditional narrative forms (such as movies or books), the game designer doesn't have total control over the aesthetics of the story as it plays out.

First, he splits drama into Uncertainty and Inevitability:

Uncertainty: the sense that the outcome of the conflict is still unknown.

Inevitability: the sense that the content is moving forward toward toward it's resolution.

Dramatic tension requires a combination of both of these factors; one alone is insufficient. If the game has uncertainty without inevitability, then the end seems far off and doesn't really matter. If the game has inevitability but no uncertainty, then there's no reason to be invested in the conflict, as the outcome has already been decided. It's worth noting that the narrative climax of the game occurs when the uncertainty and inevitability "intersect", and the outcome is realized by the player or players; the gameplay climax occurs just before this.

So, now that we know how to identify dramatic tension, how can we produce it in the design process? Well, dramatic tension (or at least the uncertainty part of it) is an aesthetic that emerges from dynamics that make the game feel close during the "contest" in the game. Closeness can be achieved in one of two types of dynamicss: force and illusion.

• Force - by manipulating the state of the contest itself, we can alter the level of a player's advantage or disadvantage.
• Illusion - it is possible to make the player believe the contest is closer than it really is by manipulating their perception of it.

A good way of employing these from a mechanics standpoint is through feedback systems; these take the current status of the game, works out how well each player is doing, and alters the game in some way (either through force or illusion dynamics) to make the game closer, or appear closer. For example, in a racing game, if one player is doing less well than another, the game might give the loser a speed boost to keep the game more even, and therefore less uncertain. 

Feedback systems can also be used in a number of different ways, to cause different effects. A negative feedback system will give the losing player an advantage, such as in the above example, or give the winning player a disadvantage. A positive feedback system will do the opposite, giving the winner an advantage, or the loser a disadvantage. The purpose for this is to give the game denouement, to let the players know the game is coming to an end, and this player has won; the dramatic climax where the outcome is decided is over.

So, we've covered uncertainty, but what about inevitability? Some good mechanics for increasing the sense of inevitability are "ticking clock" mechanics; these remind the players that the game won't go on forever, and that the end of the game is drawing closer and closer. A literal clock doesn't need to be invloved, as other mechanics can act just as well, if not better; the number of cards in a deck, the number of pieces left on the board, and so on. If a ticking clock is to be effective, it must be visible to the players; inevitability is entirely percieved, and to add to dramatic tension, it has to be percieved.

Once the climax has been reached, it can be argued that a game should end as soon as possible; once the outcome has been decided, the players become little more than spectators, which very quickly becomes boring. However, it is also arguable that there should be a period of denouement for the game, to let the players unwind, stop the game from ending too abruptly, and to let the winner celebrate their victory. This time should be kept fairly short, but it does need to be there. One way of doing this is a post-mortem of the game, such as a statistics screen, or an after-game discussion between the players.

Well, I'm pretty damned tired, I've learnt that I don't like Monster energy drink, and I need to catch a bus in under five hours. I think I'm done here.

Praise the Emperor.

Chance and Skill

Chance and Skill

Ah, mortals, it's been too long!

I think.

Actually, you probably didn't miss me too much; I didn't miss you at all.

Well, I'm contacting you today to tell you about the reading I performed this week. I read chapters five and six from Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber, which cover the use of chance and skill in games from a design standpoint.

Chance first, if that's OK with you. I don't really care if it's OK with you, it's the order that my notes are in, and that's the order I'm going to address them in this post.

"Why is chance an important component in games, and what tools does the designer have at their disposal to deploy this element?"

(I should not that chance is not an overlly important component in games; many games have gotten on just fine without it. Chess, for example.)

In games which are based purely on skill, rather than chance, allow the stronger player to win everytime the game is played; if you're better than your opponent at Chess, you'll beat them nine times out of ten (unless you let them win, which I applaud you for doing; on the other hand, where is your Saiyan Human Pride?). While making the better player win may seem like a good idea, it isn't suitable for a long-lasting game; if someone is better than you at Chess, then the game becomes a dull sequence of defeat after defeat after defeat until you lose the game. Adding an element of chance, however, increases the interest of the game immensely.

With chance in a game, the uncertainty of the outcome is increased, and the game becomes more dramatic as a result. The game also becomes difficult or impossible to solve (Noughts and Crosses is an example of a game which has been solved; with two players who know how to solve it, the game becomes a draw every time), and has increased variety, making it more interesting to play again and again.

Chance can be mechanically implemented in one of two ways, I think; as with the dramatic tension (I'll post the blog on this tonight or tomorrow, if I remember), one can use either force or illusion:

• Force: the chance factor actively changes the state of the game, such as when dice rolls decide the number of moves a player can make.
• Illusion: doesn't directly affect the game state, but changes what the player can percieve, such as a fog of war mechanic, or being unable to see your opponent's cards.

"Why is skill an important component in games, and what tools does the designer have at their disposal to deploy this element?"

(Again, skill isn't absolutely necessary, but it is perhaps a little more important to have than chance; Chess is a better game than Snakes and Ladders.)

When a game is based purely on chance, there is actually very little user-input at all. What decisions does one make when playing Snakes and Ladders, or Roullette (without the gambling part), or any other game where the outcome is decided randomly? As a result of not affecting the outcome, the victory of such a game is less fullfilling than when one has earned their victory through skill. I feel great when I win at Chess; I feel less great when I win at chance-based games. Chance games also lack the pleasure of learning and mastering patterns found in skill games.

Implementing skill into a game is fairly easy in some cases; skill can be broken down to decision-making, meaning that all a designer has to do is give the player opportunities to make decisions. The requirements of these decisions are that the decision musn't be:

• Obvious: if every player would make the same choice every time, under every reasonable circumstance, then it shouldn't be a choice; it should happen anyway.
• Meaningless: the choice has to change something in the game state, otherwise, the choice doesn't have any meaning, or therefore need to be present.
• Blind: give players enough information to know what they're choosing and what some of the consequences might be; don't punish or reward them for not knowing any better.

That's it for now, mortals. I'll maybe post the dramatic tension notes tomorrow.

Praise the Emperor!

Notes on MDA

Notes on MDA


Can I even bother to be the rude nerd I usually am on this blog today?

YES! Greetings, mortals! A very good evening to you!

So, the other day I did a bit of reading in the form of an article written by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek, entitled "MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research".

So, what does MDA stand for? Short answer: Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics. I don't have a long answer.

Mechanics covers the solid rules of the game; "This can happen, this can happen, and this can happen. This cannot happen. " Mechanics are the only things game designers really have any control over in the development process.

Dynamics are the run-time behaviour of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others' outputs. These are influenced by the mechanics and the player's input into the game.

Aesthetics are the desirable emotional reactions evoked in the player as they play the game. These are also uncontrollable directly by the designer, but are influenced by the mechanics. For example, if a game's desired emotion is fear (or a similar emotional reaction), then the aesthetic would be intended to be one of fear, through the mechanics and dynamics (a monster charging toward the player gives a great aesthetic of impending threat).

So, we know what MDA stands for, but what's it's purpose? Basically, it is an attempt to bridge the gap between the design process and the creation process of game development. Using this method, a game designer can analyse and refine the process of game creation and improve it next time; this can be done in two ways:

• analysing the end result to refine implementation.
• analyse implementation to refine the end result.

The process of designing and creation is clearly described it the format of MDA, going from Mechanics to Dynamics to Aesthetics in the same order as the designer does. After this, we can apply certain parts of a game's design, such as an aesthetic, and objectively ascertain the process by which we attain that aesthetic from a design standpoint, which can be done prespectively or retrospectively.

For example, if we use fear as an aesthetical goal, we need to find some mechanics and emergent dynamics which will result in the player feeling afraid when they play the game. A fine example of a game which does this well is "Amnesia: The Dark Descent", created by Frictional Games in 2011. So what makes Amnesia a frightening game to play? One of the most powerful things about this game is it's atmosphere. Atmosphere can be described as a dynamic, emerging from a number of mechanics working together: certain, pre-scripted events occur in the game, such as music, unsettling noises, light levels, the way the level is designed so you just can't see around that corner, come together to form this overall trait which progresses as the player does, and results in the emotional reaction of fear and apprehension.

Let's use another example from the same game; the "Gatherers" of Amnesia. The cold, hard enemies of the game, who show up every so often to terrify the player senseless, and give the main character a bad day. Now, why do they terrify the player senseless? A number of interesting dynamics are related to the appearance of the Gatherers, which are themselves comprised of a number of mechanics (or lack thereof) working together. A very good mechanics choice (in my opinion) is the player's inability to fight; you can't stop the Gatherers, it just doesn't happen, there's no way to hurt them.

Because you can't fight them, the only thing you can do is hide, and hope they don't find you. The hiding dynamic of this game is born out of the mechanics which mean the Gatherer can't see you when you're behind another object, such as when hiding in a wardrobe. Hiding in a wardrobe while you hear a monster outside completely trashing the room, desperate to peek out to see what's happening, but terrified it'll see you is an incredibly powerful aesthetic which, in my opinion, can be related back to when you were a child playing hide and seek; the person hiding, knowing the seeker is close, is thrillingly terrifying, and this is perfectly recreated in Amnesia.

So, for example, I could use this method of looking at an aesthetic and tracing it back into mechanics to build a more frightening game than Amnesia, which will evoke a more powerful or well-balanced emotional reaction from ther player. I could look at the hiding mechanic and say

"This is good, but it would also be good if you could hide in other places than wardrobes. Maybe if the player could hide under the bed in some rooms, and only see the Gatherer's feet shuffling around as it searches?"

This is the process of refinement, which can be reached by using the method of MDA.

I really liked this article; seeing the process these guys suggested and then trying it out for myself like that really feels encouraging that this is the way to make design advance the way other formats (such as hardware) advance.

That's it for now, mortals. Apologies that this was so very, very late. It was just sitting in my blog list as a draft for over a week, and I literally just noticed it and decided to pick it up. I really need to get the next post done soon.

Praise the Emperor, and a very good night to you!

Generic Weekend Title

Generic Weekend Title


Good evening, mortals.

Now, I don't know if you know this, but I'm on a course for Computer Games Design.

One of the major parts of this course is learning how to use a little-known coding program called Flash Professional. I joke, of course, you've all heard of Flash, it's used all over the damn place.

Flash, however, is hard. It is annoyingly hard, needlessly so, in my opinion. I also think that 3D modelling software is awkward, but I can understand that it's the easiest method I can think of. With Flash, however, things are just unnessecarilly difficult.

I've used a version of GameMaker before (the free version), and that was so easy; you know what the icons do and where to put them, and you're fine. Everything's very easilly laid out and labelled, so you know exactly what's going on all the time, and you can pick it up and know what you're doing within five minutes. Flash, on the other hand; I have no idea what's going on with it. The tutor (a gentleman named Chris Janes ("Hi, Chris!")) has been trying to make us understand by walking us through making a basic game with Flash, and two things stick out about those lectures:

• Why isn't any of this going in, where is he, how did he get so far ahead of me, why can't I just listen?
• I could do what's taken him an hour in Flash, in about ten minutes in GameMaker.

I understand that drag-and-drop tools such as GameMaker are more limited, but holy Hell, why does Flash need to be THIS complex?

Here's an example; I was reading a book and doing some tutorials about Flash today to try and catch up, and this is the code required to display the words "Hello World!" onto a screen (a relatively simple task, I think you'll agree):

package  {

import flash.display.*;

import flash.text.*;

public class HelloWorld extends MovieClip {

public function HelloWorld() {

// constructor code

var myText:TextField = new TextField();

myText.text = "Hello World!";

addChild(myText)

}

}

}

THAT'S JUST TO MAKE "Hello World!" APPEAR ON THE SCREEN!!! What even?

But yeah, that's been my Sunday today. Learning to do that.

Otherwise, it's been another slow weekend for work; tomorrow I have the day pretty much off; I'll get some work done then, probably more stuff toward the group project, and maybe more Flash (fun!). I will also be reading and postng notes about Rob's reading for the week.

Tonight, if I remember, I'll try to get some dialogue done for the characters I'm creating for the Introduction to Design Methods lectures. Phil Jackson, my previous personal tutor and tutor for this and the 3D modelling lectures, is leaving us. Apparently Sony has something we don't. Nah, but we're sorry to see him go. Looking forward to meeting Mike Green, our new Design Methods tutor.

Well, I think that's it for now. I know I was going to mention something else in here, but whatever, I'm doing another blog tomorrow, and I can always edit this one.

And, of course, Hail Emperor.