After a long, long time without any updates in here – with exception for my twitter right there on the right side -, I have some great news to tell you!

I’ve grown professionally, got into the game industry and…

I finally built MY online PORTFOLIO! hell YEAH!

And, with that, I’m moving this blog to that domain, hoping to have more frequent updates.

Check them out!

I’ll tell more in my new blog.

I can’t wait to receive your feedback right there!

I’ll be deactivating this blog. So, no more updates at this place. Never.

Meet me there, thanks!

The present article is a review I wrote while playing the game One Chance. I talk about my experience and how it affects the gameplay.

(beware, spoiler Alert!)

I have found the cure. Cancer is now cured. I discovered a cure that kills cancer cells, and this is great. The only thing that bothers me is that a message tells me that in six days, all living cells will be dead. Strange.

This is a game about choices. A simple game, but meaningful. You control the scientist John Pilgrim. You have a wife, a kid and a job (that’s where you found the cure). Your goal is to move right (->) with the arrows, listening to people – or sometimes just walking through them while they behold you – going through new screens/ environments, interacting with elements. The game consists of six days. At the start of each day, you start in your bedroom, moving to the right to reach the hallway, where you can go to your daughter’s bedroom and the bathroom, reaching then the exit. Outside, you often see the daily newspaper with the latest news. Some good, some bad. You car is right besides. Get in to go to work. It’s interesting how the player cannot go back (going left) sometimes. This maybe has to do with some decisions we take in our lives.

One intelligent thing this game does is: you canNOT replay it. This is why the game is called One Chance, right? This really simple game design decision forces players to stop and give time for themselves to think deeply in each decision they will take, making them all even more meaningful. Smart!

The wife

Each new day is presented slightly in a different way: you find your wife and daughter on a different place, doing different things from the previous day. The NPCs may or may not be where they were before, and their actions when seeing you would change. As day passes, the mood is nicely translated through the colors, which gets colder and lifeless tones, as also by the number of apples on the apple trees, decreasing in number day by day. An interesting point here is with the main character’s outfit. You control someone who appears to be really respected, with a great reputation (you discovered the cure to cancer, right?): you were featured on the newspaper, and you are always wearing your white coat.

On the second day, I try to get in my lab but it’s locked – maybe it’s because of the last discovery? The thing we thought was saving us from cancer will now kill every form of life? I then walk to the roof, and find a fellow doctor who can’t take the pressure and jumps. Suicide.

After the fourth day, Pilgrim – the main character – is not wearing any more his doctor outfit, like if he had lost his compromises, and you see his wife lying on the bed asking him if it’s really necessary to go to work today.

The work

I think: What should I do? Should I leave my wife? Maybe she’s right…?

Then, I leave the room. What do I see? My kid. My little sweet daughter that on the previous day, was inside her bedroom asking whether she had to go to school. And now, where is she? She is in front of me, on hallway – on my way to go to work – sitting besides her friendly teddy bear. This is sweet.

I think, with my heart: What now? I have my wife. I have my daughter. Oh… what do I do? I know that in four days, all living cells on Earth will be destroyed. What do I do then? Should I spend the last few days of my life really close to my family – what matters a lot for me -, enjoying the last minutes we have to stay together alive, or should I force, push myself to work to – at least – try to find the cure?

I know at this point that there is a chance for the cure to be found from me, as I am that almighty doctor who had found the cancer cure: a gas cure which would kill the cancer cells. Unfortunately, on the next day we read the newspaper to learn that cure was more destructive than I and the other doctors had thought, even after running a thousand tests. What a mess. What now? Everything is now so… deep.

I go outside. I go outside because, even with all the love a man can feel for his family, and the deep wish to stay close to them feeling their really meaningful human warmth, I will die in four days. This is sad, indeed. So, I think:

I will die in four days anyway. Of course, there is my family. And it is for this exact reason that I will go to work today, because this may be the last and only chance for the human race – and all living cells -, especially my family, to survive. If I unfortunately fail, at least this would be the best thing I could have done to them. I may be the hope.

Should I go back to home, or work for the cure?

To tell the truth, this has something to do with my real personality (I’m talking about myself [Anselmo] right now). I hate when something may go wrong/ is going wrong and there is a chance for someone to try something to fix that, and simply no one seems to care. Nobody tries, at least giving a try to succeed. How can one succeed without trying properly? I try.

That’s why I told doc. Pilgrim to go to work.

You see? I’m now spending more time writing about One Chance than actually playing it (the game is actually running in another window), and look how much this already made me think. This is something I love about this great experiences games can offer to us. I make the decisions here. This is decision-making. It’s me who chooses to go to work, stay home and etc. I really feel the experience of this game. This way, the designers had succeeded to transfer such an interesting emotion through this really simple game.

Back to work – really.

The bedroom. I don't use my white coat anymore.

I was even offered a seductive offer: to enjoy the last day on Earth with a women of my work. I reject in one shot. I really have to work.

Should I get crazy and skip work with this woman?

I get home at night. Oh. My. There is… blood! Coming from my bathroom! I am worried. No. That can’t be possible…!

Where is my wife?! Oh man, oh god, oh man...!

The music even stops. The game is mute now. I agree when someone says the sound design is part of the game design’s interface. It really is an effective way to connect the game to the player’s heart. Silence.

With such a game, I find strange how my daughter can’t suspect anything after seeing the bath-tub full of blood. C’ mon…! That’s shocking!

Daughter, close your eyes!

Later, on my last but one day alive, I have to choose: should I take my daughter to the park, or take her to my work, where I can experiment with a new cure?

What should I choose for the best of my daughter and me?

I feel regret. Molly sees corpses. Now, after working without success, this day is the last one I’m alive.

I’m convinced that Pilgrim is moving a bit slower. Is it a psychological effect I’m having because of the experience, or this is really happening? Anyway, it seems right for the context.

After working for the last time, Pilgrim sits in his office and closes his eyes.

I can’t to anything else but stand looking at this scene:

The last day at work and everything...?

Am I dead? Is it over? Where is the cure? I could swear I was going to find the cure! I hope this is a bug. The experience was fun.

One Chance: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/555181

Whiteboxing: it is the block-out of the level, constructing its basic geometric structure. It allows to quickly test in-game what the player sees, his path, the level flow and verify its dimensions, scale and overall proportions…

Throughout this video (which is the first part of a series of four videos), I give some tips and talk about how you can whitebox your level, after the Level Design has been done. To build this entire level I just used 2 types of 3D models: a floor, and a wall (both being planes).

I recorded the videos aiming to show to my team, so it is spoken in our native language.

Fear not! Although the videos are narrated in portuguese-BR, you can still learn the process from watching it!

Fell free to comment here ;]

After designing some levels – taking proper advantage of the game design assets – it was time to test how I would approach the assets placement, placing modular assets right next to each another through the helpful “snap to grid” (translating objects that’d “jump” to the 3D grid, being a safe way to place stuff).

Unity 3 came with lots of improvements, but we are still using the 2.6.1 version, which is great yet. One of those features was the vertex snapping, which greatly helps to build entire environments and levels in a smart and quick way.

I decided to record this video to help those that are wondering how they can build environments in a professional way, avoiding errors and leaks resulting from bad placements. Also, it’s one way to contribute with the great community that’ve already helped me a lot.

This video shows how to easily calibrate your unit settings in 3D Max to safely work with your assets in the game engine.
This way, if you build a 1 meter high wall in 3D max, that wall will be 1 meter high in Unity.

Enjoy!

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:

Just to say that I’m still alive!

I never though it was so hard to keep up a blog breathing (or an experimental Game Design notebook, in my case).

I’m a bit overcharged with some final works of my Game Design course, but things will soon be better, as the semester is ending (with lots of personal improvements).

I can tell I’m also working in an Indie Game, still prototyping it with the awesome Unity 3D game engine. I may share something here as soon as the prototype becomes playable (still really raw, but I’m doing alone to my Portfolio so, it’s ok).

Well, just to say THANKS to everyone visiting here, even if they are a few people

The following book was one I bought to read and do some studies in my last vacation.  Here we go:

The studies below came as an inspiration reading this book, “Game Development Essentials: Gameplay Mechanics”, by Troy Dunniway and Jeannie Novak. It’s a great book, and I recommend purchasing it.

I’m not free marketing the book, I just feel in need to share with anyone the good stuff I know, see, read… and whatever.

The book offers a lot of practical activities to enhance your skills in each chapter, and actually helps you create a game if you make use of the same idea in each exercise. So it is a good investment, if you handle with cunning.

Prince of Persia 3D (1999)

The first Prince of Persia game with 3D graphics.

In this game, as an improvement to the gameplay, Prince could swim, push and pull crates, and drink a special potion which made him temporarily invisible.

Taking advantage of the 3D environment, the use of a sword and a bow was an ability given to players, shooting in any direction to kill enemies that would be seen in a specific part of the level.

In previous games, with the 2D view players always saw everything there was on the screen which was not so good when designers wanted to create an expectation, a surprise behind the corner. Obviously the level’s screen separation was a tool in control by the designer to handle what he wanted the players to see, but anyway players still had a big field of view on that frame.

With the 3D environment, with the external focalization camera (AKA the third person view), players couldn’t see what the next closed-door and the corners waited. This “simple” change brought a higher tension to the series, as there could be a trap, a pit, enemies or any other type of obstacle in a place players could only see if they were looking in the right direction, in the right angle. The 3D made possible to game designers and level designers create the world with a higher freedom, sculpting more fun challenges, positioning game assets in a higher area of the levels which, as an advantage of the 3D environment, had a greater volume to the player explore.

As an example of a gameplay situation: by jumping and grabbing the edge of a higher platform, a different angle of the level was shown, revealing heavy creates which should be pushed down to hold the opening switch of a near gate. The game had a lot of this kind of puzzle, making usage of switches to open gates or affect the environment in different ways.

With the 3D game engine, unlike the previous games, the environment was modeled, textured and lighted, which helped a lot to improve the mood and the atmosphere of the playgrounds.

Talking more about the controls and puzzles, the player had to consider and fight against one more axis. The Z axis. What in the previous games was just a simple situation where players had to run and jump from a platform to another, in Prince of Persia 3D this well-known experience enhanced. When the Level Designer decides to put specific platforms moving in the X axis between the point A and B of the level, well… things change, for better! For the fun purpose! To get to the point B, it was necessary to move with more attention (concentration), positioning Prince on the right spot on the platform to jump right in time to reach the next moving platform (controls + timing), repeating this loop till the end of the sector. If he didn’t perform that action perfectly, things would get hot, really hot. There was lava below! Barbecue.

Ok so just with this single simple example of the overall game, we could detect how the integration of the third axis (3D) could turn a standard situation into a more fun and newer situation.

We have to pay attention to the details, because in conjunction with a good design, they are the little piece of advancement which turns a “game” into an eternal living experience in the minds of the players, and this is what you want to do.

There are more points to cover, of course, but I’d like to ask you:

What do you think about those games? Can you make more analogies to other “modern” games? Did I say something that should be fixed?

I appreciate your reading.

Each time you visit this place, you collect a Power Up, shown in the right column. As you are part of here, you can and should contribute with your thoughts and discuss.

Moving on with the analysis:

Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame (1994)

The 2D PoP games are a great lesson for both game and level design.

This one is not well-known today as the previous game, but it is safe to say that its movement system inspired and was the groundwork for games such as Assassin’s Creed and Mirror’s Edge.

Five years later, with a better technology, graphical improvements could be done and the environment and characters could be drawn in more details. As more details could be added to the scene, more immersive the experience became, as more different moods and level settings arose. Examples of this was the sunny outdoor, the beach and the interior of a cave.

Where it all begins.

The game started with Prince on the roofs in a well drawn and colored scene and he had to run left to jump and grab a window frame of a departing wood ship, while to this way guards appeared to fight and the Prince needed to do some rooftops jumps. There was a higher diversity of guards than in the former title. After a cut scene our hero appeared on a beautiful beach coast.

Open Sesame!

After this, tiles emerged from a quicksand, and the player had to cross this bridge which had the same symbol on a tile surface that a stone that was blocking the entrance of the cave had. After the player had reached the other side of the bridge, the lasting tile (with the symbol on it) would finally sink, removing the obstacle.

The Prince could crawl and tolerate higher drops.

There were more types of obstacles, as an aggressive flying hairy head, a sharp head-slicing blade, spikes and snakes. Players should crawl to avoid being killed by the blade and the revealed spikes on the walls, instead on the floor as seen in the first version of the series. This change on the gameplay made players act more carefully, because if you could walk and cross the spikes area on the first game (or simply jump over), as the spikes’ place changed, the average players couldn’t simply lean against walls to grab on its edge and move up; they had to jump from a higher platform to the one they usually would grab on the edge. This may seem a little bit unnecessary and confusing, but it used the player’s habit and demanded another movement flow, slightly increasing the difficulty.

Great environmental art.

Lava floors worked the same way as the old floor spikes, as an obstacle the player should avoid by not touching at all.

It's gettin' hot!

The health meter was represented as some red vials on the HUD. This version also had a life replenishing item (potion) as the Prince of Persia from 1988 had, increasing the health meter by one.

Level design was still fantastic. Utilizing efficiently the design assets like the jump distance and camera, there were levels that made good use of common (death) situations to the player, forcing players to risk their lives jumping to a direction they could bet would get them killed, but in reality, there would be an edge they could grab on the platform in the screen below (AKA “The leap of faith”).

Mirror's Edge anyone?

That is what all designers should do: be the master, be a true expert in all gameplay mechanics your design team have created, and explore it a LOT. Apply your systems in a compelling way that creates fun and hooks, WOW! moments in the mind of your player. They want to be amazed. But remember: design a rollercoaster rather than a highway – the player needs to breathe sometimes. If the game keeps and keeps pumping adrenaline into their minds, with no breaks, I can bet anything they won’t fell excited after a while.

Comments are always welcome.

Prince of Persia (1989)

The first game of the franchise was created to run on MS-DOS and Apple II.

Its animations were different from any game at that time, as Jordan Mechner, PoP creator, rotoscoped his brother running and translated those movements into the game. Its simple but great and immersive storyline captivated players easily.

The fact Prince fought using swords instead of projectile weapons helped to differentiate this game among the others of its time, even that there were some games that used this kind of mechanic.

Controls were really simple. Players were given five keys (or buttons) to play with. Those were the arrow keys, consisting of the side arrows making Prince run to a side; the down key, controlling the crouch as well as going down a ladder if the hero was standing on the edge; the up key, doing what most games do: jump, action that could be combined with the run move to jump horizontally, reaching longer distances. The up arrow also improved the combat experience, making possible to block and do counter attacks, if combined with the attack key; and finally, the ‘special’ key, called shift. This key was used to collect near items on the floor, attack with the sword, increase the chance to grab ledges and, if combined with the movement key, would make the Prince take a single step, avoiding being hit by floor spikes.

As a 2D platform game, utilizing very simple controls, the gameplay mechanic consisted in letting the player walk, run, jump, crouch, climb up and go down platforms, hang on edges and combat with his sword. Combining the walk and jump gameplay mechanic, emerged the long jump mechanic, very useful to avoid some traps; as crouching while running made possible to get a little time advantage as it allowed walking through gates while they weren’t entirely open. Walking a few steps was really necessary to be on the exactly distance to do jumps from distant platforms, and it certainly got inexperienced players killed early in the game.

Exploring the 2D view, as the 3D was not possible at that time, the Level Design explored a lot the usage of falling platforms and pitfalls the player should jump while moving to pass over.

The player should avoid special platforms that would fall as the player walked on, falling platforms which fell as the player triggered some areas, be aware with spikes (falling on it would kill instantly) and should fight human and skeleton guards, using his sword. A motivating sound was played as a victory reward after the fights.

Platforms falling due to triggered zone.

There were some life potions (emitting red sparks) around some level screens, which would refill one arrow of the classic “three red arrows” health meter as also increasing its size if the player drunk a super health potion (bigger flask, red sparks), which improved the size by one, as also replenishing life. There was also a certain potion that players should not drink at all. Those were the blue spark potions, visually the same as the average red potions with exception for the blue sparks, and if the player tasted this kind of potion, he would be punished with a decrease of one health arrow. There was a green potion, which when drunk would turn the screen upside down. This innovative health system improved the game flow, as players could continue moving around the level screens as their health was replenished, instead of doing some mistakes here and there, losing health until die and have to restart the level all over.

No alcohol included.

The game manual was an accessory to the gameplay. The second level made necessary the usage of the game manual, as the game asked for a certain letter, on a specific line in a specific page. The player then had to drink a potion with that special letter to open the door to the next level. The blue spark potion usage here decreased two life arrows.

The second level.

The camera was a fixed plane showing a set of the level, and as the player reached any extremity, the game would transport the player to the next window. This transition had a fixed order, and not a randomized order as seen in Pitfall!.

There were special floor tiles working as switches to open (and close) gates and floor spikes which were activated by proximity. Simply running to a direction could make Prince to run down, falling and being injured sometimes, depending on the speed. On further levels there were other types of obstacles, as the sharp teeth timed-closing door. To avoid the fall, the player had to be careful and stop on the edges to go down the platform.

Going down the platform.

This simple mechanic (forcing the player to stop) worked well, because as a sandglass, the game would be over after 60 minutes have passed. So because of this fact players usually wanted to go from a screen to another as fast as possible, and this mechanic was used to decrease the rush.

The simple close combat was just awesome. When you were close to any guard, the Prince would hold his sword and get ready to fight. At this point players could move left or right (with the sword always facing the enemy) and attack, being successfully to hit the enemy if he was close enough, and if he wasn’t smart enough to evade in time, using the Prince attack animation delay as an advantage to hit the player.  This got me killed several times, and I liked that!

If you were disarmed, the guard would 1-hit-kill you.

This game even had emergent elements. A player could combat soldiers with his sword. Attacking a guard, and moving to his direction would make the guard step backwards. Some levels presented those sharp teeth closing gates which when closed, would kill instantly the living being standing at that spot.

Players learned that they could combine these gameplay elements to force the guards into their own trap, resulting in an experience players felt really smart of themselves, taking advantage of the game system to an (apparently) unexpected result.

Please feel free to comment!

Thanks.