Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays readers!

whilst participating in finals and holiday festivities we are working on making the tutorial and the first three levels completely playable and then ideally aesthetically pleasing

to achieve this i have been working on the "advice" that will be displayed on the landscape in the levels. the advice tells the player attributes of the philosopher they are playing as so that in the later levels they understand how to make decisions as each philosopher.

Also I read this amazing article by Valerie Shute about stealth assessment in Newton's Playground.  I have managed to arrange a meeting with her to discuss this project! yayy!! in the meantime we are thinking about how to incorporate assessment into the game.

finally, we are working on a title, but have no ideas yet

The Fake Conference

Great Idea!

Last week my sibling and I decided to hold a fake conference so we could discuss our projects, so I created this presentation to inform her about philosophy game. (Special thanks for Ann for listening to my talk!)

Click Me

After the presentation and some discussion, I got some interesting ideas about how to deal with the problems I had been having. I am going to start the trolley car levels at the most basic scenario and work to more complicated situations, but the first one is going to be soo soo so simple. I have also decided to just make things and see how they turn out rather then obsessing over one decision, because the obsessing is not productive and it would be better if i decided and then ended up remaking something if I changed my mind. 

The last interesting-game related thing was that I went to the philosophy department at my university and got my old ethical theory professor excited about this game! It is a giant victory to have his interest! 

The Trolley Car Level 

• I read a long article that gave me some insight into the trolley car problem and how each philosopher would react 
• and how each philosopher would act to several modified versions 
• so the idea behind this level will be the very classic example of the trolley car problem 
• a trolley car going on a track that will kill 5 people, or you can make the trolley switch tracks and kill 1 person 
• I am working on the sketch of the level, trying to incorporate coins and level mechanics and things that make the game fun  
• hopefully next week we can do another of those sketch to modeled level posts 

Indecision and Lenses

This week has been all about indecision. We skipped level 2 and went straight to working on level 3, the first trolley car level(recall that every couple of levels we build a philosophical thought experiment-aka a trolley car level). but there are so many possibilities and variations for this level that it seemed impossible to decide. When I tried  to ask people they got all excited and gave me 100 new ideas, so I wasn't making much progress. At some point during the week I considered remaking the game entirely, but it was a bit extreme.
In the end we tried to figure out the micro/macro aspects of the story, but that is also difficult so there isn't much new stuff to report on this week.
A few days later we thought we had finally figured out what each philosopher would do in trolley car 1, until we stumbled across an article that threw a wrench in the whole business of the objectivist. We are taking it under consideration.

Lens 4- The Lens of Curiosity

• what questions does my game put into the player's mind?
• what is the correct thing to do in a variety of situations? 
• what would the objectivist/kantian/utilitarian do in this situation? and is that the correct thing to do?
• 
  
• what am I doing to make them care about these questions?
• their score depends on how well they understand these questions
• what can I do to make them invent more questions?
• include more puzzling situations 
• introduce more philosophers 

Lens 5- The Lens of Endogenous Value

• what is valuable to the players in my game?
• gold, minions and score
• how can i make it more valuable to them?
• in addition to getting minions for good score, the player could also lose minions for bad score 
• score is based on consistency to the philosophy 
• I am not sure how to make it more valuable, yet
• what is the relationship between value in the game and the player's motivations?
• the puzzles will be easier to complete with more minions, which the player will get from doing the earlier levels well enough to score high 
• the player will see his/her score out of the total possible score, so not wanting to feel lame is motivation  

Lens 6- The Lens of Problem Solving

• what problems does my game ask the player to solve?
• this game is full of problems to be solved (trolley car problems)
• it also asks the player to solve them from different perspectives 
• are there hidden problems to solve that arise as part of gameplay?
• yes
• as the story develops problems arise from the philosophies that the player did not choose at the beginning
• but I am not sure of what they will actually be, or how the player can overcome them yet
• how can my game generate new problems so that players keep coming back?
• there are oodles of trolley car problems and different variations that will make the player pause and reconsider what they thought they knew about each philosophy 

Models

Lately I have been working on modeling the philosopher animals. 

The models are based on sketches that I showed a couple of posts ago. 

None of them are finished, but this is how they look thus far. 

Each of them are based on an animal that in some way represents the philosophy.

I am having an issue with trying to find the balance between good modeling and the game itself. 

On the one hand I want to use this time to practice making quality models that I can texture and re-use and have in a portfolio, but on the other hand I have a lot of stuff to do for this current project and not a lot of time left to finish it and I am supposed to be highlighting the education and fun. Any thoughts on how to deal with this? 

Of the bird, lemur. otter and fox, one is extraneous- but I have yet to determine which.

 The minion
     I made this by extruding a circle until I had the main shape of the robe. The sleeves were made separately of another circle and the hood is made from a cube. This model looks a lot like the sketch and will be easy to animate since it has no legs.



The Bird 
      This bird will represent Kantianism. The original idea started out like a heron or an ibis, but along the way it started looking like the bird from Up. He fits less with the philosophy, but I like him better this way. He is the only one that deviated from the original idea. 



The dog
      This dog is the player's pet at the beginning of the game. Later it gets turned into the philosopher.
I like that this model looks a bit human and a bit dog-like. I made the whole thing out of one cube. I am pleased with the way he looks.

The fox
      This model will probably be the objectivist. Foxes are independent, which is a main characteristic of this philosophy. The model is a modified version of the dog. I particularly like the tail. The face above the snout and the ears seem a little flat, so I am still working on that. I am not sure if i like the arms, but they will do for now.  


The otter 
     Currently this is the alternate model. The body of the otter which is essentially a tube, was made from an extruded circle which was then manipulated to create the head, ears, tail and feet. The hands have about as many faces as the rest of the body. Overall i like this model, but he is a little blocky. Being blocky is an easy fix though. 

The Lemur
     The lemur will be the utilitarian because it is a group oriented philosophy and lemurs are pack animals. This model is also a modified version of the dog. I particularly like the tail and I think the way he looks stretchy is good. There is something wrong with his face though. Obviously all of the models need eyes, but there is something else wrong with the lemur face so I am still working with it.   

I would love to UV unwrap and texture all of these models, but I have to prioritize the game as a whole so we will have to see how efficiently the rest of the game comes together.

Also I will get back to Schell's lenses soon!

Mechanics

So the team sat down and had a discussion about mechanics for level 1 and for the game in general .

Scoring
the points for each level are determined in a matrix

        This is what we created for level 1. The main goal for the Kantian and the Utilitarian is to get to the minion. They are supposed to prioritize this over getting money, but there is nothing wrong with getting money so they still get points for that. The main goal for the Objectivist is to get the coins.

       We want there to be a negative penalty for time after a set amount of seconds. The penalty would be worse for the objectivist, one of the goals of the objectivist is to move quickly.
Probably wont implement this in the first level, but definitely in other levels. It is difficult to make a decision about this before playtesting of the level has happened. More on this later.
       After each level your score is evaluated and used to determine how many followers you get in the next level.

Minion Control 
In each level the player is able to control themselves and each of their minions, however the player can only control one thing at a time. If the player chooses to only control the philosopher then that is his/her prerogative.  The level ends when the philosopher goes through the goal door.

Level 1

The tutorial is mostly finished, so this week we are working on level 1.
The original sketch of level 1 looks like this  level 1 sketch
The idea behind this level is that this is how you get the first follower and you probably won't ever lose this one. In this level we also introduce the structure of the game: at the beginning of the level we give you a rule about your philosophy, probably given like a suggestion. Throughout the level you gain and lose points depending on how consistent you are with that rule. At the end we will show you your score out of the total points possible and you will have the option to do it again and try to be more consistent.

For this level you have the choice of prioritizing talking to the minion or getting all of the coins. The objectivist should prioritize getting the coins and the other two philosophers should prioritize talking to/rescuing the minion. It is not definite, but because this is the first way to get a minion we are considering having the player re-do the level if they do not score high enough to get their minion.

Next week I will go into the specifics about the mechanics for this level and for the game in general.

And as always, here is a lens from Schell's Art of Game Design   

Lens 3-  Fun
This is difficult to think about objectively and nobody has played the game yet so it is difficult to determine what is actually fun. But here is my best guess about what is fun about the game. 

• philosopher ghosts 
• animals that give philosophy advice 
• humor (once it is put in place)
• minion control/being able to control multiple units 

weekly update and some lenses

This week I am working on modeling level 1
working on the character models
and sketching further levels

I do not have new photos of content to show so I will talk about concepts and the lenses from Jesse Schell's Art of Game Design

Lens 2-Surprise (p26)

• what will surprise the players when they play the game?
• the human characteristics of animals 
• philosophy jokes (hopefully)
• animal portraits of philosophers 
• the things they learn about each philosophy 
• Does the story have surprises? 
• philosopher ghosts 
• your pet turns into other animals 
• the story isn't very developed yet, so ideally there will be more later
• Do the game rules have surprises? the artwork? the technology?
• the rules change depending on the philosophy you are following, which will be a surprise 
• the artwork is still very undecided, so it is hard to say 
• the player is able to control all of their minions (one at a time)..unless they leave you
• Do the rules gives players ways to surprise each other? 
• the rules for each philosophy allow players to surprise each other by using rules to get what they want