Finale: '2036' at the MOJO event

The MOJO event is finally past us. It was an incredible experience to try out my colleagues' games and to see my colleagues playing "2036".

A lot went wrong in the MOJO event: our final narrative trailer and gameplay trailer were switched with old versions at the event and the people watching the livestream didn't get to see the game as we wished (the trailers were really cool). But, nonetheless, it was important to hear the feedback.

In all honesty, I haven't looked at the logs we collected from the event, all I know is what the MDJ's students said about our game and the reaction was positive (we still didn't get the mouse sensitivity right though). People seemed to really like our setting and the look of the game. 

Now that we'll be writing the final report, we'll be looking at dozens of heatmaps and forms. I'm actually excited about writing the 'Postmortem' report because, looking back, there's a lot of things we would've done differently  (mostly, balance our ambition).

It was a pleasure writing this blog every friday.

I'll see you soon.

Week #11: final details

As we get to the finish line, it's time to finalize the dialogue. I wrote two dialogue trees: one for the General and other for the IT Guy. The first one needs a more defensive type of approach since the General is looking for suspicious behavior through all of the conversation and a wrong move gets you caught. The second one, it's a lot more exploratory: it's about engaging and guiding conversations for topics that are useful to the player. 

I found difficult to write dialogues since it's not really my strong suit but the final dialogue trees get the job done. 

Now... for the MOJO!

Week #10: taking some time off

As the semestre comes to an end, I've taken the last week to focus on other projects and other responsibilities. Living in 2020 is harder than living inside '2036'.

Tomorrow, I'll create the overview of the narrative screen necessary to expose the history. I've talked about it with one of our artist and everything is already in motion.

May we meet next week, the last week of development before the MOJO event.

Week #9: the playtesting plan

As we approach the MOJO day, the time to think about our play test plan has come. After discussing what we needed to know about the player's experience with the game, we have concluded that some particular questions need answering:

LEVEL 1

• Does the player fear all enemies equally? Are the enemies' speed, detection range and patrolling style balanced?

As we focused on the walking guard enemy more, the question about how danger the drones and cameras are perceived lingers. 

How: by controlling the time the player takes on each enemies' section and how much the player uses the crouching and cover mechanic.

• Does it take time for the player to understand how to get through enemies

We need to inspect if the level is designed (or not) in a way that leads the player to plan a strategy rather than just throwing themselves into whichever path they instinctively choose. 

How: by controlling how long the player stays in the initial (safe) section before engaging with the level.  

• Are both paths presented on level 1 equally enticing? 

The first level is divided in two possible paths: one with walking guards and other with CCTVs. We need to see if the players find both equally challenging at first glance.

How: by observing which path each player chooses.

• How do experienced players approach the cover mechanic?

By previous testing with our focus group, we came to the conclusion that experienced players didn't feel the need to use the cover mechanic. With a revised model for that mechanic, we need to see how many players use it during this level. 

How: by marking where and how long the players stay in cover.

• Do players feel the need to backtrack? 

We find important in a stealth game to give to the player's strategy validity at all times. The player shouldn't feel like they chose a "wrong option" and should always feel they can progress on the path they are in. 

How: by making a map of player's movement. 

LEVEL 2

• Does the path chosen on level 1 affect the success on level 2?

As stated in the progression document, the choice of path taken on level 1 should affect how prepared the player is on level 2. We want to see if the players that chose the guard enemy have a higher success rate on level 2.

How: by seeing if the players that chose the CCTV path take longer to figure out how the guards move on the level.

• Does the player use objects as distractions on first try?

We want to see if players understand that to get through the level they will have to use distractions to get guards off a fixed location/path. 

How: by controlling how many players die in the level before they interact with objects.

• How long does the player stay put?

Level 2 needs more observation. Without seeing where the guards are in the room, the player won't be able to understand how to get to the other side. We need to check if players go about the level that way.

How: by controlling how many players die in the level before they interact with objects.

• Does the player use hide mechanic? 

After implementing the "hide inside object" mechanic, we had doubts about if the players would integrate it on their strategy.

How: by checking how many players chose to hide inside the closet on their way to the objective point.

CONTEXT DATA

Data about which platform the player uses (PC vs MAC), the screen size of their device and what input device they choose to play the game with (keyboard and mouse vs controller) could inform choices of implementation going forward. 

Tomorrow I'll be writing the game experience and game engagement questionnaires.

On the playtest experience, we plan to have  a"Think Aloud" concurrent feedback (when possible) to see how players react to the game as they're playing it.

As a side-note, a great video about the importance of playtesting and the right way to approach this decisive phase of the project:

Week #8: time for progression!

In '2036' the player is going through 3 levels of out 5 developed levels:

Level 1

Setting: in front of the Forte do Bom Sucesso, dozens of guards, CCTV and drones patrol around the building, making sure no intruder can get in the party.Since Forte do Bom Sucesso became a military base again, the surrounding of the building has been filled with military vehicles and crates.

Enemies: guards, drones, CCTV.

Objective: get through the patrolled-filled area without being detected to get to a back door or the further side of the Forte do Bom Sucesso.

Mechanics: walk, crouch, run, hide in cover.

Level failed: character 1 is detected by enemy and is arrested.

Level success: character 1 gets to the door, character 2 opens the door from the inside.

Level 2

Setting: character 2 sends character 1 to a locker room where character 2 has hidden some disguises. To get to the locker room, character 1 has to get through a barracks with some military men on fixed position inside.

Enemies: guards

Mechanics: walk, crouch, interact with object.

Objective: interacting with objects to distract the fixed guards and clear the path to the locker room.

Level failed: character 1 is detected by enemy and is arrested.

Level success: character 1 gets to the locker room and finds the locker of character 2. Inside there’s 3 outfits: guard, catering staff and formal sergeant outfit.

Level 2 (alternative)

Setting: character 1 was arrested with the usb drive needed to complete the mission. Character 2, an infiltered guard, now needs to complete the mission alone, starting by accessing the cells and taking the usb pen without raising suspicions.

Mechanics: walk, crouch, interact with object

Objective: interacting with objects to distract the fixed guards and clear the path to the locked cabinet where the usb drive is.

Level failed: character 2 is detected by enemy and is arrested (game over state)

Level success: character 2 gets the usb drive and now walks to the party where he’ll need to find a way to access the server room.

Final level

Setting: character 1 has infiltrated the party with a disguise and needs to access the server room. Beforehand, the team knew there were two key cards that could access the server room: one was with a designated IT guard that needed to give manual input as a safety measure and the second one was a backup in the Marechal’s office.

Enemies: guards

Mechanics: dialogue

Objective: through dialogue, find a way to get one key card, access the server room and insert the usb drive to get the border’s defence down. Character 2 will assist by providing information he gathers.

Level failed: character 1 raised suspicion with intrusive dialogue options, the Marechal triggered code red, locking down the server room (game over state).

Level success: character 1 gets a key card, gets to the server room with character 2’s help and shuts down the servers.

Final level (alternative)

Setting: character 1 has been arrested and character 2 needs to access the server room. Beforehand, the team knew there were two key cards that could access the server room: one was with a designated IT guard that needed to give manual input as a safety measure and the second one was a backup in the Marechal’s office.

Enemies: guards

Mechanics: dialogue

Objective:  through dialogue, find a way to get one key card, access the server room and insert the usb drive to get the border’s defence down.

Level failed: character 2 raised suspicion with intrusive dialogue options, the Marechal triggered code red, locking down the server room.

Level success: character 2 gets a key card, gets to the server room and shuts down the servers.

____________________________________________________________

The focus has been writing the narrative beats: the initial narrative screen with exposition of the setting the player is put on and the final narrative screen depending on the mission success, short biography for the main characters (two rebels and the president) and dialogue for the final mission. Making environmental storytelling elements such as posters and letters is the step after. 

Week #7: after the second prototype

As the third development cycle begins, we start making decisions beyond gameplay implementations: we've made a draft for the logo, discussed fonts and art styles.

Next week I'm going to invest my time in fixing the dialogue visual, changing the material's renderer and understand lighting. As the second level is going to be indoors, lighting becomes a bigger part of gameplay cues.

We're still waiting on the 3D models from our art department but as soon as we have them, we'll start building a finalized gameplay path. 

Week #6: cameras, cameras, cameras

After experimentating with a top-down camera without controls, a top-down camera controlled by mouse and a third-person camera with orbit controls, we found that the majority of users don't like top-down cameras in stealth games, as they take the tension of not knowing all your surrounding.

The third-person camera was the clear winner. 

I started to implement a spherical rig for the camera, centered on the character's chest. The position on the rig of spherical camera can be controlled by the relative position of the mouse. The absolute position is connected to the player position.

I've created a different camera for dialogue scenes and for the crouching state. We found that different users like different level of sensitivity on mouse control, so it's important to implement the option of mouse sensitivity. 

In other news, this week we've been talking about the specific structure of the game, in order to make the gameplay loop flowcharts closer to the idea at this point in development. A new updated flowchart:

In the weekend I'll finish the gameplay loop for the final level which will be the social engineering level.

Week #5: the workshop says "no HUD"!

The Workshop

The workshop with the focus group was a good reminder that the stealth genre is a genre that has some core elements that have not changed since the 1998's Thief. Some mechanics surfaced from the brainstorm phase but a main issue persisted: how to we use the two elements of the 2036 game (traditional stealth and dialogue stealth) without giving an incoherent experience to the players? 

The group has taken some good ideas from the workshop and is now brainstorming some way to make 2036 a more cohesive gameplay experience. By the time we deliver the workshop report, I hope we will have some new strategies to add to our game design model.

The Dialogue

Since I'm the responsible for the dialogue part, I'll be working on that next week. Once we decided that we wanted to use a keyboard and mouse, the dialogue interface design options have broaden. Collaborating with the artists, I plan to have a design for the dialogue interface sketched out by the end of next week. 

Week #4: alternative low-fidelity prototype

With the COVID-19 outbreak, the user testing of the low-fidelity prototype had to be unconvencional but the show must go on! I developed a parallel prototype.  

I made a chess-like prototype on powerpoint in order to be able to have players interacting via livestream. You can find two user testing rounds in the follow video:

THE ANSWERS

How does the initial position impact the game’s pace? Should the player be able to stand still in a safe spot? 

• 1st round - the player had safe tiles where no enemy could reach and started on one of those
• 2nd round - the player started on a tile on a guard’s path and had no safe tiles

One of the players said that on stealth games, he likes to stand still on the initial position until he understands the enemy’s routine. That player, on the 1st round, took longer on each movement, standing still on spots he knew he was safe. On the second round, his strategy was no longer about careful planning, but about risky movement. He was caught by enemies a lot more. 

Conclusion: we want ‘2036’ to give opportunity to both playstyles to succeed so it’s important to have safe spots and the initial position should allow the player to observe the scene before engaging. 

How does the number of enemies impact the player’s strategy? What does each type of enemy add to the game?

• Level 1 – three guards 
• Level 2 – one guard, two drones
• Level 3 – two guards, two cameras, one drone

Players had no problem getting through the three guards, as they found their paths more predictable and avoidable.  When adding two drones, the difficulty increased significantly, since the drone detects on every direction. The players took longer to get through the level and were caught more often. The third level turn out to be of extreme difficulty, as none of the players were able to get to the objective without being caught at least once. All players avoided the area patrolled by the two guards, had difficulty not being caught by them (that were very close to each other) and struggle to find an opening between the two cameras. 

Conclusion: 

• the more human guards a level has, the more cautious the players are, since their pacing is quicker than the drone's and not static like the cameras.
• the drone detection area is very punishing when close to other enemies. It would be important to either change the type of detection or to isolate the drones.
• the cameras are a good tool to make the strategy more urgent, as the timing is shorter. 

What does the cover mechanic add to the game?

At the end, it was introduced a variation of Level 3, where there were two boxes serving as cover.

All the players used the cover system and it significantly change the playstyle of the more fast-paced oriented players, as they took longer, hiding behind the covers, to decide their movements. The slow-paced strategy-oriented players made it to the objective quicker. 

Conclusion: 

1. The cover mechanic made all players take a more calculative rather than impulsive approach (even though they could make it to the objective with the impulsive approach). Since we want to give the player the freedom to choose how to get through the level, we should separate the players’ path with covers from the path where the player could rush through.
2. Since the boxes don’t serve as cover for the drones (and they have more erratic routines), the players were more focus on that type of enemy. A good idea would be to give the impulsive players a path filled with drones.

THE PROTOTYPE GAME RULES

LEVELS

Week #3: the dialogue mechanic (update)

Finally, I finished the dialogue mechanic. Now, our colaborator can use Yarn to write our dialogue tree and our mechanic will do the rest. 

The biggest challenge is, since our team decided we would not use mouse as an input control, making the selection of dialogue not break immersion. The 'w', 'a', 's', 'd' keys are used for movement and the 'up' and 'down' keys are used for dialogue selection. 

From feedback of people I've shown this mechanic, in a gameplay perspective, it fulfils its purpose but it's not very nice to look at. Besides, since the main character is always at the center of the screen, I will need to find a way to avoid puting the dialogue monopolizing half of the screen.

For the low-fidelifty prototype, we find ourselves limited by not having people around to do experimentations. So, during the weekend, I'm going to do some gameplay storyboards to add to the already finished paper prototype test. 

Usually, storyboards are used to prototype the visual concept but they can also be used to describe interaction in gameplay. From the paper prototype, some gameplay loops are not clear so my objective is to explore every gameplay loop and to make the most of a situation where I don't have access to players,

Week #2: the dialogue mechanic

After much consideration I decided that I didn't want to use a library for the dialogue mechanic since most libraries either have a lack of intuitive writing interface or has deprecated methods. 

Since one of our collaborators, someone who isn't familiar with programming, is going to write most of the dialogue, it's fundamental that they don't have to open code to give input. 

The motivation at this moment is to use Yarn's dialogue tree composer (used for Night in The Woods) and export as a JSON file and parse it to a dialogue tree class in which each dialogue line will correspond to a node of a directed graph.

We're still not set on the dialogue display since it will depend on our collaborator responsible for the art style. 

Some of our options

The Walking Dead (Telltale)

The Night in The Woods (Infinite Fall)

Oxenfree (Night School Studio)

Three Fourths Home (Bracket Games)

I'll update you next week about how the dialogue tree was finalized.

Week #1: the setting

The dev team knew from the start that the physical setting in which our game would play out was one of the most important parts, since it's expected from the player to feel familiarity about know landscapes.

In a first sketch, we planned to use Lisbon's downtown for its intricate street network and tourist-trapping ambience. Terreiro do Paço would play a big role on the level design. 

Downtown Lisbon (2017)

Soon we realized that discrepancy between the very tight streets leading to Terreiro do Paço and the very openess of Terreiro do Paço itself would create difficulties on keeping consistency on the level design. Since main event would be a party in a military area, that idea was scrapped.

Belém came as an obvious second option since it has the familiarity of downtown Lisbon but adds  military importance in the country history. The Bom Sucesso fort was deemed an ideal option not only for being a landmark for the portuguese army but it's arquitecture is very fitting for a linear physical path. 

Sketch of the game path.

Introducing... Andreia Valente!

I started to play games back when my parent bought our first computer in 1999. The first game I remember playing was Richard Carr's Treasure Island. During my early years up until highschool, I played dozens of games on all playstation editions, having special affinity to action-adventure games like Tomb Raider and the Uncharted franchise.

Richard Carr's Treasure Island (1997).

It wasn't until I played The Walking Dead (the first season) by Telltale (rest in peace) did I start to consume videogames the way I consume movies and tv shows: choosing not to spend my time just to be entertained but to spend it on narrative-based games with meaningful stories. Since then, games like Heavy Rain, LA Noire, The Last of Us, Mass Effect, Life is Strange, Night in the Woods, Last Day of June, Her Story, Emily is Away and Yakuza have created in me a newfound appreciation for the videogame art form as I find it now to be the superior storytelling tool.

The Walking Dead: the Tellale series (2012)

I'm not on the videogame specialization on my course but with the 2036 game I want to challenge myself to use my programming experience to create a unique setting and story.