Production

Second Semester

After a break of a month, it's time for production to resume for the final 4 month. We've added 5 new team members to Phlegmatic Studios and are looking forward to working with them to improve our game as much as we can. We have a lot of ideas to discuss and decide upon and even more work to get done before the Senior Show in April.

Improvements

There are a few key areas that we, as a team, have decided we need to focus on first. The highest priority of these being the control scheme. Throughout the first few months of production, we mainly used a "twin-stick" configuration for controls, with two virtual joysticks as the method of input on the device, but as testing and feedback have shown time and time again: this isn't where we should be. Testers have found it lacking in many ways and desire something better. Our first task is to figure out what that "better" is and implement it as quickly and effectively as possible.

The next high priority area that we need to focus on is the aesthetic and theme of the world. As it stands right now, players are dropped in a pretty generic and empty feeling factory environment.

While it has worked for us up to this point, we have decided that we need to push it, either locking down on the factory setting by making the level more like an assembly line, or by taking it somewhere else entirely. The primary alternative idea, at the moment, it a Dr Sues feel, with comical looking machinery and strange devices whirling and buzzing around the level.

With these two primary points of focus in mind, we resume our work with new team members providing fresh and interesting new ideas that will take our project to new heights.

Production

The first four months of Push-It

Push-It as a game began significantly different than what we have now. When we began, we knew we wanted to create a cooperative multiplayer experience, and that was about all we had. We had not yet determined what the gameplay, objective, or visual style would be, but knew we wanted to forge something that would bring players together to achieve a shared goal. With this in mind, our first idea for gameplay was shared control of a ship.

Many people have heard of the games Artemis and Guns of Icarus Online, both of these games places a set number of players, 6 and 3 respectively, on teams to jointly crew a ship. Each player relies on the others to complete their objectives and perform their duties. If one player fails, the entire crew may fail. While these games provide players a strong sense of cooperation and urgency, Artemis fails to place players directly in the action, instead viewing it through 2D displays while Icarus players spend just as much time running around the ship in 1^st person as actually performing actions on or with it. We wanted liked the cooperative aspects of both, and created our first iteration based on a melding of these two ideas. Our players would take direct control of stations on a ship, providing 1^st person views from gunnery batteries as well as the helm to work together to control, navigate and protect the ship.

As we progressed with the idea of players jointly controlling a ship, we asked ourselves “Is every role fun and engaging to play? Would people be happy to be locked into a single role or should be allow variation in what each player can do?” What we came back with was a resounding “No” to the first and “Allow variation” to the second. With that in mind, we began developing ideas to allow players to do more than one thing and not be locked in a single role, thus we came up with the idea of drones. Drones would be a secondary mechanic for the gunners to use. Rather than having a dedicated mechanic making repairs to the ship, each gunner could choose to exchange their offensive potential for defensive. When controlling their drone, the gunner would be able to repair gunnery batteries on the hull of the ship, raise shield walls and perform other supportive actions to assist the ship and their team in non-offensive capacity.

With drones, we solved the “Being a gunner can get boring” issue, but had not touched the role of the helmsman. How could we make being in charge of navigation and moving the ship more fun and engaging for that player? After long discussion of the issues that faced being a helmsman, as well as taking a deeper look into the drone gameplay, we determined that we needed to make a dramatic change. With it determined that playing as a dedicated helmsman would likely get boring for a majority of players, we decided to remove the role. With that, we now had gunnery batteries on the hull and defensive drones for support. How would the ship move? The drones would be able to push it with a beam of some sort.

With this change, Push-It as it is now truly began. Multiple players working together to defend and push their broken hull of a ship through a maze of enemies to return “home.” Looking at where it was now, we questioned the need for the offensive batteries at all, and so we removed them. Players now all took control of their own drone, pushing their ship to safety while fighting off and avoiding enemies and dangers. Why complicate the gameplay with combat, though? Why not just make all the danger the players, and their ship, face come from the environment? Many games add combat mechanics “just because” without necessarily having a sound reason for them, thus we decided to remove them. They weren't needed, we decided, and testers agreed when we brought a combat-less build to QA with the only goal being to use your “push beam” to get an object from the start of the level, through various environmental puzzles and dangers, to the end of the level. We didn't impose a time limit or any other requirements, just “get there.” They loved it.

With the new change, however, we realized we just had an incredibly simple game, one that wasn't particularly innovative. It was fun to play, yes, because of the player interactions and the cooperation requirements, but not innovative. We also had the issue of being limited to 4 players on a single machine, using Xbox 360 controllers. Around the same time, I was working on a side project using mobile phones with gps to make a “hunger games” style hide and seek game. When I mentioned it to my group, we had a groundbreaking idea to “combine” the two. We would have players use their smart phones as controllers. It took only a few days to set up a system in which players could download an app to their android device and easily connect to the game through wifi giving them a virtual controller on the screen of their device. The versatility of smart phones has also provided us with the ability to make a range of control schemes, from a “twin-stick” scheme to a gyroscope based “tilt-to-move” scheme, with many more possibilities for additional schemes.

Push-It had now moved beyond something you might play in your living room with your family and friends to a game that could be played on nearly any screen anywhere, with little setup. It could be deployed in movie theaters before a screening or in a park or even on Time Square, the possibilities for deployment were endless because players could seamlessly drop in and out of the game without affecting the ability to complete the levels.

The process of reaching the point where we are now with Push-It has been extremely educational about the true process of game development. We started with just a simple idea of making a cooperative experience, we progressed through so many different iterations and ideas before we reached this point. In addition, although I only focused on the iterations that directly led to Push-It where it is today, we also had alternative ideas that we developed alongside the cooperative experience that also provided ideas for thing to do and not do in Push-It.

Production

Presentation

Last night we finally reached the pinnacle of the semester, the senior show. 14 teams brought forward all of their progress and achievements over the course of the semester to vie for one of the slots going forward to next semester.

We saw a wide range of games, and most of them looked great. A few of the more memorable for me were Sunbots, Phantom Mansion and Lucid Delusion, as well as our own game, BusyBots, of course.

Production

Stage 3: Proving Your Core Experience

As we progress in developing our game concept, we reach the point where we must flush out the aesthetics of our game. We have tossed around many different ideas for what our game will look like, ranging from ghosts in a haunted house to wizards pushing a dragon egg, from ants protecting larvae to fat princes, but none really seemed right, or quite fit. We finally fell upon the idea of Rube Goldberg machines as the backdrop of our game.

Using Rube Goldberg machines as the backdrop of our game opens up a wide range of possibilities for both level visuals and puzzle mechanics. Levers, balloons, and pulleys allow for many different interactions between various puzzle elements as well as means for the players to interact with the puzzles.

Production

Workshop One

Increasing the innovation of games is a constant and difficult struggle. As games become more and more advanced, the range of possibilities also increases, but with that advancement comes the sheer volume of previous creations. Developing games that are unique and innovative, yet fun, can be very difficult.

In the case of our game, it isn't the gameplay that is particularly innovative, but the method of play. Using mobile phones as a default input method is an uncommon scheme. While games on mobile devices are taking the industry by storm, ours isn't quite a game ON a mobile device, but just uses it as a controller. There exist apps for achieving such a goal, most commonly used for emulating retro game pads and arcade style inputs for use in single player games on computers. Our design, on the other hand, is to use such input in public spaces, allowing anyone to download an app and jump into the game, quickly and easily.

While games in public spaces exist, many require special hardware or non-digital input to participate in, such as Renga.

Renga requires players to use a laser pointer, something not many people carry with them in day-to-day life, as well as a specialized projector to detect the points on the screen. None the less, the player interactions are something we wish to emulate. A larger number of people working together to achieve a shared goal through the successful execution of related tasks.

By using a mobile device, we will break down the divide between those who can and cannot play, because of the hardware requirement. These days, nearly everyone carries a mobile device of some kind with them in their day to day activities. Using this fact, we can reach a larger audience and allow our game to truly be pick-up-and-play.

Production

Stage 3: Proving Your Core Experience

As our game concept has developed into a large scale cooperative experience in public spaces, we have considered in what direction to take the visuals. As our game is intended to be open for anyone to play, we must strike a delicate balance between drawing in current gamers through recognizable influences and presenting a game that any non-gamer who sees would be interested in participating in.

We are focusing on two directions to take it, in terms of theme. The first is that of ghosts pushing around a coffin or skull, think Casper the Friendly Ghost. The second is wizards with the object being a dragon egg. We also want to make sure that whichever theme we pursue, we maintain a comical and friendly aspect, which would not be difficult to do with their theme.

Production

Stage 2: Building the Conceptual Foundation

As we proceed with the idea of a "massively multiplayer local game", we now begin to explore what games are already present in this space. Our game, when complete, will be able to be played on nearly any screen in a public or private space. With its wide range of potential players, we are not limited in our audience, but work to open up the medium to anyone who has a smart phone and desires to play.

As of this writing, we have not found any other examples of large scale cooperative games in public spaces that use a similar interface as our game. We did find Renga, which is a similar target, but played with laser pointers on a projected screen, which detects the points of light and converts it to input for the game. This game, however, requires players to have a specific interface, the laser pointer, and specialized equipment that detects the pointers on the screen.

One of the interesting problems we may face with a concept such as this, which requires mass coordination and cooperation, is that inevitably, some small number of players will want to "troll" other players by doing what they can to prevent or slow progress in the game.

I feel really good about where we are now and where our concept is heading. We have a lot of potential in our sights and are all excited about where we can take this game.