Archive for the 'Gamedev' Category

Game Design Codex

Published
by
Tom
on September 12, 2006
in Gamedev and Website
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I’ve decided to do a quiet release with this just to see how it gets on. This might not be it’s finished name, and it this also probably won’t be the resulting url, but here goes.

The Game Design Codex.

Taken from the start page:

The intended purpose of this wiki is to catalog game design ideas, concepts and functionality. It will attempt to include how games have implemented certain ideas, provide discussion over these ideas and describe possible modifications, improvements and extensions. It’s also a place for people to describe an idea and put it up for comments and criticism.

Feel free to create an ideas sub-page off any existing subject. For example, if you had an idea for an fps you would create a page here if it doesn’t already exist, then create your specific idea here and link to it from the first page. Easy as pie.

Comments, criticism welcome.

Is this a good idea? Would you use it and hopefully contribute? Anything I should change?

I hope to do some work on the design as time goes on, but I just want to get it out there and hopefully have people contribute.

I guess it’s a bit of a touchy subject, a lot of people don’t want to share their idea because ‘people will steal it’.

I probably need to work out some sort of ‘attribution’ agreement where anyone using the ideas has to conform to certain criteria.

I’ll probably be doing a thing or two on it over the next while. Moving things around and making everything nicer. The front page could use some work already.

Anyway, please add things and orgainse the wiki! I don’t realy know how it should be organised so start a discussion!

Game Weapons

Published
by
Tom
on July 21, 2006
in Gamedev
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Have you seen the Portal game that may be included with Half-life : Episode 2? It’s snazzy. It’s basically the game Narbacular Drop ported into the source engine. The crux of it is that you can create two portals, one leads to the other and the other way around. These portals can be used to walk through, jump through and pass objects through. In the linked movie some of these cool things are shown.

Is it just me or have cool weapons taken an increase in games?

Take the E3 Crysis Video. A couple of minutes in you will see the in-game customisation of his weapon, you can add a silencer, flashlight, grenade launcher, change ammo and change the scope. This is awesome.

We have also had the gravity gun in the original Half-life 2.

I like making lists of things I would like in my game, things I think are cool enough to copy. Here is the starting of one such list. If you have anything to add to this list feel free to comment. This is particular to weapons, but anything is good.

Force Discharge Gun
Notes: Reloads with a twist of the weapon ‘charges up’. Distorts the air. Makes objects and people fly away.
Source: Minority Report - the protagonist uses this non-lethal weapon against the men in black. Blue barrels fly everywhere.

Gravity Manipulator Gun
Notes: Generates a force field around the item and holds it up. Can either release or fire the item. Pulls an object towards you on manipulate.
Source: Half-life 2

Portal Gun
Notes: Two portals, left mouse chick is one portal, right mouse click is another. Instant fire. Objects and the player can move through the portals.
Source: Portal - bundled with Half-life 2 Episode 2

Nail Gun
Notes: ‘Nails’ people to the wall.
Source: Armacham HV Penetrator - from F.E.A.R.

Sonic Grenade
Notes: Creates a audio silence before detonating. I like this idea because it’s scary. You are fighting away and all the sound goes… uh oh… run!.
Source: Star Wars Episode 2, Jango Fett’s ship has these grenades.

Explosion
Notes: A nearby explosion causes a white screen (if a flash grenade) or a red screen, ringing noise and muted environment sounds for a period of time.
Source: Halflife 2, Call of Duty

In-game Weapon Customisation
Notes: The avatar pulls up the weapon with tags on each of the modifiable sections, the player can then modify the weapon with the mouse.
Source: Crysis

Slow Motion Explosions
Notes: An explosion that kills you goes off, you ragdoll and time slows down to a stop, the camera pans around and it’s game over. Could also happen with all deaths - the bullet stops just in frount of you.
Source: Bennabis

Kill Cam (replay)
Notes: When you die you see a replay from the perspective of your assailant, how they killed you etc.
Source: Call of Duty 2

Edit: The way the portal gun works may have been wrong (or this one is wrong). Left mouse chick is one portal, right mouse click is another. (was each succesive shot removes the first and creates another.)

Looking cool playing your game (refresher)

Published
by
Tom
on July 17, 2006
in Gamedev
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I love anything that makes you look cool playing a game. Lets face it, a large reason to play games is to do things you can’t normally, like ninja wall running. I can’t ninja flip off a wall and jump onto roofs, but I can in a game.

The trick with these features is to make them easy to use and not to take away interaction from the player.

I believe I have already discussed some ideas for this, but it’s time for a refresher.

I like the idea of ‘adaptive behaviour’. You control your avatar with normal fps controls and the computer takes care of the special behaviours. If you push up against a wall your character will lean against it, if you crouch near a low obstacle your character will level their gun over it in a defensive stance. Your avatar will pull themselves up onto a ledge, climb over obstacles, lean out around corners and kick obstacles out of the way.

All this is preferably done as some sort of computer run over a map to identify these points dynamically.

The action key is context specific, it is used to open doors, climb ladders, pick up ammo and weapons, grap opponents and melee. What happens is dependant of your current surroundings and the way you press the key.

One problem with all this is it lends itself to a 3rd person perspective. This is a problem because this form of perspective is hard to do. If the avatar backs up against a wall the camera is often forced into annoying places. Also with this perspective it’s possibly to look around corners. Hopefully I can do this well and make it look right.

To make 3rd person prespective an enjoyable experience I’m planning to have context sensitive zooming. The camera will zoom in and position itself where it thinks is best. If you are doign a lot of running and looking around it will give you a larger view of the area. If you are taking careful shots with a accurate weapon the camera will align itself along the barrel of the weapon and zoom in to get a better view. I’m going to make sure I do this right as there is nothing more annoying that a bad camera in 3D.

Now all these would be a welcome addition to any game, but I don’t want to make any game. I’ve been toying with a few ideas and I’ve some up with something I think is quite cool. I don’t have a large budget, so anything with large amounts of artwork and content is right out. Well in fact there are a few concepts that I would like to include in a game.

5 minutes

Published
by
Tom
on December 13, 2005
in Gamedev
. 0 Comments
  • Phone rings, if you answer it your boss says that you are late for work.
  • Various things around the house, you can interact with them, push them over etc.
  • As soon as you leave the apartment a zombie bites you.
  • A timer now shows 5 minutes and counting down.
  • You manage to free yourself from the zombie, but it’s still after you.
  • If you die the game returns to the apartment (fades) and you start over again.
  • If you run out of time you turn into a zombie, it fades and you are in the apartment again.
  • Any useful items you find (weapons, armour and other items) will be in your house when you die or run out of time.
  • Most interesting and important sections require about 5 minutes of play time, the game is made up of repeated runs.
  • Various ways to complete the game, involving planning, speed and correct execution.

From a post I made on gamedev.net

Well my idea is like groundhog day. It may only suit a certain type of gameplay but the workings of it may be applied to other games.

The player is given a certain amount of time to live (or another reason why they restart) and they have to accomplish something. Progress is in the form of items they may discover (that are with them when they restart), information and experience of what worked last time. If they fail at something important, die or reach the timelimit the game starts over. I’m thinking something around 5 - 10 minutes.

The items they find should only really serve to make things easier, they whole game should completeable from the start within the time period. Someone who knows the finish wouldn’t have a need to do complete the game, because they already have, they would head out to the part of the game which they enjoyed or wanted to play. The first play through this part of the level / game would be to get the information and story needed to proceed, any plays after this would be just for fun.

Other re-playability would be searching for all the ‘extra’ items (weapons and other cool things), finding secrets within the level, completing the game with different player enforced ‘rules’ (pacifist, single weapon, melee etc.) The player enforced rules would be identified my the computer (it would know if you didn’t use weapons etc) and award these when detected.

The game I want to make is a zombie survival where as soon as you exit your apartment you are bitten, I was planning on having that part a sort of mini game where you can postpone with a sequence of very well timed moves, but in then end you always get bitten. Anyway, you are bitten and in 5 - 10 minutes you are going to turn into a zombie. You have to go to various locations, and there might me multiple endings.

This is cool because casual gamers and core gamers should enjoy it. You don’t have to put in 2 hours of work to progress, and you don’t need to quicksave or save normally, because death doesn’t matter, you just start again.

Sequels

Terrorist Activity (hidden hydrogen bomb)
Rescuing someone from execution
Volcano or another natural disaster

Sources / Inspiration

Groundhog Day
Max Payne 2
Grow Flash Games
24 TV Series
“The Game” Episode on Stargate
Zombies everywhere

Concept for the week - deus ex machina

Published
by
Tom
on November 3, 2005
in Gamedev and Generic
. 1 Comment

“deus ex machina”

Literally, “god from the machine” or “god out of a machine”.

deus ex machina

  1. In Greek and Roman drama, a god lowered by stage machinery to resolve a plot or extricate the protagonist from a difficult situation.
  2. An unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot.
  3. A person or event that provides a sudden and unexpected solution to a difficulty.

In game design this is one of the things designers want to do, but without the player noticing.

A small example of this is Cortana saying things like “there looks like some sort of transport vehicle in the centre of this tower cluster, lets check it out” when you leave the game for an extended period of time. The game designer wants the player to continue with the game and not get stuck or go off on a tangent.