Tutorial Photos and Lenses from "Art of Game Design"

Tutorial Update

As of right now there is a rough model of the tutorial because we want people to play it and see if the instructions make sense.

 As you can see, they all look really similar to the sketches. I plan to change the aesthetics once we work out the major bugs. The most important thing right now is that people play test the instructions and mechanics.

We are still working on putting the ghosts in scene two and getting the information about each philosophy to show up when the player stands by each door. Initially I wanted the ghosts to look like the animal philosophers but since I have not finished the models for those yet I had to improvise, so for now the ghosts look a bit like the Pac-Man ghost. They are an amusing place holder.




As for the third scene, there is a similar one for each
of the philosophers. Once the animal models are
finished the text in the blue boxes will be replaced
with photos.

In addition to working on the game and updating this blog I have also been re-reading Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design  

It is described as a book a lenses, where each lens is a themed set of questions to consider in regards to your game. The book has 100 lenses so I thought I would go through a couple each week to get a better picture of the game . 

Lens 1- Essential Experience (pg 21)

• What experience do I want the player to have?
• solving philosophical thought experiments as different philosophers
• being introduced to different philosophies in a non-serious way 
• What is essential to that experience?
• in order for the player to handle things as different philosophers they need to know about the philosophers
• so a little bit of education is essential 
• in order for the experience to be non-serious it is essential for there to be humor throughout 
• How can my game capture that essence?  
• Because the game is a platformer we are going to utilize the scenery space and the platforms for small bits of education 
• we also used the story to set up a mentor relationship so it makes sense for someone to follow the player around and give him advice, which is really education about the philosophies 
• our game captures the non-serious essence by using things like the arguing ghosts in the tutorial and the concept of minions 
• both of these things are presented in a way that seems humorous 
• We also hope to use aesthetics and comedy to keep the mood light
• I am not sure if this is all, if not I reserve the right to change it as the game progresses. 

More lenses and such next week

Tutorial Sketches

Hello!

This week we are working on completing the tutorial so people can play it and we can make sure our game makes sense thus far. I have been having issues getting all of the textures to show up, but the other day I finally got it! Wheee! For your amusement I will provide the very rough sketches of the tutorial that I drew on some computer paper during class.

 The tutorial, as well as the following levels are intended to follow a story. In a future post I will put the entire story, but for now know that...

 the main character(the player) follows his dog up the steps and into a creepy temple.
In this scene the player learns how to walk and jump and use doors.










Inside the temple the philosopher ghosts are arguing and they ask the player which of them is correct.
In this scene the player walks to each door to learn a thing or two about each philosophy and chooses a door to walk through based on that philosophy. 

Once the player chooses a philosophy the player learns that the ghost of the philosopher she/he chose is inside his/her pet dog and will guide them on their quest.
Here the player learns that they can take advice from the animal following them around because the animal is an authority on the philosophy. The player also learns that the quest is to practice the philosophy and teach others. 



Currently we are working on the part where the player can walk past each door in the second scene and information about the philosophy will appear at the bottom of the screen. We also need to figure out how to make the philosopher ghosts because right now I am unsure of how to achieve that.
And then after figuring out those things- the models are not all finished so the tutorial will first be played with cubes and spheres-hopefully people can overlook that at the beginning.

some other miscellaneous things on my mind about the game :
The theme of the game is philosophy, cannot forget to always be reinforcing the theme.
I want to figure out the aesthetic of our game. I know it does not matter right now- but I still want to figure it out.

In the next couple of posts I will put up some pictures of the finished tutorial, write out the story and work through Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design 

More Progress and Some Issues

        I.            What’s new?

a.       The game now has a story! Which provides a frame for levels

b.      Vague concept art  for characters , levels and start up screen

        Otter ; the Kantian ; the Utilitarian ; Minions

c.       A few unfinished models

d.      A prototype for multi-character movement

  picture of the prototype!

      II.       

            What are we working on?

W

a.       Finishing touches of the prototype

b.      Completing the tutorial so people can play it, finally!

c.       Level design

d.      Character models 

    III.        

    I          Issues?

a.       Remembering to update this blog (ha)

b.      Want to design levels based on thought experiments-how to set that up in a way that fits with the game?

c.       Keep levels progressively harder, still interesting and related to the philosophies

d.      The game needs a title

e.      And we need some play testers who haven’t heard us talk about the game every day for months. Any takers?

Characters

Lately we have been designing the characters of the main philosophers. Currently the Objectivist is an otter; the Kantian is a bird and the Utilitarian is a lemur. Sketches and further explanations to follow soon.

Issues Thus Far

As with all projects, we are having some issues thinking through some things. I thought talking about them a bit might help us puzzle through them. 

1. How to teach the player in a subtle way? 
• We are aware that once people realize they are actively learning something during the game they will be significantly less interested in playing and keeping the game fun and interesting is the top priority. The educational aspects need to be subtle so that the player is overwhelmed with information, but we are not sure how to make the philosophy subtle in a way that the player still learns. 
2. The player might need to come to the game with some knowledge. 
•  One of the strategies we want to implement for the player to learn is that the player would gain and lose points depending on whether their actions were consistent with the philosophy. For that to work the player would need to have a slight idea what the philosopher would do in some situations. How can we teach the player a few things about each philosophy beforehand so that this strategy would work? Perhaps this idea just will not work out, but I would like to find a way to implement, maybe it is something for later levels?
3. Philosophy is a large field. 
• It seems unlikely that we could teach the player everything about all 4 philosophies that we have chosen. How do we decide what the most important aspects of each philosophy are? 

These are some of the things that we are trying to solve at the moment. 

mechanics and structure

Progress!

The team has had some ideas about how to handle multiple philosophers. Of course nothing is set in stone, but here is what we are thinking right now.

The game will have four main philosophers: The Utilitarian, The Objectivist, the The Confucian and The Kantian. Each will play a different role/have different abilities. 

When the game starts the player will choose one of the main philosophers and they will use that one philosopher to navigate the levels.

In addition to controlling one philosopher the player will also have the option of controlling several secondary characters.

I have created the following image to illustrate this mechanic.

In this instance the stick person is the philosopher that the player chooses at the beginning of the game. The stars represent the secondary characters. The yellow circles represent gold. The dark gray areas are platforms for the characters to walk on and the light gray areas are doorways to finish the level. 

Hopefully from this image it is clear that the player can always see the main philosopher and the secondary characters at the same time. The player will be able to control all 4 of the characters, however the player is only able to control one character at a time. The player can choose to take only the philosopher to the end of the level, or the philosopher as well as any number of the secondary characters. The player can split the gold between every character in his party or keep it all for the philosopher. These decisions should be made based on what philosopher they are playing as. 

As of right now this is the mechanic that we are working with. More updates on this idea soon.   

Progress

The list has been narrowed to four philosophers whose philosophies will star in the game:

1.  Ayn Rand/Objectivism 
2. John Stuart Mill/Utilitarianism
3. Immanuel Kant/Kantianism
4. Confucius/ Confucianism      

The team is still working on how exactly to educate the players on each philosophy. What we know for sure is that we want the education to be subtle. We are working on prototypes and discussing ways to educate the player.