Desma 157a: Game Design

6.

2007-03-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

Final project. Like many things that we work on together Fred and I find a different outcome then our first intention. We enjoy the aspect of play testing a lot and decide to come to a conclusion after a lot of wandering. The way the game ends up working is that you control sun exposure by clicking and propogate growth. There are minuses that fall from the sky that destroy your tree. The tree continally grows until it out grows its area (world). At this point you can upload it to the website. Pictures below:

Windows Version of game
Mac Version of game

just download .exe or .app for windows or mac whatever OS you use.

5.

2007-03-13T03:34:00.000-07:00

The trump card for us is also the php/xml enabled database from where one can upload the tree that they have made. This makes an all right game become something more worth playing and gives the game a sense of community. We call it the petrified garden where trees once grown come to stay. Ideally we would like to have it a system of tessellated images where the trees that play make in the tree game are placed and when rolled over the user's name and the date they uploaded them will be seen. A mock up of that can be seen here:

Mock up

Also, here's the image that will be used as the tessellation:

4.

2007-03-13T03:20:00.000-07:00

Node based systems have changed the way we've thought about our game. In makes it much more dynamic and gives the ability to take away as well as add in a much more streamlined manner. The L-Systems didn't have the modulation that we needed to create interesting interactions. Below are the links that Prof. Kratky sent us for inspiration as well as the actual node based system we based our project on as well as images and links to the preliminary programming.
The most interesting part about the node system that we encountered was the ability to be able to save previous iterations of the branch. Because everything is created recursively it's quite easy to create many shapes. It is however very difficult to call them back, delete, modify them in the L-System format. The node system however through classes makes it quite easy to call previous or parent limbs that we want to work with. Below is our research and work.

x frog
Onyx Tree

Inspiration
Shiffman

Images

3.

2007-03-13T02:50:00.000-07:00

L-Systems were the main focus of our research for a good two weeks where we were trying to find good algorithms for making realtime tree growth simulations. From this basis we created a 3D billboard of a rotating tree on a sphere. This can be seen below. Our efforts were enthralled with this sort of outcome but our game was unfortunately lacking. While we had made progress the game itself hadn't progressed in ways that could be playable to a passerby, which is obviously the intention of the course.
Our Professor, Andreas Kratky, kindly directed us in the manner in which we should conduct our project through his various lectures on Game Design, Flow, and Play Testing. As well as interesting notes on the history of Game Design and Games/Fun in general.
On the critique of our renders the idea of how one would actually interact with the tree would occur. This was an interesting conversation that ended up negating the cooperative aspect of play and opted to go for a single user to A.I. output. The game would be how long can your tree grow for? There would be various inhibitors and accelerators to aid and bear obstacle in your journey. The critique was great and many great points were brought up including the idea of narrative and the reason to actually want to play the game.
Inevitably the idea of shaping the tree was the greatest narrative. The reason for this was because it caused users to actually care about what they were making. These were interesting variations that one could make their own. It was back to the drawing boards to work this out...

2

2007-03-13T02:43:00.000-07:00

Initial board tests began today. Ours is built on a flash website using basic terms of hexagonal shapes to create a board game. The way Fred and I tested these settings were through cutting out pieces and then adding in coin objects that would be positive growth or negative growth. You could then flip them onto the board to see where they landed as you slowly placed your branch/root pieces on the board. The problem with this set up was that there was no pending reason to actually play the game. It was so predetermined that there was no real drive to play aside from making interesting tessellations.

1.

2007-03-13T02:14:00.000-07:00

The initial concept of the game was first seen as a Katamari-esque game where you grew based on collecting sun light. It was to be a game focused on a cooperative aspect where someone controlled the roots of the tree and another person controlled the trunk and branches of the tree. The game could be played in various forms where root user could collect minerals and branch user could collect sunlight. Both would direct the manner in which the tree could propogate and both had to balance each others moves. Ideally the game would be built for multi-platform use, but for all purposes of the class the project would be built using either Processing or Flash. Following are a few conceptual images:

The idea was received by the class in positive stature that could easily be conceived in general terms through its simplicity. Obviously coding and rendering and actually getting a type of game that is seemingly simply, however, is infinitely complex and can be approach it a multitude of different angles.