Tweaks on the Royal Game of Ur

Today in Eddie's lecture we were tasked to play The Royal Game of Ur and then add our own tweaks into the game to see how they would affect it play out.

So we were first given a sheet of paper with the newer board shape on of the Royal Game Of Ur. As it is a two player game we then had to get into pairs and then get two sets of four dice and then two sets of five pieces to play the game with.

We then had to get some tipp-ex and use it to cover over two of the triangle dice. This was so that when we rolled the dice if it landed on a corner with tipp-ex that counted for one move space and each dice that landed that way up meant the amount of spaces we got to move on the board.

Me and my partner thought that it was best to play the game first using the basic rules just to refresh ourselves with the game. Once we had finished the game we started to think about what iterations we could add to the game without taking away from the basics or breaking the game. Our first iteration to the game was change the rule on the Rosette square from being able stay on it for as long as you want without the chance to be knocked off to being able to stay on there for three rounds before getting knocked off.

At this time we also added the rule that gave you the choice to group your pieces together and then move them all at once. With these two iterations we played the game. Once we had finished the game we had found out a few interesting advantages and disadvantages to the iterations. So the iteration to enable you to group your pieces together gave the game a extremely high tension to it. This because if you moved all of the pieces at once and did not make it to a Rosette square your had the chance to knock all of your pieces off in one go. We found that this work extremely well giving you the advantage to get more than one piece off the board at a time; but also having the disadvantage of having all the pieces removed if your opponent landed on that square. We found that we were constantly on edge and engrossed into the game after this.

Our second iteration was quite interesting as well as it made us have to think about our moves move carefully a remember how long we had been on the Rosette square for. We found that the advantage to this iteration was that it gave your opponent the chance to remove your pieces if you forgot about the round limit of staying on the square. The disadvantage to this though is that it was very easy to forget how many rounds you had sat there for. To solve this problem for our third iteration to the game we added two boxes on the side of the board with three circles in. We then used another counter each and put the counter on the circles for each round we have sat on a Rosette square. We found this helped us a lot to keep track of the rounds.

After playing this and adding the iterations i have found that almost any game you play you can change the rules of to either make the game better or break it.

Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design - A Pop Cap Case Study

What are the Design Components that are important for the Creation of casual games and how can they work together to provide a space for great User Experiences?

When it comes to the design of casual games there are a few different design components that are important to have within the game to create a great user experience. A few of these components are Pacing, Space of Possibility,  pick-up and play, levels, and Time.

Pacing

Within game design "Pacing" is the concept of the over all rhythm of the game; the speed in which all the different moving parts of the game are put into motion. With the use of Mechanics, Aesthetics and Dynamics to create relaxation, tension and repetition the designer can "pace" the game. Pacing is built up of four elements which are Movement, Tension, Threat and Tempo which occur in the Lower Arch of Pacing and the Upper Arch of Pacing. According to (Venturelli 2009 p3)  "Tension is the perceived danger that a player might become the weakest side on the conflict; where as Threat is the actual power of the opposing forces on the conflict".A good way to increase and decrease tension is through the use of Aesthetics; this does not work the same way for threat. The third element Movement is the desire of the player to move forward through the levels and how the player can make advancement decisions. Then the final element in pacing is the Tempo which is the time between each important decision made by the player. A Higher Tempo means that the players decision making is slow waiting for change in the game or thinking about his movement ; where as a lower Tempo represents an frantic decision making by the player.

Space of Possibility

To design a game is to design a Space of Possibility's. In the words of Zimmerman and Salen (2004 cited in Venturelli 2009 p3) " It is the creation of a structure that will pay out in complex and unpredictable ways, a space of possible action that players explore as they take part in the game". In the game Assassins Creed it covers all the possible movements by using Parkour to vault over obstacles and climb buildings and well as all the fighting, swimming and so on. It is all these collection of possible actions and outcomes inside  designed space of a game; which are all artificially made by the system. When we play games we are always trying to work out the patterns of it; our brains are always trying to get as much information as it can and then simplify it so it can then put it into boxes in our head. This is no different when it comes to playing games; for example the game  Space Invaders . You as a player are constantly trying to work out the patterns of the enemy ships movements and the trajectory of their shots so you can figure out the best way to destroy the first row of enemies as quickly as possible.

The problem with this is that if our brains work out all of the patterns and the game does not do anything to change or add to the game  it runs out of surprises and becomes not fun to play and uninteresting. A example of this type of game would be Tic-Tac-Toe; with Space of Possibility very small with not many patterns that are obvious so becomes boring very quickly. Where as the game of chess has almost a infinite amount of moves and counter moves, short and long-term strategies  and people from lots of different cultures have tried to master the game for centuries.Although thinking that just by giving a game more patterns will make the game a good experience is not correct. What can happen is that the player will become frustrated with a hard game because they will not be able to play it right because they are not working out the patterns that are needed by the system to advance the experience. This means that you need to get a balance between the complexity and simplicity to make a casual game.

Pick-Up and Play

A Pick-up and Play game is what you sometimes think of when you talk about Casual games. What this means is that when designing a Casual Game you must pace the experience to provide the player with the time to learn and time to play Zimmerman (2008 cited Venturelli 2009 p4). In these type of games all of the learning is done while playing the game and they do not generally have the player invest a large amount of time learning patterns.


With every game that is made the designers no that eventually their patterns will be mastered completely by the players and then become boring. Although if the pattern is to hard to master then the player will become very frustrated and again the experience will end. Some of the newer games like Plants vs Zombies have started to have this new system where they  have their  basic patterns for the game which are very seductive  but after a while like all games eventually get boring and starts and ends the seduction and experience. So what they do is just before the game loses its tempo is add in or replace some of the mechanics and patterns within the game. This then gives the game the sense of the game being impossible to stop playing. The key to this i trying to find the balance between the familiarity and the newness; this is is done by keeping the core mechanics and changing the peripheral ones.

One of the main companies that are responsible for the rebirth of these casual games is Nintendo. They are however not the only ones out there as there are many pick-up and play and family friendly games that are also on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC.

So in conclusion our new Casual Games are not so much a revolution but a reboot back to games like what we used to have before the AAA games we have today. This does not necessarily mean its smaller in complexity,  in there mechanics or production. I have found that this very interesting and has given me a lot to think about like making sure that the game is not repetitive and introduces new mechanics fai 

My 3D Model

This is my 3D model so far. I decided to do this because i thought it would give me a chance to learn how to use some new tools in 3Ds Max as well as give me a slight challenge. I now have the task to texture it which i haven't tried yet but looking forward to attempting it.

Main Character For My Own Game

This is DOT and he is my main character for my game that i am designing.

Main Enemy For Group Project

This is the main enemy that i designed for my group project.

Main Character for Group Project

This is the main character that i have designed for my group project game.

Robs Lesson 06/11/2012

In yesterdays lesson we were given this list of rules with a board that was subdivided into hexagons (hexes)  and was asked to play a game and then afterwards put some of our own iterations into the game.

After we played about 10 minutes of the game it became quite clear to us that the rules had been rigged so that you would not be able to die as the players could always move out of the way before they had a chance to shoot. This meant that our first iteration to the game was very clear what we needed to do, we simply just made the fire mechanic go first before the others. This made the game a lot more enjoyable and gave the game a more strategic as you had to think about where you where going to move first so that you didn't get shot in the next round. 

Our second iteration to the game was adding some random weapon pickups to make the game slightly faster paced and to be able to shoot the other players faster. You started with a pistol that could shoot 5 spaces in front of you and some of the weapons we added were:

Shotgun- which had more of a spread affect to the shot so that you could shoot someone with having to be directly in line with them

Sniper- so that you could shoot someone that was on the other side of the map to you and shoot through the walls that were on the board.

Rocket launcher- which once shot would hit and affect a bigger area of the map in a flower shape

Machine Gun- this weapon enabled you to shoot in twice in two different directions 

We found that this made the game a lot more fun to play and more exciting. If we had more time our next iteration would have been to add some sort of co-op play to it so you could work together with someone. whi