Scout Mode

As I mentioned in an earlier post we created a new game mode called Scout where the player views through a camera and has a directional microphone. The first thing to notice the HUD is designed to match what the player would see while looking through the viewfinder on high end digital camera. The squares and circle have no bearing in our game, but are there to simply match what would be seen through a real camera's viewfinder.

Scout HUD

Sniper Map

One of the new features that came out of the redesign of the missions is that there are now more sniper nests than snipers. This means that the player will be able to reposition the snipers around the mission area. So we had to come up with a system to allow the player to control the position of the snipers and luckily one of the games we looked at during the research phase of the game had such a system. It had stuck with me as it seemed to be a simple solution that added a new menu page and keep the controls simple.

The Strangers

Repurpose Not Rebuild

As a follow up to my earlier post about scraping our designed levels and building a new one it is important to mention that for the mission redesign we first designed the mission situation and then placed that situation into an environment. This let us build a gameplay experience that would be fun and engaging for our player, which was why we scrapped the first missions in the first place. It also allowed us to make the environment be something that we could use as much of the art assets we had gotten for our art team as we could. As well as keeping old art assets and making the game more fun it was equally important that we redesign the narrative. Mainly because at the time we were unsure how many artists we still had on our art team and Dan and myself would not be able to make enough of the assets we needed. It was also important because all the art we had worked well and there was no need to scrap any of it.

Building a Terrain

One new problem with the redesign of the game's narrative path is that the park is not a flat plane like the market was. This meant we would have to generate a terrain in Maya, which is something difficult for myself to do as the level designer. After a week's worth of searching for plug-ins or external software that would let me design the terrain of the park I decided on the program that would best allow me to generate a terrain and export it into Maya: Nem's Mega 3D Terrain Generator.

After experimenting with all the other solutions I had found, I settled on Nem's Mega 3D Terrain Generator for several reasons. The most important was that it allowed the level designer to quickly generate a terrain using some built-in generation techniques and hand-sculpting tools. This program also allows us to export our terrain as an .OBJ files that we can then import into our Maya scenes, a feature I felt was important to have. The designer also has control of the size and number of triangles of the terrain, which is important for us to make sure we keep our poly count down. Lastly with Nem's Terrain Generator the designer can hand paint each face with a texture which is nicer than Maya's process for applying a face with a particular texture.

Nem's Mega 3D Terrain Generator

Weird circle issuses

During the process of designing the HUD for the game we discovered an interesting optical illusion. Our first version of the scope reticule was made of a cross with three circles. The circles were placed to help the player to be able to judge distance of objects that did not line up with the mil dot cross. When we placed this into the game and looked at the world we discovered that our circles did not look like circles. This is a similar illusion to Hering Illusion where lines appear to bend when lines cross them. The following image illustrates what we saw and if you look in the areas between the crosses you can see where the lines seem to bend.

First Version

After discovering this we had to sit down and redesign how we could give the player the same capability without having any optical illusions. In the process we also discovered that circles were displaying the wrong information with circles. This lead to the new design with corner lines showing the mil dots in 4 unit increments. This broke up with circles and let the player properly measure mil dots in the reigns away from the cross. The following image illustrates how we fixed the optical illusion with using square corner pieces.

Current Version

Player Affect: Character

As mentioned earlier we want the player’s actions to have a meaningful affect on the game. This past week we discussed how the vigilantes' personalities could be affected by the player’s actions.

During the first mission the dialogue between the vigilantes during the mission briefing and the mission itself will be impersonal, cold and professional. As the game progresses the dialogue will become more personal as the vigilantes reveal more of their personality, which will be based on the player's actions.

Our current idea for someone that only completes each mission through non-lethal means is that the vigilantes will become sad as they see no end in sight for their campaign. On the other hand someone that only uses lethal means will become angry, as they let their rage from what led them to become vigilantes consume themselves. For someone that uses a mixture of the two their personality will become psychotic or unbalanced as they are unable to reconcile their feelings about their actions one way or the other.

Mission 1 - Where's My Money?

The first mission of Remote Shepherd is set in the Market described in an earlier post. The player’s mission is weakening the gang by stopping their incoming cash flow. This mission is primarily designed to teach the player the basic controls of the game and teach them that there is no set solution to any mission.

The mission is broken into two parts the first being introduce the controls and examining the crowd for a target. The player will move to each of the three snipers and be explained how to mark people in the crowd as no threat, possible threat or threat. We will also explain how based on each person’s behaviors this conclusion can be made.

The second part is teaching them all the things the player will need in order to complete any mission the way they want to. Just like in the previous part each sniper will tell the player how something in the environment will react to a bullet. This includes shooting out windows, starting a panic and shooting out a light. With this knowledge the player will be able to make an educated guess how everything else in the world will react to their actions.

Where is the Agency

A common critique of Remote Shepherd is “Where’s the agency?” Our initial answer to this question was that the NPCs would react to shots fired at or near them. However this did not stop the question, so we had to sit down and think how the player’s actions would affect the game. Our current answer is that what the player does will lead to a certain outcome for a mission. Each outcome for a mission fits into one of three categories; lethal, non-lethal or arrest.

Lethal outcomes involve the death of an NPC where as non-lethal requires that no one has been killed. The next mission will depend on which of these two categories the outcome of the previous mission fit into. The arrest outcome happens when, through their actions, the police are able to locate each of the three snipers, ending the game. When the player is arrested they view a cutscene showing a conclusion to anything that has happened in the game.

We decided to place a heavy cost to all of the player’s actions, influenced by Heavy Rain. Everything the player does has some type of effect on how the game’s story unfolds. If a player just starts shooting randomly into the crowd they will be arrested quicker, leading to the end of the game. The player’s choice to use lethal or non-lethal action will also shape how the story unfolds by changing the missions.

Hint systems: part 1

Considering that the player is often required to look for a target from various viewpoints which they themselves would have a large amount of people to observe, it becomes a daunting task to figure out where to look. In the worst case, this could result in the player not ever looking at where the target is. To fix this problem, we can: 1. make sure the level is designed in such a way that this happens as little as possible, and 2. help point the player in the right direction i.e. a hint system.

Obviously good level design is key and constant play testing for any level will be important. However, some players may still have difficulty in figuring out where to look with so much going on. As such, this is where the hint system will come into play.

Ideally we want to have 3 parts to the hint system: letting the players know what vantage point to watch from, where to look at from that vantage point, and what sort of behavior/activity to look for that the target may be doing.

So far the latter 2 items haven't been figured out yet, but we now have a good idea for the first stage of the hint system. In order to draw the player to the right vantage point, we can have the character of the team associated with the vantage point draw the player's attention there with something like "I see the target." This way the player knows that they can go to that vantage point to find the target.

This approach fits in really well with the narrative of the game since the player essentially controls the team's "hive mind" or collective thought so to speak. As the character notifies the player of the target, it's up to the player (aka the collective team decision) to determine the situation and how to handle the target.

Main Menu Design: part 1

A game's main menu is the first aspect of a game that a player will see and as such it is important that the design of the menus is well thought out. Most importantly this means that the navigation can easily be mastered by the target audience. However just because this is the most important does not mean that all one has to do is navigation and just throw the rest together at the last minute. As these menus will be the first aspects of the game the player sees it is important that they reflect the game’s look and feel. This way the player never loses their immersion in the game whenever they are not playing the game. Heavy Rain’s main menu is a great example of how the menu system can reflect the game’s look and feel. The scene matches the games dark and gritty tone as well as the photorealistic look. Just from this one scene the player can get a feeling of what type of game they are about to play and what they have been playing. With all of this in mind I set up to design the menu system for Remote Shepherd.

Heavy Rain's Main Menu

I decided to start the design with the background for the menus. I first looked at Heavy Rain because our game has the same dark gritty tones and is set in a rundown city. I liked the idea of using a live scene set in the game but I decided this did not match the comic book narrative style of the game.

Batman: Arkham Asylum's Main Menu

Next I took a look at Batman: Arkham Asylum because it both matched the tone of our game and is based on a comic book. I liked the use of batman in iconic poses set on a rooftop but this conflicted with our plan for the player.

After that I looked at Halo Reach because it used an animated comic book art style for its backgrounds. This fit perfectly with where we were heading for our cut scenes and I really liked the effect. Another thing I noticed and liked about these backgrounds is that they changed from menu to menu. This is something that we could use to reflect the change of perspective that happens in our game.