This week is about education.
The education in the first 3 levels is very important. The player needs to understand how to think like the philosopher thinks in order to succeed in the trolley levels. As of right now it seems like it will be hard to know for sure if we have given the player enough information/the right information for them to complete the levels successfully. This is something we will know more about as people play the game.
But as far as we can know we have the information that we think the player needs to know about each philosophy for the first 3 levels. So the problem is that we know what we want the player to know and when, but we do not know exactly how to tell the player what they need to know.
At first we thought about just explicitly telling the player each thing they needed to know, but then we kept getting stuck on the wording and keeping with the story. We tossed this idea back and forth for a while.
And then we consulted someone else who suggested we tell the player a few attributes of the philosopher and they show a sliding scale with a marked ideal range while they play the level and have each action affect the scale. The plan is that the player would then be able to modify his/her actions to keep the scale in the right place and in this way get an intuitive understanding of each philosophy.
This seems like a good idea so we are going to make it and if it does not work out well we will find a new plan for education. Currently I am working on using the list of attributes of each philosophy to create categories for the sliding scales. Ideally by next week I will have the categories and scales finished with an idea of where each philosophy stands in each.
The other thing on my mind this week is style. Style seems important and deciding the style of the game seems like a daunting task that we will have to stick with forever. I know that is not the case, but it seems to be the feeling that is stopping me from developing the style of the game. So the secondary mission for next week is to decide and sketch the style. It is time to commit so the game can develop further.
thank you, that is all
Friday, January 24, 2014
Friday, January 17, 2014
Heavy Things
This week has been focused on modeling. Specifically on modeling the objects that are supposed to fall on the player in level 2-the heavy objects.
The ideas we tossed around for heavy things were a safe, an anvil, an anchor and an elephant. I would have liked to make a piano, but it seemed too complicated for such a small part in the overall game.
It is difficult to keep in mind that these models are supposed to be extremely lo-poly since they are not the emphasis of the level. While I want all of the models to be detailed and perfect it is not what this situation calls for. Understanding moderation seems important.
The safe was easy to make since it is a pretty standard shape. It was the first "heavy object" that I tackled and finished it quickly. I tried to move onto anvil afterwards. In the end anvil did not communicate what it was very well so I put it aside and will most likely return to it in the future but for now it is out of the project.
It took several attempts to get the anchor right, but it was a fun process! It does not look 100% right, the top seems like it should have a hole in it, but I think it will serve its purpose in the game excellently. I want to go back later and give all of these models amazing textures, but that is not the most important thing right now. Priorities.
The elephant was the most challenging. The body, legs and tail were simple, but getting the trunk, head and ears to look "natural" took many attempts. It still does not look perfect, but it has come a long way. Elephants have weird necks. Also making the trunk look natural is like making a tentacle look natural. After staring at this model for a long time I realized the head wasn't prominent enough and the ears were in the wrong place, so now you are looking at the closest to accurate version.
Is it problematic that all of the "heavy objects" are gray?
Goals for next week:
The ideas we tossed around for heavy things were a safe, an anvil, an anchor and an elephant. I would have liked to make a piano, but it seemed too complicated for such a small part in the overall game.
It is difficult to keep in mind that these models are supposed to be extremely lo-poly since they are not the emphasis of the level. While I want all of the models to be detailed and perfect it is not what this situation calls for. Understanding moderation seems important.
The safe was easy to make since it is a pretty standard shape. It was the first "heavy object" that I tackled and finished it quickly. I tried to move onto anvil afterwards. In the end anvil did not communicate what it was very well so I put it aside and will most likely return to it in the future but for now it is out of the project.
Is it problematic that all of the "heavy objects" are gray?
Goals for next week:
- put these objects (and other necessary objects) in level 2
- work on the camera movement /how much of the level the player should see at once
- finish the educational textures
- a side note on this
- it turns out unity uses textures that are powers of 2 and if your texture is not that size it stretches and distorts it to that size
- since I did not want distorted textures I had to figure out what size to make them
- so I took a break from working on the actual textures to write a quick program to list powers of 2 and tell the user if an input number is a power of 2
- make a complete list of what NEEDS to be finished before people can play test the game
so next week I will be back to tell you that I accomplished all of these things! (at least that is the plan)
cheers!
Friday, January 10, 2014
Level 2
Hello!
Somehow we managed to do some work over the holiday break. Mostly we have been working on level 2 and continuing the quest to implement the educational aspects of the first 3 levels.
The second level is about minion control. It shows the player the differences between the minion and the philosopher and how to use both of them to accomplish goals. As usual I will share with you the original sketch I made of the level, that is barely one step above a napkin doodle. Remember that the player can control the philosopher as well as any minions under his/her control but the player can only move one character at a time.
This is the second half of the level. The only difference that we had not showcased at this point was the difference in speed. To achieve this we created a series of things that fall from the sky and would squish the minion if he tried to run under them, but would not squish the philosopher.
The heavy things were an opportunity to put humorous things in the level! To the left you can see some of the ideas for heavy things. Initially I wanted to use a safe, a piano, and an anvil, but now I have a couple of other things in mind, like elephants and anchors so we will see what is more fun to model in 3D .
The main goal of this level is to teach the player how to use the philosopher and minion(s) effectively. Because this is the case we are not sure if this level will have a scoring matrix that is split up by philosophy. We might implement one later, but as of right now we want the focus of the level to be the minion actions rather than what each specific philosopher would do.
That being said we are still teaching the player aspects of his/her chosen philosophy in this level. In the last post I mentioned that we were working on creating educational bits of information about each philosophy. The idea behind these is that the player will only see ones pertaining to his/her chosen philosophy and that they will be worked into the layout of the level, rather than being in front of the screen. The tips should give the player a clue about how the philosopher would act in that level and future situations.
It has taken me some time to figure out how to communicate aspects of each philosophy. It was difficult to figure out how to say a lot about each philosophy with a small space and a few words. I have a list of what the player needs to know at certain checkpoints to score the maximum on the scoring matrix; I am working backwards from that to create the small bits of information and where to put each one. Hopefully next week the list will be close to complete so we can talk about that.
Somehow we managed to do some work over the holiday break. Mostly we have been working on level 2 and continuing the quest to implement the educational aspects of the first 3 levels.
The second level is about minion control. It shows the player the differences between the minion and the philosopher and how to use both of them to accomplish goals. As usual I will share with you the original sketch I made of the level, that is barely one step above a napkin doodle. Remember that the player can control the philosopher as well as any minions under his/her control but the player can only move one character at a time.
okay so the thought behind this level was to create situations that highlight the differences/advantages of the philosopher and the minion. The major differences between the two are size (minions are smaller), speed (philosopher moves faster), and jump height (minions jump higher). We might add more differences later, but for this level these are the ones we are working with. In this first half of the level all of the platforms are too high for the philosopher to jump onto. So the player has two options; the minion is smaller than the philosopher and jumps high enough to make the platforms, or the philosopher can jump on top of the minion and then jump again onto the platform (like leap frog). If the player jumps onto the platform with the minion then there is a button (the bright blue box) and when the minion stands on it a ladder will appear and the player can control the philosopher to get him onto the platform. If the player thought to just skip all of the opportunities to go to higher platforms then the player could walk to the right and try to go through the door in the bottom right. When they got to the door they would realize the philosopher is too tall to go through and only the minion is short enough to go through. This was intended to get the player to understand that the philosopher and minion are different sizes and therefore are used for different things.
This is the second half of the level. The only difference that we had not showcased at this point was the difference in speed. To achieve this we created a series of things that fall from the sky and would squish the minion if he tried to run under them, but would not squish the philosopher.
The heavy things were an opportunity to put humorous things in the level! To the left you can see some of the ideas for heavy things. Initially I wanted to use a safe, a piano, and an anvil, but now I have a couple of other things in mind, like elephants and anchors so we will see what is more fun to model in 3D .
The main goal of this level is to teach the player how to use the philosopher and minion(s) effectively. Because this is the case we are not sure if this level will have a scoring matrix that is split up by philosophy. We might implement one later, but as of right now we want the focus of the level to be the minion actions rather than what each specific philosopher would do.
That being said we are still teaching the player aspects of his/her chosen philosophy in this level. In the last post I mentioned that we were working on creating educational bits of information about each philosophy. The idea behind these is that the player will only see ones pertaining to his/her chosen philosophy and that they will be worked into the layout of the level, rather than being in front of the screen. The tips should give the player a clue about how the philosopher would act in that level and future situations.
It has taken me some time to figure out how to communicate aspects of each philosophy. It was difficult to figure out how to say a lot about each philosophy with a small space and a few words. I have a list of what the player needs to know at certain checkpoints to score the maximum on the scoring matrix; I am working backwards from that to create the small bits of information and where to put each one. Hopefully next week the list will be close to complete so we can talk about that.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
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
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
Friday, November 15, 2013
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!)
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!)
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
Friday, November 8, 2013
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
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
Thursday, October 31, 2013
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!
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.
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 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!
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