Presenting our game!

Today we had to present and lay out our games ready for the people in the class below to play. To begin with we ha no one come over to play as they all went to the groups nearest to them. When we did actually get someone to play we soon found a few problems with our game, which we could probably have resolved had we done more alpha testing. We found that one of the special moves for a character in our game was over powered, it was called assassinate and was pretty much a 1 hit kill move. The move also had a downside because of the fact that it could take 90% of the users health should they not win on the dice roll. The chances of them losing we're not high enough and this move was simply too powerful for our game, we would need to lower the damage of it by a considerable amount.

We found quite a lot of positives with our game while testing too. We found that the movement system worked well and that the game was well balanced, players would reach the buff zone in the centre of our map at the same time and it was purely a tactical game from then on.

We could have improved our game by giving the players a better introduction to our game. We found that those who aren't familiar with these types of games were struggling to understand it and we should have possibly thought about providing a tutorial guide for them. Our game had a rather steep learning curve what with the rules on the movement, damage and special bonuses such as the buff zone it all got very complicated too quickly.
Another thing that needs to be resolved is the way we let the players choose the cards they're going to use in the game. People were sitting an staring at our cards wondering what to choose, they weren't clearly marked as either utility or combat, which is what they were supposed to do but it worked out quite well in the end as it made the gameplay more diverse.

Overall I enjoyed presenting our game, it was a good experience overall as iti is the first time that I have done something like this, seeing people play a game that we have created as a group an it actually work with them enjoying it was great.

We took a lot more positives than we did negatives from our feedback on the game today, the criticism we did receive was constructive and something that we can easily fix so it was very useful getting those feedback sheets back to take in what we had been told.

This is our game being play tested, it went well as the time we had spent trying to balance out the combat in the game paid off apart from Musa's suspiciously powerful long range super move. 

The game rules, we had 4 sets of these rules ready for the players to pick up as soon as they sat down.

And these were some of the game cards that Musa created them and I drew the pictures on each one each different as they were all different moves.

Changes to our board game

We decided to change our board game shape, instead of using a square we opted to cut the corners of the grid out instead of having the full square. We did this because we felt we had the right sized grid but the corners just made it unnecessarily large. By cutting out the corners we put the players into a more narrow corridor, encouraging the players to be more active and fight against one another.

Our map also has special power ups that benefit the players of they manage to get them, they are also choke points because the players have to fight each other to control it, as you can get there in equal turns whichever side that you spawn on.

The special effect is captured by a single player controlling the middle zone to himself without any opponents inside otherwise it is contested and neither will capture it. The bonus of the hill is that you get an adde half heart damage for 2 rounds and took 5 rounds to become active again.

We have barely any random elements in our game as we wanted it to be more tactical and competitive, rather than an off chance of luck for a player with very little skill. The only random elements that we have are that the characters have special attacks which have an added effect bonus when they hit. The player has to roll a dice to find out whether they're going to hit it or not. The added bonuses aren't damage they are other effects such as stun which temporarily disables movement for the other teams characters.

We thought long and hard about the characters special attacks and did so because we wanted to ensure that they would be suitable and not over powered. We did this by using the two classes that we have on each time and made the special attacks benefit one another whilst being a problem still for the other team. This will encourage teamwork in our game which should help make it more entertaining for the player.

The first game that we played on our map was quite boring and too level, we weren't able to use our special attacks because we didn't have a dice to use. We decided that we're going to include modifiers to special attacks to give it more of a random element to it rather than just the same game of chess being played over and over again.The modifiers should make a considerable difference in the games that will be played, though they wont be overly powerful and create problems for the players as the extra bonus they add wont be huge, it will just change the game in terms of how the player reacts to the modifiers being used.

Creating with "the green stuff"

Today we were told to create some simple models with drew, firstly to get used to what we were using we created two small rucksacks and tried to do simple detail in the form of making buckles and stitching then applying them to the bag.

After this we were given the task of creating heads for our characters, I found the head making quite easily and luckily got the right proportions when I started so it all came together quickly. I found that the green stuff dries and becomes very sticky quickly and kept forgetting to wet the tools that I was using so it was a struggle.

We played around with the green stuff in order to get us used to it when we start modelling next week so we won't be complete beginners to it.

Discussing our game mechanics

Today we've discussed our game mechanics and have made some good progress on our game. We've decided that all characters will have the same movement in the game with there being no random chance of either team winning by luck because they get to move more. The player of the game will encounter randomness when they find themselves attacking others, the player will get a random chance of a critical hit.

We have also discussed the size of our board game, we plan for it to be 20x20. We wanted it this size because we wanted the game to be quite long where good moves and tactics come in to play. On our board there will be buffer zones, there is one main zone in the middle which gives out the best advantage to the player who captures it, though it will take one round for them to do so. There are also two buffer zones on either side of the map so that the players on either team can choose how they want to play tactically.
    Our map will be specifically for 2v2, we chose the size of the map and the design of it solely on how many people were going to be playing it.

We have decided that each of our characters, will have their own skill set in the game, they will each be unique and have their own abilities to use which should make for an interesting game because of the combat triangle that we are planning to create.

First project of the second year!

This year our first project is to create a character in a post apocalyptic world, the character will have to be suited to the world that they're from and they will feature in a board game that we're creating.

My character is from a world where global warming has taken most of the grass land and turned it into desert. People are now scavengers as most of the worlds population starved to death. With constant high temperatures those who survived have to adapt to the new climate that they live in. My character wears clothes similar to that of a bandit. His attire is mainly robes with a face mask and protection for his face from the sun and sand. The robes he is wearing are all made from light materials so that he doesn't get heatstroke during the day.

Randomisers

We were asked to think about randomisers for our board game, we used a 6 sided dice to conduct our experiment of testing how random the results could be, whether they be even or biased.

Our results:

1-19%
2-18%
3-15%
4-18%
5-16%
6-14%

We can see from this our results varied quite a lot showing that they were random, though still rather closely related. We needed to create a mechanic for the characters so that the game could have a system to play with. I decided that if we used two dice, we could give the player a bonus when they get the same number on both dice giving them an added hit bonus when their character is attacking and the same for a character that is defending.

Another idea that we had was a hit and miss system, there are going to be different classes in the game and we had to think about how they would fare up against one another. We decided to create a hit and miss system for the characters. The highest number you could get out of these two dice were obviously 12, so we decided that if it was 6 or below then it was a hit, and if it was above then the character scored a miss. These chances though will vary upon the enemy they are fighting because of the different bonuses they will each have. We will need to adapt our system to match character receiving better equipment or scenarios in which they have the upper hand.

We have thought far ahead about our game and what mechanics we will need to involve and it is going to include many confusing randomisers.