Pacing the unknown -- estimating level traversal and completion times

Last week we set about putting some parameters around the remaining design work for the core feature set of Dead West. We’re not trying to pre-emt derived and iterated gameplay stuff -- just get a basic framework to aim for.

One of the biggest remaining decisions is whether we're targeting aracde-style replay or campaign-like progression through the various maps and levels. We've a lot of flexibility in how we spawn, introduce and balence enemies -- so we can take a basic "x enemies == y time" sense of anything.

In order to produce for ourselves both a chicken and an egg, we decided to firewall some assumptions against the level designs we currently have. After a good amount of pondering on how we do that, we:

1. Took a straight line (quickest) path through each level*
2. Calculated a walking traversal distance for that path (based on what looks right in our current codebase)
3. Inserted a number of enemy encounters that we felt looked right based on the aesthetics and feel of each map
4. Timed those encounters (based on a completely different game)

* this sometimes meant picking arbritary start and end markers

The point of doing this was to answer the question "if we just give the player a simple A-B experience in each level, how long would it take them to complete the set of designs we have"... hopefully leading us towards a design on arcade or campaign/completion play.

Some detail on the techniques we used:

• Stopwatch was invaluable for working out a pixels-per-second walking speed for our standard heroes.
• "Mean time between interesting shit" was calculated/measured in Fable 3's gameworld
• Reasonable encouter sizes and hits-to-kill enemies was estimated based on Battleheart
• Relative encouter sizes and likely time differences were based on Warhammer Fantasy unit balance calculations

We got to a level completion time of between 25 and 40 minutes... and an answer on what kind of map progression and session play style we're targetting. We'll go into more detail on that in the future -- but suffice to say it's nice having the flexibility.

By far the most difficult bit was simplifying the problem set -- we spent a long time stopping ourselves from talking about enemy encounters and the complexities therein. We ultimately boiled them down to "Small", "Medium" and "Large" encounters, safe in the knowlege that if GW can genericse everything to a points value we will be able to as well.

Other pleasant side effects of the whole thing included a prototype for how we can offer variable play based on player preference and player experience -- and a good number of ideas for where we go next in regard to spawning and triggering of enemies (all of which seem simpler than we'd anticipated).

Some thoughts on satisfying pursuits, discipline... and Warhammer

Was just going to scribble this down for myself -- as part of figuring out some drive and interest things... and how they're not always manifested in the same way. But figured you might be interested as well.

I have very much enjoying engaging in Warhammer Fantasy -- playing, strategizing, optimizing, painting, crafting, acquiring etc. But last Thursday night (the last game Goose and I played), for the first time, I didn't really enjoy it (this was from the outset -- not just after I started loosing). This I found especially odd as all the circumstances were supportive of a good time: we'd had a very significant output for 36peas that day; I had a busy but well-prepared-for day of PBAL the next day; the kids were in bed etc.

I'm pretty certain – in fact I know for sure – that this was because in the preceding 10 days I'd spent no time whatsoever engaging in Warhammer stuff – I'd not thought about army lists, strategized, painted or done any related activity.

Last night I spent an hour painting – and I deliberately set aside an hour so that I'd a.) have some measurable and quantifiable assessment, and; b.) go to bed at a reasonable time in order to be up this morning.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. And this morning I am happy and enthusiastic about playing later in the week and already spending my off time (time when I can't fit any other activity in -- normally between modes of transport, in lulls of conversation etc) strategizing about how I intend to play, what things I'd like to paint in advance, etc. I also listened to TWIT live in that time, something else on my list of must-do-regularly-because-get-a-good-bit-out-of-it-personally-and-professionally.

This brought me round to thinking about discipline and immersion (the latter of which Goose and I talked about in GDIM #4). Do I (can I) only enjoy the separate elements of Warhammer when I engage in them all? And does that have to be on some kind of regular basis?

Given the variety and volume of different things that I do, this is something that worries me – I want to understand better that behavior (immersion in multi-genre gaming pursuits) but I find it unlikely that I (personally) would naturally end up keeping to any kind of regular pattern of engagement (at this point in my life) because of the multitude of other (self-imposed) demands on my time. But I really, really enjoy this particular pursuit, and I find it rewarding and useful as a game designer.

So, in the interests of full immersion (I’m one army of 10+ into one game of 3+) I’m going to try something else I’m interested in – disciplined activity. This is unknown for me – I do a lot of stuff, but it’s almost all on either a get-as-much-done-in-the-time-permitted or a just-in-time basis. First part of said discipline (KISS for now) will be to spend an hour painting at least 5 evenings out of 7. I always have other activities I can combine with this (watching, listening, thinking) and it I don’t expect to have to shift anything else out of the way – but doing it against a personally-imposed discipline may change how I look at this, and, more importantly, other pursuits in the future. I hope it will also give me a better view on games from the perspective of a fully-immersed player. 

Game Dev in Motion #4: Engaging Players Beyond the Medium

This was captured mid-way into a coversation (thanks Audacity) about engagement beyond the medium in relation to games (video and otherwise). The gaming session we're talking about at the start was a then-upcoming Warhammer Fantasy Battle match we played that evening.

We went on to talk about a number of related areas -- primarily we were trying to pin down specifics around what engages players beyond the ostensible gaming session.

Here's the link -- Game Dev in Motion #4: Engaging Players Beyond the Medium.

For those who didn't catch the video last time, here's the audio for -- Game Dev in Motion #3: Theme, Context and Player Engagement.

Game Dev in Motion #2: Designing and animating top-down 2d sprites

Game Dev in Motion #2! ...in which we talk about designing top-down animations and give you a simple method for testing simple frame-by-frame animations direct from Photoshop to Flash in a couple of easy steps. Some what a direct follow-up to GDIM #1 - thanks for all the super feedback.

We cover:

• Deciding what to animate
• How to animate _and_ rotate a top-down sprite
• Drawing large and rendering small
  • the complexities of scaling sprites down -- or more specifically designging sprites such that they can be scaled down and why they look, well, silly at their original scale
  • ...and the suggestion of what the player sees and how that's perceived
• Testing animations
  • in code
  • with tools - specifically flash, by:
    • getting your layers (frames) in order in PhotoShop
    • scaling to size
    • importing into Flash
    • organising an animation around keyframes
    • manipulating frame rate in flash
    • adding a background layer to the animation (see GDIM #1 for more on the backgrounds)
  • we also point out some of problems -- specifically the artifacting issue we were seeing on the first imported frame
• We also explore using Flash to test movement along with aniamtion - and, well, we prove that it can be done.
• A little about animation and sprite sheet workflow - using Zwoptex for our spritesheets (which are being managed by Cocos2d in our game code).
• Working out framerates -- or, well, iterating the framerates through testing (why to test the things in the first place)

We also give away some information about the item unlocks and other game design bits in Dead West. Enjoy ;)

Gelatinous Pantyhose*: you’ve already got a solid foundation for innovative multi-player experiences

…So why aren’t there more of them?

Innovative multiplayer design can be built atop underlying mechanics that don’t necessarily even need to be iterative – they can simply be reused.

Most contemporary multiplayer (especially in the AAA space) is repetitive. Shoot this, capture that, win the match – etc. Because of the (human) nature of such multi-player experience this does – don’t get me wrong – provide a lot scope for a lot of fun gameplay. But we can only change the scenery so many times.

However, a couple of recent stand-out multi-player (featuring) titles have used this to their advantage. Instead of re-inventing the core, they left it as is and created a novel multi-player experience on top of it.

Left 4 Dead took what Valve had already perfected in the Half Life engine and underlying systems and added a fixed-build co-op setup (4 players, with 2-4 being either human or companion AI) and truck-loads of pretty stupid – and pretty terrifying – zombies. The result: a survival co-op experience that forces the player to work as a team and co-operate with their companions to succeed (which, funnily enough is exactly how the gameplay is packaged: 4 strangers meet under unknown circumstances and are forced to work together else die alone). This “forced” nature that I’m getting at isn’t a player-1-press-this-while-player-2-presses-that – it’s completely emergent; founded in the fact there’s a lot of zombies and as well as acting as bait while your buddies take out the tank… you’re also going to need to be helped up every time one of them jumps you.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood does something very similar with an emotive multiplayer experience that we wrote about last week. It uses the solid foundation of its ancestry (and many stealth action games that went before - see above) as the platform for a competitive multi-player game mode that on reflection is obvious – and ends up with you needing (not being forced) to play the role of an assassin in order to succeed.

So?

So, they stand out because they do something new – both provide an emergent role-playing  (note the lower case “r” and “p” there) experience by offering novel game design atop solid genres, building further on the inherent emergent properties of multi-player games.

As well as providing new multi-player experiences, embellishing well-trodden genres with your own magic sparkle gets around the risk of un-polished (or outright un-tested) underlying mechanics (there’s really no excuse for this in the FPS/TPS genre): all you have to test - and perfect - is the sparkle.

You don’t need to re-invent the wheel to provide a new and interesting multi-player experience. Use what you know – just do *something funky with it.