Board Game and Apple App Stuff

Play testing the board game

Test 1

After play testing the board game we found that:

1.       The original idea for the game worked well and ran smoothly

2.       The track size was too big

3.       When 2 damage tiles were placed next to each other it made the game harder and made the players have to think about their next move

4.       For the first test of the game we used the event cards from the game “zombies” because we had not made our own this gave us a good understanding of how the cards work and how to use them in our own game.

Test 2

After play testing the game we decided to make some changes before we tested the game for a second time the changes were:

1.       We changed the size of the track from 15cm to 10cm.

2.       Changed the spaces on each tile from 5 to 4 spaces

3.       We added damage squares on every other space on each tile

4.       After changing the spaces on the tiles from 5 to 4 we then had to change the attribute points from 6 to 4.

Test 3

After play testing the game for the second time we found that some of the changes we had made did not work so we made some more changes ready for the 3^rd time we tested the game these changes were:

1.       We found that having 2 damage squares on each tile made the game too hard and would get boring before you could finish the game

2.       We have created character cards and our own event cards which are relevant to our game theme

3.       At pit-stops players are able to change their attribute points or re-heal  all of the players damage points  

4.       We took out the pit-stops as track pieces and decided that the player can lay it adjacent to any piece of track including corners.

The first and second time we play tested the game we were unable to finish the game due to various problems but the third time we play tested the game

All of the people who play tested the game found that it was enjoyable, competitive, engaging and fun!

  

Board Game Research.

1.

Early Board Games:

*Egypt – Senet (3500BC)

*Egypt – Ur (2600BC)

*Oriental Countries – Go (at least 4,000 years old)

*Chess – (at least 1,000 years old)

Random Outcomes / Chance = Use of dice or cards

Figurative Pieces = Counters, figures etc.

Different Game Mechanics (Types):

*Luck   *Diplomacy (Player Interaction)        *Strategy         *Resource Management       *Territory Control

- ALL GAMES HAVE A GOAL –

Genres of Game:

*Simulation (Monopoly and Risk)       *Chance (Snakes and Ladders)           *Strategy (Carcassonne and Chess)            *Card Games (Magic: The Gathering)

2.

Definition of ‘Play’:

‘Play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having it’s aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the conciousness that is “different” from “ordinary life”.

3.

Board Games of Ancient Greece:

Most board games are based on the ‘glorification’ of war (Athens or Troy), or outdoor sports or the societal system. Usually games are played with dice or knuckle bones, traditionally Ancient Greek games were played by two people facing each other. Some games were drawn from board games designed from Egyptian culture, for example ‘Tavli’. Here are some typical examples of Ancient Greek board games:

·         ‘Mega Zatrikiori’ – A simulation game based on an excavation of Troy.

·         ‘Chora Pezin’/ ‘Pente Gramme’/ ‘Gramme’

·         ‘Poleis’

·         And ‘Diagrammismos’

Board Games of Ancient Rome:

The Romans were very fond of games involving luck or sometimes games that test your skill, recorded board games rom Ancient Rome start dated at around 1,500, some famous examples include:

·         ‘Tali’

·         ‘Tropa’

(Both played using knuckle bones, inherited from their cutural rivals, the Greeks!)

·         ‘Tesserae’ (played with two players, also played widely for gambling)

·         ‘Latrunculi’ (Roman form of Chess)

Board game designers

4.

·         Brett J. Gilbert aka Brettspiel, games: Loop, Stack, Pirate Islands, Switchback, Amongst Thieves and Treasure Fleets. 

5.

·         Tim Walsh, games: Blurt and Tribond.  Publishing Company Big Fun A Go Go and Tribond printed by Patch Products.

6.

·         Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling, games: Cavum.

7.

Lecture by Huhtala: Aspects to consider when producing a game.

Gaming Time:

·         Length,

·         Undetermined play time

·         The Games Arc

·         Downtime

·         Analysis Paralysis

·         Upkeep/Book-keeping

Undetermined play time = 3-7 hours or 90 minutes.

If the person has limited time to play, then they would prefer a shorter game.  A game might be good as a 30 minute game, but not as a 4 hour marathon.   Eg. Trivial Pursuit.  Games that don’t move automatically forward will cause boredom.  Eg. Snakes and Ladders (always returning or going back to earlier squares).  A game like Monopoly takes a large span of time due to the player gaining more money as they pass ‘Go’.  This could be corrected with a condition in which the game ends prematurely.

Ways to efficiently end a game

The game has a specific amount of turns able to be taken.

A time limit on the game. 

The game has to progress forward.

The game favours going forward.

 ‘The Game Arc’: When a game repeats itself, as applied in Monopoly which starts with buying estates then building houses, and lastly gaining all the money (a waiting game).

 However, in Snakes and Ladders , the game stays the same (roll and move).

Lost Cities is a game in which the players play until they get 300 points (point limit).

Ways to fix these issues

·         Clear phases that are different from each other

·         A change in goal as the game advances

·         The game is short and the repeating decision is tight enough

Downtime is when a player has to leave the game table to do something during play.  This creates boredom for the other players and is confusing when the player returns.  Therefore, the shorter the game the better.

8.

The rules of Senet

The R C Bell version – each player has ten pawns.  At the beginning of the game, there are no pawns on the board.  Throw the four casting sticks/dice to determine the move.  Each marked side up counts as one point.  If all of the throws come up blank, it counts as five points.  Each player in turn throws the sticks and puts his pawns on the board in the squares 30, 29, 28, 27 and 26, according to the number of points thrown (one point = square 30, 2 points = square 29 etc).   Only one pawn may be placed in each square.  If there is already a pawn in that square, the turn is wasted.  After the five squares are filled, the game begins.  In turn, each player throws the sticks, and can either move one of his pawns that number of spaces on the board, or place a new pawn in one of the five symbol squares (26-30) if any are empty.  If any pawn is moved to a square already occupied by an opponent’s pawn, the opponent’s pawn is removed and returned to the start.  This does not apply to the five symbol squares.  The player who manages to get a pawn to square one earns a bonus of 5 points.  That player must now try to get all of his pawns to the odd-numbered squares on the first two rows before his opponent can move all of his pawns to even-numbered squares.  When a pawn has reached its fiinishing square, it is ‘locked’ and cannot be landed on, though it may be moved through by other pawns.  The first player to move all his pawns to his own squares wins the game and earns 10 points.  He gets an additional point for each move his opponent makes while placing all of his remaining pawns.

Apple ‘App’ Research.

Play Testing an Apple iphone:

·       Crash Kart (3^rd Person):

Tilt to move right and left (automatic movement), crates activated by icon in the bottom, right corner of the screen.

·       iCopter (Side view, arcade style)

Tap to go up, release to go down.

·       Traffic Rush (Birds-Eye View)

Tap to stop traffic, slide to start again.

·       Paper Toss (1^st Person)

Slide to toss the ball of paper into the bin, compromise for the fan.

·       Angry Birds (Side View, arcade style)

Pull birds back and let go at chosen trajectory.

Researching Apple platforms:

(http://developer.apple.com/)

Apple platforms include; iOS, Mac OS X and Safari:

iOS: Mobile platform, the iOS SDK combined with Xcode tools make it easy to create apps. This allows the apps to continue working whilst conserving battery power and performance levels. Uses in iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Graphics programming includes; Quartz 2D and OpenGL ES.

Mac OS X: Mac platform, this platform uses Core Animation, Core Image and OpenGL, this allows the developer to create 2D and 3D drawing, animation and multimedia. Using the API’s built in effects you can create incredible applications and unique effects. The Mac OS X is built for 64-bit apps and multi-core processors. This platform allows the developer lots of physical RAM space to create apps with large file sizes and heavy animation.

Safari: Focuses on the web as a source for power (powered using WebKit). It works in conjunction with HTML5 video and audio, CSS animation, CSS web fonts, HTML5 offline, Geolocation and more. Note this is optimised for the web useage, not so much for smaller (iPod touch etc).

My initial game app design is a ‘Steam Punk’ style racing game. Therefore, after considering platform types, I have decided that the Mac OS X is the most relevant and practical platform for my app production. As the graphics would require a large amount of RAM for the end product I would aim to accomplish.

Most Popular iPhone Apps: (27/10/2010)

(http://www.appstoreapps.com)

Top Free Game Apps:

1.    Catapult Madness- Armor Games Inc

2.    NudeRunner-Girl Edition- Piky Team

3.    Giant Moto- rocket5studios

4.    Retro Revolution- Mike Berger

5.    We Rule Quests- ngmoco Inc

Top Paid Game Apps:

1.    Angry Birds Halloween- Rovio Mobile Ltd

2.    Angry Birds- Clickgamer.com

3.    Cut the Rope- Chillingo Ltd

4.    Cartoon Wars 2: Heroes- BLUE GNC

5.    Plants vs. Zombies- PopCap Games,Inc

Now focusing on research for my game specifically;

Definition of ‘Steampunk’:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk)

‘Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Specifically, steampunk involves an era or world where steam power is still widely used- usually the 19^th century and often Victorian era Britain- that incorporates prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy.’

Here is an example of a typical Steampunk character design:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_fashion)

Starting with ‘Rich Victorian Fashion’:

Rich women in Victorian times wore gowns with narrow, sloping shoulders, low and pointed waists, and bell shaped skirts. Corsets, a knee-length chemise and layers of flounced petticoats were worn under the gown. Evening dresses were low cut and hung off the shoulders.

Rich men wore tight-fitting, calf length frock coats and a waistcoat. A dark tail coat was worn in the evening, with cravats or neck ties. Trousers had fly fronts and breeches, top hats were also widely worn.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_dress_reform)

Poor women wore corsets ‘boned’ with rope rather than the more expensive steel or bone. The poorer classes wore rags or second hand clothing from the richer families; generally women kept one dress for special occasions and wore one outfit the rest of the time.

(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_did_Victorian_Poor_Men_Wear)

Poor men wore second hand, often mismatching clothing. Whilst working they wore corduroy or moleskin trousers, with a clean shirt (checked or white), a black coat and waistcoat.

Blog Work (Assignment 1)

Blog Work.

Chris Goodswen:

          Chris Goodswen, a professional 3D character artist gave a lecture to us game art and design students in the lecture theatre, Friday 8^th of October 2010. His lecture covered his path through university to his current career as a freelance artist. For the blog report we were told to take one thing from his lecture and make a comment on it, therefore I have selected his love and inspiration from Del Toro, the famed movie director. During the lecture, Chris showed us an image of an Ogre he produced during his university course that was inspired by a historical story of an ogre that ate children. The image was inspired by the dark style of Del Toro, and similar to that of the monster used in Pan’s Labyrinth during the banquet challenge. (See below)

          The body structure of the ogre was very similar to Del Toro’s monster creation, in that it appears thin except for its swollen belly, also the appearance of an excess of skin makes the creations (both Chris’ and Del Toro’s) appear disgusting and deformed. Not only in Chris’ earlier work but also in his later artwork, his passion for Del Toro’s dark and unnerving style becomes apparent, even in his lighter character assignments. For example, his concept artwork for the Mount Dash video game;
(picture to follow!)

          This image of a boy scout may not look at first sight like that of any Del Toro works, however, the construction of the face gives a slight suggestion of a darker style influence, notice the widened eyes with the slightly dilated pupils. This along with the wide grin gives the impression of a ‘creepy’ child; only the colourful and childish clothes dull the character into looking presentably ‘cute’.

          The task for this written piece was to study an aspect of the lecture Chris gave and then give a comment on that study. As a result, I will now give my opinion on his ability to take another person’s style and yet still make it unique to his own artwork. I believe that Chris’ inspiring relationship with Del Toro through his artwork is a wonderful connection through art and has allowed me to understand that a person can gain artistic influence from another artist or person and still manage to keep their art style original and ground-breaking. His lecture has given me confidence to take influence from my artistic idol, Tetsuya Nomura, a Japanese artist who worked on the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series’. (See example below)
(picture to follow)

    

My personal history of gaming:

          This section is focusing on video games that I have played in the span of time from birth to the present day. My first memories of video gaming were of the ‘Playstation’, I remember my mother taking my sister and me out and buying a ‘Playstation’ when I was about six years old (1998). I remember my mother having an argument with the shop clerk about buying ‘Spyro’ with it in a package deal, in the end of course my mother won! We took it home and set it all up, and I played my first video game, ‘Spyro’. Of course soon following ‘Spyro’ was ‘Crash Bandicoot’, which had come out two years earlier (1996), and which I soon became a fan of the ‘crazy, lab experiment bandicoot, Crash’.

          My next memories of video gaming were from  Christmas 1998, when I got my first ‘Gameboy’ (the ‘Gameboy Color’) and played the hit retro game ‘Tetris’ for the first time. Also that year, I received a copy of ‘Tekken 3’ which had come out only a month earlier and I have been a major fan of even to today. After that I played various games for ‘Playstation 1’, including some of my favourites, ‘Tomb Raider’, ‘Driver’, ‘Gran Turismo 2’ and ‘Pandemonium’. For the ‘Gameboy Color’ I played ‘Pokemon Red’ for the first time and quickly became a fan of both the anime and the video gaming series.

          My next console was the ‘PS2’ which came out in 2000, I got it for my birthday with my first aerial simulation game, ‘Ace Combat: Distant Thunder’. I collected a mountain of games for it including some of my favourites, ‘Dark Cloud’, ‘Shadow of the Colossus’, ‘Soul Caliber 2’, ‘Persona’, ‘DMC’ etc. But my all time favourite game series was only introduced to me at the beginning of high school (2003), I began with the epic ‘Final Fantasy 7’ and throughout the rest of high school and after have been a dedicated fan to the ‘Final Fantasy’ franchise. This passion continued into the ‘Kingdom Hearts’ series (‘Square-Enix’ and ‘Disney’). Along with the ‘PS2’, I continued to keep up with the ‘Gameboy’ releases (the ‘SP’ and then the ‘DS’), and in terms of games I like ‘Final Fantasy’, ‘Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days’, ‘Dragon Quest IX’, ‘My Sims’, all of the ‘Pokemon’ Games (From ‘Ruby’ through to ‘Soul Silver’) and of course the updated version of ‘Tetris’.

          Then of course, in 2006 the ‘PS3’ first came out. I didn’t get my own until much later due to the price, but now I enjoy the ‘PS3’ as much as my ‘PS2’. I play all of my old favourites (‘FF’ and ‘Tekken’ etc) whilst picking up a few new titles, for example, ‘Elder Scrolls IV’, ‘Fallout 3’, ‘Resident Evil 5’ and ‘Silent Hill Homecoming’.

Text Book Study: Rules of Play, Game Design Fundamentals, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.

Chosen Section, ‘Defining Culture’ (Unit 4: Culture, pg 505-513).

          This section of the book explores how games inspire culture or culture influences games. It begins with a few quotes from various people examining basketball. Through doing this the reader gains perspective of how much culture influences a typical game. In this context the authors try to simulate the events leading to basketball, for example; ‘The model for football is the drama of the adjacent nations at war. The model for basketball is the polyglot choreography of urban sidewalks.’ If we examine this statement we discover that ‘football’ is the fight between two teams (or ‘nations’) to win in the guise of a game, simply football could be looked at as the cultural development of wars between nations. The basketball version is that it is a ‘polyglot (A person having a speaking, reading, or writing knowledge of several languages.) of choreography’ taken from ‘urban sidewalks’, meaning that people have developed the game basketball from merging dance and language in somewhere like the streets of New York to create a game that expresses this.

          The next part dives deeper into this theory, introducing concepts such as the Olympic Games being ‘not just a series of sporting events’, but also a creation that changes throughout global politics. The games origins themselves (a Greek Competition) are a reflection of Greek culture and inspire today political debates and even national disputes and friendships. For example, during World War 2, Nazi Germany hosted the Olympic Games and only allowed one half-Jewish person (Helene Mayer) from their country to attend the games! This meant that the Germans were willing to sacrifice potential gold medals because of their vendetta against the Jewish populace. This caused disputes between countries and of course, religions across the world. This is a prime example of games influencing culture. Not just aspects of countries, but also gender and class positions within cultures became apparent through games. For example, the much loved Lara Croft in Eidos’ ‘Tomb Raider’ was a display of women’s rights, women in the west had become applicable to become a ‘Heroine’ in a video game. However, the display of a female character as thin, sexy and having large breasts may say the opposite in terms of women’s rights. This is also a display of how culture affects video games and how video games can cause disputes!
(picture to follow)

Rebekah Towler (Blog Work)

 Fnd Games Art and Design, Year 1, Norwich University College of the Arts.