Royal Game of Ur - 3D Model

I've made my own version of The Royal Game of Ur for my design document. So far I have yet to name it, so I'll just give it a cool codename: 'Project Royal-Steam'.


This was made on Second Life, and I also decided to take away my third iteration (which involved removing part of the board), as I felt it didn't add anything or change anything significantly.

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Week 14 Reading - Mike Stout - "Learning From The Masters: Level Design In The Legend Of Zelda" (2012)

In this article Mike Stout talks about the level design on the classic NES game: The Legend of Zelda. Though it may be logical to think that this old game is lacking some of the design elements we see in today's modern games, it actually turns out that it contained some interesting and influential techniques to guide the player through each level.


The creator of the game, Shigeru Miyamoto, wanted to give his players a feeling of exploration as they journeyed through the land of Hyrule, and to achieve that there are some clever tricks found present in the game.

Mike looked through each level of the game and did a detailed analysis, looking closely at:

• Level Flow. How do the spaces in the level fit together? Where is the player supposed to go, and will she know how to get there?

• Intensity Ramping. Does the intensity of the experience ramp up in a satisfying way? Do monsters get more difficult as the level goes on? Does the player get a chance to learn how the enemies work and then display her mastery later on?

• Variety. Is there sufficient variety in the gameplay? Do enemy encounters frequently repeat themselves? Are the spaces varied in interesting ways?

• Training. If the design requires new skills from the player, does it teach and test those skills appropriately?

Level Flow

The dungeon layouts in the game are carefully planned so that the flow is very cleverly executed.

The critical path is the shortest path through a level without using secrets, short cuts or cheats. It is the path that the designer wants the player to take through the level without being too clever.

Critical paths don't often require players to complete 100% of a level, just that they do the mandatory objectives.

The critical path is almost always linear in the dungeons, there are few times where the player needs to re-traverse ground they've already been. This means the player rarely gets lost.

There are optional rooms that branch off from the critical path which aren't mandatory, but they reward the player with bonuses. These rooms make the level seem less linear.

At the start of the level there are rooms that force the player to re-traverse ground, it makes the level feel less linear, but because there are only two of them the player probably won't get lost.

The dungeons also have lots of short cuts, which can only be accessed with certain bonuses (such as bombs), so it makes the player feel clever.

This level generally keeps an excellent balance between giving the player the feeling of exploration and keeping them from getting lost.

Intensity Ramping

There are two important things to look for with intensity ramping:

1. The enemy encounters should usually ramp up in difficulty over the course of the level.
2. No encounter should be repeated twice. This gives a greater variety, and also keeps the player constantly answering new questions as she goes through your level.

It seems that on the dungeon the monsters slowly increase in difficulty over time, with more monsters appearing in the later levels OR the level elements affecting the gameplay in such a way that it becomes harder for the player to defeat the enemies.

For example, the player fights five Stalfos in Room 3, but two blockers in the room make it easier to avoid them; in Room 4, there are only three Stalfos but there is only one large blocker which obstructs your movement more than theirs'.

The design behind these encounters were intentional, subtle and very well executed.

Variety

None of the encounters in the dungeon were ever repeated. The combination of blocks and monsters are always different.

One criticism is that there is too much monster variety. In modern games you would have the same monsters, but more of them or combinations of previously fought monsters, whereas in this dungeon you and introduced to new monsters at almost every room.

The game does this combination mixing later in the game, but for some reason it doesn't do it here.

Training

In modern games, training seems like a required feature. When looking back at the NES-era of gaming, however, you would have to read the manual in order to get any form of training.

The original Legend of Zelda does actually contain some training - it's just very different to modern games.

In The Legend of Zelda, training is accomplished with "black rooms" where an NPC gives you hint.

The hints were practically useless most of the time, the above one telling the player to go to the end of the dungeon, which is obvious in itself. 

The most interesting thing about these black screens, however, is that in the Japanese version of the game they are actually useful, the hint in the first dungeon tells you that you need money to shoot arrows in the Japanese version, which is much more useful training.

Miyamoto and his team were trying to guide the player, and on the important things too, but due to the translation error we English-speaking players don't see the mastery behind the "black screens". Even then, they weren't overly successful, which is why they eventually scrapped them in later games.

What Did We Learn?

• It is possible to achieve the feel of non-linear level design by taking a linear path and adding short offshoots.

• Ramping encounters up along the critical path still allows you to have a good intensity ramp even if your level designs aren't all linear.

• Miyamoto and company intended to have training in the game, but it was excluded because of localization errors.

What Mike finds awesome is that they were making this stuff up back then, they had no prior knowledge of these techniques but instead relied on the masterful mind-power to achieve such amazing results.

My Thoughts

I always loved the original Legend of Zelda game, but until now I never appreciated how much thought when into the level design of it. It's true that it never felt like an overly linear game, even in the dungeons, where nearly all games fall to a linear set-up. It just shows that clever pacing and difficulty ramping have always held a place in successful games.

To implement these techniques into my own games, I imagine it would take a lot of play-testing and iteration to find a good balance between keeping the player on target and making them feel the feeling of exploration.

Week 13 Reading - Ed Bryne "Game Level Design" (2005) Chapter 2

In this chapter, Ed Bryne takes us through the process of designing a simple level of a game. There are many basic and critical elements which should be put into place for the level to be fairly simple and easy to figure out, whilst still keeping the player feel like they accomplished something challenging.


Level Design Building Blocks

The basic elements of a level, or the "building blocks" are these:

• Concept
• Environment to exist in
• Beginning
• Ending
• Goal
• Challenge to overcome between the player and the goal
• Reward
• Way of handling failure

Although these building blocks don't cover more complex elements which you would find in a modern-day shooter or RPG, they generally work with most modern games, you just need more of everything.

A good example of this method would be a Tetris-style puzzle game, as it's still a very popular template for modern games:

• Concept: Find a place for the blocks or lose the level.
• Environment: The active play area to the left of the game data.
• Beginning: The player starts with an empty screen and a score of 0
• Ending: The level is over when the player either creates the correct number of vertical lines (success), or the blocks pile up to the top of the screen (failure).
• Goal: Create a number of lines that meet the target requirement for success.
• Challenge: The speed of descent, type of blocks, and number of lines needed.
• Reward: The player moves to the next level, or receives a brief animated sequence.
• Failure: The game ends and must be started from the beginning.

Story

Storytelling may seem important, but it isn't a fundamental requirement. Story can enhance a level and give players information about what they're expected to do, but many games exist without a narrative element. Players are left to imagine their own story, for example in chess, which has elements of medieval war and politics, but can also be played with coloured stones. 

The gameplay drives the game, and is what drives the stages and levels within them. Ideally a game should allow players to create their own narrative as they play, even if it's just a list of personal achievements.

Putting the Elements Together

Concept


As the example, it is a game for a portable phone called Clownhunt; it involves the player controlling Crispy, a  clown escaping from an insane ringmaster.

The player can move Crispy left and right and make him jump, he can fall from any height, has unlimited energy for jumps and has no inventory or weapons. The game is simple.

Environment

Clownhunt is set in a circus, all elements should be thematic. "Cartoony" graphics fit well and offer contrast to the games context, running from murderous ringmaster.

The environment consists of static background, starting point, visible exit and whatever elements to help him in the foreground. There isn't a HUD to interfere because the game doesn't have lives, energy or other "metrics".

It's also important to keep the player immersed in your game by keeping everything to the right theme, but it's also important because the player needs to understand what they can and can't do. If you were to drop a pair of wings in for the player to put on, he will obviously believe he's able to fly.

Beginning

Begins with the player on left of screen ,he needs to move to the right to reach exit. Entrance can be at the top, the middle or at the bottom of the screen, depending on the level. This level starts at a plain wooden door next to elephant cages.

Ending

The exit needs to be far away to make it more challenging, the exit is therefore placed in the opposite corner of the entrance, and clearly labelled 'exit', to make it obvious for the player.

Goal

The goal in every level of Clownhunt is the same - reach the exit. Other elements can be added, but for starters it doesn't matter. It's important for the player to be able to finish the level.

The game has a narrative-driven goal, as although Crispy is supposedly running from the Ringmaster to motivate the player to continue, the Ringmaster will never actually appear in-game. This means there is no need to precede each stage with a description of the objective, and also no need for additional metrics.

Challenge


This creates the fun in this level, we need a challenge to stop the player simply reaching the exit, but it needs to be thematic - that it doesn't seem out-of-place or goofy for the genre of game. This is called dissonance, it has to be avoided.

A seesaw would be good as it fits with the game style, and it is useful for a number of reasons:

• The player needs to gain height to reach the exit.
• It is immediately recognizable by most players.
• It's easy to see how it works from looking, so no explanation is needed.

Determining the Challenge Mechanics

We now have to add mechanics that allow the player to interact with it, we can usually break down challenges such as this into different sorts of mechanics.

For example, the mechanics behind doors are simple in most games - activate a door and it will move on one axis (usually hinges), as in real life. The best gameplay mechanics need no explanation, allowing players to interact with them from their own observations. This makes players feel clever and allows the designer to stay out of the picture.

The seesaw mechanics should work as the player expects, a weight on one side makes that side go down, and the other rise. There are three possible ways to do this, as illustrated:

To avoid adding any new gameplay mechanics into the game, the only way it will work is if we put the weight ON the seesaw. Crispy can only move left, right, and jump.

By putting the weight on the seesaw, it means players need to work out how to use it to throw the weight up, then use resulting impact to propel Crispy to the exit. This mechanic needs little explanation, as players know how gravity works.

The player feels obliged to then jump on the high part to make the opposite weight fly up, smash down and send him flying. In real life this wouldn't work, it might break the seesaw or the weight may not land where it started, but this is an example of "game logic". Game logic means events may be more predictable than they are in real life.

Knowledge about the game, gained within the game itself is called intrinsic knowledge, whereas knowledge applied in the game but gained from another source, usually real life, is called extrinsic knowledge. With the seesaw, the player uses his extrinsic knowledge of how it works in real life to tackle the virtual problem.

It's good to include a simple set of in-game rules for objects to follow and react to the player's actions. It's useful for the programmer to implement these when they code said object. 

An example of a rule for the seasaw would be:

Multiply the distance the weight goes up by the number of feet the player character falls before landing on the other end of the seesaw

We then add a pile of objects in front of the seesaw for the player to get high enough before jumping onto it, as he currently can't jump high enough without them, and we don't want to alter the functions of the game.

Reward

The main reward for completing the level is access to the next one, and a secondary reward would be a short victory animation of Crispy giving a thumbs-up. For many players, the act of completion and progression is the driving force for playing a game.

Failure

What happens when the player fails is another important aspect. With this game this is handled inherently, there isn't a timer or over-arching challenge that ends the game before the player finishes. 

In this level there is no way for the player to fail, and the more players can blame the designer for failure, the easier it is to simply stop playing. Because of this, it's good to let the player have a way of climbing back up and trying again, instead of kicking them out and forcing them to retry.

My Thoughts

This chapter made it very clear that a lot of different genres share the same basic elements that make up the game, and that by learning these building blocks, it's possible to make a basic design for almost any kind of game. I thought the order in which he set up the level was quite interesting, as it involved planning out the start, finish and general level layout before thinking about the challenges. Personally, I think it would be good to think of a set of challenges to overcome and generally base a level around said challenges, to make them seem more coherent with the theme of the game and fit perfectly.

The information and techniques discussed will certainly be helpful in the future.

La Decima Vittima

"The 10th Victim" is a 1965 Italian/French science fiction film directed by Elio Petri. It is based on Robert Sheckley's 1953 short story "Seventh Victim". It's set in the near future where there are large wars going on, and the only way they know to hold them up is to give people with violent tendencies a chance to kill in the 'Big Hunt'. The Hunt is a form of entertainment in this fictional world, where people looking for fame and fortune participate in ten rounds each, five as a hunter and 5 as a victim. The survivor of ten rounds becomes very wealthy and retires.

The protagonist, Marcello, an assassin in a loveless marriage with his wife, finds himself the target of a female assassin called Caroline. The film looks at the relationship between these two and how Marcello is reluctant to kill her as he is not sure whether she is his hunter, and they eventually become romantically involved. To maximize financial gain, Caroline wants to get a perfect kill in front of the cameras as she has negotiated a major sponsor from the 'Ming Tea Company'.

I personally loved the concept and setting of the film, but I think the narrative could have used some work and I would like to see a more modern version of it. I think the film helped to encourage 'live-action games', which are games that take place in real life and on a bigger scale. The most prominent example of these and one that we looked closely at is 'The Assassin Game', which I feel was directly influenced by the film; in this game people are randomly assigned another participant to 'assassinate' (pretend to kill). The game is fairly popular worldwide in different Universities and videos of it can be found online.