This summer I made a Game Design Document for a strategy game staring adorably backward humans who must compete for resources against highly advanced and bureaucratic futuristic civilizations. The document ran well over 100 pages, but it is far from complete. I have been rethinking the basic strategic elements since playing Pixel People, and took some time today to reaffirm the pillars of this game and overhaul the concept before working on the document again.

There are five pillars, which may be excessive, but that will stand until the game loops are more established. The first pillar is humour. The second and third pillars are the inspiration for this game: the enemy is playing a european style game where players do not influence others actions directly and the player is the only one playing that acts with a zero sum game mindset. The fourth pillar is repurposing tools, an idea in the original concept that was not as developed as it could be in the original document. The fifth pillar is a collection of game theory concepts that I want to develop in the repurposing mini-game and the world domination meta-game. Respectively, they are mapping, ordering, and nesting, versus allocation, growth, specialization, cybernetics, and system dynamics. In order to achieve the second and third pillars, the enemy AI may have to be designed using complex adaptive systems as well. Stated simply, the fifth pillar is to keep these concepts in mind while continuing to design the game so that it can avoid becoming as convoluted or shallow as previous iterations.

I have been reading the Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks, which inspired me to make the Starship Arya an integral character to the both the plot and an important NPC that assign missions to the player. So far, I have been working on a puzzle design chart for a tutorial challenge. A lot of the details are vague because 1) they have been covered in previous iterations and 2) they may need to be updated once the concept is developed more fully. Here are the basic steps:

1. You found an bike frame in a trash heap and you need to make it run again to make your UnderNauts able to move faster.
2. You ask the Starship Arya for a recipe to make the bike frame work and must complete one of several objectives to unlock a unique recipe that corresponds to the individual mission you completed. You will not be able to stumble upon locked recipes through experimentation until you level up the Science skill tree, so for now you must unlock them one at a time.
3. Salvage and combine parts to form any components that the recipe requires.
4. Attach these components to the frame as well as additional parts that are needed.
5. Solder these parts in an acceptable order to link them together and create a working bike.

Also, I want to move away from grungy and dirty, worn-out graphic design plans and towards a pre-school pastel and incorrectly assembled, misshapen style. This means revising HUD and menus, but I think it will benefit the game's aesthetic. The Prince of Thorns trilogy by Mark Lawrence has been another source of inspiration, but to explicitly say why would be a massive spoiler for those who number among the far too many that have not read these books.

More to come. Until then Happy Holidays!

So far only Jesse B's mechsuit character has made it into the game but I decided to make prototypes to start defining the spectrum of behaviours for our characters when they all get put in. I made one orange "heavy" mechsuit that has big hits, moves slowly, and charges his finisher quickly. I also made a blue "light" mechsuit that has smaller hits, faster movement, and charges his finisher slowly. Big hits also means further knockback, which makes it easier to knock opponents off the level without finishers - we are currently discussing whether or not players will get points for killing without using their finisher. The fallen player always loses points when they die. I played some Playstation All-Stars to get inspired so my personal feeling is to emulate their scoring system until we start heavy playtesting. This would mean you get two point for every kill using your special - perhaps knocking the player off would give one point though?

Ben has also started my character who is a capoeirista! I am super excited to see the final sprites because it looks awesome now.

After some deliberation, we have ironed out the core gameplay for the our big team Unity2D class project. GD All-Stars is a multiplayer combat game where characters charge up power meters with each hit and are eliminated by falling off the map or being victim to another character's finisher. Each character has a generic melee attack that can be aimed in four directions. Each of them also has a special ability that is a unique attack or defensive move. The finisher can only be activated within ten seconds after the character fully charges their power meter. When activated, there is a short delay so others can escape because the character with their finisher activated can one-hit-kill any other character! If two characters have their finisher activated they will both kill each other.

These drawings are some of the early ideas we had for finishers including the shoryuken (in the style of Worms), an area of effect blast, and a smaller range unidirectional attack. In the end, we settled on the current decision (inspired by the hammer in Smash Bros) because it allows the character using their finisher to have a larger window to eliminate multiple other characters.

The character for each person in the class is being designed by another random person in the class. The themed choices for the character avatar, generic melee attack, special ability, and double jump will be described in a high level manner and then translated into beautiful pixel art by Ben, Darian, and Tomas and converted to a balanced adaptation of those abilities by the programmers, Alvin and Marcus, and the functional systems designer, Pietro. Jesse B will consider the art, the abilities, and the gameplay to create an initial balance for the character, which I will help incorporate into the already existing library of characters and maintain when other characters are added. Peter will create environmental art with help from Natalie and work with the level designers Alex and Zac to make some awesome battle arenas.

I am designing the theme and abilities for Pietro, the boardgame guru in GD31, so I decided to give him a special ability that alters the flow of the game and gives the player who chooses him as much choice as possible. His special ability will do short range damage and spawn a large rulebook that can be used as a platform or to block attacks. I am excited to see how this gets implemented into the game, and then tuned it to make Pietro the most overpowered character (jk).

Two previously undiscussed features were added today and they are important consequences of our design choices. The first is the knockback that occurs when one character hits another character. Knockback is required in a game like this, not only for visual stimulus/feedback, but also because of the way the power bars are charged. If two players were to walk up to each other and repeated spam their basic attack without moving the other person, then they would both reached special at nearly the same time; turning this game into a Mario Party button mashing mini-game where the fastest clicks per minute wins. (Not to bash Mario Party, one of my all-time favourites) The knockback separates the two player by moving the player who received the hit while the hitter gains power and stays stationary. The absence of knockback in certain situations also communicates that a move is uneffective or has been blocked. Collectables are another way to gain power for (a) characters who are are fighting against a character who has an advantage over them and (b) players who are not confident to rush into battle or know their enemy is holding the finisher until they get closer to each other.

I am excited to begin working on this project, the next stops are character creation and the first prototype. Go artists! Go programmers! Go team!

Now that industry night is over, a number of students in the class have decided to get together and pay homage to one of the classic Nintendo franchises. We are making a very simplified version of Smash Bros with all 19 students in GD31 as playable characters. I am excited to be working with Pietro Esposti and Jesse Bardell to balance and integrate the fighting systems into this game. The early concept is to have each player have one unique attack as well as a generic move that is shared between all characters. It will certainly be a fun way to wrap up our final month at VFS and learn the Unity2D tools that were unavailable during our final projects.

My biggest goal for this project is to focus on the balancing of systems designed by other designers and get some experience working with a team of two other systems designers and a total size of more than 10 people.