Digital Prototyping

Welcome back to the blog posts relating to the course material of Game Design and Productions 2. The last few posts have been side tracked to help boost the experience of your favorite avatar TwoLock. Anyways, continuing with this weeks lecture. This week in class we discussed digital prototyping as well as a few other smaller topics. There are four areas of digital prototyping: game mechanics, aesthetics, kinesthetics, and technology. I will also go over designing control schemes, selecting viewpoints, effective interface design, and go over some prototyping tools.

Game Mechanics

When it comes to the mechanics of a game you want to make sure that the mechanics are simple. This doesn't necessarily need to be a standalone progrm. The mechanics of a game are focused on a particular design question. So when designing you would start with your core mechanics. Mechanics may sometimes have a spreadsheet filled out with questions embedding the complex game logic.

Aesthetics

When creating the aesthetics of a digital prototype, you need to keep the mindset of juice it or lose it. This means that you need to make your prototype juciy. If you don't know what that is, well I'd recommend you watch this video.

This can be done for storyboards, concept art, interface, and even audio.

Kinesthetics

Now kinesthetics is talking about the feel of the game. So for example, how responsive the interface is as well as how the controls feel. This would also involve the type of controls available to the player. It is good to have a compelling control scheme.

Technology

When developing the tech for your prototype, you want to make sure you cover these key points. These would include: Graphics, AI, Physics, Production Pipeline, etc. During the tech development you also want to validate your ideas are good and to refute the bad ideas. Make sure that when rapid prototyping, you design something small, and can be completed quickly.

Designing Control Schemes

For the design of a control scheme for whichever choice of input, whether it be mouse and keyboard or a gaming controller, the controls need to be good and intuitive. Allow for mulitple controller types because not everyone is going to want to use the same type of controller. Understand the capabilities of your controller and know how your game can make optimal use of the controller you've chosen. Having a list of procedures that the player can do helps with designing the control scheme for your game. Procedures tied to game states is another way to approach the design of the controls. When testing the controls, remember to keep in mind that effortlessness is key.
Viewpoints

The viewpoints in the prototype will be of your game environment and it's not your visual display of the game's status. There options of viewpoints can either be: Overhead view, Side view, Isometric view, First- person, or Third person view. When choosing one you want to think about what degree of access you want to give the player of the game world. Also keep in mind the relationship of the player to the game objects around them.

Interface Design

Really briefly, the effective interface design would include: player information design, form follows fumction, metaphors, visualization, grouping features, consistency, and feedback.

Tools

When making the prototype, keep in mind that the design of the experience comes first and that tech is second. Now, when it comes to different tools that are great for this would be game engines such as CryTek Engine or level editors like Unity, UDK, WarCraft 3, StarCraft 2, and even Portal. Or of course you can program it yourself using C++ or your language of choice.