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.

Networking: Clone War

As a project we were tasked with working in pairs to emulate the 1985 game Spacewar in XNA. We had to maintain all of the core gameplay of Spacewar, although were were told to specifically not include a few aspects.

Overall, Lou and I did a pretty good job. My previous project in Networking already provided most of the core systems and elements needed to create the game. As such, within an hour or so of starting, we were quite far along.

One of the requirements the initially seemed like an obstacle was synchronizing "game mode" data across all clients. XNA doesn't provide an interface for automatically synchronizing settings or options that are not directly related to the network session. As such, I had to use a bit field stored in a byte to transfer game mode related data from the server to the clients.

Lou's blog: http://lounetworkingforgamesblog.blogspot.com/
Professor: http://prof.johnpile.com/

Production

Stage 1: Establishing the Foundation

As we slowly get closer to challenging Stage 1, our initial ideas have fallen away to leave one our Push mechanic. Although it is a single mechanic that we are focusing on, it leaves a wide range of possibilities to explore and iterate on.

Mobile Device Controllers

One of the biggest and most interesting ideas we are pursuing with the Push mechanic is that idea of a "Massively Multiplayer Local" game. The idea is that everyone has a controller in their pocket, even if they don't realize it, they would just need to download an app, connect to the game, and play.

The largest hurdle with this idea, currently, is designing and implementing a strong and reliable input setup. We have two iterations on the mobile controller currently, one with dual virtual joysticks and the other using tilt rotation and a throttle control. We have brought both to QA and received positive feedback on both, with some issues brought up that still need to be looked further into.

Production

Stage 1: Establishing the Foundation

As we have continued to meet and discuss our ideas, the concept of Coop-Push has itself been pushing to the forefront of our thoughts. On the other hand, we are concluding that the Space Combat concept leaves much to be desired and would quickly rise out of scope.

Coop-Push

Through the last week, we settled down on what experience we really want to promote with this concept. By focusing on the cooperative mechanic of the game, players will connect with one another and see each other of valuable to their own success, rather than an obstacle to be removed. This view is often lost in games which more often then not, put players on opposing teams or create huge gaps in ability and power between two players on the same team. We want all of our players to have similar, if not identical, abilities that much be amplified in power by working with other players.

GPS

Another idea that has risen over the last week is that of a GPS game. The initial idea rose from the idea of Hunger Games, where players must collect resources to survive. This alone, wouldn't make for a very interesting game, let alone any reason to use GPS, but the idea expanded to be a "hide and seek" type game. The initial concept is that players would be randomly assigned roles, Seekers and Hiders. The number of Seekers would scale with total players, but would generally be one.

Hiders would be given an initial amount of [resource] to survive on. As time progresses, their [resource] depletes and they must find and collect more. [Resource] would be shown on the GPS map to all hiders(perhaps seekers as well) for them to collect to stay alive. This would mean they have to stay on the move and would not be able to just hide away for the entire game.

Seekers would also use a GPS enabled device, their [resource] would be replenished by finding Hiders. Their GPS would also show "blips" on the map whenever a Hider made "noise", measured by the accelerator of their device.

Whenever any players' [resource] was depleted, they would lose the game, sending a message to all other players. The game would end when either all Hiders are found or deplete their resource, or when all Seekers deplete their resource, which would determine the winning "team".

Production

Stage 1: Establishing the Foundation

Over the last week, we have fleshed out, revamped and reworked our concepts. We still have a handful of potential candidates, but are more heavily focusing on two of them, dubbed Coop-Push and Space Combat.

Coop-Push

Last week, when we presented our cooperative space combat game, it was suggested that we take a better look about the actual cooperative experience and focus in on that aspect of the game, rather than on the combat side of it. We decided to do both, what we now call Coop-Push is what came out of the deeper look into the cooperative experience.

The core mechanic, as is currently envisioned, is a group of players working together to achieve some goal, generally by moving some object around as a team. Each player on their own would be unable to meaningfully move this object, but by working together, to either move obstacles out of the way or to push the object, they can progress through the puzzles.

Space Combat

While we were iterating on what the cooperative experience meant, and how we could focus in on players really working together and relying on one another, we didn't want to drop our idea of a cooperative space combat game. We have had further discussions on what directions we could potentially take it and how we can make it more engaging and fun for all of the players.