Game Level Design

Game Level Design

A very fine evening to thee, mortals.

So, this week, I read "Game Level Design", a chapter for an unnamed book written by Ed Bryne. This covers the essential components of designing a level for a game, and applies them to create a basic level for a basic game. As always, I was posed a question before going into this;

"What are the key lessons for level design that Ed Bryne draws from his analysis of a simple level?"

Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is just asking for what he said in the Summary. Well, I'll tell ye.

Ed's summary was made up of three main points:

> The more players can complete a challenge through interacting and observing, the better. Giving them constant prompts and special mechanics to help them finish fells like they're having their hand held, which can be incredibly inappropriate in certain games.

> Finishing a level can be its own reward, without the need for an end-of-level boss or animation.

> The fewer cases in which the player can blame the developer the better. If they blame the developer for their failure, the player gets more and more likely to stop playing; on the other hand, if they blame themselves for a failure, then they're inclined to try again and do better this time. Even better than this, according to Ed, is to make fail-states as rare as possible.

Well, that was easy. Too easy...

As this has been a very brief post thus far, I'll include other lessons I got out of this, just in case.

> Story is a nonessential component in most games; Chess, Tetris, Solitaire, Minesweeper, and so many other games don't have any kind of story to guide the player, unless the player makes one up in their own head. It's nice to have a story in many games, helping the player understand and giving their actions context, but it's not entirely necessary.

> Giving the player visual clues rather than straight-up tutorials is a much better way of conveying method or context. For example, rather than explaining how to jump onto a seesaw to make it work (Bryne's own example), give the player a seesaw and some boxes to jump off and let them work it out. Of course, this isn't always possible, but when it is, it makes for a much better experience.

> Make sure the environment and challenges of the level are thematic, that they fit with the theme of the game. If it's a game set in space, have sci-fi themed challenges like zero gravity. If it's set in the jungle, use a jungle theme like bugs and fruit and monkeys.

> Games make use of "Game Logic" rather than real life logic. In a game, a ball can hit the ground and roll in a specific direction predicted by the player, while in the real world, there would be far too many unpredictable effects on the ball, and it would likely go in another direction entirely.

Well, that's mostly it, I think. Intrinsic and extrinsic knowledge was mentioned, but that's more or less self-explanatory. I'll leave you to your lives again for a while mortals.

Praise the Emperor!

Don't be a Vidiot

Don't be a Vidiot

Sup, mortals.

Just when you thought I was finished with my woeful raving, I'm back with the notes about the last piece of reading I conducted.

This week, I read "Don't be a Vidiot," written by Greg Costikyan.

This was an interesting little read about how video games have hit a rut of "more first-person- shooters!" and "more real-time-strategies!" when there's a whole universe of game types out there to explore. For this blog post, I will as ever simply give the question posed to me before the reading and answer it to the best of my ability and willpower.

*ahem* "Costikyan says a Vidiot is 'a person whose sole understanding of games derives from video games.' From the notes you have taken from the article what do you understand the problems to be and do you agree?"

Well, as Costikyan explained, the problem with Vidiots is that they have very little knowledge of new types of games other than what they are comfortable and familiar with. This, coupled with the popularity of video games over more traditional games, as well as the massive population of so-called Vidiots within the video-gaming "community" has lead to a lapse in innovation of creativity within games design, and a lack of major game releases that don't follow specified parameters or genres.

More simply put, a chosen few genres of video games (most often first-person-shooters) are iterated and reiterated time and again, making them the most popular genre and restricting what else is made.

This means that many peoples' experience of gaming is limited to just a few genres or platforms, which leads back into the same things being made and new ideas which could have massive potential being discarded as likely failures. This is due to both designers having a limited knowledge of what works and what doesn't, due to themselves being Vidiots, and to publishers being disinclined to invest in something that isn't firmly grounded with a popular precedent.

Ultimately, this means that, while there is a massive variety of possible games, the only thing being made is Call of Duty. And that's awfully sad.

So, that's my understanding of the problem. Do I agree with it? Well, it's a sound theory, it makes perfect sense, and the outcome is there for everyone to see. I'd say that I agree with this.

There's a massive amount of possibility with video games, as well as gaming in general. Where is that variance? In the discard-bin of publishers who don't want to risk their wallets on anything different (not even new, just different from the current winners of the popularity contest).

But, hey, at least we have nine Call of Duty games which haven't actually changed much in mechanics or graphics since the fourth one, six years ago.

Well, that's me done; it's getting late, and I still have other things to be doing.

Praise the Emperor with your very lives, mortals.

So, we Meet Again...

So, we Meet Again...

Konbanwa, mortals!

By the Nine, it's been such a long time since I last spoke at you.

Not nearly long enough.

Anyway, I'm making two blog posts tonight; this one welcoming you back after the Christmas break, and another later on with my notes on the latest wall of text I've been reading.

My Christmas was pretty good, mortals; I got a tree for my room. I went to see The Hobbit. Both are awesome. Now that I have a piece of greenery back in here, I've been trying to open the curtains and let the outside world infect my little hole in the world.

Other than Christmas during this break, I have mainly done two things; I watched SO MUCH damned anime. And I played Katawa Shoujo, a highly interesting visual-novel style game created by a number of 4Chan users. If you don't know what 4Chan is, it may be time for you to get to know the Internet a little better (albeit at your own risk).

Katawa Shoujo was a slightly life-changing experience. With it's anime-style artwork and somewhat sudden initial story progression, I was drawn in very quickly, and allowed to enjoy the deep characters at my leisure. When I say "at my leisure", I do of course mean that I was up at six in the morning playing this thing because my mind wouldn't let me stop thinking of one of the characters in particular.

This little harem adventure from the eyes of a Japanese student who discovered he had a critical heart condition and was sent off to a school for disabled youths made me realise a number of things, primarily properly demonstrating to me for the first time that disabilities may be a major change to one's life, but they aren't entirely character defining if you don't let them. And that shy anime girls are a major vice of mine. I am referring here to the individual in the game I chose to romance; a heavily scarred young lady by the name of Hanako, who suffers more from psychological damage than anything physically life-threatening.

Hanako is one of perhaps two or three characters of any medium that has broken my heart. Most certainly, she smashed that thing up more thoroughly than anything else has in the past, and even more impressively, she did it twice.

I played Katawa Shoujo once, I got the good ending with Hanako, and I was depressed for several days, rethinking everything about my life up to this point, and desperately wishing for a second chance at everything, for the first time in my life.

I am never touching that thing again.

Funny part is that from what I've heard, Hanako's heart-rending ability pales in comparison to some of the other characters'. If you want to go forth and play this game, I won't stop you. I think as many people as possible should play this; but be ready, cos it's gonna test you HARD. It broke me for about a week, and I'm only now starting to get back into the flow of things. I miss past Hibberd sometimes, but I like to think that I'm a better person now.

Well, that's my page-long rant on some visual novel I played over the holiday done. I will leave you in peace now, with this nice little quote from Gandhi:

"What you do in your day to day life is of utter insignificance, but it is very important that you do it."

Or something along those lines.

May the Emperor guide your path.


--UPDATE--

Oh! Before I forget, there was one other thing I did this Christmas break;

Lately, I have been trying my hand at Photoshop, getting to know the program as well as my drawing tablet. I am going to post the result here, in the hopes that I get sme kind of praise out of you that I clearly don't deserve. Please be gentle in your text-based abuse.