MIGs 2012: Creating Efficient Tools

Amongst the presentations at MIGs, one of them was so simple and yet so well done that it had my attention the entire time. This presentation was"the Art of Creating Efficient Tools" presented by David Lightbown who had just recently joined Ubisoft Montreal to work on the exact topic he was covering. The presentation was coveyed not with heavy text, but with simple images and through enthusiastic presentation. You were paying attention to him the whole time and the presentation in the background helped to demonstrate his points nearly flawlessly. He even had volunteers to come up and gave a free copy of Assassin's Creed III afterwards. No other presentation I saw had volunteers at all.

Now the topic doesn't sound all that interesting, but honestly it's the core of usability. It's the core of ease of access for anything and everything relating to the creation of pretty much anything that requires software or even hardware. The point of this presentation was to be aware of how important making tools that are easy to use will help the entire process of creating something like a game. He pointed out an interesting system that we use in our everyday life when using tools.

Look -> Act -> Think

So what happens is we look at the tool and then we begin to act. But then we think about if we are doing the right thing, or wondering how I am supposed to do a particular task using this tool. It could be thinking about something as simple as finding out where the print button is or something like that. What is happening with complicated software that when we are having to look and think too much, we do not act. That means we do not get the task we want to accomplish with the software completed. What we want to happen is to maximize the amount of acting. Well the only way we accomplish this is reducing the thinking and looking time!

It's such a simple looking process and I have never thought about it because it just comes naturally. But it makes a whole lot of sense. From my personal experience, I have hard coded values to place a whole bunch of objects in a world. Now that works, I can get the objects where I want them to be but I have to think more to make sure I am adding the right parameters for each object, if it has health or what not. Instead of doing that I could use a PREFAB. A PREFAB would be an object that contains most or all of the necessary information to place an object where I want. So instead of 10 lines of hard coding per object, I reduce it to 1 line of code using this PREFAB, it makes it a whole lot faster. More acting.

The User Experience

The user experience is key. We want users to be able to have a streamlined experience that maximizes acting and reduces looking and thinking. Well he gave a few tips on how to best maximize acting.

Form and color was the first thing mentioned. Form and color are so simple and yet they can represent so much. A simple circle combined with a color provides a lot of information for us. For example street lights have red and green circles for stop and go. They are simple shapes with colors and yet they tell us information we need to make an action almost instantly. A good point was brought across that you should not only use colors though. There is still a large portion of color blind people and a green and red hue circle nect to each other would still be confusing for them. A combination of a different shape for each along with the different color will make it adaptable for more than one kind of user.

Which object would be more likely to represent STOP?

This shape idea ties into the next point which is interaction design. With the Mental model and conceptual model. These two models are essentially "How do we think?" vs "What it actually does". Essentially its like comparing two objects to be similar, so you say something like "Its as easy to learn as riding a bike". Typically learning to ride a bike is easy for most people so the message is essentially that the material will be easy to learn. This ties into how shapes have certain meanings. A circle is a softer shape and we think more along the lines of smooth, nicer objects. Meanwhile a hard edged square we might associate as more aggressive.

In the Real World

After pointing our some tips on how useful shapes and thinking are, he began to point out some very useful real world examples. So let's say we need to make a tool to help users build levels for a game. Well there is something known as the 80 vs 20 model (I THINK). Basically what you need to do is focus on satisfying the 80% of people using the tool because it will be near impossible to satisfy the other 20%. For example the earlier example of "Easy as riding a bike" would apply to 4 out of 5 people, except the 5th person who had great difficulty learning how to ride a bike. The analogy doesn't apply to that person, and the usability you provided in your tools won't either.

If there are 4 out of 5 circles that can use your tool efficiently already, forget about the 5th circle

Another point is that tools should be streamlined to do certain tasks. Don't make it a jack of all trades tool that does everything. Making it do everything makes the interface of the tool even larger and more cluttered which makes it more difficult to navigate and perform the tasks you need. If you are just making a level loader tool you don't have to give it the option to be able to create models either. It only complicates things even more.

This leads to the next point which was the statement that intermediate users make up the bulk of users for the tool. There are some experts of course but it's a small majority. There are also beginners who will be learning to use the tool. Now the more complicated the tool the harder it is to learn. Make it less complicated and there will be less beginners and more intermediates who know how to use the tool fairly well. You cannot expect all users to become experts, especially if its a tool that's very complicated. Even if they may know all the shortcuts that makes them very efficient, it won't apply to all users and the extra features will slow most users down. Overall the workflow will decrease due to the larger amount of users slowing down versus the expert fast user.

So how does this overall affect our workflow? Well like we stated earlier, more acting means more productivity. The easier we make the tool the more workflow we get and the more people we have working on making content instead of wasting time thinking on how they need to solve a silly problem. We can same hundreds, thousands of work hours by simple usability.

Do these apply for Game Design and Game Engines?

Well actually yes they do.. Game engines is the easiest to identify that this lesson helps because a Game Engine is in fact a tool. It's a tool that helps to make the game in a more user friendly way. The Unreal Development Kit is a game engine that tries to streamline the process for even non programmers. Ogre SDK provides plenty of functionality that we wouldn't want a weaker programmer having to waste his time figuring out. Point is that yes these lessons apply especially for Game Engines.

What about Game Design? This is much trickier to answer. Usability is a very important concept in games. No one wants a game that is extremely difficult to control and is a complete nightmare to figure out where to go. Usability and functionality attracts players because if they are able to do cool things with button presses rather than having to do crazy complex combinations to accomplish a lesser task, then there will be more of an audience. Just look at games that have simplified controls. A simpler fighting game such as Smash Bros has a lot more sales and more of an audience than a fighting game with crazy controls such as Blazblue or other complex combo fighting games. Even the shapes idea can lead into character design which reflects the game designer and etc.

Smash Bros used simplified controls to great success

The only way to debate this topic is the fact that some games actually want controls to be harder because thats just how the gameplay works. While some games go for simplfied controls, others want more complex interfaces. Take Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth, an RTS that simplified the control scheme while looking at something like Supreme Commander, on opposite ends of functionality. And yet they both sold relatively on the same level anyways. That goes to show functionality doesn't always lead to better games but neither do complex ones either. So the conclusion for game design is that really, is that efficiency in being able to perform tasks in a game doesn't mean a better game. Unless its a level building game, then you want to be able to build levels easily like Portal 2 Level Editor.

Conclusion

Anyways going back to the actual presentation, it was great. It was simple, it was very well done and got the point across. Though I might have known most of this information before, the presentation really helped reinforce it my mind now. I believe it's stuck there permanently. What to take away from this presentation is that creating efficient tools reduces thinking time, increases work productivity which means more time to make stuff!

MIGS 2012 : Directing Visual Design in Games

It's been a while since I did a post of any sort due to GDW deadlines and what not. Now that it's finally over I can fill in some blogs I wanted to do a while back. First off I mentioned during my MIGs experience that I wanted to talk about one of the talks, which was the Art Direction for Rage.

It went over the following note points for the development of RAGE over the course of the hour long talk

• Assessing the Visual state of the game
• Assesing the limitations of technology
• Priorities and Targets
• Wishlist

First off the Director of Art for RAGE Stephan Martieniere talked about how he first joined the project. He spoke of how he had to adapt and make use of assets that were already in existence when he came in. By that time the RAGE development team had a lot of landscape already and a good skybox. However Stephan Martieniere had to take what already existed and not only improve it, but to find ways to fully implement it and work with the gameplay of RAGE. I will go over some of the notable points he talked about that really help show how important visual design is to the overall feel, look and even the gameplay of the game.

SkyBox

The first thing he improved was the skybox of the world. It is an essential look to the asthetic design of the game as he explained. Why is that? Well the skybox in a world like RAGE, where you can see it whenever you're out exploring the world makes it a very important asset to get right. You will be seeing it time and time again and it has to compliment the scenery and not be an eyesore. It needs to be pretty to look at and draw you into the beauty or ugliness of the world. Its more important than you would think at first glance.

Breaking the World

When he spoke of this he meant breaking the world that already existed. As I mentioned earlier he came into the project a bit late, when some assets were already in place. In this case the landscape of an entire world was already in place. What the team had to do was take this existing land and punch new areas that could be filled with content. But it wasn't just a simple, open up a new place and hope it works out. They had to actually plan out how the world would work. The places that would now be created needed to be logical to the geology of the world and needed to be located in a place relative to how it would reflect in the lore of the world. Breaking up this new places took a land that was already defined and made it seem even larger than it already was.

Avoiding Containment

When he spoke of containment he spoke of the presence of the high valleys and cliffs that cluttered the world of RAGE. He specifically got into how the large valleys would serve as a way to make the players feel more constricted and feel like they are in a smaller world. In that sense it meant making far away landscapes and more of the skybox visible. It allowed for a sense of change and direction as there was more to see in the distance. You could see landmarks or cities and have a good idea where to go. It would present itself to gameplay as well for the exploration and discovery of the world since you have more to see.

Establishing Narrative logic and Visual Coherence

Next he spoke about what I have mentioned a few times earlier in this blog and that the environment is about the characters as much as it about the story. The Environment needs to be a fleshed out world, a place that characters inhabit and therefore leads to the story. The gameplay needs to take into effect the characters and monsters you might face in the world, the cities they live in and how they might behave. Incorporating all of this together is visual coherence. For example you would put a character in a an environment that suits them, that they belong in. 

A high tech city gave way to bandits with high tech looking weapons and armor. This affected their visual asthetic for sure. This also affected gameplay as well as it might give access to new equipment as well. The characters would be designed to match and compliment the palette to the city so that they would not only fit but be visually pleasing as well.

He also briefly spoke about ways to enrich the story in subtle ways. Billboards in cities, signs, logos, landmarks were all used in RAGE's cities. Each of these tell their own story, some lore in the game that would help flesh out the world. You would see some billboards advertising products that fit in the world of RAGE, movie posters that would show what kind of movies they watched before the apocalypse, etc. These would help flesh out the world and make it it's own and though we might not always pay attention to these extra tidbits, they really do help make the world feel believable and engrossing.

Extra Tidbits

I can't really put the rest of what he said into one larger catagory but I'd still like to talk about them.

One thing he mentioned was that the design of the environemnt was all about the information that would be revealed to the players. This has an obvious gameplay aspect to it as it helps show and guide players where they might need to go, what to do, or just engrossing the player in the world itself. Environments should be composed in a manner not to overwhelm the player but to provide enough information and give them a good idea where to go and still have the beauty of the environment. Again this is visual coherencing and mixing game design with the art design.

Another neat thing he mentioned  was that when making environments he stated that it helped create the NPCs that inhabited them. Like was mentioned earlier, the NPCs are supposed to be able to inhabit the location they are at, or at least the world. Making a specific kind of environment lead to how inhabitants might dress, what kind of equipment they might possess and how they might act. This again leads to their AI, new weapons, new story and a lot more game design elements.

Conclusion

Stephan Martiniere had thought he had an hour and a half but only had an hour so he didn't have time to speak about everything he wanted to. Nevertheless I learned a lot and it helped reinforce in my mind that game design and art design really shouldn't be seperate at all. For higher level games they should be fully integrated together if a believable world is to be created. Even if the art design leads to level design, the gameplay needs to take place in those areas which leads to influencing how gameplay is. The large overworld of RAGE meant there would be a lot of driving and exploring which was an entirely new gameplay feature different than simple shooting.

It makes me want to discuss more about the visual design of the environments if I wish to make a fully fleshed out world for a game someday. This honestly sounds like the key to making a great environment to fit a great game.

MIGs 2012 - Trip Experience

Just this week from November 12 to 15th, the Montreal Internation Game Summit took place. Developers from all over the world ranging from programmers, game designers, artists, audio technicians and even the CEOs and executives of companies came to meet over the course of these days. Some even gave very useful presentations about their field of study that would unveil new technology and techniques to either market their own company or help audience members for their feature endeavors.

The Trip Begins

A trip for UOIT students was formed and I was among the students taking the trip to Montreal, leaving on the 12th and leaving home the night of the 14th. We spent only two nights there, being at the conference for day 13 and 14 which were the most important days anyways. We took the 6 hour long bus ride to reach our hotel on the 12th and pretty much spent that day exploring Montreal. The tickets we had purchased did not include the 12th or 15th in it's admission so we would not have been able to get into MIGs for that day.

The first night concluded and the first real day of MIGs began. We spent a 20 minute walk towards the hotel in which it took place (though we got lost the first day) and came late to the first presentation. The first presentation came from Tim Sweeny, the CEO of Epic games in a talk about Challenges of the Next Generation Consoles.

Highlights included a speech from CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeney

On a side note I want to state that there are lot of important game industries people here at MIGs (though perhaps not as much as there would be at GDC). Tim Sweeny is the CEO of Epic Games, developpers of Gears of War and Unreal and they are a very powerful company for both making games and developping tools for making games. Other speakers included Peter Molyneux, formerly with Lion Head Studios and created Fable, Black and White and other games.

Going back to how the day went, I missed the entire first lecture since I had to help my friend Mr. Freeman who did a problem with tickets. I then split off to go to the lectures I wanted to look at. I was very curious about a lot of the art related topics interestingly enough. Though I pretty much mostly focus on programming in Game Dev, I am still extremely interested in art, perhaps more so than programming.

A quick note about the presentations is that every time slot is an hour. Also there are always 5 other presentations going on at the same time so that means I missed some other presentations I wanted to go to due to conflicting time slots.

To get an idea of the presentations and topics covered, look here! 

The Presentations Begin - Day 1

The first lecture I went to was "Drawing Inspiration" Bringing Characters and Worlds to Life" by Samantha Youssef. She works at Disney now and went to Sheraton College in the art program, being the only one from her year to be hired by Disney when she graduated. Her talk was incredibly informative regarding art and it was very useful as it opened my eyes to some new techniques she talked about (and she was pretty). I took notes as well and I plan to do a personal write up about this topic and some of the other topics later.

Then came lunch break where I explored the rest of the show floor, but before that I will go over the presentations I went to first.

Guild Wars 2 artwork from Lead artist Kekai Kotaki (now at Bungie)

Amongst the other presentations the first day included Kekai Kotaki, the lead artist who worked on Guild Wars 2 and worked on Guild Wars 1. Unfortunately his presentation got shafted as he was supposed to be provided a tablet so he could draw live for us and teach us techniques. Instead he did not get one and was forced to simply go over his existing work which was still interesting but kind of dry since he was not prepared for this event.

I then went to attend a programming presentation, one on GPGPUs which should interesting since it regarded the use of GPUs for more uses but the delivery was very dry and kind of boring so I almost fell asleep unfortunately. I do not remember much from that presentation and if I had been less tired at that time I would have absorbed more information.

Square Enix featured their new Glacier 2 Engine

The most interesting presentation followed, a look into Square Enix's Glacier 2 engine. I have already made a write up of my impressions of the engine here. To sum up that experience, seeing a AAA game engine close up and learn more intricate details and its features is awesome.

I pretty much ended my day there even though there was one more presentation that day since I was probably going to fall asleep in the next presentation

The Presentations Begin - Day 2

The first presentation I went to was the earliest slot, with a keynote from Peter Molyneux. We got in a little late once again and he talked about "Experience and Innovation". It was a little strange though since he was there via Skype call instead of in purpose. Apparently his new game "Curiosity" became so popular it had a server crash and he needed to stay there. He pretty much talked about Curiosity, how it works and a look into the office where the studio works.

I went to a presentation on audio afterwards which I unfortunately fell asleep in. Not because the presentation was boring, in fact it looked really interesting, but I was kept on too late the night before and got very little sleep. Sadface.

RAGE - Featured in the Art Direction presentation

Following that I went to a talk on Creating and Art Direction Visually Successful Games by Stephan Martiniere, who was lead art director for RAGE. It was extremely informative and in fact related highly to game design surprisingly. A few key points about it for now is that he was designing environments the NPCs themselves could inhabit and the environments would reflect in their outfits. I.E. a tech city would have people in more high tech looking outfits. It was a mesh of visual design being coherent to the world of the game and being immersive. The talk was so interesting that I will probably have a write up on that later on.

Details regarding Battlefield 3 Cutscenes and use of Facial motion capture were presented

Afterwards I went to a presentation regarding Voice Acting/Performance Capture, featuring Battlefield 3. The presenter Tom Keegan talked about the use of motion capture needing a lot more physicality now as the actors need to be able to act naturally and actually envelop the character for more natural movement. So an actor playing a soldier would need to hold a rifle and move around like they were doing it. He even talked about having all actors in at once to do a scene versus voice actors just going on different days and doing their recordings separately. It was an eye opener into some of the techniques they use for MO-Cap acting.

One of the most interesting talks of the day came from David Lightbrown, recently hired by Ubisoft Montreal for designing user interfaces. The talk was about "The Art of Creating Efficient Tools" and was actually VERY interesting and very well done. The presentation itself was the most engaging out of all the of them, he actually used the audience, he was funny, his presentation wasn't heavy on text and used simple shapes to engage the audience. This is one of the talks I am going to write about in the future but essentially it was all about developer tools that are so well done that they will reduce the work time to learn them and just use them to create content.

The final presentation came from a combination of a lot of speakers talking about how they think the future of gaming will come about. Some were more serious speeches, while others were more light hearted. It was interesting to see all these people talk on stage within an hour and everyone had a different opinion and topic they coverered. With that, the MIGs trip ended and we took the bus home!

Extras, Extras!

In my lunch break time and time I didn't spend in the presentations, I looked around the rest of the show floor. There were several booths for many companies, from Game Development studios, to Colleges and programs that specialized in teaching Game Development. Amongst them included Eidos (Deus Ex: Machina - Human Revolution), Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin's Creed III), Bioware (Mass Effect 3), and several others I can't remember. At these booths you could meet with the representatives of those studios and get contacts for networking.

Ubisoft Booth

There was also several others areas such as a demo booth which developers of any sort (including indie) could get space to display their new games. Another area was the art gallery featuring art submitted by people for a small fee to be displayed and voted on. The winner would get a prize of some sort (I have no idea what that prize could have been). There were two catagories, one for pictures which included 2D concept art, 3D models, illustrations and another catagory for video. The video could be trailers, or some artsy looking cutscene. Some people even submitted just a piece of music they had composed themselves.

The Sketch Duel area - Participants are focusing intensely on making their art

To top off this area, every now and then they would have a sketch duel. The first day featured professionals going head to head where they would have 15 minutes to draw something based on a randomly generated template. It could be something like "Draw a samurai dancing beside a house", which they would have to agree on. After the 15 minutes the audience would vote on the favourite. The same rules applied then next day when non professionals were allowed to enter and I watched the entire thing to see their technique. It was mostly speed painting and was another good motivator to learning more art.

Unfortunately I forgot to take many pictures and I should have gotten the art gallery...

Final Notes

So that was pretty much the MIGs trip in a nutshell. It was a really fun and interesting experience, something I would love to do again. Next year I plan to have my portfolio all ready, business cards ready and improve my art experience so I can have a chance at winning the Art Gallery. The presentations were definetely interestin and I learned a lot from them, so I will definetely check them out again.

Stay tuned for more posts for MIGs. I will probably have the following topics covered in more details in the future.

• "Drawing Inspiration" Bringing Characters and Worlds to Life"
• "Creating and Art Directing Visually Successful Games"
• "Art of Creating Efficient Tools"

Basic AI Systems - Pattern and Dynamic AI

A major factor in how believable the game world is, comes from the AI system. When you think about it, almost every game has AI in one form or another. Even a simple game such as Super Mario Bros. has AI,  very basic AI that follows the same pattern. Nowaways we have highly advanced AI, like the ones demonstrated in the Halo series, renowned for their AI. There are varying types of AI, they can be set patterns or they can be dynamic and changing based on the state of the game. The type of AI used is dependent on the type of game being made.

For my post about making a Basic AI Behaviour, click here

Pattern AI

At it's core, a patterned AI doesn't care about what the player is doing, it's not going to react specifically to you if you happen to be jumping, attacking, or dodging. The most they might react is if you happen to be near, it will activate their AI. This is the kind of AI that was featured a lot in games in the 90s and earlier.

The most basic versions of these come in the form of goombas in Super Mario Bros. Their AI pattern is to just walk ahead and if they run into an obstacle turn around. These enemies in particular don't care at all where you are.

Super Mario Bros - World 1-1 ~ The Goomba AI literally just walks forward

Another rather basic AI is the AI in turn based RPGs, notably Pokemon (the old games). They pretty much have no AI. Where pokemon will have a list of four moves, in most battles though they will simply use them at random, with no thought to strategy. Later games started to implement actual patterns in battles to make some good strategies but they were still mostly patterned.

Pokemon Red - The AI used to just randomly use whatever attacks where in their movelist

Dialogue in Games

How does dialogue enhance the experience of a game for us? What are it's advantages and it's disadvantages? What are the different ways we can go about bringing dialogue to life and bringing story to the players? As a follow up to my previous blog I want to talk about the difference between dialogue with audio, dialogue without and even games that feature no dialogue at all to convey the story.

Story has always been an important part in some games. A lot of games still have story of some sort even if they have no cutscenes or dialogue. Some games simply feature a "story" button featured in the main menu or something of the sort (though that's usually for flash games or lower budget quick games). For titles with larger budgets they usually have either cutscenes with dialogue & voice acting, cutscenes with only text dialogue, or the rare no dialogue and no text ones.

Action Only

These aren't too common and it's very important for these kinds of cutscenes to convey all the emotion and the messages they need with only character motions. It becomes very hard to pull this off for certain kinds of games, such as RPGs which usually have the largest of backstories. However there have been some very notable successes that have proven that you don't always need talking and text to convey what's going on in a scene.

The best example I have experienced of this is the Lego series games, such as Lego Star Wars, Lego Batman, Lego Indiana Jones, etc. In these games, the Lego characters do not talk at all but they have to re-enact scenes from the movies or settings they are in as though they were mimes. They are able to provide and make the emotions obviously in certain scenes such as worry, happiness, laughter, while still trying to stick to the character they are playing. They also have to use a lot of exaggerated gestures to convey more emotion as well.

Sound is important! ~ Audio in Games

We often take for granted the sound we hear in games. As our professor Bill Kaprolos taught us, sound is often a neglected part in games. Not just by designers at times but also by players as well. How often is it that people will play a game without the sound or replace the game's music with their own. Designers adding in sound in the last few months and thinking of it as an after thought. Not everyone does these but it's not uncommon for it to happen. For this post I'm going to take a look into how sound, from music, to dialogue, to sound effects and ambiance affect the game. I believe that a truly great game will have great sound to make it a truly complete experience.

Sound Effects

These are the bread and butter of pretty much every game now. These define the sounds your enemies and players will make in the world, the environmental reactions to your actions. This ranges from things such as character footsteps, sword slashes, gunshots, explosions and anything that is resulted from an action or visual change in the environment. It can be a scripted sequence like a bomb going off and setting off that explosion, or your character holding a gun and you, the player making the gun shoot by pressing the trigger.

The reason these are so important is because they are something you will hear a lot during your game, pretty much all the time. It means that they cannot be annoying, tedious or repetitive. They need to be designed in such a way that they make the experience for the player even better. They need to be satisfying and make sense with what's happening on screen.

Humans Opponents vs AI Opponents

Human opponents and AI opponents, there has always been a debate between which provides a better experience for players. Many stronger players have agreed that humans are much better and that there is no question about it, while others have tried to argue that AI opponents can be compable. All of this is usually a comparison in multiplayer games where the option to play with bots or human opponents is provided. In this blog post I look to compare the advantages and disadvantages of both in a multiplayer environment as well as take a look at how they provide a different experience for singleplayer versus multiplayer in a variety of different genres.

Human Opponents

Skill Levels

Your entire play experience changes depending on the skill of your opponents. Since there are so many players with different skill levels and different strategies it means that your experience can change with every match you play. This is the most important factor in having human opponents versus AI opponents because it means humans can provide you some uniquely different experiences that you could never get from AI.

Soul Calibur V - My Online Matches against human opponents, much more dynamic and interesting than AI.

Linearity versus Freedom in RPGs

The balance between control and freedom between the players and game developpers has teetered since the beginning. Developers have tried to find the right balance of leading players into their story and levels while giving them enough freedom that they aren't suffocated and can have their own unique experiences.

But its not just about freedom. it's about the type of game is being represented. Some games benefit more from a linear experience while others are better suited to give more freedom. Every game is different and requires the right balance to fit with the games mechanics. In this post we will take a look at how some games have gone linear or given freedom and how they faired.

Three layers of Freedom

Before we begin let's take a look at the three types of linearity/non linearity we can have.

Linear

Pretty much controlling the entire experience, forcing you onto a single path to one objective, no alternate paths or methods of completing that objective. Players learn new things in the appropriate order and developers can make sure everything goes right.

The path is very guided in Linear. The gray lines represent missions/obstacles that must be completed in order to proceed.

Semi-Linear 

Players are sent to complete their objective but they can use alternate methods of completing it. Players are given some amount of freedom but they are still being led slowly towards the final goal (Main storyline). Developers will have less control as players can do certain actions out of order that can make the experience not the intended one designed by the developers.

There are many more choices, alternate paths but to proceed any farther you must reach the end of the current level. From there you will get more paths.

Portal 2 - Ways to design a level

Portal 2 is a rather simple game with pretty basic mechanics but the concept of having two portals to play with via portal gun opens itself to limitless numbers of puzzles. With Portal 2, Valve later released a level editor for the community to share. The level editor itself is very easy to use and with basic knowledge of Portal 2 of even just experimenting with the level allows you to create all sorts of puzzles. For Game Design our goal was to create a Portal 2 level with our group with some requirements.

I’m not going to talk about what I did to fulfill requirements for the assignment, instead I'm going to go through what I learned in designing a level. Essentially what I should do and what I should not do for a puzzle. These dos and don’ts are up for debate but I feel these are things that really help in level design.

My designed level (With testing and additional content from teammates)

NOTE TO THOSE MARKING THIS ASSIGNMENT : ONLY READ THIS BLOG POST AFTER PLAYING THE LEVEL

What to do!

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Make it obvious what a button does

When triggering a button, you need to make sure that you see it affects the environment around you. This means if you press a button, a cube should drop down for you to use right in front of you or near you. It shouldn’t be all the way across the map where you can’t see or hear it.

Laser gate on

The reason we do this is because that way it won’t confuse the player needlessly. Have a button be in viewing distance of what the result is going to do, or at least keep it close enough so that players will see the result without having to search too much. Having an obvious audio queue can also work but isn’t as effective. We need to provide the player some feedback on their actions otherwise it’s needlessly harder. If we want to make a puzzle harder, it should be because they need to think about how to solve a puzzle, not more difficult because they need to find out what your button did and where it dropped the cube.

Laser gate off. The button is in plain site of the laser field so it's easy to tell what the button did.

In my level, I’ve positioned all my buttons in such a way as if you look close to them, you will see the result immediately or soon enough. For example, a button will drop the cube right next to you, or will raise a bridge right in front of you.

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Lead a path for the player

In other words, don’t make a giant room that doesn’t look like it has any particular order or requires a lot of back tracking. The reason we would want to lead the player is because we want them to get to our puzzles, this isn’t an adventure game. Now there is a limit as to how much we should lead the player, don’t point out everything for them, but point enough out for them to get somewhat of an idea of where to go. Don’t have three paths and in no sequential order scattered about.

The purpose for this game is for players to solve puzzles, not wander around like an adventure game. Though designers could attempt making a level like this, the main draw to playing portal is puzzles. Any moving around without doing any actual puzzle solving could be considered boring. Walking around to get to the end of the hall just isn’t fun.

The goal is in sight, all you need to do is figure out how to disable the threats in your way

For my level I lit up the path (This was actually a requirement for our levels) but I also made it very linear, you can actually see your final destination right away. I made it obvious where you need to be, you just have to figure out how to get past the obstacles in your way. Some key areas are also highlighted by lights though you still have to figure out how to solve the puzzle once you get there.

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Allow some mistakes

The player is going to make mistakes and we shouldn’t always punish them too terribly with them. One bad thing to do is make it so if players pass a certain point, but forget something they become permanently stuck and have to restart the level. This is especially terrible if there isn’t even much of a clue that continuing without a key object will end up this. I made a jump in one level to test and found out I became stuck at the bottom because I couldn’t portal to anywhere else.

For my level, it is possible to return all the way to the beginning if you dropped a cube

One debatable thing is the use of precision mistakes. For example I played a level where I had to use a reflection cube to aim a laser to a laser catcher to cross a bridge. If at any time the laser slipped off, the bridge would fall under me. Now this is difficult to cross and it’s a neat idea but for some players it can be frustrating because they know exactly what to do but one small slip up leads to restarting a level. This can lead to even more frustration if this is right at the end of a level meaning you have to do everything all over again because of that. If I were to use this in a level, I would just force them to restart the bridge, not restart the level. Either that or have a checkpoint right at that spot.

On the topic of checkpoints, one thing to do for a level is that if you plan to have a very dangerous area where players will die, try to keep it closer to the beginning rather than the end. This way if they make the mistake of dying, they will be able to retry as soon as possible rather than having to go through the same beginning puzzles over and over. Eventually that just becomes a chore because you already know how to solve everything at the beginning and have to keep doing it over and over.

Precision mistakes are minimal as the player is given the whole length of the level to try aiming this laser

How I used this in my level, you ride across a tractor beam throughout the level, spotting obstacles in the distance. You can also see these obstacles before riding the tractor beam too. I ensured that players could return to the beginning of the level by raising a bridge if they forgot anything important. To solve my puzzle, I also give you ample time and alternative ways to get to the finish so as to avoid players blaming precision mistakes. At the end of the level, you have to destroy some turrets with a laser beam and using a reflection cube. The farther back you start on the tractor beam the more time you have to target the turrets in your path. There is also a fairly wide window you have to destroy the turrets even if you start as far forward as possible.

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Don’t have “Troll” buttons

Try not to have buttons that will screw over the player, especially into death. Don’t have a button that immediately kills a player for pressing it, unless it’s obvious that’s what the result will be. Don’t have buttons that randomly cause effects like that or put you at the beginning of a level unless you make it clear pressing it will have that effect. It will only serve to frustrate players and make the experience worse.

These two button (left) in my level used to be unhelpful. This has been rectified.

For my own level, I did in fact have a “troll” button, where activating it would not really help you. It wouldn’t kill you or set you back, but it wasn’t helpful either. Players in general will want to press the buttons and have them do an effect of some sort that will help. My buttons simply disabled the laser that would allow you to kill the turrets blocking you from the end of the level. Now I have it so pressing the buttons will instead activate the laser so that you can proceed. I made the button actually give some benefit for the player.

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Get rid of anything useless

This one should be fairly obvious and it’s to make sure not to have any areas that look like they mean something, but they don’t actually do anything. So don’t have a bunch of buttons in an area but pressing them actually does nothing. It will only confuse the player even more, similar to the problem I mentioned earlier of having buttons who’s effects are obvious. Don’t have corridors that lead to nowhere either, they should be either a means to complete a puzzle or a way to get to another puzzle. This is similar to the troll button issue except these serve to waste time rather than frustrate the player.

The button behind this cube is given use to flip the turret in the distance. It may be a one time use, but it always benefits the player.

For my level, I got rid of any extra areas that weren’t needed. I had a small corridor that had a reflection cube but I got rid of the cube because I had already provided a reflection cube at the beginning of the level. Hence I made sure to get rid of the corridor later because it wouldn’t make the puzzle any better. I also made sure every one of my buttons did something meaningful. This is also part of the reason I changed the buttons that disabled the laser (noted in the trolling section), because they didn’t actually help you at all. You could get by without even touching them, which confuses a player even more.

Difficulty vs. Accesibility

Level beaten!

Everything I have said is relating to making everything easier to understand for players. It is my belief that it’s a very good practice. There is a reason that Portal & Portal 2 did so well in their campaigns despite them being brief. It’s because they were all very accessible, pretty much anyone could go through the game and enjoy it. They pretty much adhered to all the “What to do”s that I mentioned. Everything was clear and straight forward, the difficulty was in figuring out the puzzle, with no other issues in the way.

Think about it, if you suddenly had useless buttons, buttons that changed things in the level far away, way out of your sight then that’s just going to confuse and frustrate you right? That’s not confusion by logic, it’s just confusion to frustrate, it does not benefit the player experience in anyway. Sure it can promote observation but the key to making levels that will appeal to players is to make it accessible and it’s easily possible to keep observation too.

That’s the point of good level design to draw in players, to make them want to play even if it’s difficult. You want to make players like your levels and play through the game. If word gets out your game is broken, punishes players and is confusing in its level design, people don’t want to play. So making accessible, but difficult levels is really the best way to go. It’s simply good level design.

Goals are the Spice for Games

Multiple game types are no strangers to games. Video games have been implementing multiple different modes for you to choose from since the very beginning. These can range from coop, to multiplayer and such but the most drastic thing to change are the goals to winning the game. The mechanics of the game remain intact (such as going from Campaign to Multiplayer) but the goals to winning have changed. No longer do you focus on getting to the end of the level and continuing the story. In multiplayer your goal can vary but the most common one is get the most kills, either solo or with your team.

Within the subset of multiplayer lies a vast array of different modes though, each with different goals. The same can be said for some singleplayer modes as well. The point is that changing the goal can affect how you play the game itself. 

In my Game Design class we did an activity for the purpose of looking at different goals in a single game. We played a coin tossing game essentially, with everyone having different goals. It was easy to see some people playing much differently, such as one person flicking coins to try and knock off others the whole time, while others were simply trying to flip coins to land on another coin to gain points. After seeing this activity I could really see how much goals can vary the gameplay.

For this post I'll take a look at various games and the other modes with different goals they offer and see how they change the experience. Let's first take a look at Left 4 Dead 2 and how a goal change in the game leads to different level design.

Left 4 Dead 2

Campaign mode vs Survival Mode

Left 4 Dead 2 is a survival horror shooter with cooperative gameplay in every mode it has. There is always a team you are with, you are never alone. If you decide to run alone you will be easily picked off by the infected. In the main campaign it has you and 3 other players trying to reach the end of the level. In the campaign, you move with your team from point A to point B, hoping to make it to the next checkpoint before dying. Simple enough, how pretty much every other campaign works in a shooter. 

Campaign mode: Beginning of the first level 'Crash'

However in the alternate mode survival, your goal is now to stay alive as long as you can with your team. Your goal is no longer to move from location to location but to simply hole up somewhere and give it your  best shot to stay alive. There is no winning in this mode, there is simply the satisfaction of getting the longest time alive in a level.

You still have access to the same items as you would in campaign but in terms of level design there are several changes.

• In survival you are no longer forced to wander around or being forced to go to certain areas to proceed. You can stay in the same spot for as long as you want, but the catch is that the areas you can go are now limited. 
• Survival mode takes place in much smaller areas and wandering off is not a wise. Another difference is that the amount of enemies is increased so surviving can actually become a daunting task.
• You have unlimited supplies for ammo located in an unsafe spot (Depends on the map but typically its not easy to get back to supplies). Health packs are limited however
• Special infected appear more frequently, especially Tanks.

Survival Mode - There is now a timer to show how long you've been surviving

With Survival mode, things have to be changed in terms of level design in order for the mode to work properly. Simply putting you in a campaign level and telling you to survive though it does change the goal won't actually make it fun. By changing a bit of the level design and rules slightly to fit with the now changed goal, it allows the mode to be significantly different to play then the campaign counterpart. Otherwise it would just be campaign mode with a slightly different shell which wouldn't be different, wouldn't give variety and wouldn't help the game.

By making a game mode with a different goal, it forced some aspects of the game's level design to change as a result to accomadate the goal. The experience is different and gives another way to play the game just because of a decision to change the goal of the game.

Let's take a look at another popular shooter with several different game modes.

Call of Duty

The Call of Duty franchise has had a wide array of game types (so have many other shooters) since the very beginning. Here I am going to outline three distinct game modes with very different goals from each other and methods of victory. Let's compare these modes which are Team Deathmatch, Domination and Search  & Destroy.

Multiplayer Modes

Team Deathmatch is the typical get as many kills for your team as you can. The first team to a certain number of kill is the winner.

Domination's goal is to hold 3 areas at strategic locations. These areas are always located in the same spot and once captured will give points to your team for every second they are under your control. They can be recaptured by enemy players. The team to get to the score limit first wins.

Search and Destroy is different than the other 2. For one you only have one life for a round and there are multiple rounds in a match. Teams alternate between defending and attacking. Attackers need to place a bomb and have it detonate, or kill the entire enemy team to win. Defenders need to run out the time limit (rounds are only a few minutes), defuse the enemy bomb if they planted it or kill the entire enemy team.

Comparing the Modes

So now let's compare them all shall we. Team Deathmatch has the most simple and typical goal, run around and kill as many people as you can. The most efficient method to achieving victory is to make sure you die less than you kill. This is typically considered the most "mindless" of the mode since it's not always necessary to think up advanced tactics to get a certain position.

Team Deathmatch - You can see the score required to win in the bottom left

Domination requires more thinking because you need to have people cover the areas you have captured as well as send in people to capture other points. Its a constant balance of keeping what you have and taking from the enemy. Since the goal is now different then Team Deathmatch, it becomes unadvisable to run around the edges of the map, far away from capture areas because that won't help to attain victory for your team.

Domination - Three locations A, B and C to capture and defend

Search and Destroy becomes far more challenging with a lot of varied goals all around in the mode. In order for these goals to become available (such as taking out the entire enemy team) some changes needed to be made. For taking out the enemy team, the rule of unlimited lives had to be changed to a single life to accommodate the rule. 

Search & Destroy - Attacking team planting the bomb

As can be seen, changing the goal to winning the matches presents themselves to very different gameplay styles. Some require less tactics to achieve the win, while others work a lot better with coordination and are much more punishing. Since some levels have objectives placed in certain areas, different levels can become signifcantly different to play. Such as for domination, which will differ much more in tactics due to different locations of capture points in maps then it would for Team Deathmatch.

 It can also be seen that for some goals they need to modify some core rules of the game in order to function properly for modes like Search and Destroy. Unlimited respawns would not work in a mode like Search & Destroy, though it could turn into a different game mode still involving the use of planting bombs. Those modes come in the form of demolition and sabotage.

Now that we've seen how goals can change how everyone has to coordinate together, let's take a look at another game which allows multiple goals to achieve victory.

Age of Empires II

In Age of Empires II, as an RTS you have the option of selecting from a variety of different victory conditions (goals). There is a selection of standard victory as well as alternative victory conditions. You can win any standard game with any of the following Standard Victory conditions.

Standard Victory

• Conquest : Defeat all opponents. To defeat an opponent destroy all their units and buildings.
• Wonder Victory: Build a wonder (Takes a ton of resources to make) first and keep it for a set amount of time to win.
• Relic Victory: Control all relics on the map. These can be taken into and stored into monasteries by monks. Keep them all for a set amount of time to win.

You can complete any of these during the course of a standard match which means you have three potential ways to achieve victory. You can also opt to force everyone to only be able to use one type of victory when creating a game. So you can make a conquest only victory game, or Wonder only, etc.

Alternative Victory

• Timed Victory: Have the highest score at the end of a certain time, or defeat opponents before then.
• Score victory: Reach a certain score first. Score is determined by resources gathered, buildings and units built, map exploration, etc.

For these alternative goals, they use a system to calculate score based on the value of your units, buildings, research, resources, units killed and map exploration.

How these Victories make the game different

A Wonder- This is one way to achieve victory in a normal match

It's interesting in a standard game where you can try to opt for any one of the three standard victory conditions. It means you players can decide a tactic that best fits their strengths and their position in the map. They could try defensive via using a Wonder, or explorer by looking for all the relics, or even opt for offensive by going all out to try and destroy everyone. 

This system really appeals to players of all sorts of styles because a defensive player who likes to make a really strong castle would be at a disadvantage in a conquest only mode. They can use their wonder as a chance to obtain victory by staying in their base. And likewise it gives offensive players the chance to go and stop that Wonder camper by destroying everything in their base. Its a very flexible system that shows how giving multiple goals in a single match can cater to players. This also shows how having different goals will promote different styles of play.

Monastery - This can be used to store relics located around the map and is another way to achieve victory

The score system also lends itself to a slightly different style of play. You would still want to be using winning strategies to outsmart the other player but if things draw to a standstill or go to long, there is a chance you can still win by alternative means like exploring the map while one player stays inside their base. Having this different win condition can change your tactics on the fly.

So as can be seen, even with different goals, the base mechanics of the game didn't have to change. The resource collection rate hasn't changed or anything like that, or your unit creation limit isn't changed. The goals are the only thing that will differ which by themselves will make you play the game differently.  And that's the point of goals, to change how you play a game and promote variety and refreshing strategies.

How Goals change the game

Goals can vary in the way they influence the game. As can be seen in COD's Search and Destroy mode, it sometimes require some core rule changes (no respawning) in order to work properly. In Age of Empires II's case, they didn't even require core rule changes.

Whether they change the core rules or not they promote changing the way you play. It makes you think different, aim for things that you wouldn't do in a different mode. The purpose behind multiple goals and game modes is variety, to cater to different playstyles and give different experiences to players.  Sometimes you make the goal the same for everyone, othertimes you allow everyone to win in different ways. The choice in doing that lends itself to allow the game system to used to it's full potential and provide a larger amount of ways for players to enjoy themselves. Not everyone enjoys the same game type, so multiple modes is a great way for players to choose how they want to play and match up with others that want to do that mode as well.

This is how I've seen different goals affect the games I play!