Month: October 2020

I began with two ideas in my head. A 2d top down static tank game reminiscent of Wii Play (2006) tanks where the player would fight a wave of enemies in a level there were around 100 levels designed for it. With the base we created during the programming fundamentals tasks I could use it and create the ai and wave system from there.

My second idea was to create a 2d side view arcade wave shooter inspired by Super Crate Box (2010) in that game enemies would spawn from the top and fall down onto the platforms below and the player would have to kill or avoid them. I hope to recreate this but add a few different mechanics and see how it changes the flow of gameplay. I also chose this idea as it would be better to recode everything from scratch as it would give me a chance to apply what i’ve learnt from the fundamentals lessons

References:

Nintendo (2006), Wii Play [Video Game], Nintendo.

Vlambeer (2010), Super Crate Box [Video Game], Vlambeer.

Video games (more prominently in mobile games) prey upon individuals who suffer from addiction through the use of loot boxes and microtransactions that are designed to focus onto these people and exploit them through a hook habit hobby where they hook the player and have them download the game and then incentivise the player to spend money therefore making the player feel more invested and making it their main hobby. The key to this strategy is making the player feel like spending money isn’t a bad thing in the game and to incentivise social spending where people who spend are announced to over players in a positive way to make other players want to spend more. All of this preys upon people who have shopping or gambling addictions by trying to coax them into spending until they give in and begin the destructive cycle that leads to more and more payments and microtransactions for the game to either gain an advantage or to roll for a chance of a good item

References:

PocketGamer.biz (2016) Let’s go whaling: A guide to monetisation through in-app purchases. Accessible through https://www.pocketgamer.biz/comment-and-opinion/63871/monetisation-lets-go-whaling/, accessed on 24/10/2020 Jim Sterling (2019) The Addictive Cost Of Predatory Videogame Monetization (The Jimquisition). Accessible through https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S-DGTBZU14 accessed

I chose to look at Jesse Schell’s Lens of action from “The Art of Game Design, 3rd Edition 2003” which is about the actions that the player can and cannot do in the game. I will be looking at Dead by Daylight (Behaviour Interactive (2016), Dead by Daylight [Video Game], Behaviour Interactive)

This game is split into two sides with 1 killer and 4 survivors. Survivors have to escape and the killer has to stop them. The basic actions the survivors can perform is; moving, sprinting and repairing generators, these actions allow the player to run away from killers and work on the objective of the match (escaping by powering generators). The basic actions for killers are; moving and attack, these actions are purely for finding and chasing survivors which is the only goal for the killer.

The strategic actions that the survivors can perform are; vaulting windows and pallets, throwing down pallets and various perk actions that can slow down being caught, all of these actions are designed to slow and prevent the survivors from being chased or caught and to allow them to traverse obstacles faster than the killer can.

The strategic actions that the killer can perform are; vaulting windows, breaking pallets, the killers actions are fewer and simpler but this is because the killer instigates the chases and is faster than the survivors. The survivors are given a variety of tools to escape the killer because without many tools their actions would be more predictable and would make the killer’s objective easier

I believe that the ratio for actions is well balanced for the games goals and objectives, it leads to varied and interesting gameplay and has a high skill ceiling for players to work towards

I’ve added the ability to change the width of the tools by using A and D

I’ve also added a tool that creates squares

https://toddnorrish.nuacomputerscience.co.uk/paint/paint.html