Basket-Ball - Game Design Class Activity Breakdown

Game Design and Production has never shied away from doing class participation though always to various extremes. Today was the most involving and interesting class activity in a while. Usually class activities are with small groups of around 5 or so, but this time it involved splitting the entire class into 2 very large groups.

The objective was for each group to make a game within around 25 minutes and had the following guidelines…

• You have 1 ball
• Objective: Get the ball into a basket
• Use whatever you want in the room to help with the rules of the game

To set some perspective on the environment we were in, it was a large room, with about 8 rows of long desks extending across the room. Here is a picture to show the room we were in and how we could use.

Our group demonstrated our game first while the 2^nd group did so afterwards. I will put it out there that they were interesting for the time given to make them but overall they were pretty bad games.

1st Game – Chaos Bounce

Rule overview

The group I was a part of. For our game we made it a team based sport with 5 players on each team. The goal still is to get the ball in with one team starting with the ball in possession.

1. Teams are to position their players around the field strategically before the match begins. They were allowed to stay on top of the desks.  
2. An important thing to note is that players cannot move from their initial spot. They are allowed to take a step out but leave a foot behind as well as move their hands to block but they cannot take a real step out. The only time they can move is when they have the ball in possession, and are allowed 3 steps. 
3. This makes it important to pass the ball around as you won’t be able to score if someone is blocking your way. An important thing to note about passing is that when passing you must bounce the ball on a surface first to your teammate. Fairly to do so was not actually given a consequence yet but you just weren’t supposed to.
4.  If somehow a player misses passing the ball, since no one can move from their spot, it will automatically go to the closest player.
5. One final rule is that players cannot position themselves too close to the basket so that they cannot easily dunk the ball in.
6. An added rule near the end was for every player to take a chair and choose a position to place it on the tables around so that it could prove to be an obstacle and block other players.

Players must always bounce the ball when passing

Problems with the game

Breaking down the game, it became pretty obvious it was similar to handball and basket ball. The handball rule of only moving a certain amount when holding the ball applied with our rule #1. The basketball aspect came from rule 3, bouncing the ball. However it was obvious it was a very static and rather boring version of those games due to the fact that no one else can really move except for the player holding the ball. It makes the game a lot slower as repositioning will only happen when another player manages to get the ball and they really cant move too far.

Another problem lies with rule 4, which sends it to the closest player. It should have been automatically given to the other team because the passing team made a bad throw and should be punished. Otherwise they could simply throw it really far, reaching their teammate on the edge and being out of reach of anyone else so they can automatically get the ball.

The whole positioning of the game is interesting but honestly really slow and boring. A player could literally stand there and never get the chance to do anything in the game. Nor can they make “good plays” by getting into position at a good moment. This is like a turn based bored game with some interaction between players, not what a game with a ball should really be like.

Chairs as an obstacle were there but didn't really matter all that much

What could be improved

In a game like this, you really need to have some control over your movement, either that or the rules needed to be changed because it would have just become handball. Games with static movement in a physical sport are not generally as fun as those that have some movement. The idea of positioning is neat, but it needed to have just a bit more movement because if you never got the ball, you were pretty much stuck.

There were also simple rule changes that could have made the game better but weren’t put in time to be applied to the game, such as the ball going out of the reach of players.

Conclusion

For a game made in 25 minutes though, it isn’t bad but it wasn’t particularly fun either. I volunteered for testing the game though only with 3 on 3. It was honestly not interesting because I never once got the chance to get the ball due my position. I already went over the problems with positioning but honestly it just wasn’t too fun.  It looked like it had potential due to the positioning of chairs and people, however people on the edge of the area just couldn’t do as much as people closer to the basket.

2nd Game – Human Foosball

Rules Overview

The game made by the 2^nd group, I honestly didn’t hear all the rules but the basic gist of it was human foosball. For some reason both of our groups decided that we should have minimal movement in this game and be stuck in the same position for most, if not the entire game. With their game, you could not move at all, no matter what, you stayed in the same position.

The basket was placed in the middle of the field, where it was surrounded by members of the two teams in foosball like positions. They litered all the rows of the area, (not allowed on the tables) with around 10 or more players on each team. They essentially slapped the ball, trying to get it into the basket. It was simply mindless hitting into the center which looked kind of fun and intense at times but overall was as static as our game.

Problems with the Game

People in certain positions hardly ever got to see the ball or get a chance to hit it, which in all honesty doesn’t look like too much fun. Since they were forced to stay still in that position, it made players in the center the most likely to hit the ball and have the most fun, while players on the outer edges got it far less frequently. There was a lack of balance in who got to hit the ball the most due to these positions so the fun factor was not equal.

Another problem was that players would often hit the ball out of boundaries which slowed down the game since they had to go pick it up.

The Legendary Game Design Ball

What could be improved?

It was honestly an interesting idea but if the game allowed for a bit more movement then it would have been better. Something I would have done to add to the fun was to allow some limited player movement. Players should be able to move around a bit in their row, a limited distance but not running into other players (if they happen to be in the same row). This would allow players to be more mobile and have a shot at being able to hit the ball to where they need to.

The basket was also located too close to players, if they were farther back they it would have allowed for more shots on the net that weren’t blocked by players. It would have given an opportunity for more scoring. The demo by the other group had no one scoring in the timeframe they were given.

Conclusion

This game was even less mobile than our game which I don’t find to be that good of an idea. It definitely looked chaotic like our game but I noticed a good portion of people who rarely were able to hit the ball. The idea was interesting but seemed to lack in fun factor for those on the edges.

The goal behind this activity

Both games used a mix of level design and Game Design. We created the rules but then we fit those rules and mechanics into the field we were to use, which is the goal of level design. I can tell that both groups thought more so about the game design aspect then the level design aspect. Though the rows of desks were incorporated, the only other level design that came about from the activity was for my group, (Chaos Bounce) which incorporated chairs into it to make more dynamic levels.

There has been a lot of emphasis on level design these past lectures so I believe it would have been more beneficial if we had put a bit more interesting design into the use of the room. Group 1 (Chaos Bounce) however had better use then group 2 (Human Foosball) so my group wins!

A look into Super Smash Brothers Brawl’s Engine

Super Smash Bros. Brawl may have been released 4 years ago, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something that can be learned from it. Knowledge from classes from the previous year have made me realize just how some of the systems in Super Smash Bros. Brawl now work. I won’t have code or anything but I do have tons of experience with this game so some of this is speculation but I do have some proof too!

Physics & Gameplay

For this entry in the series, they were able to get the Havok engine into their game. But Super Smash Bros has always dealt with physics in it's own way and having Havok only helps. With Havok the game deals with physics in ways that don’t deter from the core gameplay the series is known for and adds several things that make the game more dynamic then it used to be. 

A brief overview of how the gameplay works is that characters are knocked off stage, flying further the more damage they receive until they are KO’d offstage. The distance someone flies away is based on several factors...

1) The character’s weight – The lighter the character the farther they fly when hit. Heavier doesn’t fly as far. In general heavier character are slower and lighter are faster.

Mario is considered average weight while Bowser is the heaviest character (Weight values found here)

2) The floatiness of the character – Some characters are inheritly floatier, meaning they will fly up higher when hit then someone who is the same weight but has a lower floatiness. In general all characters are floatier in this game then they were in Melee. You also cannot fall as fast as when you're floaty.

These two have the same weight but despite that Samus falls much slower and is easier to knock farther vertically (Fall rank found here)

3) The amount of force in the attack – Some attacks will send players flying farther compared to other attacks. Some attacks from items like the “homerun bat” have enough force to usually knock an opponent off to the side regardless of weight or their damage.

Smash attacks have some of the most force in a character's movelist usually

4) Damage Percentage – Determines how far a character will fly from an attack. This is NOT a direct ratio of distance however. A character at 100% damage will not fly 100 times farther than a character at 1% damage. Nor is it true that You will fly twice as far at 200% damage compared to 100%. Rather than linear ratio of distance, the game uses an exponential formula to calculate how far an opponent will fly. 100% compared to 50% sends an opponent flying much farther away and that distance also depends on the force exerted. The exact formula  for this is not known (By me).

Link flies farther when hit since his damage is higher

5) Stale Moves – This is a more minor addition to how the game handles force of attacks. Basically the game keeps a counter of how many times you have used a particular move. For example, Mario’s forward Smash attack, which is very good for KO’ing. If you have only used that move, it would check the counter based on how times you used that move in a row and hit with it, compared to other moves you have used to it with recently. The amount of damage and force that the move would apply would be reduced based on this counter. Therefore the game endorses using a variety of moves rather than just spamming one single move. Basically if one person uses the same move too much, the force they can apply to knock an opponent away is reduced.

6) Directional Influence – Not known to many but this is a way to influence the direction you’re flying when hit. By mashing the control stick in the direction you want when hit, you can reduce or increase flight distance.

Havok Additions

Besides these basics, Havok applies some additions to the series as well, these are…

A. Collision of characters – When an opponent is knocked away, if they pass through another character on screen, they will collide into them. The person who was flying will have their flight distance reduced based on weight of the character you collided with. Usually this results in a significantly reduced flight distance upon hitting another person. For the person that is hit, they will fly a distance based on weight and force the other character is experiencing from flight. A set modifier seems to be added in order to reduce the distance the person hit is, since in all cases this person seems to only get knocked back a short distance. The only way you can be KO’d like this is if you’re already near the edge of the stage.

B. Weight to items – Some items are put on wheels such as crates. These items typically are given a large weight from the start and they can begin to move if they are on an inclined surface. If they happen to hit anyone on the way, the speed the crate is at will determine the force the opponent is sent flying. For these items the weight seems to be rather significant as it’s been shown to KO many characters or set them a large distance if at a high percentage. Items can be influenced by the wind as well to send them into characters as well.

Crates in Smash Bros now have weights

There are other additions that Havok or the base Smash Bros system uses for other things involving gravity that aren’t easy to tell apart. But they are in the game one way or another.

Animation & Skeletons

The game uses a skeletal animation system, this can be observed from watching Brawl moveset hacks. In these videos provide cool insight into how the skeleton is assigned to the mesh of a character. The mesh is attached to the skeleton and assigned the correct weight values to coincidence with the joints of the skeleton. Each model for a character would normally be assigned appropriate weights that fit with their particular skeleton. Once you start assigning different movesets to different characters, its basically trying to use a different set of animations which belong to the character who's moveset you're trying to mimic.

A video of Brawl Hackers switching movesets of characters Part 1

For example if we have Mario and we try to give him Luigi’s moveset, they may look similar but Luigi’s skeleton is not the same, with different proportions and with his mesh assigned to weigh correctly with the skeleton. Mario will therefore appear distorted since now he is automatically taking Luigi’s skeleton, but still using his own mesh. He appears to be stretched and is also using Luigi’s animations now. Also, certain moves that Mario does applies automatic particle effects which will still appear despite having Luigi’s skeleton. This is because those particle are still assigned to the character of Mario and since we are identifying him as still being Mario, he will get to have those fire effects in his Smash Attacks.

Part 2 of the moveset swaps. Notice how no one's meshes are breaking. It appears they all have a similar skeleton structure.

There are issues with missing animations however. If Mario was to use his down+B, which brings out his FLUDD water tank, Mario simply spawns the tool on his back, there is no animation (0:50 of the video). Luigi’s moveset however requires an animation to do the down+B attack (Luigi spins around). Since there is no animation, Mario will simply go into a T-Pose since it’s trying to reference an animation that does not exist in Mario’s data and will become unable to move due. If Mario had a normal down+B move, he would be able to reference an animation since it would likely fill that slot in Mario’s data. Sometimes the animation can break anyways even if they do have an animation in that slot, so its hard to say for certain why that is since moveset hacking is, finicky.

Final Part of moveset swaps

For the most part having a character and giving them someone else’s skeleton seems to work. Since everyone seems to be able to use each other skeletons, we can come to the conclusion that their skeletons all in fact have the same hierarchy and number of nodes. The only difference is the position of those nodes which causes the weird distortions we see in characters (such as Mario's face being weird in the first video). The only problem is a few missing or broken animations due to characters having different properties for their attacks which cause the T-Pose to activate. It's cool that they were able to make the right number of nodes that would fit all their variety of characters, from Bowser to a more humanoid character like Mario. It becomes scary when one gives a little character like Pikachu, someone big like Ganondorf’s moveset…

Pikachu becomes a creature of pure terror

Other systems

I won’t go too far into how the particle system works because I don’t really have too much information on the rendering system of the game. So I won’t spend time just purely speculating without any actual stuff to go on. All you need to know is that the game looks very nice for a Wii game, character models and particle effects.

Conclusion

That pretty much raps up this post. Thanks to moveset swapping I was able to look in detail about how the animations in the game worked as well as the meshes and skeletal animation system. Physics on the other hand were found with just years of experience with the game as well testing and observation. Thanks to Game Dev now I can see this game in a different light!

Accessibility of Fighting Games

My friend Mr.Moose recently tweeted an article about accessible games, which are games that are able to be played by all manner of people, included those handicapped. Now this got me thinking about games in general that would be accessible to everyone, or rather games that seem to have barriers to a lot of gamers handicapped or not. One of the genres I found to be consistenly have issues getting people into the scene are fighting games, one of my favourite genres.

There are really a variety of factors being the cause for this and I'll go through them and why I think they are causing a barrier that detracts people from playing a lot of fighting games. For this post I am going to select three different fighting games, all with a variety of different characters and fighiting mechanics to ensure that none of these games play alike. The three games are as follows, Street Fighter 4, Blazblue : Calamity Shift and Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

Reduce your opponent's life gauge to zero to win

First off let's just briefly outline how you win in these games, it's really simple. Reduce your opponent's life gauge to nothing to win a round. Win enough rounds (usually 2 out of 3) to win the entire match. Now this concept is simple enough and no one should have trouble understanding it, the problem comes with the other mechanics in the game. 

First off let's talk about some crucial things to learning fighting games to show why it's so hard for people to get into this genre. These are...

1) Fundamentals
2) Movelists
3) Combos

In short, fundamentals are key things that you don't normally think about but do in a fighting games. These aren't normally taught to players by tutorials in game so these are key things that aren't being taught.

Street Fighter 4 - There is more to a fighting game than just using special moves

Movelists are assigned to your character, every character has different moves to choose from with different properties. You need to learn your characters movelist if you want to know what action to do at a certain time. Movelists can range from reasonable to insane depending on the game.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 - Every character has access to hundreds of different moves

Combos have been a highlight of fighting games for a long time and are a way to deal massive damage that you wouldn't with just hitting a person once with a special move. These take memorization and time to learn and can be daunting to figure out and execute.

Blazblue - Combos require execution, timing and memorization to do

Fundamentals of Fighting Games

A lot of new games have tried to make an effort to teach the fundamentals of their game but it's a difficult road for new players to learn. For Blazblue and Street Fighter, they share a lot of similar elements because they are both 2D fighters while Tekken being 3D does in fact share elements too.

Spacing

Spacing - Gouki (Right) uses a fireball at a distance that the enemy played would jump in only to get an uppercut to the face

For instance one of the most basic things to learn is spacing, which means your distance relative to your opponent which is important because some characters lend themselves better to close range combat and others at further range. Spacing out your opponent to take advantage of your character's movelist is a large versus your opponent's character's movelist becomes part of the "mindgames" that come in the matches. Knowing when to throw a fireball based on the distant to your opponent, to make sure they can jump over and kick is an unspoken rule but its there. The problem with this is, no tutorial in any of these games actually teaches you the fundamentals of spacing and this IS one of the most important parts of fighting games. Everyone pretty much has to figure it out for themselves or look online which is just meant more time researching instead of learning hands on. Not too beginner friendly.

Footsies

SF4 - Fei Long (Right side) uses a fierce punch, hitting at max range. A demonstration of footsies or "poking".

Another important fundamental is footsies, which lends itself to spacing. Footsies basically means "poking" at your opponents with moves that ensure you can keep the distance you want relative to the opponent and deal damage. These are important in pretty much all fighting games. Again the problem is that these aren't really taught in tutorials either. I don't know why fighting games neglect to include this in tutorials but this is another very important concept that I never learned without looking online.

Punishing

Ken (On the right) Uses a very slow attack that takes a while to recover. Ryu can then "punish" it with an attack as result.

Punishes are another important concept, which means to punish an opponents move that either misses or simply takes too long recover from the animation. This has been taught in a very well done manner in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 but the other games I have not seen it being taught. This is really important to learn as well and the problem is to learn how to punish, you need to know how the opponent's character you're facing works. This involves a lot of technical mumbo jumbo of frame data and such that really makes it hard for newcomers and even experience players to learn. This is something that though simple, takes a ton of dedication for any player which can seriously deter casual players.

Mix-Ups

Mix-Ups means to alternate between attacks that force opponent to defend themselves in different ways.

Mix-Ups is another technique that was actually taught in the tutorials for these games (except Street Fighter 4). Basically when characters block an attack, they have two options, block high or low. Moves can be counted as either overhead or low. Lows block lows and high blocks can stop overheads. It's a pretty simple concept in practice but hard to execute in real time without lots of practice. You also have to do it without looking to obvious or you'd get predicable.

There are honestly a ton of other fundementals but I've covered more than enough to show how complex a fighting game system can be. This is NOT an easy system to get a hold of and the fact that a lot of fighting games still have yet to officially teach these concepts in a tutorial makes it really daunting for new players to get into.



Movelists

You have a lot of characters in a fighting game, sometimes its around 12, sometimes around 50. And every character in the game has a different set of moves with different properties and special attributes. That could be throwing a fireball or doing an uppercut to lay the hurt on opponents in the air. It's really a lot to remember and you're going to have to learn to combine together to form combos if you want to do any real damage. Let's quickly take a look at how Street Fighter 4 handles these.

SF4 - Ryu using his Ultra Combo, dealing tons of damage

Street Fighter 4 handles move lists fairly well. You have a movelist that doesn't seem to be too large or overly burdening. It can still be a lot to remember but it's organized well and not too complicated. The moves themselves take some getting used to. The quarter circle motion for a fireball is a lot easier to do than it used to be in Street Fighter 2, meaning that these games are trying to appeal more to the casual audience. The problem comes when combining these in combos or trying to apply fundamentals such as spacing and footsies. Still that can be considered more "advanced" stuff but if you want to even think about becoming good, you need to learn those fundamentals.

Blazblue is in a similar boat to Street Fighter 4, with a lot of moves still but not an overbearing amount. The tutorials also teach you how to use these.

TTT2 - Characters have a lot of moves but none are specified as "special moves"

Tekken on the otherhand suffers greatly on the topic of movelists. The game has pretty much 100 different "moves" for a character and they don't even give you any recommended moves to use. They don't even have a tutorial for each character to teach you how to use these moves as well, its all in practice mode. This is one of the greatest oversights the game has and it makes it extremely difficult for even an experienced player to get the grasps of a character. For beginners I can't even imagine how hard it is.

The problem in general is movelists don't ever tell you why you'd use a certain move. They don't say "This is a fireball move, use it for spacing" or "This move has invincibility temporarily, use it to counter moves" you have to go through the entire movelist and figure it out for yourself. Learning this stuff for new players is a lot of work.


Combos

Combos have been a basic feature in pretty much all fighting games since Street Fighter 2 first came out. They used to be much simpler but still restricted to certain timing and were difficult to pull off. Nowadays, combos come in all sorts of flavors and the methods to do this in each fighting game is different from the other. Let's start off with Street Fighter 4.

SF4 - Ryu Trial mode and combos

This is probably the best example of a game that provides simplicity with depth. Combos in this game are actually taught through a mode called trial mode, where set combos are provided and you're allowed to attempt these while seeing all the inputs necessary. Every character has their own trial mode and since every character's moves have different properties then they all have different timing and move combinations to make different combos which makes this mode necessary.

The problem with this mode is that they don't show you the proper timing or even provide a "demo" of the combo being done for you. This means you pretty much have to experiment by yourself to find out the timing for the combo. This can become very frustrating to new players since when going into a fighting game, you don't have much sense of timing. Though they show you the combos, it pretty much becomes trial and error to learn. Some even require one frame (1/60th of a second) to chain a combo. Some very basic combos can still be achieved through button mashing and still aren't too difficult but it can still take a fairly long time for new players to learn these. Street Fighter 4 still nevertheless contains a good way for players to learn combos.

Blazblue - Challenge mode for Ragna

In Blazblue, combos are in general much longer and more complex than Street Fighter 4. You combine knocking your opponents all over the air and your hit count in a combo soars into the double digits easily. The mechanics to Blazblue are entirely different and have different timing and properties to combos such as ground bounces that make them it so that any combos you might learn in a different fighting game won't help you here or at least not as much as you'd hope. Thankfully they also contain a trial mode for each character similar to Street Fighter 4 and even provide a demo reel for you to see the timing and learn it. Basic combos with more hits are in general easier to do in Blazblue than Street Fighter.

TTT2 - Fight Lab

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and it's predecessors are in 3D arenas and have combos that are way different than Blazblue or Street Fighter. The problem with Tekken is that unlike those two games, combos aren't even taught through a trial mode for characters. Tekken Tag 2 recently had a "fight lab" mode which taught you the basics of the game (and some fighting game fundamentals) and some combos, however any character specific combos have to be learned entirely through trial and error or looking up videos. For the game not to include this is not very beginner friendly so the process to picking up any character in this game is very difficult.

Combos in general can take a long time to learn for new players because they have to get used to a lot of different gameplay elements still. It's not like in a shooter where the basic knowledge of where to aim and use corners is quite a bit easier to grasp. There is a lot of memorization to be had with combos which can really be offsetting to new players.

Fighting Games require commitment

Fighting games are a daunting task to get into, because there is a certain level of commitment this genre needs more so than other genres I have played with. I myself have a few friends who have tried fighting games but never got into it because either A), they think its button mashing which its not, or B) Upon figuring its not button mashing looks way too complicated for them to figure out and really get into. They don't play one more than one fighting game and even if they do, it's not very often.

TTT2 - Combo video, these aren't easy to do and takes a while to do in training mode let alone in a real match

The fact that a lot of fighting games don't have a good story means that you usually buy a fighting game for the fighting system and multiplayer, not anything else. A lot of fighting games recently have been lacking in single player content (not counting Blazblue and Persona 4 Arena or Mortal Kombat recently). So the problem lies in the fact that you have to spend a lot of time to get good in these games because of course you play to win.  There is no fun in getting obliterated by someone miles better than you and beating computer opponents only has so much appeal. To enjoy these games you need to fight real people, which means you really have to get into the system and learn the fundamentals. If you don't you could end up losing, getting frustrated and just giving up.

SF4 - Daigo and Justin Wong are top tier players who spend most of their time playing fighting games. This can be seen in their grasp of everything about the genre.

That's the barrier this genre faces. It needs the deep mechanics, fundamentals and movesets present right now to keep it's core audience because that's what fighting game fanatics go for. But how do they get new players in while keeping the same tournament level style of play.

Accessibility has been improving

I may have been stating how hard it is for newcomers to get in due to all those factors but companies have been working hard to get people into the genre.

For one there has been an "easy button" mode implemented into Blazblue as well as Marvel vs Capcom 3. This basically makes all the special moves easier to execute, not requiring quarter circle motions or full circle motions and what not. This definetely makes it easier for the new players to get the hand on the basics as they dont have to worry so much on the execution of moves. These modes are however limited and don't allow you to access the full move list of your character. This type of control has been implemented as earlier as 2001 in Capcom vs SNK 2.

Blazblue - With easy mode, even basic moves turn into special moves and can turn into combos easily

As previously mentioned, there have been more tutorials for combos and some of the basic fundamentals (though not all of them) featured in some games. The game Skullgirls recently featured a rather broad tutorial and taught a lot of the fundamentals as well as the game's own systems thoroughly though it had no trials. Other games like Tekken Tag 2 have not shown all its systems in it's tutorials. If games could teach the fundamentals of the genre more like Skullgirl's tutorial, then a lot more of them would be appealing and accessible to audiences. If they can combine Skullgirl's tutorial along with teaching you at least the basics of how to use a specific character, then it goes a long way to teaching players how to get into the game.

Skullgirl's Extensive Tutorial

Conclusion - How do we make it easier for new players?

In short the problem is there are a whole cluster of things for new players to do, learning movelists, characters, combos, important fundamentals, with usually only a few of these things actually being taught. Fighting games are daunting there is no question about it, which is why new players need the game to help them. Sure they can look online if they are passionate about learning but you want to make sure the game itself is helping right there. Its so much easier to do a tutorial in game than to look at a video online.

But if you can make a person really enjoy a fighter, get into the system and learn the fundamentals, you have to get a hold of their attention for not only the sequels to that fighter, but other fighters in the scene as well. If you learn Tekken 6 for example, you can easily get right back into Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Even your fundamental understanding of spacing and what not will transfer to Street Fighter despite the different mechanics of the games. That's what fighting games have to do if they want to hook people in. Make it as easy as possible and add in the depth of the game's systems and fighting game fundamentals as they go through tutorials (fun tutorials that is). The more a game guides a newbie's hand, the easier it will be for them to get in.

Game Design vs. Level Design

There was an important question that was raised during the first session of Game Design and Production II. It was what are the differences between Game Design and Level Design and well how are they related to each other? Well what they are each individually is pretty obvious in itself but I'll just quickly detail them.

Quick Overview of Game Design & Level Design

Game Design is the mechanics and the rules of the game, pretty much the gameplay. Is the game a shooter where you can jump around, use grenades and powers ups? Or an adventure game where you explore by using physics to interact with the environment? Is there a certain goal to the game, such as save the princess. I've covered this before but its good to get the definition out there again (even for my sake).

Mario jumping is a game mechanic and part of Game Design

Level Design on the other hand are the areas in which gameplay will take place. For example, in Mario our level would be World 1-1, the very first area in the game (aka first level). There are blocks placed all around the area as well as blocks containing power ups. To make it clear, the level would be the placement of these blocks, power ups and enemies, where as the gameplay would be the interaction with these elements. 

World 1-1 is a level for Super Mario

Designing a certain level means you want the player to experience certain challenges at certain points in the game. The first level would have a simpler layout, less enemies, more powers, or anything that helps get the player into the game. The last level would have the most enemies, the most complex layout and overall require the most skill. Now this doesn't always have to be true but it's not usually a very good example of level design when your hardest level is the very first one, and the easiest being the very last. I have not yet encountered a game like that which performed very well.

World 1-4 is a much harder level than World 1-1 because the player has progressed further

Game Design vs Level Design

Now two important and rather subjective questions were also raised in class which I will focus the rest of this post on. There were...

1) Does bad level design make a good game bad?
2) And does Good level design make a bad game good?

These question can be answered in any number of ways as they are subjective and I would like to give my opinion on them because they are pretty interesting. First of all, let's try and answer the first.

Does bad level design make a good game bad?

The first question assumes that our game in question has good gameplay mechanics. So let's say our game is Halo, which has very good foundations as an FPS. It helped reinforce the two weapon choice limit, has excellent controls, intelligent AI, fun weapons and other great qualities as a shooter. This game has a number of excellent and fun levels, save for one, which is titled the Library. The problems with this level are twofold. It's boring and it had enemies that no one really likes.

Halo - The Library, the labyrinth of the same thing over and over

The reason it was boring was because it was essentially the same one area, over and over for simply too long. Aesthetically it looks boring after seeing it for another time, but then you're forced to relive it over and over, the exact same scenery. Just when you think its about to end... nope, let's go through it again and again. There was honestly very little variation in it and it's proclaimed as one of the worst things in Halo: Combat Evolved. The enemies were also boring too, it was the flood, not the intelligent Covenant enemies you usually face. The flood AI is zombie like on purpose which makes them rather dull to fight in comparison to the covenant. It's always cool fighting an Elite from the Covenant but fighting a flood enemy is just not as interesting. So you have to fight these tedious enemies over and over with the same scenery. This is not a good level, everyone hates it. It's torture just to get through it, yet despite that the game still gets exclaim and I still love the game too.

Halo - The Flood, not as well liked as the Covenant

So in this case, it was a bad level, no one liked it, but a lot of people still loved the game. Did it ruin the game? Maybe for some but overall it didn't drag the game into oblivion by itself. So then maybe it's multiple bad levels that make a bad game? Because most of the other levels in Halo were much better in comparison and much more interesting. If you had to do 3 library like levels throughout Halo, things might get more grim for the shooter. You take that a step further and you just have every level being bad design, with flood everywhere and similar corridors about. Since people hated just playing the level once, won't they hate the game entirely if they had to do multiple bad levels? That's really a question of opinion for everyone but for me, I would absolutely despise it. I wouldn't play the game if I had to suffer through many dull levels like the Library multiple times. Sure enough I have the gameplay with cool weapons but things can get boring if you simply go through the same thing over and over. Now one can argue the levels would still be different even if they were badly designed but it can still make the experience dull as can be see in the difference in response to the Library compared to other levels.

Halo - The Silent Cartographer Level, I really loved this level. Why can't the Library be like this?

One thing to note is that, if a game has terrible level design everywhere, can a game with fundamentally good mechanics fully take advantage of it's own mechanics if the levels aren't designed well? Level design consists of using your game mechanics to their advantage in meaningful and interesting ways (such as the right amount of difficulty depending on how long the player has been playing and their skill level). If levels are low quality, then your mechanics will most likely be dumbed down to fit with that low quality which will make the game bad.

Does Good level design make a bad game good?

Expendables 2 Game - I can't say I know anything about it's level design but I know it's not a good game

So let's try and answer the second question now, does Good Level Design make a bad game good? Our Bad Game has terrible mechanics, the combat system is just awful, repetitive and doesn't really have all that much depth, its just mashing the same buttons over and over. The game's gameplay is just mediocre at best. Now say our game is an action game, and let's put them in the most fantastic level, with the right amount of enemies to fight, the right difficulty, and a really cool final boss encounter. In my opinion, if the game's mechanics were terrible to begin with, even with the right difficulty, it would still be a dull affair. If I am in a game where all I need to do is press one or two buttons, you could even argue that the level design doesn't even make a difference. 

There should be a picture here but I honestly couldn't think of a bad action game with an excellent level

It's a little harder to answer this question with a terrible action game because its hard to balance the right amount of enemies in a game where you only press one button to really win. That and level design for these kinds of games isn't as complex as some others, so let's switch to a platformer for a sec to get another perspective.

A platformer, with excellent level design, gameplay looks like its going to be a lot of fun and there are a lot of innovative puzzles on hand and a lot of imagintation that really makes the level look fantastic, both gameplay wise and visually. Problem is, the controls are awful and you're more likely to boost off a cliff than make it to the platform the level designer wanted you to get to. This level is fantastic and in another similar game with better controls and mechanics, you'd be sailing through with a ton of fun. But in reality, you're fighting the game just to be able to play the level but you just can't.

Yoshi's Story - I liked this game when I was younger and the level design seemed good but I felt the gameplay was lacking compared to other Nintendo playformers

There is another issue with answering this question that came up with showing the action game example. If a game's mechanics and gameplay are really that terrible, can you really show a great level through that? A purely action oriented game with only fighting can lend itself to level design mostly in spawning enemies, but if you can only really do a handful of boring actions, can you make a good level based on that? That's where I feel like this issue makes it difficult to determine if you're really making a good level when you have terrible game design. For some games it can be more obviously determined like in platformers, but others can have trouble telling the difference.

Yes, I played this game, I really hated it, couldn't even tell if the levels were designed well because of how bad it's gameplay was

But even with platformers its still difficult to tell, let's take Sonic 2006 for example. I made fun of this game a while back in a previous blog post and well I know the game's controls and mechanics weren't very good and that it's levels weren't particularly good either, or were they? Now it's hard for me to judge because I see Sonic going on rails, looking like he is having a blast but then suddenly falling through the ground or spinning upside down. Were the enemies and platforms Sonic was supposed to be facing actually placed really well but couldn't be taken advantage of because of his poor controls? I honestly can't really tell because maybe I am just blinded by my dislike for it's controls.

 

Sonic 2006

This is where I feel there is a grayline for the second question, where Good level design can make a bad game good. I can't even properly tell if its supposed to be a good level in the first place because the game can't take advantage of it. But let's just say we can tell in that case. My earlier example of the platformer not being able to control well and you go out of control to get to those "perfect" would like me to think that even with good level design, in general you can't really make a bad game good or it's really hard. 

Little Big Planet - Great game, with controls I didn't quite like

The only exception I can think of is Little Big Planet, who's controls I didn't really like at all but it's excellent Level Design, level creation and customization made it a great game still. That and the mods that allowed you to change the controls to even overcome some of it's control yipes (like becoming a spaceship somehow, don't know how Little Big Planet Players do that). The problem with including this exception is that it's Game Design was built around customization and overall it's Game Design is very solid. My only grief with it was the controls (though to be honest controls are very important in a platforming game)

My conclusion

To give these two questions a quicker answer I will say for the first...

Bad level design can make a game with good design suffer, one level can make the entire experience a bit less than it should be but still be great. Multiple bad levels can serious hinder a game from it's full potential but not might outright make it terrible. It certainly won't be as great depending on the severity of the bad level design but it probably won't outright "kill" the game on bad level design. Besides whats "bad" can be subjective to some people anyways. There is a difference between bad/poor level design and "just flat out terrible why would you do that, kind of level design".

For the second question, a good level will most likely not save a bad game. If the game is that bad overall, you might not even be able to tell if it has a good level or not since a good level works with the mechanics of the game and if the mechanics are bad, it might influence the level to be bad in order to fit. I feel it's highly unlikely great levels will make a bad game good.

That was a lot of time just spent on two questions but I honestly feel these are really good questions I hadn't considered before and that they deserved the time they got in this post.

Beginning of a new Year

It's the start of a new school year at UOIT and what better time to continue the blog then to do so now. It's now my third year at UOIT's Game Development Program and it's only been a few days since class started and there really isn't all too much happening at the moment except the formation of teams. This means there is quite a bit of time on hand (At least for now) for other things, including to make sure this blog gets a proper start back into the new Year/Semester.

Game Design will be getting frequent updates as it's one of the courses for this semester so it will continue to get the loving treament it did before.

New for this year I am adding the Game Engine section, which will include my hands on experience with Gaming Engines such as Ogre3D, Unity, and other engines. It will also include some breakdowns of games like I usually do and try to decipher some of the engines behind them and such. There will probably be more things to come to this section as well.

I will most likely continue my Tunes of the Week as well since they don't really take too long.

This year I will probably talk more about the development of the Game being made by my group but that won't begin till the groups are actually formed. I'll also probably have a post relating to some of the basics of level design soon as well.

That's it for now!