Assignment Cover Sheet

Faculty of Science and Technology

NAME: Andrew Fox ______________________________

STUDENT ID: ___________________________________

UNIT CODE: ____________________________________

ASSIGNMENT/PRAC No.: 2 ________________________

ASSIGNMENT/PRAC NAME: Gameplay Concept ________

DUE DATE: 5th May 2010 __________________________

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DATE: 29th April 2010 ____________________________

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1. Title Page Student Declaration (form can be downloaded off DSO) Student Name, Student ID, Prac Class Day & Time, Tutors Name

2. Game Concept (20 Marks) Brief gameplay scenario (story, characters and level) Concept Art (Sketches, Reference images)

3. Storyboard (10 Marks)

4. Gameplay Experience Discussion (50 Marks) Challenges Goals/ quests Victory or loss condition Rules Interface design/control Feedback description Implementation Decisions – which technology you are choosing to implement

your sequence and its limitations

5. Summary (5 Marks)

6. Professionalism – Presentation, quality and structure of report will be assessed (10 Marks)

7. References (5 Marks)

Section 2. Game Concept

For my assignment I have chosen topic 2, the action adventure game. The brief concept given by the assignment is “The game is set within a castle. The castle is inhabited by many rogue monsters and beings that intend to stop you from making your way out of the castle. It is up the main character to find the castles secrets so that they can escape! The game will have a player to game mode only level of interactivity (no online or cooperative play with other humans). The proposed characters of the game include a archaeologist.” Story You are an archaeologist and you hear of a castle with strange happenings so you head out to investigate it. The game starts with you entering the village in front of the castle. You speak to one of the villagers and they tell you about the castle. When you goto the castle you find it seemingly abandoned with the gates closed. However, you notice there is a hole in the wall but to get to it you must first dive into the moat. You dive into the moat and enter the castle through a small hole, you find yourself entering into the dungeon. Once you have got inside the ground shakes and you find yourself blocked inside by some rocks falling down and blocking the passage you took. Guess the only way to get out is to advance through the castle! This is where the game actually starts. You find a key to escape from the dungeon and meet a guard who asks you a series of riddles that you must solve, once you tell him the answers he is looking for he lets you past into a main section of the castle, from here you must find a sword. You find a sword inside one of the guards’ quarters, using this you cut out the candles in a room which opens up a secret passage up to the next floor of the castle. When you get upstairs there are a number of guards who wish to stop you, after killing them you continue through to another hallway. At the end of the hallway is a big door with a boss inside it, this is indicated to the player by having a big skull on the door. Along the hallway are various rooms with small challenges in them, the rooms have a red light above the doorway and when you complete each room the light changes to green. The player must complete all the rooms and then they get to enter the boss room. The boss is slow moving and attacks in a pattern, the player must defeat the boss to proceed. In this prototype after defeating the first boss you escape from the castle, however in a full game it would be much longer.

Characters Pretty much the only character in this game is the main character, the archaeologist & the generic bad guys that you fight.

Archaeologist (Player Character)

(Archaeology in New Zealand)

Main element from the reference image is the hat

Guard (Generic Enemy)

(Chainmail Armor, Monster Hunter Wikia) Main element from the reference image is the armour, not the pants though

Levels

Town You begin the game in a small town with a few small buildings, none of which you can enter. There is an NPC who asks you to investigate a mysterious castle above the village.

Outside Castle You arrive at the castle and need a way in, if you jump down into the moat you can get in through a small crack

Similar design to this Zelda 3: Link To The Past Wallpaper (Unknown Date)

Dungeon You enter the castle dungeon, sneaking in through a tunnel which then collapses behind you, trapping you inside the castle. You have to try and find a key to escape from inside the dungeon. The dungeon is completely dark except for a small circle of light that surrounds the player.

Storage Room After leaving the dungeon you find yourself inside a storage room with blocks all over the floor, you must solve the block push/pull puzzle to pass the room.

Riddle Room The next room you enter is guarded by a soldier who asks you a series of riddles, you must solve them to be allowed past.

Main Hall You are now in the main castle, there are a series of doors you may enter. You have to try and locate the barracks so you can get a weapon (sword)

Room With Candles If you slash the candles with your sword they will go out, you have to cut out all the candles and then the door to the next room will open up (gameplay “gate” to prevent the player encountering enemies with no weapon)

Upstairs In this room the player meets their first enemies, the guards. They must defeat them to proceed.

Boss Hallway This hallway consists of a big door with a skull on it that remains closed until the other rooms in the hall have been cleared. This room contains the boss battle which is the end of the prototype. The rooms all have a red light above them that turns green when they are completed.

Boss Battle This room is a simple arena room where the player faces off against the first boss. After defeating the boss they wind up in the castle courtyard and can open the gates and leave, ending the game.

Section 3. Storyboard

Section 4. Gameplay Experience

Challenges - Puzzles – Must be solved by the player to proceed. - Navigating the dark dungeon

- The block puzzle - Riddles from the guard - The candle puzzle

- Enemies – Must be killed by the player to proceed - Guards. - The boss.

Goals/ quests

- The player must get past the first guard, who asks them a series of riddles - The player must solve the block puzzle - The player must locate the sword and then solve the puzzle of cutting the candles - The player must defeat enemies to reach the next hallway - The player must complete all of the rooms in that hallway to unlock the boss room - The player must defeat the boss

Victory or loss condition - If you die you lose the game and must try again from a few rooms back. - You win if you complete all of the quests / challenges presented to you and manage to get out of the castle.

Rules - The player must complete an area to move onto the next one, this is achieved by using “gameplay gates” which are elements of the game specially designed to stop the player from progressing until the goal of that room is completed. The player may only exit & enter rooms through the doorways. - The player is given a short tutorial on how to use the game (controls) - The player may jump off certain cliff tiles. This is the only way to get down into the dungeon at the start of the game. They are told how to do this by a sign next to the castle bridge. - There is no way to save the game. If the player closes the game they will lose their progress.

Interface design/control The interface shows the player life in the top corner of the screen The interface also shows the currently selected weapon on the side of the screen, by pressing a button the player may open their inventory to change their active weapon.

Feedback description Direct Feedback – If you get hit the screen flashes and your character makes a sound as well as getting knocked backwards. - There is a sign at the castle bridge that explains that you can jump off cliff tiles - When you enter the room with the block puzzle it is explained how to push blocks Indirect Feedback – When the exit to a room is opened, you get hurt or you collect an item a sound will play. If I can locate good public domain music then there will be indirect feedback in the music that plays for each level, this would allow the player to get a feel for what they can expect to encounter in each level.

Implementation Decisions I have chosen to implement my games design within a game called “Graal Online”, it is a multiplayer Zelda clone with a level editor and it’s own fully featured NPC scripting engine which can be used to achieve pretty much anything Zelda-esque. I feel this is a good choice as an archaeologist exploring a castle sounds very similar to Zelda. The limitations of this “engine” are that the tileset has only 1 layer so it is difficult to create multi-levelled rooms/areas.

Graal Online (2006) I feel that a top down view is appropriate for an action adventure game as it allows you to see your surroundings all at once and easily navigate around. For inspiration of ideas for the game I looked to Zelda which focuses on you also navigating a castle. The Zelda games put the player through a series of rooms

with small challenges in which they must accomplish, they try to balance puzzle solving with fighting enemies and I feel that these are fun elements of gameplay that would translate to my game with no issues. Since the player is an archaeologist they will not the start the game with a sword so I had to work that into the storyline that you discover it in the guards quarters before being faced with a challenge that requires the use of a sword.

References

Outbreak Quest Design Doc, 2009, Outbreak Quest, viewed 2nd May 2010, < http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/documents/OutbreakQuest.pdf >

Design Document: Play With Fire, 2007-02-20, Games Ultra, viewed 2nd May 2010, < http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070220/bateman_01.shtml >

Greg Woronchak Storyboard Samples, 2005, Greg Woronchak, freelance storyboard artist, viewed 2nd May 2010 < http://www.freewebs.com/gwor/ >

Chainmail Armor, 2010, Monster Hunter 3 Armor, Monster Hunter Wikia, viewed 4th May 2010 < http://monsterhunter.wikia.com/wiki/MH3:_Armors >

Zelda 3: Link To The Past Wallpaper, Unknown date, Zelda Shrine, viewed 4th May 2010 < http://zs.ffshrine.org/link-to-the-past/official-wallpapers.php >

Archaeology in New Zealand, Unknown Date, New Zealand Archaeological Association, viewed 4th May 2010 < http://nzarchaeology.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=51:careers-in-archaeology&Itemid=59&layout=default >

Screenshot from Graal Online, Captured Sun Oct 8 11:09:23 2006, Graal Online, viewed 3rd May 2010, < http://www.graalonline.com/community/gallery/2659 >