Gameplay extract, or How to look at the world in a different way

Look around you. What do you see?
There’s a big chance to be potential game elements.

This article came as an inspiration after reading a section of the book “Game Design Workshop”, by Tracy Fullerton, where she said she tells her students to look at their desk and create a game with only what is present.

In this post, I’ll try to explain a bit about my personal process of abstraction and extraction of properties from trivial objects and elements. By this, I can have a brief vision in my mind of their capabilities and possible usages in a game design. Combining and testing these elements in interesting ways, I can come up with fun.

I’ll try to show this process using something we ALL see everyday (or at least you should!), and to tell the truth, is being useful to me. </hint>

Clouds

Inspiring cloudscape

Just by looking at clouds, it’s simple to catch some of their properties:

Size

Does it have a fixed size? Is it a tree that starts really small as a seed and becomes enormous, like in Amazon and Africa? Or is it a door, that has a standard measure?

Clouds are ever-changing natural elements with different and dynamic sizes and “shapes”.

In addition to the “external world relation”, the size is influenced by how it is “structured”.

[different and dynamic sizes]

Structure

What is it made of? Is it made of water, like a wave; or is it made of goo? This section is quite useful for physics usages.

Clouds can be read as a (proportionally) massive environment filled with billions of water and frozen crystals (droplet). As those crystals start to accumulate in the sky over and over, they become so dense that we can see the result, a cloud, with a naked eye.

You can’t grab and hold a cloud with your hand. It’s not concrete, it’s a gas.

[made of billions of droplets, are like a gas]

External World Relation

Does this element affect in some how anything else in the Universe? Is it affected by external sources? Can it affect itself?

The wind has a key function here. As the wind blows and translate the clouds, the massive amount of droplets that they are made of are affected, affecting the cloud as one.

Other clouds, in the gigantic jungle that the sky is, are another external world relative (I need a better name for this!). When clouds collide, if we look deeper, what really is colliding are those lovely droplets. That’s how the rain and other kinds of precipitation starts, and that’s why in a rainy sky, it seems to be just a single massive and dark cloud above our heads.

It affects the climate (so clever!).

[affected by wind and other clouds, besides affecting the climate]

Shape

Is it organic like a dune? Is it inorganic like a game console? Is it amorphous?

Shape it shape it shape it!

As with the size, the shape is dynamic and differs from cloud to cloud.

If you are a meteorologist, you may know a lot more; but doing some research in the web, I learned that the top and base of the clouds are important.

The depth of the cloud (determining its top) is determined by the local convection. The lower the cloud base is, the higher is the rate of thermal radiation emitted in the exchange between the cloud and the land (or sea), affecting the environment.

As we see, we could play with the ambient convection and possibly thermal radiation to bring up interesting mechanics. The player doesn’t need to know that “oh my god, this game has local convection and thermal stuff…!”, but for sure they can remain silent below the user interface and affect the game itselft.

[organic natural elements with environmental relevant tops and bases]

Width and Length

These particular properties impact the area of effect of the precipitation, but surely the wind affects a lot.

[the width and length affect the area of effect of the precipitation created]

Weight

How much does it weight? Is it light like a helium balloon, or heavy as a tank? Are we talking about something that has no weight at all?

Clouds doesn’t weigh. What weigh inside them are the droplets, that after getting heavy, fall in the form of precipitation.

[create precipitation after their droplets become heavy]

Height

Is it tall like a skyscraper? Is is low but stay in a certain height above the ground?

Clouds can be formed in different altitudes.

A really low cloud, for example, is known as fog.

[are formed in different altitudes]

Material

Does it bounce like a tennis ball? Or slide like ice? Can it refract? Reflect? Is it elastic?

Clouds are great light reflectors, absorbers and thermal radiation exchangers.

[affect the light in many ways]

Light scattering

Resistence

‘This element is as resistant as steel, right? No, it’s like a paper bread bag!’

In this example, this section doesn’t seem to help much. But hey, as clouds are full of droplets, a big “vacuum cleaner-thing” would mess things up.

Color

…color?

Cloud colors are generally white, but sometimes are affected by the environment. If you are looking to a sunset, you generally see orange, red and pink clouds.

The cloud base is sometimes grey because of its light scattering feature.

When light scattering, if there are a lot of ice droplets within a cloud, it will receive a green tint. If it is scattering by rain-sized droplets, the color will be blue.

[the cloud color tells what's happening inside it]

Colored clouds

Special Quality

What’s its special feature?

Clouds are used to hide UFOs…!

Clouds are really special for their ability to impact the climate system (another great possible use in the game design).

[impact the climate system]

Putting all those brief sentences together, we have: “(Clouds have) different and dynamic sizes; (are) made of billions of droplets, are like a gas; (and are) affected by wind and other clouds, besides affecting the climate. (Clouds are) organic natural elements with environmental relevant tops and bases; (they) create precipitation after their droplets become heavy; (and) are formed in different altitudes. (Clouds also) affect the light in many ways; the width and length affect the area of effect of the precipitation created. The cloud color tells what’s happening inside it; (and clouds) impact the climate system”.

This was just an example of how you can extract important features from common objects, and of course you can (and should) add more properties to analyse your desired gameplay element.

Fell free to relax watching this time lapse video: