Homework 8: Mechanics

1. Is the space in your game discrete or continuous?

The space in our game is discrete. There will be three discrete buildings and a discreet outdoor area which will allow travel between the buildings. In addition, each building will have several discrete floors nested within it. The floors will be connected by an elevator or staircase that will serve as a warp point. There will also be discrete rooms the character can enter from the hallways through doors.

2. How many dimensions does your space have?

Our outdoor space will only have 2 dimensions. The buildings will have 3 dimensions, but the player will only experience 2 at a time. In other words, for each floor, there will be a 3D square of hallways, but the camera will be locked into 2 dimensions. When the character rounds a corner, the camera will change to the new side of the hallway. When the character enters a room, it will also be two dimensional.

3. What are the boundaries of your space?

The space is bounded by the movement of the character. The character can only ever move in two dimensions. In the case of the outdoor area, it will have an invisible boundary (wall) on each end. In the case of the buildings, the walls of the hallways and rooms will provide the boundaries.

4. How many verbs do your players (characters) have? What are they?

The player will be able to walk, jump, search, interact (with an object or person), and shoot. So there will be five verbs. "Interact" is a flexible verb with many possibilities for emergent gameplay.

5. How many objects can each verb act on? What are these objects?

a) The player will be able to walk everywhere  he/she goes.
b) The player will be able to jump at any time, but will use this ability to get past obstacles such as tripwires and gaps in the floor.
c) The player will probably be able to search piles of papers, desks, and filing cabinets. Some will be useful, others will return nothing of use. Of course, the player will also be searching various rooms: on this larger scale, the same principle applies, but the verb used would really be walking. The searching is not really its own action in this situation but rather something emergent.
d) The player will be able to interact with various types of objects and puzzles. Some examples would be an elevator, a keypad, a door, or an NPC. The amount of different objects will depend on how many puzzles we ultimately implement and how large our spaces ultimately are.
e) The player will only be able to shoot in one situation; shooting at the final boss during a confrontation.

6. How many ways can players achieve their goals?

There is really only one way for the player to achiever his/her goals. That is to search for the clues to the mystery of what happened and track down the final boss. However, the player may be able to collect clues out of order if we have time to implement it. Also, the player can make it to the final encounter either with or without having assembled a gun from pieces they've found. Having the gun will make the final encounter much easier to win.

7. How many subjects do the players control? What are these subjects?

The player will only ever control one subject, the main character, unless you count moving pieces of a puzzles as subjects of a sub-game.

8. How do side effects change constraints?

The only side effects I can think of are taking damage from traps or failing to find the pieces of the gun. These would each increase the intensity of the game and make it more difficult from that point on. Maybe if a puzzle is failed several times in a row, a hint will be provided.

9. What are the operative actions in your game?

The operative actions are exploring, searching, solving puzzles and surviving.
 
10. What are the resultant actions in your game?

The resultant actions are discovering and synthesizing information, obtaining helpful clues and items, progressing through the levels, and reaching the final encounter/solving the mystery/winning the game. 

11. What actions would you like your players to do that they cannot presently do? (based on your current knowledge of Blender)

I would like the character to be able to punch/kick but I don't know if we'll have time to animate this non-essential component (it would only be used in the final encounter). I would also like the characters to be able to speak but I think voice acting is outside of our game's scope.

12. What is the ultimate goal of your game?

The ultimate goal of the game is to guide the character to solving the mystery and confronting the villain.

13. Are there short and long term goals? What are they?

Short-term goals: searching for the notebook pages, finding the notebook pages, finding gun components, navigating traps, solving puzzles

Long-term goals: assembling the complete notebook to solve the mystery, assembling a complete gun to use against the villain, finding and confronting the villain

14. How do you plan to make the game goals known and understood by the player?

Our goals are somewhat intuitive and the game space isn't that large, but we will provide instructions both explicitly through non-diegetic text prompts and through the character's inner monologue.
 Ex: "Maybe I should search the other buildings and see what I can find."

15. What are the foundational rules of your game?

The foundational rules are as follows: Objects that need to be found are hidden in specific places. There are decoy places to increase the difficulty. Many objects that need to be found are protected by puzzles that must be solved and obstacles that can injure (take health) from the player. There will be vending machines to give the player health. The gun pieces are optional, whereas the journal pages must be found in order to continue. Some areas will not be accessible until the completion of other areas. The game will ultimately reveal the location of the final boss. The boss must be confronted and fought in order to complete the game. The player can win or lose, and the outcome will change the game's narrative ending.

16. How are these rules enforced?

The foundational rules will be enforced by limiting the actions a player can take in a given situation and by halting game an narrative progress until the most immediate logical goal is accomplished.

17. Does your game develop real skills? What are they?

Yes. Our game should develop self-reliance, critical thinking, thoroughness, efficiency, problem solving, and dexterity.

18. Does your game develop virtual skills? What are they?

The character will have virtual skills such as jumping and shooting, but they do not change over the course of the game, so I would say no, the game does not develop virtual skills.