Presentation finished, Demo - nearly!

Okay, Presentation is done - read it here:

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AWu12LJfJsACZGM3bmgycV8wc2dkNTh2aGs&hl=en_US

Demo's showing off most of what I need, but can still be improved in a few ways!

Off to Melb soon!

Research Project Update

I have been working on my Research Project more and more recently - though with job applications and Clo wrapping up it's been hard.

I have started writing up my final presentation and once it's done, and I know exactly what I want to show with my project - I will start really focusing my project towards that. Not to say that I'm going to be delaying work on the project in favour of the presentation.

Topics I want to cover in my Presentation:

Behaviour Trees vs. Scripting

Pros and Cons of BTs

Creating tools to aid the creation of BTs. (Tool Investment vs. Ease of Use)

Optimising BTs (esp. with multiple entities using the same BT)

Interesting BT uses. (Genetic BTs)

Conclusion

So yeah, going through and writing that now!

Research Project Update

Hey guys, update on my research project.

I had a big break from it - mainly because I was focusing on the group project (too much, perhaps) - but, it has come to the time when I should have started really digging in a month ago, so I'm still, as always, behind.

I started looking over my project again about 2 weeks ago - looking at areas where I could improve, and the implementation I have now is not very good.

The choices that leaders and people seem to make almost seem random because of the ridiculous number of factors I've implemented (usually only affecting one-off choices too...) - and so it doesn't really seem like there's much AI at all - there's no cohesion.

Similarly, many interactions within the game don't make sense, for example, when a natural disaster strikes, it cuts off Tech Trees at a random point in the city's investment - wiping out not only say, road infrastructure that makes sense, but... also potentially the civilisation's knowledge of making musical instruments.

Similarly the code is starting to get bloated with poor planning and one-off variables and functions that don't do much. It's getting hard to expand upon.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that my current project is stupid because I rushed in, just trying to get the programming done - rather than properly designing the system and the data/choice interactions... which frankly, if you're coding AI - seems really obvious. My bad.

So, I'm going to be redesigning my AI system from the group up - paying particular attention to all the relationships and the effects of choices like I should have been. Similarly, I will design my rulesets now as well, ensuring that every variable in each AI entity has a significant purpose. If I want to code in intricacies, I can do that when I'm done.

Similarly I'm thinking of coding a program to create Behavioural Trees. For example, a simple drag and drop interface and such. While this might be a risky detour, it could potentially benefit me a lot in the long run.

So, see how that goes!

Clo Prototype is finished!

Hey guys, remember that not-very-fun Clo prototype?

Well, we spiced it up a bit!

Play it here:

There are 3 resolutions to choose from, you'll need the Unity player.

http://edibleweapon.wordpress.com/protoypes/

I am the Lead Designer from this project - most notably, I designed a couple of the levels and mechanics, as well as making design decisions (or at least bringing them to the attention of the group. I like to make sure everyone has their input.)

As we develop the game (now that we're done prototyping), I will be designing far more levels, and hopefully bringing some more mechanics to the table - to ensure that the gameplay experience is exciting, and frankly amazing.

Have fun! I hope you like it!

Update on... me!

What's up guys?!

I just want to update you on what's happening with me and my video game designing and such and such.

Currently I am in a bit of a high work period.

I have the programming task which has been in my recent updates, which I'm still behind on. I'm going to try to dedicate 2 days a week to it until it's due. That should catch me up.

Clo

I am mainly focusing on a group project for college - where the project is to make a complete game. My group's game is called "Clo". It's a puzzle platforming game based on the idea of changing the seasons around you to manipulate puzzles within a level.

We ended up with this as our final prototype that we submitted to the industry:

http://www.mediafire.com/?7odlo2ka4ew59al (Also included is our pitch presentation)

Copyright blah blah.

We went in with high hopes as the teachers and students seemed to like it, but, it didn't actually perform so well. The judges did not think that the prototype was fun - but, those are the breaks!

Their main suggestion for improving it was "Add more mechanics" - which we were planning to do anyway, so it wasn't so bad!

Either way, we're still struggling through the prototype. During the holidays, the group programmers did a substantial amount of work, now it's just down to finishing it up, and resubmitting the prototype this week.

Hopefully it does well this time!

---------------------------------------------------

Captain Catnip and Challenges

I have found I am starting to enjoy prototyping and implementation more than typing up long hypotheticals on game design.

It is much more effective to code up a mechanic, and test it - rather than typing up how you hope it will work, and then finding it doesn't.

Plus, it's something you can really show people, and it makes me feel happy because I am programming. I enjoy both programming AND design - I don't like to focus on just one.

Anyway, each week I try to set myself a design and/or programming challenge - a few weeks ago I made the game "Captain Catnip" - it was a 7 hour, 40 minute prototype made by just me - and it was mainly made to see how fast I could code a game in Unity, rather than as a big design show-off.

That said, it does give some insights into design - such as, why boids need a lot of work to be a fun game mechanic - and not just something pretty to watch.

Here's Captain Catnip. Copyright blah blah.

http://www.mediafire.com/?w4v80757boi4h77

------------------------------------------------------

Digital Alchemy

My project for this last week of the holidays (as said, I spent the first week focusing on our prototype), has been to make a Forum Adventure game. I am making it with a friend from my high school, another aspiring game designer.

Forum Adventures require no programming, and are mainly a design exercise. Also heavy on writing.

In fact, the first games I ever made were forum adventures, so this is a nice "back to my roots" exercise.

Forum Adventures are a fun genre as they are limitless - you give players the situation, and players say what they want the characters to do. Players generate their own content, and running these is an amazing way to study players and how they wish to interact with the environments presented to them.

Click here to check our Forum Adventure named "Digital Alchemy".

http://pokemon-universe.com/index.php/topic,3311.0.html

My forum name is Level5Pidgey, and my friend (Shadowfred) helps out mainly with pictures and behind the scenes as we decide the plot and what happens to the player.

It starts slow, but, the most recent part of the story details the main backstory to the game, and one of the main mechanics which is crafting. Upcoming are stats, and battles.

So far the whole experience has been great - as said, studying players!

The biggest thing I've noticed are that, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

I used to operate under the idea that, if you subtly hint to a player what they should do - they will probably get the idea and take your bait, while not feeling forced into it - but, as I have found, sometimes they just want to pick up heart rate monitors and smack guards around with them.

As said, I'm learning a lot about players - and something I really want to try to work out, is a solid method for both offering players as much control over the game as possible - while still telling a linear story that you set out.

Will be interesting.

-------------------------------

Pokemon Universe Balance

Pokemon Universe is going great on the balance side. We have set up a testing server for members to test on, and they seem to be having fun with the balanced Pokemon metagame.

We seem to be 40% of the way through, so, cool!

------------------------------

Game Design Pitch - A History of Asskicking

I held another AIE Game Design Comp - and I submitted this game idea.

I hope you like it.

------------------------------

Challenges

Anyway, so, I will leave you with a list of challenges I wish to carry out in the future:

- Make an RTS in one day.

- Make an Escape-The-Room game in one day.

- Make a Single-Button game in one day. (Bring it on, Tiny Wings)

- Try to make a fighting game in one day.

These challenges are meant to challenge me design-wise, and programming-wise. So, I'm sure I will fail a couple of these, and many challenges I set for myself in the future. But that's okay, because I'll be learning from my mistakes and successes all the way.

If you have any suggestions for challenges, send a message or leave a comment.

Still behind on my research task.

Okay, it's been another month, and I'm still implementing the core framework for my research task.

I can't say I'm proud of that.

That said, I'm really starting to make progress - I've started working (as in, occupation) less, so I have more days free to program, and my progress is much faster than what it was a month ago when I was working 3 days a week, at AIE another 3, and I just wanted to have fun on the last day.

The progress I'm making on the task is also becoming more and more fun, so, I'm enjoying the programming more than when I was just starting out.

So, hopefully it's full steam ahead from here.

Update on Programming Research Task

I haven't started implementing much of the framework for my research task, which is a problem since I did plan to have it done for the 25th (4 days).

So, I'm a little behind.

What I have done however, is implemented A* - which will be useful for Tree navigation, and I've started researching heuristics for specifically trying to take into account how likely it is for a research to lead to other research paths down the track.

So, if a political goal was researching C, and further down the line they wanted to also research D - they might take research A, which leads to both - rather than B which reaches C quicker, but now not lead to D.

I am programming this task in C# - because it is extremely quick to get off the ground. I already have a simple GUI going, with inputs.

The only issue is that it is slower than C++ - so, my efficiency calculations will have to consider this. It is possible that as C# and C++ are pretty similar, I could try to quickly port the code over, and test it on C++ as well.

I am using XML for the research trees - and loading in of other data items, for example, "Area" templates which define temperature ranges, local materials and such which define the initial products that a civilisation can create (such as rice, fruits, and metals).

While, again, XML is slow, it only really needs to be loaded in at the start of the application for skill trees, and, depending on whether I allow the saving and loading of past simulations, they can be accessed on the menu screen when selected.

On the plus side, XML is very quick and comprehensive to edit.

To make up for the time I've lost, I'm going to implement a very basic skill tree, and expand it as I go.

This blog will be home to my major research project.

It totally will.

So... ummm... this is late!

Hey guys!

The Game Design comp finished a week ago - and, so, here are the entries!

Tales of Berefriszia: The Knighting of Delacroix

By Wafik Salim

Impending Ascension

by Matt Jones

PROJECT neverWAKE

by Raymund Serrano (This one had to be cut down for submission)

A.N.T.agonist

by Adam Taubert

Cyberelm

By Greg Lennard

Zombie Hallway Dash

By Justine Colla

Sloth

By MEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (Zanda Cetinski)

Project: Element

By Sean Evans

Chino

By Josh Dobson

Dropper

By Adam Vieira

Watch them all, they're all awesome!

Best College Ever?

Today, the head of my college campus help a PSP box just outside my room, and motioned towards a poster I had up saying "First prize?".

Yes, that's right guys, AIE Sydney has officially donated a PSP to the competition as first prize!

That should certainly motivate people!

Thanks to Neil and the other staff at the AIE for spicing up my poor-college-student prizes with something much more awesome!

Metaphor for Skill vs. Imbalance.

Introduction

Do you ever find yourself arguing over balance on forums?

Damn right you do - or at least I do occasionally.

One thing I find in every single gaming community is that many people (new to the game and experienced alike) don't understand that when discussing balance, you must eliminate skill as a variable.

Hence, most discussions are like so:

"X is too powerful"

"Just use [unreliable attack] to kill him!"
"But that assumes he just stands there and lets you use it!"

In this situation, someone defends a unit by assuming a player of low skill is playing it.

Or
"X is too powerful"
"I find it to be balanced as when I'm playing, other people kill me with [unreliable attack] all the time!"

"That attack is easy to counter if you are aware of your surroundings, though."

In this situation, people often degrade their own skills, or give examples of extremely strong opponents to defend the unit.

Obviously, all of this argument is invalid, because, your test subjects should be at an equal skill level, or, as I posted in a previous article ( http://zandagamedesign.blogspot.com/2010/02/skill-ceilings-and-floors.html ) - they should be at the skill ceiling of their respective units to accurately judge absolute potential.

Anyway, I'm not going to dive into all that and restate everything - this article is made so that, if you ever do need to explain to a person how skill relates to a unit's potential, you can just refer them to this article.

On with the Metaphor!

To balance two units, you MUST measure their potential at their skill ceiling (or peak human skill if the skill ceiling is higher than the limits of human qualities).

To demonstrate this, I will be discussing the fine art of carpentry.

Firstly, imagine that instead of complex characters, the units in your game are simple tools, that you as a player, utilise to win the game.

This is exactly what they are. You unit in a game is a tool. Nothing more.

So, let's say we have two Hammers, the "Craptacular Nailpusher 101" and the "Super-Gold-Hammer Deluxe 5000". We'll assume that, as their names suggest, the 5000 model is far superior to the 101.

Let's say that "Balanced Hammer Co." wants to measure up the hammers against each other - as they are unsure of whether the Deluxe model really is any better.

So, they pick two carpenters from the local area, Tom and Dave to test out the hammers.

The thing is, Tom has been hammering for an odd 20 years now, and specialises with his Nailpusher 101, while Dave is completely new to the trade, and was frankly dropped a few too many times on his head while he was a baby.

The test begins, and Tom immediately takes the lead. He finishes the task deftly and with prowess, while Dave manages to hit himself in the face more than the nails he's supposed to be hammering.

The company records these findings, but obviously note that Dave was a really bad test subject, and so they discard the reports.

To relate this back to balance briefly, this shows that just because a unit is overpowered, it does not necessarily mean that new and unskilled players will immediately dominate skilled players with it. Even in unbalanced scenarios, a wide skill gap will still favour the more skilled player.

If it doesn't, then the balance issue should be so plainly obvious, it would have to be intentional.

So, back to the hammers.

Balanced Hammer Co. goes back to the drawing board.

What could they possibly use to test the hammers?

They search around, and find another carpenter - Adam, who has the same degree in hammery as Tom, and has been hammering for exactly the same number of days as Tom.

As far we can tell, Tom and Adam are both skilled at carpentry, and they are both about equal in terms of skill.

So, the competition starts off again, and, Tom, who now gets to try out the 5000 model, wins by a mere nail.

The company takes the results, and concludes that their new hammer isn't worth the 200% markup over the 101 model, and agrees that they must add more and more features to the 5000 model.

Seeing as Tom has been a willing participant in two tests, the company give him a free 5000 model as thanks - and guarantee him a discount on the model when they finish superpowering it.

So, Tom goes home, and, decides to use the hammer full time. It did win the competition, so why not?

Anyway, 3 weeks later, he's hammering some nails when he realises that on this particular model, the handle has a flat base that, on every 3rd swing, can be used to strike nails harder than usual.

Conducting his own test, he decides that this feature should be raised with the Hammer Co. company, to help them with their designs.

What does this show us?

Just because players aren't currently bunnyhopping with the Sniper class, headshotting every player they encounter with quickscoping, doesn't mean that the unit cannot do it. Players will often gain more and more skill until a large portion of a unit's potential is realised.

When judging balance, you cannot just use "good" players, you must go further, you must evaluate the unit's absolute potential.

Back to hammers.

So, Balanced Hammer Co. take this last lesson in their stride, but unfortunately they're still unsure of how they can measure up the two hammers.

But, one of their engineers has been doing some searching, and he finds the contact details of a couple of Romanian Hammer Brothers who are said to have such amazing skill in carpentry that they can immediately take one look at a hammer, work out every single trick with it, and utilise the hammer and all its features to a near perfect degree. The degree at which they can utilise these hammers is at the absolute limit of human hammering ability.

So, the company flies them in, and hands them each hammer.

The brothers take a quick moment to analyse the hammers, and the competition begins.

The result is that the brother with the Deluxe Super-Gold-Hammer 5000 wins by a land slide. He found many more tricks to this new hammer, than the other brother could find with the older one due to the new design's slick form, useful handle, and other features.

The brothers were completely equal in skill - and both were at the peak of human skill in hammering terms - so what happened?

As we started at the beginning, the Deluxe Hammer was simply better.

If we liken this to games, you can have a player at the skill ceiling of a Machine Gun class - but, if the machine gun class only deals 2 damage per second, while the others deal 100 damage per second, all that skill does not matter. The class is inferior to the others.

Conclusion

So, Balanced Hammer Co. choose these results over all others - why?

• We are not comparing a bad player to a good player.
• We are not comparing two equal players, that cannot utilise their units properly yet.

We are comparing two players, who use the units to their full (human) potential - and they demonstrate how powerful the units really are in comparison to each other.

This is how you evaluate balance.

I hope everyone enjoyed this post, and I want to try to follow this up with more skill vs. balance articles really soon.

AIE Sydney Game Design Competition!

Okay guys, I've been talking about this for the last year or so, but I've decided to finally get off my butt and set it all up.

Not all details are finalised, I'm just putting this up now so that everyone can get started.

In the spirit of the competition, I've decided to lay this info out as its own game pitch.

So, let's get started:

AIE Sydney Game Design Competition

Basic Concept:

Participants must submit a video pitch for a video game idea to be judged.

The video should be of 3 minutes or under in length.

The design can be any original design, for any style of video game.

The video should detail the concepts of the game, its tone, its gameplay, and etc.

The competition ends on 3/4/11.

The winners will be announced on (to be decided)

Gameplay (Specifics):

Information and updates on the competition will be displayed in my statuses, notes, and on my blog. (link below)

This competition is only for AIE Sydney students (first and second year)

No implementation is required, and any additional material will not be considered during judging.

Any video style is fine, whether it's full video, audio over animation, or a simple powerpoint.

Submission:

Videos must be uploaded to Youtube.

When the video is uploaded, post the link to my wall, or email it to alexander.cetinski@gmail.com

Submissions close on 3/4/11.

I will showcase submissions on my blog, and on my wall.

You can only submit one entry.

Multiple people can work on the same video, but the prizes are not negotiable or multipliable.

Submissions > 3:10 mins will be rejected. The extra :10 is to protect against youtube length issues.

Please include your year in the video description.

Win Conditions:

The competition will be judged by our amazing and wonderful game teachers - Conan, Dan, Epona, Matt and Mike.

The Judging Criteria Are:

- Concept

- Gameplay

- Fun Value

- Sellability

You will get a rating out of 10 for each criteria, which is averaged for your final score for that judge. Then the final scores are averaged for your over all mark.

Rewards:

Overall Awards

1st Prize: "Game Development Essentials: Gameplay Mechanics” - http://www.amazon.com/Game-Development-Essentials-Gameplay-Mechanics/dp/1418052698

2nd Prize: $25 in Steam games

3rd Prize: $15 in Steam games

Prizes are not negotiable or multipied for group submissions.

Year Specific Awards

First, Second, and Third Best Submissions will be announced for each year.

There are no year specific prizes however.

Additional Awards:

Best Original Protagonist

Best Original Antagonist

Best Game World Concept

Best Tone (Comedic, Suspenceful, Dramatic, etc.)

Joke Awards:

Most Likely to get Cease + Desist’d by Nintendo.

Most Likely to get a terrible movie adaption.

Most likely to require a Valve-Time release date.

Most likely to be refused classification in Australia.

-------------------------------------------

An example entry that won me a similar competition 2 years ago (2009):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL294g3svr0

So yeah, spread the word, and start with the entries!

I want to see lots of them. LOTS OF THEM.

This comp will be useful for getting your skills up to pitch for the major project coming up!