The game I am choosing for my third dekonstruer is our own game Aeolus. I chose our game cuz it is nearing completion as this semester comes to an end and I thought it would be a good way to look at what we have applied from what we learned from this course. Also, I am running out of games to discuss in my blogs as you can see I am almost at 25 blogs for the semester. That's an all new record for amount of blogs for one class! Anyways, onto the blog at hand.
Players
I will be writing in the perspective of the game being complete in April to give myself more to talk about for this blog. When it comes to the players in our game, there will be a campaign experience where the player will be pitted against the A.I in our levels. They can take their helicopter and skills online and challenge their friends to matches while wagering parts online or even their own helicopter.
Objectives
In the campaign of our game the player will be able to complete different missions. These missions consist of collecting supplies, destroying key buildings, and taking out enemy helicopters. They are basically whatever job is given to you by your mercenary leader. The merc leader will give you a list of missions you can do and from there you can choose to do whichever one you want. The choice is there so you can gather parts you want for the helicopter you feel comfortable flying. So the objectives in this game are: Exploration, Solution, and Outwit.
Rules
The rules in our game consist of a set of boundaries in which the player can fly their helicopter. The player cannot leave the playspace of the level. There will be an invisible ceiling that keeps the player from flying too high and there will be walls that have the same effect. If the player reaches these boundaries the helicopter starts to fail and the indicator lights will turn on. Another rule is the energy for the helicopter. If it reaches 0 your helicopter will also start to shut off.
Resources
The major resource in the game is the energy. Player's need to manage their energy for their helicopter so that they don't have their engine fail in the middle of trying to fly or shoot down enemies. Later in the development cycle we will have a currency system that player's will use to purchase and sell components of their helicopter. This would then make the components themselves to be a form or resources. The weapons, generators, engines, and hulls of the helicopter's that you earn through the campaign can be collected for customization or for profit.
Game States
The game states in our game are reflective of the helicopter and the missions. We have states for when the helicopter is firing or not. There is a state for when the helicopter is flying or not based on the amount of energy in the generator.
Information
Some of the information displayed are related to your resources. There will be information about the generator in the HUD. The HUD will also display information about the helicopter's position and orientation relative to local and world space. This is here to help the player fly the helicopter with ease since they can see elevation, angle of rotation and so on. The player also has armor which is information displayed in the HUD.
Sequencing
In our game the energy causes pressure on the player. The way how the player feels pressured by the energy from their generator is that the energy depletes as the player uses the mechanics in the game. This forces the player to manage which mechanics they want to use while playing the game. The player's health is also pressuring because they can die if they don't avoid crashing and being shot at.
Player Interaction
The player interaction in the game is only found in the multiplayer experience. There isn't a coop campaign yet. The player's interaction consists of a pvp match between one another. The two player's will face off in a duel and the victor gets the opponents helicopter. The losing player will then lose their helicopter in the fight. The player's can instead wager only certain components of their helicopter if they don't want to gamble the entire helicopter.
Theme/Setting
Our team is trying to go for a realistic look and feel of the game. We want to set the mood of the game to be futuristic, so there will be music that is calm similar to Halo. We also want the feel in game to be gritty like Gears of War. The theme of the architecture for the buildings and helicopters is similar to the Mech Warrior games.
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
Fun and Accessibility
In this blog today I will be talking about what a fun game is and how a game is fun. Video games are for entertainment and learning purposes. With entertainment being half, if not all, of a game's purpose for existence, fun becomes a critical aspect of design for a game. Let's get into some more detail on fun in games.
What key elements would be used for seeing if a game is fun? Well, the dramatic elements that I talked about in my third lecture will be good to check if games are fun. More specifically, let's look at challenge, play, and story. These elements will emotionally hook your player's into your game and having a player immersed into your game will cause them to have fun.
When it comes to challenge, there are very important aspects the we need to know. First, reaching and exceeding goals is an important part of challenge. The way how a player can exceed goals is by giving them subgoals or bonus objectives to also complete while finishing the main goal. Competing against other opponents to give the player someone to compare themselves to is a natural challenge for players. Stretching a player's personal limits allows player's to challenge themselves. Exercising difficult skills gives the player the chance to master and display certain skillsets. Choice creates situations where players must weigh their choices and can be found as a challenge.
There are 7 natural types of play:
Living out fantasies
Social interaction
Exploration and discovery
Collection of things
Stimulation of senses and imagination
Self-expression and performance
Construction/Deconstruction
With each type of play in a game, there is more and more fun added to a game. Using StarCraft as an example, you can live out the fantasy of controlling a large army, you can socially interact with your team and opponent, explore the map and discover where your enemy is, collect minerals and gas, imagine being in this universe with alien races, being able to do what you want and seeing a performance report after, and finally being able to build and destroy what your opponent builds. Since StarCraft has all 7 types of play it makes the game very fun.
Continuing with StarCraft as our example, this game had one of the best stories actually winning best story award recently. Story is a powerful mechanism for engaging people's emotions. The story naturally tells the tales of a specific hero with their ups and downs in a critical time in their life. Within the story, there needs to be a created drama to make empathy. This makes the player have something to relate to as well. The mechanic of story in StarCraft that takes their story one step above this is that it gives the player choices to how they want to go through the story. There is a choice in the order of the story. The incredible story on top of this mechanic gives StarCraft a very big fun factor for their game.
On the topic of decisions, let's briefly list and explain the types of decisions. There are 8 different types of decisions:
Hollow - no real consequences
Obvious - no real decision
Uninformed - an arbitrary choice
Informed - where the player has information
Dramatic - taps into a player's emotional state
Weighted - a balanced decision with consequences on both sides
Immediate - has an immediate impact
Long-Term - whose impact will be felt down the road
To end of this blog, I would like to discuss fun killers that need to be avoided. Excessive amounts of micromangement can kill the fun of a game. I have found this in StarCraft to be a fun killer at times but it is part of the challenge where it stretches the player's limits causing it to be fun. StarCraft stretches the player's limits just enough to not break it and kill the fun. Stagnation will also kill fun. Repetition, balance of power, and having a negative feedback loop will kill the fun in the game. I have also found that an insurmountable amount of obstacles will drain the fun out of games. Having arbitrary events will bring the fun down to a minimal. Finally, predictable paths will make the game boring from being to easy. Easy, boring games are not fun and should be avoided.
What key elements would be used for seeing if a game is fun? Well, the dramatic elements that I talked about in my third lecture will be good to check if games are fun. More specifically, let's look at challenge, play, and story. These elements will emotionally hook your player's into your game and having a player immersed into your game will cause them to have fun.
There are 7 natural types of play:
Living out fantasies
Social interaction
Exploration and discovery
Collection of things
Stimulation of senses and imagination
Self-expression and performance
Construction/Deconstruction
With each type of play in a game, there is more and more fun added to a game. Using StarCraft as an example, you can live out the fantasy of controlling a large army, you can socially interact with your team and opponent, explore the map and discover where your enemy is, collect minerals and gas, imagine being in this universe with alien races, being able to do what you want and seeing a performance report after, and finally being able to build and destroy what your opponent builds. Since StarCraft has all 7 types of play it makes the game very fun.
Continuing with StarCraft as our example, this game had one of the best stories actually winning best story award recently. Story is a powerful mechanism for engaging people's emotions. The story naturally tells the tales of a specific hero with their ups and downs in a critical time in their life. Within the story, there needs to be a created drama to make empathy. This makes the player have something to relate to as well. The mechanic of story in StarCraft that takes their story one step above this is that it gives the player choices to how they want to go through the story. There is a choice in the order of the story. The incredible story on top of this mechanic gives StarCraft a very big fun factor for their game.On the topic of decisions, let's briefly list and explain the types of decisions. There are 8 different types of decisions:
Hollow - no real consequences
Obvious - no real decision
Uninformed - an arbitrary choice
Informed - where the player has information
Dramatic - taps into a player's emotional state
Weighted - a balanced decision with consequences on both sides
Immediate - has an immediate impact
Long-Term - whose impact will be felt down the road
To end of this blog, I would like to discuss fun killers that need to be avoided. Excessive amounts of micromangement can kill the fun of a game. I have found this in StarCraft to be a fun killer at times but it is part of the challenge where it stretches the player's limits causing it to be fun. StarCraft stretches the player's limits just enough to not break it and kill the fun. Stagnation will also kill fun. Repetition, balance of power, and having a negative feedback loop will kill the fun in the game. I have also found that an insurmountable amount of obstacles will drain the fun out of games. Having arbitrary events will bring the fun down to a minimal. Finally, predictable paths will make the game boring from being to easy. Easy, boring games are not fun and should be avoided.Sunday, 24 November 2013
PVP Fight 2
Dark Matter.
This is my second pvp blog and this one is going to be on Emilian Cioca's game Dark Matter. I did not see or hear many people play this game but I got a chance to go at it and the game was pretty good. There was some room for improvement as well, so let me go into detail about what was good and what could have made the game better.
Let's start first with what the objective of the game is. This game is even more simple than the last one I did, even though they do still hold the same objective which is get to the other end of the level. There is very little to stop you from completing your objective. The only thing that is holding you back from reaching the other end of the level are three different colored blocks. The blocks are either red, black, or white. Depending on which color you are allows which one you can go through. So if you are a black particle, you can go through black bricks but not red or white ones. This is a cool mechanic because it can cause you to try and solve different problems with that. There is only one problem with that and it's the controls.
The controls in this game are almost non existent. You are only able to jump and change color. This can be a good thing because it is easy to learn and master. The problem with this is that the game forces you to constantly move to the end goal. This is how the game can become challenging. As I played I was anticipating quickly flipping through colors trying to make it through the level near the end. This brings me to my next point of challenge.
The challenge in this game was not as challenging as it should have been. There was a good increase between skill of the player and experience with the game for the beginning. The level went through teaching the player the mechanic of jumping first, then the mechanic of the different colors. It didn't take long to learn the colors so I expected the game to pick up and increase in difficulty from the tutorial. However, the speed in which your particle moved did not accelerate to a more difficult speed. The separation of colors did not decrease much either. It wasn't nearly as difficult as it could have been and that would have been a key improvement to the gam
eplay for the level.
In terms of the feedback in the game, there was very little. There were no sounds at all so there could've been great opportunities for auditory feedback. I think a simple, yet effective form of auditory feedback would be to have sounds for when you change colors. Another possible sound for feedback would be when an incoming block is being approached and the player isn't in the right color to pass through it. He does have visual feedback for when you are able to pass through a block which is good. When you are able to get through a block the block would turn transparent which is a nice way to visually show the player they are good to go. He also had good visual feedback of which color you have selected by directly changing the color of the particle.
I like the art in the game. It is very simple and sets a mood for the game. There is a nice color scheme to match the colors in game. I think the red should have been changed to blue and the white changed to purple to follow the color scheme for the rest of the level better. The colors would need to be bright blues and purples so they can be distinguished from each other easily and have some sort of way to stick out from the background.
In conclusion, I enjoyed playing this game but I don't feel the need to go and play it again. I would love to go back to the game on another level that was more difficult because I am one for a challenging game. The art was simply appealing and the gameplay mechanics were creative. I would give this level a 6/10, would play again on the condition that the next level is more challenging.
Let's start first with what the objective of the game is. This game is even more simple than the last one I did, even though they do still hold the same objective which is get to the other end of the level. There is very little to stop you from completing your objective. The only thing that is holding you back from reaching the other end of the level are three different colored blocks. The blocks are either red, black, or white. Depending on which color you are allows which one you can go through. So if you are a black particle, you can go through black bricks but not red or white ones. This is a cool mechanic because it can cause you to try and solve different problems with that. There is only one problem with that and it's the controls.
The controls in this game are almost non existent. You are only able to jump and change color. This can be a good thing because it is easy to learn and master. The problem with this is that the game forces you to constantly move to the end goal. This is how the game can become challenging. As I played I was anticipating quickly flipping through colors trying to make it through the level near the end. This brings me to my next point of challenge.
The challenge in this game was not as challenging as it should have been. There was a good increase between skill of the player and experience with the game for the beginning. The level went through teaching the player the mechanic of jumping first, then the mechanic of the different colors. It didn't take long to learn the colors so I expected the game to pick up and increase in difficulty from the tutorial. However, the speed in which your particle moved did not accelerate to a more difficult speed. The separation of colors did not decrease much either. It wasn't nearly as difficult as it could have been and that would have been a key improvement to the gameplay for the level.
In terms of the feedback in the game, there was very little. There were no sounds at all so there could've been great opportunities for auditory feedback. I think a simple, yet effective form of auditory feedback would be to have sounds for when you change colors. Another possible sound for feedback would be when an incoming block is being approached and the player isn't in the right color to pass through it. He does have visual feedback for when you are able to pass through a block which is good. When you are able to get through a block the block would turn transparent which is a nice way to visually show the player they are good to go. He also had good visual feedback of which color you have selected by directly changing the color of the particle.I like the art in the game. It is very simple and sets a mood for the game. There is a nice color scheme to match the colors in game. I think the red should have been changed to blue and the white changed to purple to follow the color scheme for the rest of the level better. The colors would need to be bright blues and purples so they can be distinguished from each other easily and have some sort of way to stick out from the background.
In conclusion, I enjoyed playing this game but I don't feel the need to go and play it again. I would love to go back to the game on another level that was more difficult because I am one for a challenging game. The art was simply appealing and the gameplay mechanics were creative. I would give this level a 6/10, would play again on the condition that the next level is more challenging.
PVP Fight
Hover Tank.
This is my first pvp blog and I have chosen to use Cameron Chodan's famous game Hover Tank. This game has been known as the claimer of souls for it's extremely challenging gameplay. His game teaches patience with really simple mechanics, smooth controls and decent aesthetics.
The objective of the game Hover Tank is to reach the end of the level. As anyone who has already lost their soul to this game, you will know that it is a side scroller game. This game has more objectives as you progress through the level. It begins with teaching simple mechanics like moving and moves on to jumping. Then when the platforms start moving it will teach you timing and the biggest lesson of the game, patience. The key to victory in Cam's game is timing and patience. Later in the game's level the objective graduates to activating triggers to open doors so you can move on to the finish. This is a simple to understand mechanic and it works well in a side scroller game.
Game objects that can be found in his side scroller would be the turrets that try to prevent you from completing your objectives, and triggers that will open doors. In his next level he adds pits with spikes at the bottom but for this level he just has bottomless pits.
In terms of difficulty, it has been made clear of how difficult this game can be. There is only a handful of other students who have actually beaten the level. The learning curve is too steep in the level. Although he does teach the all of the mechanics one at a time, which really helped make the game not be impossible, you get to a point in the level where you are stuck for majority of your play time because the difficulty is too high. A suggestion I would have made for this to improve the gameplay would have been to split the problems into smaller segments rather than having to do it all at once. This gives the player more relief knowing they don't have to do the same easy part of the problem every time they fail the hard part in the level.
The feedback in the game was very lacking. To start, there is no auditory feedback or any sounds at all for that matter. It would be nice to know by listening if a bullet is shot out of the turrets or if I need to hurry because something is on a timer. I did like the ant lines that were attached to the triggers in the level which gave you feedback as to what door or object they affected. He also has the ant lines change color when they are activated to give feedback. The lines also blink for timed triggers which is great feedback but I didn't realize this on my first playthrough. If there was even a picture with words saying that is what a blinking line means I would've got it. Another good form of feedback he could've added if he had controller was a vibration when the hover tank got hit by the bullets.
The controls are very simple. The player can use 'a' and 'd' to move left and right as well as 'space' to jump. These are standard controls for a side scroller. The controls were smooth and responsive. The only thing I would suggest for improvement is that the controls didn't have physics properties attached. The momentum that comes from jumping off of a platform can really cause problems for timing with jumps. This could just be a feature for Cam's level to add to the difficulty but I think this is a feature that this game could do without.
In conclusion, this game is very challenging. It is almost extremely frustrating, but it's just frustrating enough to want to beat it. Once you do beat it you feel very accomplished. I didn't really say too much about the art but I will say that it did not hinder the gameplay. If anything, the art worked well together and everything was very distinguishable. I would give Cam's level an 8/10 would play again. Well, I had to play it again for screen shots but I would probably play it another time.
This is my first pvp blog and I have chosen to use Cameron Chodan's famous game Hover Tank. This game has been known as the claimer of souls for it's extremely challenging gameplay. His game teaches patience with really simple mechanics, smooth controls and decent aesthetics.
The objective of the game Hover Tank is to reach the end of the level. As anyone who has already lost their soul to this game, you will know that it is a side scroller game. This game has more objectives as you progress through the level. It begins with teaching simple mechanics like moving and moves on to jumping. Then when the platforms start moving it will teach you timing and the biggest lesson of the game, patience. The key to victory in Cam's game is timing and patience. Later in the game's level the objective graduates to activating triggers to open doors so you can move on to the finish. This is a simple to understand mechanic and it works well in a side scroller game.
Game objects that can be found in his side scroller would be the turrets that try to prevent you from completing your objectives, and triggers that will open doors. In his next level he adds pits with spikes at the bottom but for this level he just has bottomless pits.
In terms of difficulty, it has been made clear of how difficult this game can be. There is only a handful of other students who have actually beaten the level. The learning curve is too steep in the level. Although he does teach the all of the mechanics one at a time, which really helped make the game not be impossible, you get to a point in the level where you are stuck for majority of your play time because the difficulty is too high. A suggestion I would have made for this to improve the gameplay would have been to split the problems into smaller segments rather than having to do it all at once. This gives the player more relief knowing they don't have to do the same easy part of the problem every time they fail the hard part in the level.
The feedback in the game was very lacking. To start, there is no auditory feedback or any sounds at all for that matter. It would be nice to know by listening if a bullet is shot out of the turrets or if I need to hurry because something is on a timer. I did like the ant lines that were attached to the triggers in the level which gave you feedback as to what door or object they affected. He also has the ant lines change color when they are activated to give feedback. The lines also blink for timed triggers which is great feedback but I didn't realize this on my first playthrough. If there was even a picture with words saying that is what a blinking line means I would've got it. Another good form of feedback he could've added if he had controller was a vibration when the hover tank got hit by the bullets.
The controls are very simple. The player can use 'a' and 'd' to move left and right as well as 'space' to jump. These are standard controls for a side scroller. The controls were smooth and responsive. The only thing I would suggest for improvement is that the controls didn't have physics properties attached. The momentum that comes from jumping off of a platform can really cause problems for timing with jumps. This could just be a feature for Cam's level to add to the difficulty but I think this is a feature that this game could do without.
In conclusion, this game is very challenging. It is almost extremely frustrating, but it's just frustrating enough to want to beat it. Once you do beat it you feel very accomplished. I didn't really say too much about the art but I will say that it did not hinder the gameplay. If anything, the art worked well together and everything was very distinguishable. I would give Cam's level an 8/10 would play again. Well, I had to play it again for screen shots but I would probably play it another time.
Thursday, 21 November 2013
Skills, Goals, and Feedback
In this blog, I will be going over three different i like games. More specifically, I will talk about the feedback the game gives the player, the skills required and the goals in the game. The three games I am going to cover are SSX, Left 4 Dead, and StarCraft 2.
First off, in SSX there is lots of feedback given for many different scenarios. The one feedback I will be focusing on is the music. I really like when the player goes into super tricky mode, the music blends the song it's tricky and plays that while you are in super tricky mode. The song ends and blends back to your other song when the super tricky mode is over. The skills needed to play this game is how quickly you can gain and maintain super tricky mode. Once the player has access to super tricky they can move faster, and do better tricks. These are two different goals that will also be found in the game.
Next game is Left 4 Dead and this game has several different ways it shows feedback. One of the ways the player is given feedback is physically. When the player takes damage the controller vibrates to optimally give physical feedback. The most important skill in this game is teamwork. Without teamwork the survivors won't be able to make it to the safe house. This brings me to the goal of the game which is to make it to the safehouse alive.
Finally, I will address StarCraft2 and the feedback that is given in this game. There is a visual feedback provided in the game. This feedback is a blinking explanation mark on the minimap to show when something you own is under attack. Another example of visual feedback that's really nice is the green circle that shows up around your unit that is selected. Some skills that would be needed for this game would be the ability to micromanage groups of units while macro managing an economy and production of an army. The objective of this game is to eliminate the enemy player's base.
Those are the three games I have decided to talk about. I wanted to make sure I covered three different types of feedback. These three that I covered were: auditory, physical, and visual. I also wanted to make sure that in this blog there were three different skills and three different types of goals.
SSX, Left 4 Dead, and StarCraft2. Describe feedback generated. List the skills required. What type of skills do people enjoy that you could incorporate into the games i design.
Those are the three games I have decided to talk about. I wanted to make sure I covered three different types of feedback. These three that I covered were: auditory, physical, and visual. I also wanted to make sure that in this blog there were three different skills and three different types of goals.
SSX, Left 4 Dead, and StarCraft2. Describe feedback generated. List the skills required. What type of skills do people enjoy that you could incorporate into the games i design.
Reverse Scrowdriver 2
Welcome to my second reverse scrowdriver blog. Last time I took the game Monopoly and added a new mechanic to it. This blog will take the game checkers and add a mechanic to the classic board game. Here's my new mechanic:
If you get your king back to your side of the board, you can move any piece on the board anywhere on the board.
This mechanic will add a feature that will move game pieces out of spots that they are stuck in. This often happens in a game of checkers when a game piece starts on the side and then the opposing game piece is "camping" it's only move making it unable to move. Other instances of this are back pieces are blocked by pieces in front of them.
The mechanic will also apply to your opponents pieces. With this you can move their pieces into danger. This is balanced by still giving them the chance to move their piece away or having them jump your piece.
This new ability can also be a combo. The way how this can combo is if a king jumps a game piece that is one space from being a king, as it gets back to it's own side to activate the new mechanic, it can move an enemy game piece into the same spot for a combo.
Having this mechanic active will increase the flow of the late game. In checkers there is a lot of chasing each other's kings or regular game pieces. This mechanic will hopefully improve that problem.
This mechanic will add a feature that will move game pieces out of spots that they are stuck in. This often happens in a game of checkers when a game piece starts on the side and then the opposing game piece is "camping" it's only move making it unable to move. Other instances of this are back pieces are blocked by pieces in front of them.
The mechanic will also apply to your opponents pieces. With this you can move their pieces into danger. This is balanced by still giving them the chance to move their piece away or having them jump your piece.
This new ability can also be a combo. The way how this can combo is if a king jumps a game piece that is one space from being a king, as it gets back to it's own side to activate the new mechanic, it can move an enemy game piece into the same spot for a combo.
Having this mechanic active will increase the flow of the late game. In checkers there is a lot of chasing each other's kings or regular game pieces. This mechanic will hopefully improve that problem.
Tuesday, 19 November 2013
Crafting a Dekonstruer 2
I have decided to discuss the game atoms of SSX 2012.
For those who look at this and say TLDR I have three short videos at the bottom summarizing what I've written.
Players
The players in this game do not interact physically, only physically with the AI. What I mean by this is, when playing the campaign, which is offered to the player, you can push the AI as you snowboard in order to gain an edge over them. The multiplayer is player vs player in a free for all game style where everyone is pitted against each other. However, since the developers knew that not many people will be online at the same time, the online challenge only comes from the leaderboards. How they then populate the scene without player's playing the game at the same time as you, is that they created replays of other player's runs and they call them ghosts which are holographic replays of another player's run.
Objectives
There are three different objectives in this game and this goes for both of the single player and online play, and those are: race, trick, and survive. For race, the objective is to simply be the first one to the bottom of the mountain. With trick, you are trying to accumulate the highest score by lining up multiple tricks in a row while building and maintaining a combo. Finally in survive you try to escape or evade some form of elemental danger whether it be cold, low oxygen, rocks and trees, gravity, or even avalanches. Best way to complete these objectives is to explore the mountain run before attempting to set a highscore. The objectives that come with this game are: Race, Alignment, Escape, Construction, Exploration, Solution, and Outwit.
Rules
SSX does not enforce many rules in the gameplay. The major rule was the boundary in the game. Even though the mountains seem like you can go anywhere on it, there are invisible walls that will not bounce you back in to the world but instead suck you into a vortex that kills you. Other boundaries that kill you are the crevasses in the mountain that you can fall into.
Resources
In the game there is one major resource available and that is boost. The boost in the game allows you to be able to move faster. With this resource the player can get higher jumps to do more tricks, avoid danger easier, and make it to the bottom faster. To acquire this resource the player needs to complete tricks. Doing tricks adds to the amount of available boost. The game also offers a series of bonuses to boost, speed, trick score, and other perks for gear which can be considered resources since they need to be managed on your in game currency and when you need to use them for the runs down the hill.
Game States
One of the most noticeable game states in the game is if you are riding down the mountain. Other game states that are seen while playing the game are: idol in the helicopter, tricking, tricking in the air, tricking on a rail, using a wingsuit, a game state for each equipment and if they're being used, about to die, rewinding, tricky mode, super tricky mode, wipeout, and the finishing game state.
Information
The hud in this game provides specific information about the player's progress as well as what you are doing in terms of tricks. So in the top left it provides details such as your distance left on the mountain, speed, time for the run, and total distance traveled. The top right provides information on the other player's scores. At the bottom it shows details about your tricks like trick combo, trick score, total score, tricky state, and boost meter. There is also a status bar to tell the player how his equipment and health is doing. Everything is available to the player, the challenge ahead is what to do with all of this information.
Sequencing
When racing, the time puts a serious pressure on the player. They feel very eager to get to the bottom of the mountain. With the 3-2-1 Go! online mode that was released in a patch, it allows player's to take part in events such as race or trick in real time against each other in a free for all. This gives added tension to the player's as they play side by side without being able to see the goal they need to reach since it will be provided at the end when everyone has placed their score.
Player Interaction
As I said above, the player interaction is limited other than in the 3-2-1 Go! online mode and the competitive ladders. There is also a world events section where player's can spend in game currency to compete against each other in the attempts to win other's in game currency. Other forms of player interaction is this game mechanic called a Geotag. What a Geotag is exactly, is a marker in the world that any player can put in the world, if any player playing the game does not go to the same spot in their game where you put the marker, you achieve maximum in game currency the Geotag awards you. However, if a player does then you achieve less and the other player will gain in game currency. This is how player's can interact with each other.
Theme/Setting
Similarly in my previous Dekonstruer, I said that Greg Hasting's Paintball 2 was going for realism, SSX 2012 went for the same thing as you will see in the video I posted below. With the realistic physics for the avalanche as well as movement and control of the character, it feels very realistic and immersive. Another way they simulated realism is by using real life mountain ranges with real mountains. They also took real life environment dangers and used then as mechanics you need to survive. Only difference between my first game I analyzed and SSX 2012, is that the developers wanted to pertain to their former audience which really liked their old SSX games that were outright over the top in scale and humor. That's the only thing that draws the game from a full try hard mode to be completely realistic like Greg Hasting's Paintball.
To conclude, I leave you with a few videos of some gameplay as well as what I see to be dev diaries of the game. They cover just about everything I mention in this blog.
For those who look at this and say TLDR I have three short videos at the bottom summarizing what I've written.
Players
The players in this game do not interact physically, only physically with the AI. What I mean by this is, when playing the campaign, which is offered to the player, you can push the AI as you snowboard in order to gain an edge over them. The multiplayer is player vs player in a free for all game style where everyone is pitted against each other. However, since the developers knew that not many people will be online at the same time, the online challenge only comes from the leaderboards. How they then populate the scene without player's playing the game at the same time as you, is that they created replays of other player's runs and they call them ghosts which are holographic replays of another player's run.
Objectives
There are three different objectives in this game and this goes for both of the single player and online play, and those are: race, trick, and survive. For race, the objective is to simply be the first one to the bottom of the mountain. With trick, you are trying to accumulate the highest score by lining up multiple tricks in a row while building and maintaining a combo. Finally in survive you try to escape or evade some form of elemental danger whether it be cold, low oxygen, rocks and trees, gravity, or even avalanches. Best way to complete these objectives is to explore the mountain run before attempting to set a highscore. The objectives that come with this game are: Race, Alignment, Escape, Construction, Exploration, Solution, and Outwit.
Rules
SSX does not enforce many rules in the gameplay. The major rule was the boundary in the game. Even though the mountains seem like you can go anywhere on it, there are invisible walls that will not bounce you back in to the world but instead suck you into a vortex that kills you. Other boundaries that kill you are the crevasses in the mountain that you can fall into.
Resources
In the game there is one major resource available and that is boost. The boost in the game allows you to be able to move faster. With this resource the player can get higher jumps to do more tricks, avoid danger easier, and make it to the bottom faster. To acquire this resource the player needs to complete tricks. Doing tricks adds to the amount of available boost. The game also offers a series of bonuses to boost, speed, trick score, and other perks for gear which can be considered resources since they need to be managed on your in game currency and when you need to use them for the runs down the hill.
Game States
One of the most noticeable game states in the game is if you are riding down the mountain. Other game states that are seen while playing the game are: idol in the helicopter, tricking, tricking in the air, tricking on a rail, using a wingsuit, a game state for each equipment and if they're being used, about to die, rewinding, tricky mode, super tricky mode, wipeout, and the finishing game state.
Information
The hud in this game provides specific information about the player's progress as well as what you are doing in terms of tricks. So in the top left it provides details such as your distance left on the mountain, speed, time for the run, and total distance traveled. The top right provides information on the other player's scores. At the bottom it shows details about your tricks like trick combo, trick score, total score, tricky state, and boost meter. There is also a status bar to tell the player how his equipment and health is doing. Everything is available to the player, the challenge ahead is what to do with all of this information.
Sequencing
When racing, the time puts a serious pressure on the player. They feel very eager to get to the bottom of the mountain. With the 3-2-1 Go! online mode that was released in a patch, it allows player's to take part in events such as race or trick in real time against each other in a free for all. This gives added tension to the player's as they play side by side without being able to see the goal they need to reach since it will be provided at the end when everyone has placed their score.
Player Interaction
As I said above, the player interaction is limited other than in the 3-2-1 Go! online mode and the competitive ladders. There is also a world events section where player's can spend in game currency to compete against each other in the attempts to win other's in game currency. Other forms of player interaction is this game mechanic called a Geotag. What a Geotag is exactly, is a marker in the world that any player can put in the world, if any player playing the game does not go to the same spot in their game where you put the marker, you achieve maximum in game currency the Geotag awards you. However, if a player does then you achieve less and the other player will gain in game currency. This is how player's can interact with each other.
Theme/Setting
Similarly in my previous Dekonstruer, I said that Greg Hasting's Paintball 2 was going for realism, SSX 2012 went for the same thing as you will see in the video I posted below. With the realistic physics for the avalanche as well as movement and control of the character, it feels very realistic and immersive. Another way they simulated realism is by using real life mountain ranges with real mountains. They also took real life environment dangers and used then as mechanics you need to survive. Only difference between my first game I analyzed and SSX 2012, is that the developers wanted to pertain to their former audience which really liked their old SSX games that were outright over the top in scale and humor. That's the only thing that draws the game from a full try hard mode to be completely realistic like Greg Hasting's Paintball.
To conclude, I leave you with a few videos of some gameplay as well as what I see to be dev diaries of the game. They cover just about everything I mention in this blog.
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