Homework 8

1. Is the space in your game discrete or continuous?
 I think it is discrete. Because the player will walk in different locations/stores to fight with the aliens and find the dragon ball. The spaces of different stores are independent. They are connected by the street in the middle.

2. How many dimensions does your space have?
It should be 3 dimensional.

3. What are the boundaries of your space?
The boundaries is surrounded by the house, stores and forest. The player will not see exact boundaries. But when the player walks into the house or stores, the boundaries would be the walls. They will not be able to walk through the wall or the forest. The boundaries will be set up transparently.

4. How many verbs do your players (characters) have? What are they?
Fight: The player will be able to use the sword by pressing certain key and fight with the aliens.
Interact: The player should be able to interact with/talk to the person at stands to get the hints or triggers to proceed.
Move: The player should be able to walk to different directions by pressing four keys.
Run and Jump: These two can be the same key by setting up time endurance pressing on the key. The player can press the key to jump over object or run by keeping pressing the key.

5. How many objects can each verb act on? What are these objects?
Fight: The fight verb can only act on the aliens and enemies.
Interact: The interact verb should be able to use on the villagers and the objects, such as the dragon balls, swords, food, etc.
Move: This verb should be able to act on the grounds, and any platform that the player is walking on.
Run and Jump: These two verbs should act on the same objects as in "Move".

6. How many ways can players achieve their goals?
I think there should be only one way to achieve the goal, which is to collect all the dragon balls and get the dragon out. But there are different triggers for them to find the clues of the location of the dragon balls.

7. How many subjects do the players control? What are these subjects?
For now what I am thinking of is the character and the sword. I saw my teammates created other equipments as well. The sword can be upgraded when the player get certain level and the player can have different skills set with different sword.

8. How do side effects change constraints.
The player has to upgrade the sword before he/she can fight over certain alien. The player may not be able to upgrade the sword until they talk to the right person and get the information. This may differentiate the time for the player to find the balls and it may take forever for a game beginner.

9. What are the operative actions in your game?
Fight (swing the sword), move forward and back, jump, and run.

10. What are the resultant actions in your game?
Talk to the villagers, collect the balls, enter into the store

11. What actions would you like your players to do that they cannot presently do? (based on your current knowledge of Blender)
We have not done a lot yet. I'd like to see the players to interact with the villagers smoothly and the villagers will response appropriately.

12. What is the ultimate goal of your game?
The ultimate goal of the game is to collect the dragon balls and get out the dragon. The player will make a wish to get rid of all the aliens and save the village.

13. Are there short and long term goals? What are they?
The short team goals are to fight over the aliens hidden in different spaces and collect each of the dragon balls.

14. How do you plan to make the game goals known and understood by the player?
The player will be able to know the story following the game. In the beginning the master of the player will talk to the player about the background story. During the process, the player will be able to talk to the villagers on the street and get to know more about the information.

15. What are the foundational rules of your game?
The foundational rules may include the sword level, blood meter, dragon balls in the bag.

16. How are these rules enforced?
There should be alert setting to alert the player of there blood meter when they are fighting with the aliens. And everytime the player collects the dragon ball, the bag will show up so that the player will know the number of the dragon balls collected. The sword level will be enforced everytime the player upgrade his/her sword. The player should be able to check these rules all the time.

17. Does your game develop real skills? What are they?
I think so. The game will enforce the player's responsibilities and his/her analysis skills. The player will need to analyze where is the enemies and how they will be able to win the game. And the player will need to go and talk to the person in the game to collect information. They will be able to practice their skills on collecting information.

18. Does your game develop virtual skills? What are they?
Maybe. I was thinking maybe they can build up their own sword in some certain.

Homework 7

Description: The sword can be controlled using A to stab the monkey head. Once the sword gets close to the monkey, the monkey will get exploded. The sword is the parent of the camera so that the viewpoint will be from player in the game. The color of the ground was changed to make it like ground.

How it fits into our game: This animation will be used in the fighting scenarios when the player uses sword to fight with aliens.

Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42628612/Game%20Design/Homework%207.blend

Homework 6

1. For each of the four elements of the Tetrad, explain how it is addressed by your game. If one of the four elements is not used, please state this.

Story: The frame of the story results from a discussion of our team. We have different thoughts and finally we combined it together. The story is all about to have the players having fun in the game. The player will be playing a role as the hero in the game to save the whole village at the end. The background story is this mysterious old saying passed on: If you can collect all the dragon balls in the village, you will have any of your dreams come true. The aliens heard the story and want to control the world. They landed on the village and try to infect all the villagers with viruses so that they can easily find the balls. The player is supposed to shoulder the responsibility of saving the village.
Technology: We are all currently using Blender now. Mike knows Python, so we are able to achieve "whatever we like" in the game later on.
Mechanics: The player is supposed to use sword to fight with these aliens. I am thinking there should have no time limits because the player has to fight with the aliens and at the same time look for the balls ahead of the aliens. It is more of exploretary. The more aliens the player kills, the more hints they will get to find the dragon ball.
Aesthetics: We have discussed the design theme of our game in our kickoff meeting. The game skeleton was just built up but there are so many details need to be fixed and put into right place at the time. So we searched around the images and games and tried to find the images in our minds for our final game. The following is a picture of what we see our game may look like. Follow the theme, we will be able to build our objects and design the games in a consistent way, especially when we work independently.

2. Do the four (or less) elements work towards a current theme?

I think so. We have built up the game as RPG in medieval era and trying to fill in the details with our frame of the background story.

3. In your own words, describe the meaning of a "theme", and how does it differ from an "experience" (see book for examples in Chapters 2 and 5.)

From player's perspective, the theme is the impression on the game while the experience is what their impression comes from, including the interface, etc. (all the elements in Tetrad).

From designer's perspective, the theme is the concept or idea that applied throughout the entire game consistently. The entire game should follow one theme. The experience can be really different with regard to different settings and game elements. The designer will consider Tetrad when designing for desired user experience.

4.What is your game's theme?

Basically, it's about medieval era fighting game. We wanted the game neither too cartoonish nor too realistic.

5.What are the elements in your game that are meant to reinforce this theme?

All the elements (aesthetics, technology, mechanics, and story) we have been working on are based on the theme that we have discussed. We have been creating the objects following the four elements in Tetrad.

6. What is it about your game that you feel makes it special and powerful?

I think our team makes it special. We discussed and agreed on the game background story. Everyone of us is motivated to learn skills in blender. And we are trying to think about the user experience when thinking about the objects and mechanics. I think this makes the game special.

Homework 5

I created another object for this homework-- the sword that the character can use. Basically, I added 4 motions on this sword:
1. Forward (F)
2. Back (B)
3. Rotate and move forward (R), if you keep pressing on R, it'll be the mass stabbing.
4. Rotate and back (S)

These motions can be used when the character is fighting with the aliens and the player will use the sword to protect himself/herself. Once the player get much experience, he or she will be able to upgrade his/her sword and get much skills to use the sword. The following is the video of the sword animation.