(see assignment here:
http://fsugd.blogspot.com/2010/10/homework-13-iteration-and-players.html)
- What steps are members of your team taking to prototype the game?
I've been using the Blender assignments as a way to incrementally add ideas and mechanics that directly relate to things we want in our game. In effect, the Blender assignments have become a working prototype of our group game, though with a different "plot" behind it, if you even want to call it that. I know that Sam has been primarily focused on making an original score for us, and the relevant form of prototyping for him is that he's been writing and playing around with different themes on a piano before going to the effort of actually recording them through a midi system. David's been working on improving his modeling skills and building us some various objects to use in the game, and seems to be getting quite a lot better at it.
- What could go wrong in your team’s game?
Murphy's Law? Plenty of things could foreseeable be more difficult than we're expecting. The main one I've been concerned with, as the programmer, is implementing the dynamic room generation, and dealing with transitioning the player between rooms (We're going to have to do some tricky stuff, maybe, to deal with issues Blender has with lighting)
- Will men and women like your game equally? What could be done to enhance the game for one or the other gender?
I imagine it would appeal more to men than to women... the genres involved (FPS and Survival Horror) both tend to be skewed in that direction. Enhance the game for women... hmm.. Ignoring the fact that it's out of the scope of this class, perhaps making it multiplayer could help a little... even then, though, I don't have much hope that it could appeal to a general female audience much. Can't win 'em all!
- What would have to be done to your game to make it appealing to 15-18 year group. Same question for group between 40 and 50.
I don't think this game would be overly geared towards any particular age group... Teens would probably be fine with it as is. 40-50 might want more explanation that we want to give the players, but aside from that, I don't see too much that we would want to change if we're sticking with the same core game concepts.
- What pleasures does your game provide to the players (Chapter 8)
Progression, a sort of suspense up and down feeling, hopefully a little bit of humor if some objects are animated to move in novel ways.
- How are you applying the principles of iteration (chapter 7) to your game design? Each member should discuss his/her approach and contribution
I touched on this in the earlier question on prototyping, but the fact that I'm playing each version I create for the homework, and usually ever several steps within each assignment. I'll fudge around with a couple variables like speed and health... though so far I've mostly been tuning it to be easier to test, as opposed to more balanced to play. I'll clearly go back and rebalance everything once we get closer to a final game.
- What are some changes that you “might” have to make to your game to improve it?
From a purely gameplay perspective (as opposed to, say, technical problems we may encounter), we may decide that we want to give the player more varried ways of interacting... missile weapons is one idea that we initially threw out, but I might suggest re-considering if we have time, because it could allow for some interesting ways of dealing with more dangerous or tricky foes.
- What are you doing that “might” not work as expected?
Some of our lighting ideas are proving tricky, and we've still got a lot to learn about how we want the player to interact with the music. I'm also, as I mentioned, a little worried about getting the dynamic rooms working out smoothly.
- What are the characteristics/experiences/features that players will like and not like? What are your expectations from the players of your game?
Assuming we get everything implemented as we're envisioning it? I think the random layout of the mansion will be a fun thing for players to work with... keeps things unpredictable. It's possible that some players might not like the idea of conveying health information through music... it requires them to pay attention to something that many people have become self-trained to tune out. Also, depending on how you feel about tension in games, you may love or hate the fact that you often don't know until the last second if a sofa is going to try to eat you or not.
As is becoming my norm for text-heavy entries, here is a picture:
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