level scale and level 3

scale

The time has come to fix the levels in terms of scale. Earlier we decided the size of everything- the philosopher, the minion, the blocks that the level would be made of, how high the philosopher and minion can jump. the units could be anything really.

the philosopher -- 2 units tall, jumps 3 units high 

the minion -- 1.5 units tall, jumps 3.5-4 units high (not tested yet) but he definitely jumps higher than the       philosopher 

the block -- the basic building structure for any level. 2 units long, .25 unit thick. 

so armed with the scale and the idea that all of the levels would be constructed out of the same block, I re modeled the first 2 levels.  They look much better, even if the aesthetic has not been implemented yet. The idea for the aesthetic is there, though which is an improvement. 

level 1 with scale, but without aesthetics (keep that in mind)

level 2 with rescaled objects

level 3

has been changed! yay! I have been turning level 3 over in my mind for quite some time. It did not seem clear what the player was supposed to do, it was difficult to create a scoring system for that level. It started to seem like the only redeeming thing about the level in its current state was that it was true to the trolley car problem. 

a very quick MS paint doodle of the level

a few quick announcements about this doodle. 

1- I did it very quickly, and it modeled after an actual sketch. 

2- the X marks the spot (ha) where the lever will be. 

3- the thing in the top right is a trolley car 

4- the double triangle in the background in an hourglass, with sand in it

5- the large 'A' and 'B' indicate the platforms

thank you, that is all. 

the re-worked level 3 looks like this. This version is less true to the classic example, but it is clearer what the player should do. I have begun modeling the level,  but the necessary animations are not yet complete. This is what I envision :

• when the level starts a trolley falls from the sky and squishes platform B (the one with 5 people instead of 1) and then we show a lever pointing to that platform
• player needs to understand that the trolley fell there because of the lever pointing that way
• player cant move at the point
• then the level resets and the hourglass in the background starts counting down
• when the hour glass empties another trolley will fall to a platform
• the platform depends on the where the lever is pointing

This seems easier to work with than the original level 3 idea. It seems easier for the player and most of it uses mechanics that have already been created for the first 2 levels, but of course if it turns out that it is still complicated I will consider level 3 take 3.

The main differences between the new and old versions of level 3:

• in the old version the player walked around a lot - in the new version the only moving they do is to move the lever (if they so desire)
• ideally the new version will have a tiny cinematic beforehand to show the trolley action (mentioned above)
• the new version features an interesting way to show time counting down , at least I think its interesting
• the new version has the trolley falling out of the sky rather than running on a track, this is less true to the actual trolley car problem. but that can be overlooked for the time being (and perhaps forever)

real life problems

the last thing on my mind has less to do with the actual game and more about how to get work done in general. In my workspace there is a cork board dedicated to Kourality and it has 3 columns- to do, in progress, and done. The board is filled with a bunch of small cards with tasks written on them. Everytime I am going to do work, I look at the board and decide what needs to be done. I was operating under the assumption that the programmer of this program used the cork board as well, but that did not seem to be working in terms of making progress on the programming for the game. I am going to work on some ideas to keep the game to do list in his face, besides printing a list and taping it to his forehead.

Action Paths and Assignment

Last time we were talking about the priorities of each philosophy and how we would use those to create guidelines for what actions would get you a result of each philosophy.
Currently the plan is to have the player play the first three levels without a tutorial and without instruction and to monitor their actions throughout the levels. After each level we would do a small assessment of the actions from that level and mark the player as K, O or U. That happens again after the second and third levels. So for example, the first level is simple so we were able to create a small matrix.

      key:
K -- kantianism
O -- objectivism
U -- utilitarianism
chest -- a treasure chest (with money inside, instead             of loose coins all over the map)
minion -- going to rescue the minion in the far corner                of the level
speed -- the amount of time it takes the player to                    reach the goal in the level (will be measured              in greater than of less than a certain time,                  but that specific time is not determined yet)

Based on the order in which you did the actions in the chart, after level 1 the players is marked as K, O or U for level 1. There is another (slightly different) scoring system for levels 2 and 3. After playing the first three levels the player would have 3 "scores" each K, O, or U. If the player has the same letter for two of the levels (scoring U in levels 1 and 2 for example) then we run a final check (for exceptions). If the player passes the exceptions then the player is marked as that philosophy and is informed of the great news! (keep in mind that the letter scores for each level and the exceptions are all managed internally and the player has no idea)
The exceptions
Even if you score a certain philosophy twice, there could still be a certain action that you did that means you would never be labeled as that philosopher. For example a Kantian would never end the life of another person. So even if the player was evaluated as a Kantian in the first and third levels, he would not be a true Kantian if he killed the minion in the second level. So if the player scores K in at least two of the levels it it would set off a flag to check the exceptions for Kantianism at which point it would check if the player had purposefully killed anyone throughout the first three levels (again all of this is managed without the players knowledge). If the player had killed someone during the levels then he failed the exceptions (not a big deal, just means he is not a Kantian). If the player fails the exceptions then they will get randomly assigned to one of the other two philosophies. This probably isnt a perfect way to handle the exception cases, but it will do for now until we find a better option.

This post was a little different because it had a a lot of thought that normally goes into the programming, but is skipped in the blog. But it seems important to understand the way the game is going to work (more than just on the surface level)

Hopefully soon we will get into aesthetics.

Action Paths and Priorities

hello!
We have decided (at least for now) to have the player play the first three levels without any instruction and not assigned to a philosophy. After the first three levels we will assign the player to a philosophy. The new story supports this idea and it is set up in such a way that it does not seem like a test (even though it is). The assignment to a philosophy is based on actions the player does in the first three levels. So it goes like this:

1. the game starts(yay!)
2. the player is in level 1 (there is no longer a tutorial) 
3. there are no instructions 
4. we monitor the actions of the player
5. based on those actions they are grouped into one of the philosophies
6. then they learn more about that philosophy and have to be consistent with that 

The best part is that the way the new story is set up, all of that makes total sense and (ideally) noone would question why any of that is happening, but more on the story next week.
Because the assignment is based on the actions in the first few levels we had to decide exactly what actions would constitute each philosophy. In order to do that we created a list of priorities for each philosopher. We then used that list to create an action path for each philosopher in each level; it is rough sketch rather than a rigid set of rules. Whichever path the player matches with the most will be the philosophy they get placed with. Some of the priorities had to be exaggerated from the original ideals of the philosophy, but that is to be expected since it is a game.

Priorities of each philosophy
This is intended to be a rough guideline for the philosophy. For example, the priorities of Objectivism might be something like speed, independence, absolutism and happiness, but most of those would not be priorities of Kantianism. Some of the priorities of Utilitarianism would include happiness and community, but not independence of absolutism.
Since one of the priorities of Objectivism is speed, we would monitor how long it took the player to go through the level (if the player explored the whole level it would take longer than if the player just breezed through quickly).    

Poster

Okay so let's talk about the poster.
        We designed it to represent the game at Digitech, which was an students+technology event at our university. We wanted to have the game there and have people play-test it, but we had class for the majority of the event so it did not end up working out. Luckily, we did have the poster there to represent the game and the people looking after the poster told me there was some interest in it throughout the day!

        The idea behind the poster was to explain the elemental tetrad of the game (Mechanics, Aesthetics, Story, Technology) without boring the reader to death. We wanted the poster to be halfway between a typical game poster (lots of flash, little explanation) and a research poster(lots of explanation, no flash). We also wanted to find a way to represent all three philosophies of the poster without it being visually overwhelming. Over the course of drafting, redrafting and redrafting the poster we made some changes to the story and aesthetics, which I am personally very excited about. So without further ado, here is the poster.

poster that we made for Digitech
Here is a link! (in case that is your style)

        We managed to represent all aspects of the tetrad and have some flair! The title has a color to represent each philosophy: orange for Objectivism, sky blue for Kaniantism,  gray for Utilitarianism). Under the title there is a small blurb that explains the game: an educational philosophy game that focuses on the differences between three philosophies, higher levels simulate trolley car problems. The elements of the tetrad are spread around the poster, and story is at the top because it is useful to know when considering the aesthetic, as well as the overall design of the poster. The story explains that the translucent purple humanoid on the poster has no memory of himself, his values, his likes and dislikes. He needs your help to find himself and figure out why the little robed guys follow him around offering to help and to figure out how he keeps ending up in weird situations.
        The humanoid is standing in front of a 3-sided mirror and there is a different character in each face, one for each philosophy. The humanoid is one of the three characters, throughout the game he figures out which one. In the poster the humanoid is translucent because everything is uncertain for him.
        The minions in the background represent understanding of the philosophy (because you get more of them in the game by demonstrating an understanding of the philosophy).
       The black to gray gradient in the background represents the aesthetic, which is dark and blurry in the beginning (because that is how the mind of the humanoid is-fuzzy and dark and uncertain). As the game progresses the humanoid remembers more about who he is and what he values. As that happens the aesthetic get lighter and more detailed.
        The mechanics and technology have not changed, since the last blog post about them. I like the changes we made to story and aesthetic. Hopefully the thought we put into the poster translates to the viewer. It might be one of those monkey cage situations where it makes sense to me because I have spent so much time working with it. The people that saw it seemed to understand what we were trying to get across, so that is promising!

Kourality

WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Eventually we decided to call the game Kourality, at least for now. 
I still like Die Ethik, but it sounds kind of serious (and this game isn't even a little serious). Kourality seems to better represent the game. It is a word we made up by combining Kantianism Objectivism Utilitarianism and moRALITY. We can change the title later if we think of something more fitting. It is very exciting to have even a working title!!!!!

In addition to thinking of a name I designed a poster to represent the game! I understand why it is not usually one person's job to think of concepts, design and model characters, create and debug levels AND make the posters. I really enjoy doing all of those things, but there are not even close to enough hours in a day to do it all. During the poster making process we decided it would be better to have the player play through the first 3 levels without instruction and to monitor them during that time and assign them to a philosophy based on that(but more on that in a later post.) The poster gave us new ideas for the story and aesthetic. We ended up re-writing the story and that led to us finally deciding on an aesthetic! WOO HOOOOOO! 

It was quite the action packed week, at least in terms of game progress. We are trying to keep up this momentum as we work on the weird bugs in the 3rd level and map out possible actions in the first 2 levels to certain philosophers. Next time lets talk in depth about the poster! 

Game Title

stop the presses! We have thought of some names for this game! Finally!

So we got together with a pseudo focus group and we all brainstormed names and then narrowed it down and asked some more people. We are still in the ask more people phase. But the main two names are

                         Kourality         and             Die Ethik 

So that is what we have going on; ideally we will make a final decision by the end of the week!

Thank you, that is all!

Start and Stop Progress

Stuck 
We seem to have been stuck for a while. Something about the first levels is not quite right and we keep rethinking the way they should be to accomplish the bigger goal . Now we are thinking that instead of forcing the player to pick a philosophy blindly we should let you play through the first few levels without any instruction. During those levels we will monitor the players in-game actions and the combination of those will determine which philosophy you align closest with. Then the player will play through the rest of the game as that philosopher.
I think that if we go this route we will have to have the first few levels for monitoring, and then the next levels will be about instructing the player about that philosophy? But that sounds like it could get boring, so perhaps we could have the first 3 levels for monitoring and then for the following levels implement the sliding scale idea in which the player sees a sliding scale with an ideal range that the player tries to stay in by performing certain actions. See? There are so many ideas floating around, it is hard to just pick one to implement and test.

Style
I still have access to the HUGE book about Game Design by David Perry, I think it would be beneficial for me to schedule some time with the book daily, just to think and what have you.
Also I regret to inform you that there has yet to be a style commitment. It feels like something that should develop naturally, yet I do not see it happening; so that is cause for some concern.

Digitech 
There is a small thing at our university where students show things they work on that are technology related. We would like to have the game there to see some people play-test the game. This will be beneficial so that we can continue moving forward with the education. If it seems like people are picking up on the subtle things we are trying to get the player to learn in the first few levels then thats great! But if not, we will need to return to the drawing board. This also might be a good opportunity to create the several versions of the first 3 levels that we keep bouncing between and we could have people play different versions throughout the day and see which one gets the better response overall.

Two very important things that we need before the event (besides a working version of the game):

1. a title for the game 
• or at least a working title, just SOMETHING
2. a poster to represent us and the game 
• since we have classes the day of the event we will not be able to be in attendance all day
• but we still want the game to be represented 
• it is unfortunate that there will be times when people will not be able to play the game because when we are gone, our computers will be gone
• perhaps we can have the poster to represent and also have some sort of "contact us if you want to playtest this game for us!" type of deal, but I do not want to just have my email lying around for everyone to see..hmm.. any ideas? 

okay so, think about all of that over the next few days. 

Ker Blam!