Homework 9: balance

Address each of these aspects as it relates to your own team game. Homeworks are individual. If a particular item does not apply, say so. Each item must be addressed, and the answer should use complete paragraphs.

      This assignments is about reading chapter 13 from our class textbook on game design. and interpreting which forms of game balancing mechanics are applicable in our game. There are a lot of things to look at regarding balance, and the book ivides them for the most part into 12 different catogories.

      The first topic of course, is fairness. The book discribes fairness by dividing it into symmetrical and asymmetrical games. A symmetrical game is one where every person has the same reasources and powers, while an asymmetrical does not. Since our game is a single player game that is ment to focuse on stealth against an AI then the best would probebly be asymmetrical. Where the AI has the ability to catch the player and imprison them. This way the player actually has a reason to hide from enemies and would build some tension and difficulty.

     The next topic is that of Challenge vs. Success, keeping the player from getting board with an game that is "too easy" while not making it so hard that that player is frusterated. THe books sudjustions for this are a variaty of methods such as dividing gamplay into levels and increasig the difficulty in the later ones. THe genneral plan for our game i sto actually do that. THe game is divided into 7 days, with a goal of killing at least 1 person each day. As the player kills more NPCs then the hard the game becomes. With the NPCs grouping together or hiding from the player so that it is harder and harder to kill them. The challange will come from trying to kill as many people in the orphanage with out getting caught, while to finish the game you only need to kill 7 people.

      After that is the idea of Meaningful Choices. Allowing the actons the player makes to have some significant effect on the rest of the game without creating some Dominate strategy. However for our game, since it is a stealth and murder game, the choices will likly not be more than what weapon the player uses to murder characters, or how they choose to be stealthy.

       Skill vs. Chance however is a component that every game has to have in one way or another, and is pretty straight forward. As our game is stealth based, with the intent being the playes skill at evading dectection, then putting to much chance in the game would be very frusterating for the player. The NPCs will have slightly predictable movements that they go through that the player would have to notice to get past, with the ways of murdering characters being a players choice not a random event.

        This goes directly with the balancing type of Head vs. Hands. Our game is a thinking game, ment to draw out tension before short violent outbursts involving the death of an NPC. Most of the focus would be on planning out how to murder your target without getting caught. While allowing the player to attempt to elude capture by running away and trying to loose your pursuers.

       Unfortunatly the next balancing topic of Competition vs. Cooperation is almost entirly out of the question in our game as it is a single player working alone in a closed environment. The actions and the results of those actions are the players choices alone.

       When looking at Short vs. Long and balancing them, the goal for this game is to have 7 levels that essentially will only take as long to complete as the player takes to kill NPCs and get blood back to the Flower. If a player wishes, then can attempt to kill the first NPC they find and try and get away with it, or instead try and plan out the safest way to approace the problem.


        Rewards in our game are a bit less straightfoward than many of the other things in the game. By design the player is a child in an old run down orphanage, killing people in order to feed the Flower Below then orphanage. What we have decided is that portions of the game are going to be blocked off depending on what day it is and eventually the player gains access to more and more parts of the map. then they can obtain different weapons depending on where they are, and more ways to kill people. Though at eh same time for each kill that you feed to the Flower, we are thinking about gving the Player slight buffs or powers to play with.

     Punishment in our game is also a bit different as the way it is set up is the player cant be caught killing a person. If they are the day will reset and they have another go. But at the same there has to be a reason for they player to be stealthy. our solution to that is that the adults that are in the orphanage will take away weapons from the player if they see them, or punish them by sending them to their room if they are acting strangely or disobediently. This punishment will have the affect of setting back the players plans without having the entire level reset if they have spent time working toward a goal.

     As for deciding if our game should involve more Freedom or a more Controlled experience, due to the limitations of time mostly. the game has been limited to 1 building and the grounds around it. To keep it from feeling confining the building will have 3 floors and many rooms, as well as a playground area and some room around it blocked by a fence. Within these confines the player is only really limited by skill and intelligence. There are areas that thy will not be able to get too early on, but as long as they don't get caught, with can wander freely.

      As far as Simplicity vs. Complexity, this is a difficult one. The book describes 2 categories, Innate complexity and Emergent complexity. Innate complexity is when there are lots of exceptions to rules that make the game very difficult to play. While the Emergent complexity is described as balanced surprises, things that keep the game interesting every play through. The hope is that our game presents a variety of ways to play, enough that many play throughs are warranted, while still being simple enough that we have the time to finish it.

Finally, when looking at Detail vs. Imagination the book has some interesting suggestions. The first is that when making a game, only detail what you can do well, and has the very helpful advice that if voice acting is hard to pull off, then Subtitles are a very cheap and easy thing to implement that allows the player to let their own imagination fill in the voice of the characters. our current play involves voice acting but we may simply limit that to the important parts of the game and let the imagination of the player give them personalities. The other bits of advice are less easy though, giving details the imagination can use or that inspire imagination are very vague statements. Both use chess as an example of creating a fantasy of war that I honestly never even would consider even when i was younger. The best i can think is that things like weapons or poisons would be easily identifiable without details of how they work. A bat is something you just hit someone with and a vial of poison will kill someone sneakily. The player would know that and it requires no more effort than creating the items to implement.

HW8 From Blender to Unreal to Git

            In this assignment, we had to create objects in Blender, Import them into Unreal, and then Describe them and how they are used in the game. So I created a classroom desk chair like this.

            Its pretty basic y design as it based it off of old desk chairs that i found in the storage of my old middle school. The setting of our game is supposed to be in a old and run down orphanage so it seemed appropriate for a small classroom that was planned to be made. I have yet to figure out the UV unwrapping so it can be textured unfortunately but i am still working on that. Bun in the meantime i made this.

            I have been working on a door, but haven’t really found anything I like. Especially since like I said before I can’t figure out UV unwrapping for textures. But I have this which would be an old wooden door to work with. And after fiddling with it for a little while i think this will work at least for now.

         

          I was able to successfully import both of them into Unreal as objects. Though I think there I saw lot am going to have to mess with on the door. 

        After all of that. I added them to the file where the rest of my eam has already been busy making plenty of objects ot work with and use for our game.

HW6 GetHub repository

Our Gethub link is this:     https://github.com/CaptainHoneydew/flower-belowMy username is Acorous

HW5 Game Assets

        Things are now coming down into the actually development of the game and in all honesty things are a little bit overwhelming. I believe i have a lot of Unreal figured out now, but at the same time have no idea how to implement any of that into an actual game. I guess though the best place is to start with some basics.


          








          So how about a table and a fridge for the kitchen of the orphanage. The current plan is to have the game in a very old orphanage, but new enough to have running electricity and plumbing of a sort. What you see above in the picture is the 2 geometry shapes that i made using the Unreal editor and how they look.





           As you can see, I made the table a bit small, with only 1 central leg holding it up. This may change later to have 4 legs so that the table is easier to hide under, but currently fits as a small old wooden table similar to one I have at home.





           The table leg itself since i had it stand on only 1 leg has 4 supports that it uses to balance on. I made these by taking a cone and turning the number of sides down to 3 and just shifting them into place.





         The fridge itself is made up of a bunch of parts. None of witch move currently as i have not quite figured how to make it rotate the correct way. the plan is to have the fridge and freezer doors open and work as 2 separate doors that can be open and closed by the player. Perhaps as a uncomfortable but useful hiding spot for one, or a place for a snack item to be hiding to be used later in the game to lure one of your victims.



         Unfortunately that's really it for today as some of the things we need to do just for the game in general are confusing. My team as far as i am aware is doing fine though, and i am looking foward to seeing what happens with the final product. Just have a lot of work ahead of us!