Studio 5 - Exploring Playability

Phil Co: Level Design for Games (New Riders) pp 1-28

Chapter 1 - How do you make a game; summary

The development of any type of game could last anywhere between 6 months straight through to 6+ years from the initial idea to the game completion. The development of games breaks down to two sections; pre-production and production. These two sections are important as each other because they are both needed to develop the intial concept idea for the game, the structure of the game and the completed product.

Pre-Production: In this stage the project will move on from the initial concept idea to a well thought out and organised plan. This is crucial as the production stage will derive each step from pre-production. Group discussion, agreement and designs are very important during this stage as they lead the way for preparation of the design documents, which will be passed through onto the production stage.

Production: This is where the action will take place with the development team taking pole position of putting the plan from pre-production into action. The development team will then take on the events on creating the game and also the technology needed in order to produce the product. Only once the technology, tools and concept art have been created and finalisied, is when the production stage will be fully under way. Development of the game does involve different types of stages within the pre-production and production stage; this is why the development team must consist of: concept artists, graphic designers, visual artists, programmers and game design engineers.

There will always be a 'head document' (blueprint) that will be constantly updated throughout the project, normally by the project leader - this is to ensure any changes can be seen straight away. This blueprint will include all of the following:

• Scope of the Game
• Concept Art (At Top-End)
• Game Levels
• Art & Technology
• Design and Construct of the game
• Visual representation of in-game (characters, halls, lighting, surroundings etc)

Designers will be the people who generally try to keep an equillibrum of the game to ensure everything fits together, there always tends to be a lot of designers who work together on this issue because they also have to deal with the placement of events. All of the artists will work together creating the concept art of characters and enviroment which will then lead the programmers in the way to create a game based on their art as a basis. The programmers will also be required in creating the technology and tools (i.e. character movement, abilities, enviroment, level editors etc) which will then be passed back onto the artists to use.

Once all of that has been done, then the production stage will officially start and the 1st step will be in creating some scripting sequences, intergrating all of the visual elements (i.e. textures) and audio together so that there will be some core gameplay to be used as a prototype.

After a prototype has been created (these are sometimes released to the general public for beta testing), debugging (also beta testing) is needed in order to finalise the product before it goes into gold. Gold is when a product has been created, modelled, developed, tested and finalised it goes onto shop shelves. This is where the project will be finished and the development team may be used to a different project, or sometimes a development team is made up of freelance agents.

Studio 4 - Starting Assignment 1

A concept artist is an individual who generates visual reference for an object (like weapons, armor and vehicles) or being (like a character or creature) that does not yet exist. This includes, but is not limited to, film production, and more recently video game production. - Wikipedia

General Ideas

To come up with a concept of a video game for my assignment 1, I have been browsing through a collection of films and old video games for inspiration. The old video games range from Dizzy the Egg on the Amiga, through games from the sega mega drive, snes, n64, master system 1 & 2, Playstation 1, 2 & 3 and across the spectrum of PC games.

There is such a variety of video games that have been brought out over the decades, that to create something that isn't expanding on another idea and has the originiality to last the ages is extremely difficult.

One of the general concept ideas that I have been coming up with over the past few weeks is the following:

The Final Ascension - The general concept idea for this game is that the user will be able to take control of a civilisation from the history books and bring them alive in the future, ahead of our time.

Background story: The date is 24.04.2666, the Cyanites (a race consisting of only dark matter with the ability to linger in our shadows and in the darkness) have invaded planet earth and left the planet in a devastated ruin with minimal natural resources left.

Only one top secret goverment base survived the attack, barely. Located undergound and with the ability of time travel now possible; the fate of the planet rests in the hands of one scientist, the only remainning human survivor. The only problem is - during the Cyanites attack the time machine was broken and can only bring the far past to the far distant future.

You must take control of the time machine, choose your target location and date carefully to bring back an army to fight off the Cyanites and help rebuild Earth.

More Info: The user of this game would be able to bring back any type of civilization and it's army to try and fight off these dark matter monsters. The civilization could be any of the following: saxons, romans, nomads, samurai, small part of the allied troops (world was 1), renegades (these would be a specialised unit unlocked after completing the game once - the characters would be based on concept art taken of Cloud - a character from Final Fantasy 7)

Studio 3 - Use Cases

A use case is a methodology used in system analysis to identify, clarify, and organize system requirements - TechTarget

I am going to be concentrating on the game Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (A.K.A. PES 2008) and the way in which, the user interacts with the game.

For this, I am going to be showing you 4 individual Use Cases that are completely focused on showing the interaction within PES 2008. These Use Cases are entitled; Player input, Game Object Interaction, Display System and Audion Interaction.

Use Case 1 - Player Input

This use case is to show the steps that a user/player of the game will go through, in order to achieve interaction within the game. If you look at the image below, you will notice that obviously the 1st two steps are simply to turn on the gaming console and select the game in order to start up the game process.

Most game processes are the same these days, by which I mean; selecting single or multiplayer and if a sports type game, then what type of game/match the user will wish to play.

Use Case 2 - Game Object Interaction

This Use Case is being used to display the type of interaction that occurs within the game between all 'game objects'.

Game objects can be anything from the football, players or stadium itself through to the invisible walls (which in this football game would be the lines of the fooball pitch).

Use Case 3 - Display System

Use Case 3 is being used to show the various visual displays that the user will encounter, whilst playing the game. PES 2008 uses a very simplistic menu system as Konami (the game's creator) wish the football simulation game to have an arcade type feel to it.

By giving the display system an arcade style basically means that the user won't need to worry about over complicated menu's and can get straight into the action and play their friends or against the computer itself. Use Case 4 - Audio Interaction

Audio Interaction can be used during gameplay or even just starting up the game; i.e. when a user selects to start the game - they are normally faced with an introduction movie which will normally be accompanied by music. This Use Case is to display the type of audio interaction that a user would face, whilst playing Pro Evolution Soccer 2008.

Studio 2 - Exploring games and identifying games concepts 2

Definition of a games concept

Doom
‘A PC-based first-person shooter where the player controls a space marine in a 3D environment against a horde of bizarre monsters. The gameplay is action based with no strategic or role-playing elements; instead the game depends on bleeding edge technology providing a rush of adrenaline through its aggressive attention to carnage.’ (sic. Bethke, p106)

Pro Evolution Soccer 2009

This game has been around for many years and each new version brings something new to users eyes. It may simply be improved graphics, or gameplay. The last installed (PES 2008) was huge success which as always was caught in a battle against its rival Fifa 08.

These two football simulation games have been going head-to-head against each other for a very long time, and at first Fifa was dominating the football simulation section. Now though, Pro Evolution Soccer games (also known as World Winning 11 as it is originally produced in Japan by Konami) has been beating Fifa sales for the last 5 years, until recently.

PES 2009 bring to the user, a new level of realism as they have tried to make full use of the 'next-gen' technologies (eg: Playstaion 3, XBox 360). One of the original things about Pro Evoluation Soccer titles, is that they have always tried to be as life-like to the free flowing movement of football as much as possible; as opposed to Fifa titles, which tend to have a very 'arcade' feeling to the game. Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 is exhilirating to the user by using a fast paced style to the game of football, allowing the user(s) to have end-to-end action to their desires.

"there’s no doubting that PES 2009 is the most fun football game on the market." - IGN.com

Impact of concept
Using the game 'Pro Evolution Soccer 2009' as the main example, we are going to be looking at how the concept of the game has had an impact on different areas. The concept of the entire game is to be a 'realistic football simulation' game, while the aim is to bring the user into the game, as a team player - rather than having the user as the centre of attention.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 features hundreds of football players from across the world, and they have been designed to look as real to life as possible, as well as Stadiums, crowd chants, football kits and footballs themselves. All of this data needs to be modelled. So we would need concept art of players, kits, balls, boots and stadiums. After this development stage, 3D Modelling, animation and movement would need to be done in order to have the basic concept of the game.

Artificial Intelligence is the key aspect in PES 2009, allowing the user to take control of one player on a team of 11. Whilst the user has control of this one player the AI is taking control of the team, referee and psychics within the game. If there wasn't any AI within PES 2009 the user could take control of a player, but their would be no reactions from his team players or opposing side; they would simply, cease playing football.

How parts of the game are affected by the impact of the concept

Audio
All of the sound effects (Crowd chants, player voices, ball sounds, players tackling, collision sounds etc). Everything plays it's part in PES 2009 and the crowd singing is as much as part of the game as the football itself. The Crowd needs to roar when their team scores, it needs to be big, powerful and raw to make the user feel as if they are standing in the middle of a stadium.

Voices (Player Dialogue, Crowd Dialogue) these are more short sound clips with the volume of voices lowered a small amount, so the user can just hear what they are saying. Real players or supports would be best suited to state the dialogue for realisim.

Music (Menu music, pause menu, career achievements, celebration cut scences) Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 needs uplifting mid to high tempo music for the menu's to keep the users attention. Whilst in cut-scences it will need celebratory music, possibly classical smpthony (eg: The UEFA Champions League Hymn)

An Audio Programmer would be needed for this game to implement chants, songs, sound effects and music that has been recorded by him/herself into the game.

Visual (Art & Concept Drawing)

Texture, Lighting, Skins, Condition (Animation - 3D motion capture(Crowd & Player Movement), Stadiums, weather conditions, kits, player faces, body type, colours etc).

PES 2009 blends tremendous amounts of visual art together to create a life-like footballing simulation to capture the users mind. The enviroment (Stadium, pitch etc) will need a concept artist; they will create the initial drawings of the enviroment to later on be approved and moved onto a 3D modeller/programmer.

A 3D modeller/programmer will use the concept art draw by implementing them into a computerised 3D-designed world involving the stadiums, grass effects, weather conditions and more. Once this has been completed, the 3D modeller will then to capture the movement and facial animations of real-life footballers using specialist equipment. This will then allow the modeller to create a moving computerised version of the footballer and move towards creating the full concept of the game.

Studio 1 - Exploring Game Concepts

Studio 1 - Exploring games and identifying games concepts

List of games that I am familiar with:

MMORPG
City of Heroes - 2
City of Villains - 2

Arcade
Fifa 09 - 3
Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 - 3
Wii Sports - 3
Gran Turismo 5 - 4

First Person Shooter (FPS)
Call of Duty 4 - 1
Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood - 2
Time Crisis - 3
Area 51 - 3
Doom - 1

Action/Adventure
Manhunt - 4
Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Series - 1

Platform
Superfrog - 2
Zool - 3
Dizzy the Egg - 3
Alex the Kid - 5
Pac Man - 2


Games Concept Identification

Manhunt – The concept of this game is a very simplistic idea. The general idea of this game is that the user can take control of a convicted murderer and experience true portraits of what it is like to kill people. Although that is the main idea, the developer’s added a slight twist to the game – by creating a storyline that the killer had already been sentenced to death however; conspiracy had occurred and that the convict was given a fake death in order for him to be put into a ‘game’. In this game the convict must fight his way through each level (and sections of levels) by performing gruesome murders. The more gruesome the murder, the more points the convict gets.

Fifa 09 – The main concept is a realistic football simulation game. The developer will be aiming to create as much realism as possible towards the user and creating a clever Artificial-Intelligence (AI) which will control players, decision making, and movement etc of the players that the user isn’t controlling.

Gran Turismo 5 – A realisitic car racing simulation game. Gran Turismo aims to look, feel and react as much as possible to real cars.

City of Heroes – The game concept here, is to create an online role-playing superhero game with a comic book feel. The user is able to create endless costumes for their character, as well as their own size, gender and superhero name with a background story.

Time Crisis – 1st person shooter as a member of a S.W.A.T. police team. The user follows an automatic route set up for them throughout the entire game, however they need to decide to use cover effectively and they must aim using a wired gun instead of a standard controller.

Implementation of Games Concepts

If a game concept is generally followed throughout the entire production of the game itself then I believe the game will be very good. Too many games are released these days that state they are going to do various things and that the general idea is in this direction, and when it comes to the release date; the developers have produced something completely different.

If a games concept is fully explored and thought about carefully then the implementation should go smoothly. For example: If a developer had come up with the idea for a violent FPS game and the gun fired tennis ball’s instead of bullets, or the blood came out as bubbles then the implementation of the game would be extremely poor. It would be this bad, because the developer didn’t explore the game concept to its maximum potential.

I personally believe that the design stage of the implementation is the most important. I believe the design stage plays an extremely important role in the final outcome of a game.
This is the stage where everything is thought out, drawn and laid out for people to see what the levels, characters, environments, costumes etc will look like. I think it is the design stage that ‘makes or breaks’ a game.