Homework 14: Indirect Control

Assigned: October 31, 2014
Due: November 7, 2014

For this project, please describe the various ways that your game addresses the issue of indirect control. What elements of your game (characters, interface, scenery, art) contribute to the indirect (or direct) control of the player. The book discusses five categories of indirect control. Please address them, and add any other forms of indirect control that may apply to your game.

Story and Game Structures can be Artfully Merged with Indirect Control:

The Feeling of Freedom

Indirect Control Method #1: Constraints, giving an answerer to freedom of choice, would definitely play a big part of our game. For once the choosing between one path to the left or right can lead to a successful and gratifying ending. The second freedom would be in the form of choosing potions that could save the player’s life in any defining moment of risk.

Ultimately players could choose from different combinations!!

Indirect Control Method #2: Goals, design goals is a good reason to have players care about your game. If a player has two doors they can go through, don’t really knowing which one leads to a secret area, they would enter anyway giving them a random chance to find more items and more secrets even if the second door leads to the same place than the first door at the end.

Indirect Control Method #3: Interface, something else to consider about the interface is indirect

control because players want interfaces to be transparent, they don’t really think about the interface, if they can help it. Limiting the players to a single activity due to a simple choice of controls is partly about who a player will relate to, but it is also about implicitly limiting the player’s options. In Purgatory that player would have the standard w,a,s,d which is been proven to give players plenty of choices as well as combining a python script for mouse look to give a convincing look around the avatar.

Indirect Control Method #4: Visual Design, having a controlling effect on were the audience would look in visual design is a very powerful weapon. As an art student, we are thought to design keeping a clear and readable image of the focal point, the most important element in the narrative. This can be achieve by making the focal point brighter in color than the rest of the elements.

Indirect Control Method #5: Characters, using your storytelling ability to make the player actually care about the characters, that is willingly wanting to obey them, protect them, help them, or destroy them is what suddenly can generate an excellent tool to control what the player will and will not try to do.

Indirect Control Method #6: Music, designers think of adding music to a game, they usually think of the

mood they want to create, and the atmosphere of the game. But music can also have a significant effect on what players do. After listening to the feedback given in class on game critique day, my team and I decided to have the avatar heart rate increase as well as the intensity and pace of the music to influence the player’s reaction and fear of the game. This would be an attempt to make the game immersive and scarier.

My contributions to my team game during the past 7-10 days. Has been to design and create the game poster from scratch, writing the game document, communicating with my team via email as well as face to face meetings to delegate duties in order to meet the deadlines.

Homework 13: Game DocumenHomework 13: Game Document

Link to game Doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UdsQKiJhyGLNn57VDclY09rO-UW9kts3NVZ81ZPiViU/edit

Updated new poster for Purgatory. I spend a few days integrating the various ideas given in class as feedback to improve the illustration that would give life to the concept of this first person interactive horror game.

 Minutes after she died, Sara is sent to Purgatory where she most escape and find her way into heaven. In Purgatory the suffering that poor souls have to experience in order to be completely purified, is a necessary test in order to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The game takes place in a fully accessible and interactive labyrinth. In order to progress, the player must ensure its immediate well-being is intact while avoiding supernatural creatures that lurk in the dark. The goal is to collect prayers scattered across the labyrinth along with other items such as potions that would enhance the player’s powers allowing Sara to find the exit. However, be careful to encounter demons as this can send you straight to Hell.

Purgatory is a single-player exploration horror game that delivers an immerse experience, capturing the player’s minds with its astounding visual depth and encompassing music.

New improvements in Player Health Bar reacting to enemies and
enemies health bar affected by player.


NEW HUD:

Homework 12

HW 12

Time to completion: 2 weeks

Responsible:

Art/Aesthetics/ Story/ python: Morales Alan. Create the art poster for the game to express the horror appeal to the audience. Create a game Hud/score system with a health bar.

Mechanics/Interface, python: Lenczewski-Jowers, Justin. Create a navigation system for the demons in the game to follow the player. The perimeter could use near or collision. Create obstacles inside the maze, such as traps and pits. Adjust the controls to first person, adding running, view bobbing.

Play testing/Sound: Lauzier, Adam. Create and sound design the music along with any sound effects needed to enhance the feeling of anxiety and to exploit the player’s fears. Find a group of people for play testing the game.

Link to game Doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wTmDi7lTPxFnDA-2-6x4O1greY4Z03BDJ9-Nkz157E8/edit

What I’ve you done this week for my team is create a game Hud to display the characters Heath along with a score system that can visual reference a beating heart. I created this Hud from scratch using Photoshop to draw the elements and Blender to make the elements interactive.

HW 11 

1) Describe the user interface in your game The user interface would be created to display useful information to the player in game via a HUD2) What role will the interface play in your game?It will allow the user to know how much Health / lives possibly Time Weapons and magic potions are available.3) Intuitive interfaces give a feeling of control. How easy (or hard) is your interface to master?We are designing the interface to be as intuitive and simple to master as possible. It requires little interaction with the player. A circular bar displays health and this is visually indicated by a beating heart every time a recovery item is taken.4) Will your players have a strong influence over the outcome of the game? Please describe? If not, how can you change this?The game is design to allow the player to decide among a series of choices depending on what path is taken in the maze. Some areas would lead to avoid monsters, while others to run into them directly, which at that point defines which type of player you choose to be.5) Players like to feel powerful. Do the players of your game feel powerful? How could this be improved?In the game we will include power-ups that will temporarily grant advantageous skills, such as running faster or walking through walls.6) What does the player pick up and touch? The first item the player will be able to pick up when first starting the game is a lamp to see in the dark. Items such as magical potions will amplify the player’s powers and disappear entering an inventory for later use.7) Does the interface map to actions in the world? How?When the player’s life is in danger, its heart located next to the health indicator will beat faster.8) How does your interface let the player see, hear and touch the world of the game? Could this be improved in order to make the game world more real to the player's imagination?Simply by mirroring the game character to the player's own reactions. The sounds of creatures in the maze, along with a sensitivity to nearby enemies triggering a fasting beating heart will induce the player’s own heart rate to increase. Other elements such as dark or low illuminated areas will tonally set the mood for a immerse experience that will theoretically leave the player in fear increasing the players sensitivity at every step.9) The idea interface is invisible to the player. Does your interface cater to the players desires? What are these desires?We believe that making a successful interface is a very important part of the games success and it needs to be as unified to the game style as possible. It will be on screen all the times, but with a transparency or opacity layers so the player won’t get distracted by it.10) Can your interface be used without the players thinking? Is it natural?Yes, we are designing the interface to be as simple as possible. By allowing the players to have an inventory system to store and collect items, standing in front of these log at given times, will feel as if checking for provisions in a real life camping situation.
11) Assuming you can do what you want, how would you make your interface more natural?An opaque or transparent interface, one that is there when needed. This type of interface will possibly feel much more natural, however we don't have time to implement it in our game.12) What kind of feedback does your interface present to the player? What do the players want to know? How does the interface relate to the player's goal? Will it help achieve that goal?We are planning an interface that specify when the player's current status changes, plus their health and various objects. We consider these being the main things the players will want to see.13) Is the interface feedback continuous? Why or why not? Yes, because it continuously sends info on the characters status/health and scores counter.

14) Please describe the concept of interface modes? Does your game have multiple modes? Please explain (Lens #60).

An interface of any complexity is going to require modes.modes make the player feel powerful and in control and do not confuse oroverwhelm● The modes we need in my game are based on the complexity and level of player interaction in the game. Simplifying the game complexity will add to the fun and also would make the game easier to make
● The modes in game can be combined, by making some areas easier than others, therefore easier to skill players and promising to less skilled ones.● None of the modes overlap in my game, is one giant level● When the game changes modes, the player will know because thegame will communicate it by changing to a faster pace by sound will increasing tempo.

Homework 10

Updated of the score system without the debug properties view

  In this installment texture packaging and sound have been updated to run without any errors. In game particle system is generated to create fire. In addition I created a score system and distribute it to my team members to help develop the game HUD. By creating pleasant animations of Potions this would help guide the player to obtained and complete their journey giving them a visual reference on what to do next. 

Blender file:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1FCqjLwNfv-aERjbXBnSmpzYlE/edit

Video:

Images: 

#A

#B

#C

#D

How did I do it?: I created an empty illustrated in slide (#A) attaching a score system (#B) a property integer that allows the objects in front of the main character to interact adding by a power of one every time the character shoots an object of interest. In addition to the score increasing, objects are deleted from the world, and this is done by creating a sensor that detects the collisions of two objects. I animated the objects (Potions) (#C) and gave them a rotation in the -x axis as well as adding point light to give it the appearance of red glow.

My contributions: to the team this week have been to develop and research the Art work for the game promotional Poster as well as conducting studies that would lead me to place a health bar and score system interacting together and ready for when the monsters attach the main character. I packaged in game textures and sound, as well as updating them to test they would run without any errors. I placed a node.py file as part of a particle system in python to create fire. I created a score system and distribute it to all my team members.

In addition, as a team leader I allocated our resources by delegating the focus into developing AI (Artificial Intelligence) for the monsters in game, and communicate the daily updates and task to members individually as well as supplying a series of tutorials to help them guide the next series of steps to make our game design a success.