Week 3
As per our normal routine for this lecture we started by discussing what we had found out from the reading required over the past week. http://critgamestuds.blogspot.com/2012/11/bookarticle-readings.html.
Once we had finished discussing what we understood from this article, it was time to put theory into practice.
RTS Game (Real Time Strategy):
Our lecturer Rob had created a game for us (in groups) to play with the aim of iterating into a better game. This was by far the hardest game to iterate so far.
From playing the game the first time with no iterations, we found that it was pretty much impossible to kill each other due to the game mechanics (unless a player was not paying attention). So our first change to the game would be a small one to try to fix this issue.
Iteration 1 - We had simply changed the order in which a player takes their turn, making it so that 'Fire' would always be first, followed by 'Move' and then lastly 'Turn & Move'.
This iteration seemed to have fixed the issue where players couldn't kill each other. So we then moved onto changes that would increase elements of fun within the game.
Iteration 2 - This round we had added in weapon drops with a variety of weapons each having unique characteristics, there was a limit to how many of each weapon there was in game and to also how many weapons each player could carry at a given time. An example weapon would be 'shotgun' having a range of 4 squares out but a wider radius of 3 squares wide.
We found that this iteration had increased the fun of the game in the following ways, using the 'MDA' framework:
Once we had finished discussing what we understood from this article, it was time to put theory into practice.
RTS Game (Real Time Strategy):
Our lecturer Rob had created a game for us (in groups) to play with the aim of iterating into a better game. This was by far the hardest game to iterate so far.
From playing the game the first time with no iterations, we found that it was pretty much impossible to kill each other due to the game mechanics (unless a player was not paying attention). So our first change to the game would be a small one to try to fix this issue.
Iteration 1 - We had simply changed the order in which a player takes their turn, making it so that 'Fire' would always be first, followed by 'Move' and then lastly 'Turn & Move'.
This iteration seemed to have fixed the issue where players couldn't kill each other. So we then moved onto changes that would increase elements of fun within the game.
Iteration 2 - This round we had added in weapon drops with a variety of weapons each having unique characteristics, there was a limit to how many of each weapon there was in game and to also how many weapons each player could carry at a given time. An example weapon would be 'shotgun' having a range of 4 squares out but a wider radius of 3 squares wide.
We found that this iteration had increased the fun of the game in the following ways, using the 'MDA' framework:
- Challenge,
- Sensation,
- Competition,
We were about to move onto a third iteration of improving the game's Aesthetics via the board which would also change the Mechanics, but we had run out of time for the lecture.
Conclusion:
From this lecture we had come up with some great ways to improve the game play but we found it difficult coming up with ideas initially while sticking to the game's core mechanics.
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