Game Design

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Final Burn 2009

November 11, 2009 | No comments

Last night was the last IGDA SLC meeting of the year, called Final Burn 2009.  It was awesome, to tell you the truth (vazor agrees, and gives a pretty decent run down of the night, here).  Though it was only my second IGDA meet and greet, I felt like people were starting to get to know who I was, and I was really happy that the openness of the event (unlike the last one I was at, where we all sat at a single, long, table) really helped me meet people.  Unfortunately, I didn’t play any of the games that were available, mainly because I was busy interacting with everyone that was there.

My personal friends Alexis and Christopher came, as well, and I thought everyone was really open and receptive to them, considering neither of them have expressed any real interest in being in the video game industries.  (Christopher was even invited to be part of a smaller group of people that tests tabletop games, and I personally hope he takes them up on it.)  Also, Alexis and Jacob were able to meet, face to face, instead of just seeing names in the MonkeyEgg forum.  If only Squink could have made it, too.

The more time I spend getting to know the local game dev community, the more I’m glad that I’m working toward being part of it.

Speaking of being part of it; in January, the Global Game Jam is happening, and there will be an SLC portion of it, which I hope to be able to attend and write music for;  finally, GEEX is coming back to SLC next summer, and will have a Game-in-a-Day competition, which I also hope to be part of.   Guess I need to get on the ball, practicing my speed-writing.

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Recommended Readings: Related Links from Around the Web (July 22, 2009 ed.)

July 22, 2009 | No comments

It seems that every blog has a weekly roundup of sorts, posting related (or semi-related) links from around the web.  So, to give this blog validity, I think it’s a good idea to follow suit.

It’s been a busy week for me, as I’ve mentioned before: I’ve been staying up ’til midnight or later working on music for Brandon Irwin, got sick, built a fence (where, during clean up, I was able to source out a couple BEAUTIFULLY squeaky hinges), and got right back to writing music.  Game Design Concepts has taken a back seat to a heavy workload at my 9-5 (I’m taking a break from that, right now, just to write this), and PARPG and the GAME have followed suit against the approaching Churches deadline.

I can’t pretend it’s been all work, though, and to accent that, I present to you this weeks links.

Music to Listen To:

  • He Who Brings The Night. A sweet song I stumbled upon today, by Thomas J. Bergersen.  Give it a listen, and let him, and me, know what you think. ( @ nemesisII )
  • Peace Piece. A set of videos related to Peace Piece, by Bill Evans. I’d love to play piano like that, and I’d never heard a bowed vibraphone before. ( @ the music of sound )
  • Fun.  My brother, Steve, mentioned this band to me, claiming I wouldn’t like them because they’re too eclectic. (This’ll show him!) Fronted by Nate Ruess of the now-dead Format, this band is super… um… fun. ( @ Fun )

Music to Read About:

  • DRM is Dead.  In the early 2000s, I ripped all 200+ CDs I had onto my computer, trying to get with the times of moving to digital media, using Windows Media Player, which added DRM by default.  A few years later, those CDs were stolen, and the computer I was holding my music on died (the motherboard, anyway)… A few years after that, I hooked up the old hard drive to retrieve my old music and found the DRM had expired, and I could no longer use music that I rightly owned.  Long story short, if DRM  had never happened, I’d have a lot of music I’ll never have again.  This couldn’t come soon enough. ( @ Gizmodo )
  • Trent Reznor: What To Do as a New / Unknown Artist. The music industry has changed, and is changing; Nine Inch Nails’ frontman lays it all out how he feels new and unknown artists should do to get themselves out there. ( @ hypebot )
  • Why the Academy is Scaling Back Best Original Song.  Not only has the music industry changed, and DRM died, but the film industry is moving away from original compositions in favor of paying rights for popular songs. (Even when they don’t fit. I’m looking at you, 21 Guns, by Green Day, in Transformers 2).  John Piscitello sums it all up pretty nicely, and even throws in a Marylin Monroe video to spice things up. ( @ Film Composer Blog)

Game Design

And here I thouht I wouldn’t have anything useful to share. :)

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Chakan: The Forever Man

July 20, 2009 | No comments

If you’re reading this from one of my cross-posts, let me first say “thank you for checking me out,”  and second “but your princess is in another castle.”  Meaning:Thanks for coming this far, but this is just a carbon copy of the material that I post on my website, DaveMatney.com, where you can also find my portfolio.  You can keep reading my stuff on this site, but things like images, audio samples, and updates may not work correctly.

This entry is built in reverse, telling you what I learned first, then what I should have done, finished with what I did. In Game Design Concepts Level 4, we were challenged to build a non-digital adaptation of a video game.  I chose Chakan: The Forever Man, a Sega Genesis platformer.  As you can probably tell by when I was assigned that task, and now (when I am posting it), it’s pretty obvious I bit off more than I could chew.  I tried to develop a completely playable game, which was the objective, but I kept adding and adding and adding, and I’m STILL not finished. So, What Did I Learn?

  • First, keep it small, keep it simple.  This early in the design process there’s no reason to add more features than I could handle, and even though I was basing my rules off HeroQuest rules, I was adding too many rules to effectively playtest.
  • Second, though it’s just an extension of the first, don’t stress the details.  I spent too much time trying to cram an entire game into a ruleset without actually capturing the elements of the game.  To be honest, I was actually trying to one-up the game, making my non-digital version something that’s more fun, and actually completable. (Chakan holds a certain notoriety for it’s difficulty; sure, you can’t die, but you can’t save, either, and you can probably count on one hand how many people beat it legitly.)
  • Finally, Focus on a single mechanic, make it work, THEN move on. I know GDCU has hit that point many, MANY, times, but it’s not until you let feature-creep drown you that it really hits home.

So, what SHOULD I have built? Chakan’s difficulty lies in ONE area: jumping.  Many jumps are pixel-perfect pits where, if you miss them, you fall to you “death” and have to start the level over.  (This video represents that frustration well.  Take into consideration that he’s using a utility to save his game, which wasn’t possible in the actual game; every time he dies in this video, he’d have to return to the beginning of the level) So, the game I SHOULD have built would have been like this:

Goals:

  • Reflect difficulty of, and dependence on, jumping as a game mechanic

Game pieces:

  • 40 glass markers, separated into 10 of each of the following colors: red, green, blue, clear.
  • 16 plastic skulls
  • A mini-fig to represent Chakan
  • Mini-figs to represent the different enemies
  • 20 1”x1” wooden tiles
  • A dry-erase square-grid board
  • Dry-erase markers

Overview:

  • A game for 2 players

Order of Play:

  • Play begins with Chakan. After Chakan has completed his turn, it is the Game Master’s turn.  On their turn, the Game Master may move all monsters currently on the gameboard. This sequence continues until the Quest Level is completed, or until Chakan returns to the Hub.
  • Any Player’s Turn
    • Whether playing Chakan or the Game Master, a player does one of the following on his turn.
      • Moves his figure(s) and performs an action
      • Performs an action and moves his figure(s)

Movement: To determine how many square spaces to move, you must roll 2d6. Then, move carefully across the board square-by-square.  You do NOT have to move the entire distance indicated by the dice roll. When moveing, however, you cannot pass over monsters, move through walls, or onto areas you must jump to. You may move diagonally.  You may only enter rooms through doors. Jumping: Jumping is an action.  To determine how many spaces you can jump, you must roll 2d6. Then, moove Chakan across the pit to be jumped. You do NOT have to jump the entire distance indicated by the dice roll. When jumping, you can only move in a straight line.  You may only jump up one “level” at a time.

  • Levels are indicated by stacking the wooden pieces. One wooden piece is 1 level up, two is two levels, ect.

    • Admittedly, that game wasn’t very good, and it’s only about half finished at that state, but it’s playable if the players are creative.  What I made, instead, was a complete waste of time. Read the rest of this entry »

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    WW1 Game

    July 13, 2009 | No comments

    In Game Design Concepts: Level 3, we were challenged to make a game based on WW1.  I chose the lowest level of difficulty, mainly because this was a REALLY hard assignment for me.  In fact, it was/is so hard I’m officially a week behind the course. This is the game I came up with.

    My concept

    A large portion of WW1 seems to be trench warfare, and I wanted to make a game based on that.  I wasn’t allowed to have death/destruction or owning territory as an objective for the player, so I decided to have a Race to the End type game.

    You play as the Allied Powers, though that doesn’t really matter.  The Central Powers have come into your trenches, killed off most of your team, and have taken your ammo supply.  They have taken a handful of your team mates hostage, and placed you in a central holding cell, within your own trenches, waiting for their commanding officer to decide what to do with you.  When the guards backs are turned, you’re able to escape the cell, and have to exit the trenches to return to your home base.  (Cheesy, I know.)

    Allied Powers Goals

    • Reach the outside edge of the game board without getting caught.

    Central Powers Goals

    • Capture players
    • If you can’t capture them, prevent them from leaving the trenches before your commanding officer arrives.

    Rules

    • For 4-10 players, even numbers work better.  Half are Allied, half are Central; if there’s an uneven number of players, the odd man out is Central.
    • The Allied players start in the middle area (blue) , the Central players start on the edges (yellow).
    • The game goes for a set number of turns, at the end of the game, the Central Powers’ commanding officer arrives, and any Allied Powers players left on the game board are captured.
    • Players roll 1d12 to move.
    • Color Definitions: Brown: Trenches, Green: High ground, Blue: Jail, Yellow: Freedom
    • Players can move from the Trenches to the High ground through the Orange squares.  Players can move from the high ground to the trenches without restriction. Allied Powers Players cannot enter the jail, Central Powers players can pass through the jail’s doors.
    • Players are given a number of “Sandbag” tiles, which they can place next to their player-marker at any time during their turn.
    • Sandbags block the path. A player can spend a turn to remove the sandbags, and they can keep the tile to play during their own turn.

    freedom

    What did I learn from this?

    • I need to stop procrastinating.  This took me 30 minutes, and I’ve had the idea and rules figured out by the day after the assignment was given.
    • Even if the idea sucks, finish it, so I can move on.

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    Climb the Mountain

    July 6, 2009 | No comments

    If you found my blog through an internet search on Game Design, and you haven’t yet heard of gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com, I suggest checking it out.  This blog, and the series of blogs to follow it, are exercises from that link.

    An exercise in game design

    An exercise in game design

    In the first lesson from Game Design Concepts, we were instructed to build a simple 15-minute game (an exercise developed by Brenda Brathwaite).  The above game was my product.

    The goal is simple: reach the top of the mountain.  The rules are equally as simple: roll a dice, move that many squares forward.  At that, the game is supurbly boring.  In lesson two, we were asked to playtest it (which I didn’t do, but given the simplicity, I am fairly certain I can play it in my head), and then change or add a rule.  I added “If you land on the same square as someone else, you can forfeit your next turn to ‘throw them down the mountain.’  Roll 1d6, and move the opponent’s piece an equal amount down the mountain.”  I’ll playtest it tonight, hopefully, though I think my three-year-old won’t much like the new rule.

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    The Road So Far

    July 6, 2009 | No comments

    Ah, first entry. Unless you’re one of my personal friends, or find me incredibly interesting –assuming I’ve written more than just these few words– I’m honestly surprised you’ve stumbled across this page. It’s not that I find myself boring, but as the unspoken rules of the blogosphere go, reading the first few posts of a new blog is about as taboo as wearing nothing but a pink corset to a business meeting. (It flies in some circles, but most it’s just unheard of.)

    So, how did I get here? Passing all the nitty gritty that gets us all here (it’s not that kinda blog!), my story sounds pretty similar to just about every other non-prodigy musician’s, writer’s, designer’s, or composer’s story. I started at a particularly young age, producing absolute drivel, but I have a supportive family that felt lying to me was a good idea. They said “I love it!” and told me to keep it up, and I did.

    Piano lessons, public school band classes, Dungeons and Dragons with friends, an overactive imagination, various jobs to pay the bills, various bands to build my musical arsenal… I didn’t write much, not traditional writing anyway; that was my brother’s area. For those of you without siblings, that means I never considered writing as an option, but that didn’t mean the ideas never came, only that I never learned to polish them.

    I started writing music for short films, church projects, and that lead me to sites like indiegamer.com, which lead me to PARPG.net, a project that I’m currently working on. I signed on to write music, and when the other composers started moving in, each with more experience, I opted to move into sound design. Being so early in the design process, and hanging out in the forums, I started contributing story ideas, with people taking note and seeming to enjoy what I was putting out.

    I began reading game design blogs, hoping to find some direction I could move in PARPG, and I came to realize that all of my D&D games and overactive imagination were priming me for this.

    This blog will serve as a progress report for everything I’m learning, and doing, concerning music, sound, writing, and design.

    Here’s to moving forward.

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