Wipeout Pure [PSP]

Wipeout Pure is a futuristic racing game in which players have to race their hovering race vehicles over tracks that can go up into the clouds over a city and down below the ocean. Think of a roller coaster track, just wider and the vehicles are not attached to it.

Goal:
The goal is to be the first to reach the finish line by any means possible. Built into the tracks are pads which can provide a substantial boost or give the player a randomly selected weapon.

Means to improve the odds of reaching the goal:
The weapons can be homing missiles, straight going missiles, EMP bursts, mines and track-wide explosions. It is also possible to pick up powerups such as shields, extra boosts, or an auto pilot instead.

Goals in more detail:
The first place is designated a certain best race time. The first AI opponent will always reach the finish line around that time, so the goal for the player is to beat that best race time.
The player is awarded a score, entered into the high score list and is awarded a gold/silver/bronze medal kind of thing if he gets 1st, 2nd or 3rd place.
The game has an online mode (really online, not just within the local WiFi), associated with that is a global high score list. Each

Cooperation:
There is no alliance / coop model in this game. The player always races against all of the AI or other players altough it is possible to imagine that a race held by only real players might be influenced by social alliances between certain players, keeping each others backs clear so one of them could win.

Competition for resources:
In front of upcoming booster / weapon pads there is often a struggle to push away, overtake or block the closest enemy because the pads give an advantage and the weapons pad in particular has to recharge before it can give out a new weapon.

Game attributes:
Each race vehicle has different attributes in terms of top speed, acceleration, agility and shields.
There are different leagues (difficulty modes) which increase the overall pace and add new race course. The faster one has to go the easier it is to crash into walls or fall off the track which costs time.

Decision making:
Apart from deciding when to break or accelerate in order to navigate difficult parts of the race course the player only has to decide when to use a certain powerup or weapon he picked up. Shooting missiles when no-one is around is pointless, so is activating the shield powerup when nobody is shooting at the player or no mines lay around. The best time to use the auto pilot is in very difficult to navigate places whereas the extra boost should only be used on long, open stretches as it makes the vehicle hard to control.

Risks:
Using certain weapons or powerups presents a risk to the player. He could knock himself out with the EMP burst if he shoots it into a wall right in front of him, or if he hits an enemy which is too close. Using the extra booster when a corner without walls is coming up might not be a good idea either, since the player would fall trough the world and be reset, costing him time and shield charge.

Sonic: Rivals [PSP]

Sonic is that blue haired hedgehog who can run like crazy and likes to collect gold rings. The Sonic name is usually associated with the SEGA system name as thats where it started.

In this reincarnation of the original game, the players guide him trough 3D levels on a 2D axis, racing against an adversary that’s also a Sonic, but he’s always a bit different looking with different special moves.

Players start standing still at the beginning of the level and end standing still at the right end of the map. The goal is to navigate Sonic trough the level (left to right) as fas as possible, avoiding traps or falling off the bottom of the level and making use of various power ups and weapons/traps. Collecting gold rings adds to the final score but has no influence on Sonic’s performance during the race.

Powerups/attack moves can be picked up by jumping into a powerup icon/box. Powerup effects are specific to the type of Sonic that picks them up.

Blue Sonic will gain super speed
Red Sonic will punch the ground and daze the opponent no matter where he is
White Sonic will scramble the opponents inputs.. make you go left when you press right etc
Black Sonic will scramble your screen

Attacks include ice, fire, wind, electric shock, proximity mines but also punching/kicking the enemy.
Each attack has 2 moves, if the enemy is in front the attack is usually released towards the target in front, self guiding. If the enemy is behind the player then the attack is dropped behind the player as a trap, except for the fire attack, it turns into a shield/force field around the player.
Ice trap turns the player into an ice block, mine blows him up, electric shock trap is disguised as a golden ring with a faint purple haze around it and wind will just trap the player.
Movement trough the level is so fast that it’s almost impossible to notice player traps and avoiding them.
If you get close enough to the other player you can kick/punch him. It will make him fall over and stop and he will lose some rings which you can pick up while you’re jumping over him.

The Rules:
Move from point A (start) to point B (finish line) faster than the opponent.
Falling off the bottom edge of the screen will reset your position to a safe spot before the fall and cost you some time.
You may take advantage of attack moves and power ups at any time if you pick them up. You will lose your currently stored powerup/attack if you fall off the level/hit a level trap.
You have to overcome all the challenges within a level to make it to the end.

The System:

Elements	Attributes
2 players	human / computer controlled
	always available abilities
	general acquirable abilities
	Sonic type specific acquirable abilities
Attacks	picked up by a player, activated at any desired point, will follow the level’s path forward but wont avoid obstacles
	dropped from the player’s 1 item inventory if the player has been affected by a level-trap / fall off the bottom edge
Traps	player traps placed at any point, will activate when opponent touches it, will disable/affect him for a few seconds
	level traps come in form of mobile enemies which have to be jumped on – mario style, there are spikes, lava, oil pits
	bottom edge of level, costs time, resets the players position, strips any powerups/attacks, removes a number of gold rings from his inventory
Level	is the playing field and contains all the other elements
	has a start and finish line
	contains obstacles / challenges, boosters to help the player overcome certain obstacles
Internal Relationships
player to player	opponents, have to battle for the lead position
	can use any powerup/attack/trap to their advantage to reach the goal
attacks / traps to player	will stop the player for a time period, may affect other attributes such as ring count and stored powerup/attack
player to level	players use level design to advance, players also have to avoid / overcome level obstacles
level to player	provides player with paths to the end, powerups, boosters to make passage of certain level elements possible, obstacles, traps
Environment
	playing the game
	controlling the game device, PSP
	wireless network if 2 human players want to interact with the same game using their PSP’s
Interactions
	The players interact by trying to out-run each other, doing so requires to attack / defend the other’s position using player-launched traps/attacks.
	The players interact with the level by following one of sometimes many possible paths, avoiding inbuilt traps and sometimes performing a certain action to be able to proceed.

All the rules and possible interactions tie directly into the player’s objective, to win the race. None of them are there for no purpose or just to annoy players.

The AI that controls the NPC Sonic is sufficiently advanced to make him use all available moves and activities to win the race. However it is attached to the player by the ‘rubber band’ technique, making it possible for the player to catch him after encountering obstacles and traps that cost much time but it also makes it impossible to gain a significant lead on the enemy. He will slow down when you’re far behind and catch up quickly if you’re in front.

The player can often choose to place traps in strategic locations, such as right after a booster which would provide the player with the required speed to overcome a looping or jump over a wide gap. Being slowed down/stopped by the trap after encountering the booster will cost him much time because he has to return to the booster and attempt to overcome the obstacle again.
It is also a good strategic choice to save up a powerup or attack for the last strech, to freeze the enemy right before the finish line, making it possible for the attacking player to win.

Command & Conquer

What if Hitler had never existed and Nikola Tesla had lived at the time of the cold war? Einstein was working for the Allied forces consisting of America and Europe and Nikola Tesla had never left for America, instead developed weapons technology for the Russians.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert explores this world picture by putting the player into the role of a military commander to run a campaign against either side, leveraging various technologies that in the real world never made it beyond theoretical physics.

The Command & Conquer franchise of games have been defining the status quo for RTS (real time stragety) games for a decade. What is the secret to this kind of success?

Lets identify some of the basic elements that exist in each C&C game.

Good Story
There are two different C&C series, one with real world powers such as the Allied Forces and Soviets and the other one in a fictional setting of the Global Defense Initiative, GDI against the Brotherhood of NOD.

There has always been a compelling story to the C&C games, realistic yet fictional and the player was introduced to the story trough cut scenes which also served as mission briefing.

Gradual introduction of game elements
The single player campaigns introduce new game elements in each mission and the player has to use the new technology, together with the already available technologies to finish the mission due to map design or special event triggers.

Intuitive interface design
The interface is divided into the world view and a side panel containing the different build options. Buildings, infantry and ground vehicles, air units and base defense items each have their own tab in that column to keep the player from having to click trough item trees or having to click on specific buildings to issue build commands.
This allows the player to keep an eye on the progress of a battle while planning ahead by starting to build additional units.

Player interaction with the game has been researched and the results put into practice. No aspect of the gameplay appears tedious to the player, instead, basic use of the game appears intuitive with the AI helping the player out by taking over tasks which he is not always interested in.

Scalable multiplayer and teamwork
Multiplayer matches can range from two players to 8, players can team up and have the option to fight against NPC players or teams of varying difficulty and strategy presets.

Fighting not just for the sake of fighting
Players will eventually run short on the finite amount of resources on a map and need to fight over this tight resource pool in order to build an army massive enough to eliminate the enemy. Players also have to fight over strategic points on the maps such as mountain passes, bridges, replenishable resource providers and other items of strategic interest in order to maximize their chance to win the match.

A big army is not always a winning army, strategy is key
On the easier modes of the game it is certainly possible to win a match using a large amount of combat units but as the difficulty increases a player has to think of new strategies to achieve his goals. There are small commando units that take out key defense systems to breach a path for the rest of the army, covert units that steal technology, money or disrupt systems or units that hide the existence of armed forces from the enemies radar. These units open new ways to build a strategy and win against a player that would seem to have the upper hand because he has a larger army or more resources to spend on defenses.

Evaluating ideas and concepts

The way I go about getting ideas for new games is by looking at existing games, finding the unique or successful elements and then thinking of how to integrate them into a new piece of work.
Usually I only evaluate ideas that I know that I’m capable of executing/realizing but if that was not a concern then I would also think about new, original ways of integrating the use of existing hardware into the game experience as well as more complex types of player interaction.

New Hardware:
Electronic games are intellectual games, played out in our mind. Our arms and hands are simply the tools which we use to carry out the mental responses to the visual and audio input. Now thinking of the future, with mind control over the computer, it is possible to remove the challenge of perfect motor control and gameplay get closer to the core of competition between computer players: who’s the smartest and quickest thinker.
Remove motor control and you’ll open up a whole new level of competition. The next limit will be the cognitive speed in which input is recognized, processed and responded to.

This idea is a bit ambitious but could be used as a basis for a research project, as such it is not yet ready to be directly implemented into the game design process (of commercial games).

Social Interaction:
There should always be a variety of activities available to the player, ranging from challenging, time constrained tasks to something to do while having a relaxed play session. People like to play together in a social, friendly environment, it can have a competitive side but should also cater for those who want to spend some time by themselves. This points towards the need for well defined rule sets and letting the player control which set of rules he wants to use. Switching from PvE to PvP rule sets would be a good example. Sandbox type of multiplayer games which don’t adopt this type of player control over rule sets are usually plagued by ‘griefers’, people who find amusement in ruining other people’s experience.

This is one game design aspect that is used in many MMO’s because there are so many players in a relatively small area and those players don’t necessarily have the same goals. The buddy system has been adopted by many other games in the form of inbuilt instant-messengers with community functions for grouping up with other like-minded players.
The concept of choosing rule-sets on the fly is a good example of how players can draw that ‘magic circle’ around them and play the game differently while they remain within that zone. It would be interesting to explore within multiplayer games other than MMO’s.
One example could be counter strike, if two players decide to knife instead of shoot each other. Usually thats pretty hard to to because other players that don’t play along with the ‘knifes only’ shoot them.

Technical limitations:
If a player does something on his PC in relation to what he sees on the basis of server-supplied data then the server must acknowledge the action, no matter what, and modify the game state accordingly. If there is a conflict because of PC/server/network latency then it must not be compensated/accounted for within the game code, this would introduce randomness and confuse the player. The player will figure out how to deal with the result of such latency issues as it will be a constant to this actions.
In case of a server-client based environment there should be a way to have localized servers in order to provide the player with the lowest possible network latency and thus improving his experience of the game.

These are technical aspects that have to be considered in the game design process. Some of the rules might need to be evaluated against this sort of technical constraint.
One prominent mistake in this area was in World of Warcraft. They opted to use a certain algorithm which worked fine in low latency environments, but once the latency increased in cases like inter-continental connections the algorithm artificially inflated the latency to a multiple of the real network latency and the game became very unresponsive to all the overseas players, such as Australians (all WoW servers are located in USA) and certain parts of Asia. This artificially high latency affected the rules that allow/restrict players to perform certain actions.

Diablo 2

Diablo 2 is one of those games that test the durability of the player’s mouse. In Europe it is one of the most popular hack-n-slash RPG’s and the community is still going strong since the game’s release back in 2000.

The game concept is about the story of a past hero who thought to have defeated Diablo “The lord of terror” or the devil, that has now been possessed by Diablo’s soul and is in the present on his way to free two more prime evils which will show themselves as game bosses and unleash hell onto the mortal realm. The player is a new aspiring hero with the goal to send Diablo and his demon minions back to where they came from.

The player chooses his character from 5 classes, Paladin, Sorceress, Amazon, Barbarian and Necromancer, and controls it in an isometric 3rd person view.
Over time, the classes allow the player to choose and utilize certain powers. The paladin is a sort of holy warrior, using holy spells to smite the demons and various other monstrosities, the sorceress uses lighting, fire and ice to combat the vermin, the amazon is good at using bows and spears, the barbarian likes heavy armor and big swords and the necromancer raises the dead creatures (killed by him or other players) to fight for him.

Type of play:	Mimicry
	Ludus
Narrative:	Enacted
Game mechanics:	Altough maps are large, the player is always contained within by fences, walls or natural barriers. There are no time constraints and the player is allowed to stick around in areas as long as he wishes.
Interactivity:	The player can interact with the game by clicking on the map (moving the character), clicking on objects and by assigning and tapping hot-keys which is an alternative to clicking certain items.
Choices:	The player has to make some long term decisions even before he starts playing by choosing for his character a name and class which will restrict him in the choice of game objects he is able to use. As the game progresses the player has to decide on which attributes and skills to focus on when unused skill points are available. It’s an important choice because it will direct his play style in the long run. In the short term, the player has to make choices of which abilities to use on certain NPC’s and which type of monster to focus on if he is up against a group of them.

Like in most RPG’s the player has an inventory to store items, equipped item slots and a skill point system to gradually gain new abilities.
The player starts out in a secure area, a camp with various vendors and story telling NPC’s and his only items in the inventory are very basic weapons typical for his class.

The player can go about exploring the map on his own or take a quest from one of the characters in the camp, either way, he’ll meet his first challenge right outside the protected area. The class specific weapons all handle a bit differently but it comes down to clicking on the enemy creature until it dies. It is easy to kill the first few creatures but the player is not immune to their attacks. After a few kills the player has gained enough XP (experience points) to choose his first new ability and increase attribute points to make him stronger. The dead enemies might have dropped money or items which the player is free to use to upgrade or fix his current gear by visiting the vendors in the camp.

That is mostly how the whole game is played yet most players will play it trough to the end and some will go even further and repeat the whole game two more times to reach the character’s maximum level.

The game is tiered into three difficulty modes: Normal, Nightmare, Hell and once the end boss of the game has been defeated the player is returned to the initial starting position, with all his acquired items and starts the game all over again, with the hit points of the enemies adjusted in relation of the player’s powers at that point.

While the game can be completed as an individual player, it was specifically designed to be played in groups of players, called a ‘party’. The different classes abilities complement each other and make the game experience much more fun.

An addiction effect is present with this game, making the player spend hours to improve his character, collect items and beat the next challenge which is always just a few steps away. Blizzard, the developing studio of this game, have that aspect figured out perfectly and it shows with all the other games they released but they tend to cut corners in prop/model varieties. The same models are used over and over again throughout the game with minute variations in color, abilities, item drops and name tags which makes the game a bit bland for those who like rich visual representations of game objects.

I think both these aspects are important to consider for new games and as new technology provides the means to have great varied visual representations of game objects, the more important factor of keeping the player constantly interested and longing for new content is somewhat lacking in many of the latest high profile games.

Counter Strike

One of the games I’ve been playing for years is Counter Strike (Half-Life 1 engine) and it’s newer form, Counter Strike: Source (HL-2, Source engine).
Both games are mostly the same with the only differences arising from the difference in underlying game engine such as improved collision control, extended rule set and its enforcement.

Counter Strike can be summed up as this:
There are two teams, the Terrorists and the Counter Terrorists that have to accomplish a set of goals within a set time frame.
The graphics realistically resemble real world locations, player models and modern weapons restricted to small arms, a machine gun and rifles plus hand grenades.

There are 3 types of maps (playing environments), players start grouped up as teams at opposite ends of the map:

• DE: bomb defusal: The terrorist team possesses a bomb with a timer and has to plant it at one of two designated points on the map. The counter terrorists have to defuse the planted bomb before it blows up after a certain amount of time (usually 45 seconds).
• CS: hostage rescue: The terrorists hold 5 hostages in a building and have to defend their position until the counter terrorist team is eliminated or the round timer is up (usually 3 minutes). The counter terrorists have to storm the building, make contact with the hostages and escort them to one of two designated rescue points.
• AS: protect the VIP: This mode is only available in the original Counter Strike. A special player, the VIP starts with the counter terrorist team and has to be escorted to a designated safety point. The terrorists have to prevent the VIP from reaching that point.

The game may also be won by eliminating all players of the opposite team with the exception of bomb defusal. If all terrorists are dead but the bomb is still ticking, it has to be defused or the terrorists will be awarded the win for the round.
This is the most common outcome of a round, players tend to ignore the primary objectives and opt for the easy way, just killing each others.

Type of play	Agôn, Competitive
	Ludus, Strongly rule bound
Narrative:	None, unless you count the above definition of the game as narrative. The map goals are displayed once at game start.
Game mechanics:	Player movement is restricted by map design and gravity. There is one timer for the play round and optional timers for special events. Players may or may not be restricted from harming anyone. Input is standard for FPS, mouse and keyboard.

Some people may associate the type of play with Mimicry since there is a visual impression of real-world simulation but that’s where this association ends (with the visuals). For me, the game play does not exhibit enough parallels to the real world to qualify as simulation type game.

A character has 100 points of health and the player retains unrestricted control over his character even if he’s down to 1 HP meaning he has as much of a threat potential to others at 1HP than he had at 100HP.
My standing record is to hit someone 13 times before his health reached 0 or below. Since the game boils down to hitting others until their health reaches 0, that is not realistic.
The simulation impression is further reduced by the fact that there are no simulated bullets. There are instead invisible laser beams which are shot from between the character’s eyes, not his weapon! This has serious implications on expected vs. actual shooting angles, expected vs. actual ‘bullet’ behavior, on map design or exploits thereof.
I believe that the Half-Life: Source engine doesn’t provide the best possible platform for this game if the design goal really was to achieve realism.
One design decision was not to include counter measures against all forms of attack. Counter measures in CS include blinding people, throwing explosives or dodging bullets / taking a few hits and returning fire. These measures mainly work against small arms and rifles on short to medium range, but none of them are of any use against the strongest gun in the game, an insta-kill sniper rifle.

Team based combat in games is usually structured in a way that attacks can be countered or developers try to keep the damage potential of any action to a level that gives the target some time to react. In games that have insta-kill attacks, the target player is usually allowed to respawn and give it another try after a short amount of time (a few seconds) but in counter strike the player has to wait and watch the game until the whole round is over which can take up to 3 minutes.
Waiting and watching others for 3 minutes is not fun, so this would be a point that could use a reevaluation by the designers.

It is interesting how the developers tried to even out some of the advantages and disadvantages of players (in Counter Strike: Source) which are typical for online multiplayer first person shooters. The most common bottleneck is bandwidth and latency. One player might have very low latency and his opponent might have relatively high latency. The first player would always have a great advantage in reaction time and be able to kill the other one before player 2 can even see player 1.

The way the devs tried to solve the problem is by letting both players make their moves without assigning the hit points straight away, instead it compares what went on on each player’s screen after the fact and depending on who hit/missed on his client and managed to send the data back to the server it calculates the chances equally. All of this takes place within milliseconds and the players often don’t notice or mind and get away with a better playing experience. The other side of the coin is that the software on the server sometimes mis-calculates things and the wrong person dies.

Jump n Run / Sidescroller Plan

I got this idea in a sleepless night when I was thinking about primitive game concepts that I may be able to recreate in that horrible programming language, ‘Lingo’ which is used in Macromedia/Adobe Director.

As usual for me, I set my goals higher than I could probably achieve but thats a good thing as it often leads me to learn new things.

I‘ve got a plan for a side scroller / jump n run game which I could realize as part of an assignment for ITN257 Multimedia Systems using Flash or Director.

Attached are the scanned pages from my notebook.

You may have to enlarge the pics to full size to read it all: Right-click on the ‘Full Size’ link on the bottom left and select open in new tab/window or you’ll have to use the back button to get back here.

The purpose of this game is not to design an actual game to be played by many people but more to showcase the use of programming, art and sound production.

It is a competitive game, played with two players and the goal is to out-run the opponent. The map scrolls constantly which brings new challenges and sometimes also cuts off the way to the end if the players don’t advance quick enough.

The game would be targeted at the same demographic that plays the short Flash-games on websites like www.newgrounds.com. Without knowing exactly who they are it would be a good idea to present it in the fashion that the high ranking games are presented there.
It should be short, colorful, intuitive and instantly playable without having to learn the controls or downloading big files.

Concept, game play, start and end conditions as well as more in-depth thoughts on how the game logic works is all contained within the attached notes.

Great Minds Think Alike

The drive to find new and interesting input devices has increased since the development of the Wii-mote showed the industry that people will accept new ways to control games other than the hardware that’s been around for years. While pondering on new ideas myself, I thought about using brainwaves, or rather the output of an EEG (brainwave measurement instrument) as an input device.The idea and partial application has been around for more than 20 years (IBVA : http://www.ibva.com/html/core.htm) but few have ever used it seriously to interact with games.

Further research into the viability of EEG output for my ideas of game control that lie within my programming skills resulted in the conclusion that i would only be able to achieve two dimensional movement control, which would be the product of overall increasing or decreasing brainwave activity.
The data contained within sample output is quite complex and somewhat random (spikes) even if the individual’s state of mind reflects calmness but it would be possible to detect overall trends.
A visual example of someone calming down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nffgMFajFjY&feature=related
Sample ASCII data from a 10 channel EEG recording: 10chEEG (Excel 2007, one channel / line)

Where do I stand now with game design?

I’ve got the option for 2D control of an object. The first thought would be the throttle of a race vehicle. The game I’m thinking of would be a racing game with hovercrafts, one of which the player has to control and navigate around obstacles and of course the race course itself.

Part of the game control mechanics would be based on the following theories:
It seems fairly straight forward to think that for an increase in speed, the player would have to concentrate, therefore increasing his EEG values.
But don’t we already do this for gaming, concentrating, competing by trying to be the quickest thinker? What would happen if the player had to relax in order to gain speed?
This would seem to create a paradox for the player in many ways. The faster he goes, the more difficult it gets to avoid obstacles, therefore he has to concentrate more which in turn will slow him down. If he’s competing against other real players it adds the next layer of contradictory brain function, he doesn’t just want to navigate his car, he also wants to be faster than the others, this of course requires him to relax more than his opponents but in reality the player’s brain is programmed to increase activity for competition.

Another interesting thing to experiment with would be the lighting on the race course, maybe certain colors or strobing light in tunnels or along trees with sun and shadow effects could influence the player’s brain activity.

If the vehicles aren’t invulnerable the fear of crashing, as well as spectacular but surprising explosions of other players, could also add to the challenge.

There should be a training course to let the player experiment and learn this original way of controlling the vehicle. An onboard computer voice could guide the pilot trough the process of acquiring the necessary skills.

Trying to introduce a story into racing games has been attempted but the only believable or relevant to the game play story has been with the latest parts of the Need for Speed series which mimics real world conditions of racing cars in different environments. Those games expanded the gameplay beyond the usual buy car, tune car, race for money by introducing territory conflicts and conflicts with the law and subsequent cop chases.
In most other racing games the story only set the graphical theme of the race course and had no other practical involvement with the game.
Based on that I would suggest to either leave out any sort of story and just make sure that the game is enjoyable to play and watch.
If there was a serious budget it could be possible to acquire the rights to use intellectual property like Star Wars and base all the graphical and some of the usual game elements around the story of the big hovercraft race in one of those episodes.

Concluding that I had a really original idea would have been nice but apparently a team of engineers in Sweden had a very similar idea a few years ago. They didn’t go into as much interactivity as I envisioned for my application but the main principle of relaxing while competing is the base of their product. (http://smart.tii.se/smart/projects/brainball/index_en.html)

One thing is certain, games will make use of EEG output in the very near future.
(http://www.megagames.com/news/html/pc/braincontrolledgamingarealitythisyear.shtml)

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