Stuff I Did at Uni: Digital Media Project

I’ve been meaning to archive a lot of my university stuff for a long time. While horrendously outdated, it certainly provides a lot of insight into how my brain handles education and, who knows, maybe someone can benefit from my university coursework?

The digital media project was the final year “big project” for my Web Design course. It was supposed to be the project where you showcased everything you had learned from the course, one of the few modules where you were on your own¹  in showcasing your talents. This had some problems for me:

1. I couldn’t code for shit². I could write about it until the cows came home but, somehow, I had managed to survive two and a half years on a web design course without producing any code of note beyond practical exercises.
2. I didn’t know what I wanted to work on and didn’t have any great ideas for web-based applications.
3. My time management was akin to that of Red Dwarf’s Arnold Rimmer; I was great at mapping out what time I had left to work on stuff but absolutely terrible at actually using it.

Despite all this, I have to give credit to myself for not panicking and handling the situation rather well. Here are the steps I took:

• I intentionally aimed low with what my output would be. Rather than promise the world and not deliver it, I instead opted to build a rather rudimentary text-based adventure game. This end goal, to put it bluntly, is a piece of piss to deliver in PHP even if you only have a really basic understanding of the scripting language. The fact that it would be text-based also meant it didn’t have to look nice.
• I realised that most of the marks would come from the theory behind the deliverable rather than from the execution of the final product, so I decided in advance that I’d focus on the accompanying documentation rather than the deliverable. This played up my strengths of being able to blag at length in paperwork; not to toot my own horn but I have a talent for writing vast quantities of stuff and make it sound like it has some purpose without actually saying anything³. I can make references to valid, authoritative sources until the cows come home. As a result of this early decision, I can disclose that most of the documentation for the project was written almost an entire month before the deadline, while the main deliverable only had the barest of content to it.
• While writing the documentation I ensured not to make any specific references to part of the final deliverable. I also guestimated how much I would actually be able to code and wrote to reflect that, which was the only risky part; if I had guessed wrong then my documentation would look out of line with the deliverable and it would be obvious that something was fishy.
• Choosing a text-based game as the deliverable had the added bonus that I didn’t really need to talk about coding the damn thing at all! I could actually get away with looking at puzzles and ruminating how to execute them and have it still be relevant. I was actually surprised that none of the lecturers tried to reign in the game theory I was producing, especially since game design wasn’t part of the course.

I feel slightly cheap confessing all this but there you have it. Sometimes you have to be underhanded to get ahead in life.

As for the final deliverable, while my memory is a little foggy the version I have in my head is that I started reading a PHP textbook on the week it was due and sat down to code the main bulk of the thing at 3PM the day before the deadline. I think I went to bed sometime between 3 and 6 AM the following day and had to be up and gone by seven to get to uni to prep handing everything in. I do remember uploading all the game files to my uni webspace and hoping to hell that the examiners would be able to access it. It was only while playing the game much later I discovered a bug in one of the puzzles that contradicted the intended clues so I have no idea if any of the examiners managed to finish or even play the damn thing.

The final deliverable was a game called Labb Rat, and you can play it on my website right now.

If you’re at all interested in some of the theory behind the game, then read on. The project was split into three phases and the first of these required regular provable updates of research and development going into the project. In another module I had been tasked with setting up a free blogspot account, so I cannibalised the thing for the Digital Media Project and posted regular updates to it as required. Since I am currently in the process of closing down and archiving old web accounts, I repost below my blogs from the project.

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Digital Media Project 0 – Preamble

Published 21/10/2009 14:55

I intend to use this (recycled) blog as a means of tracking the progress of my Digital Media Project at UWE. I say that this blog is recycled because it was once a happy contented blog that was once concerned solely with Introduction to the Web; it had about nine happy posts from more innocent times. Waste not want not, I’ve deleted all that stuff, poked the blog reluctantly back into life with my elbows and now we’re all set for hardcore game-development action (children need not apply)!

My project, in summary, is to research and investigate “old school” text-based adventure games, and then make one.

Time is short right now and I intend to do a full proper post on Friday and/or over the weekend, concerning my progress. To quote judiciously from my Project Proposal document:

“23rd October – Establish what makes a good game narrative, what will draw returning players to what might be considered an archaic game format, begin plotting out narrative ideas for my game.”

So I’ve basically set myself the task of defining what games developers still don’t know and have been striving to distil for the last ten or fifteen years. The only knowledge I have of games is as a gamer, and I’ve never touched any sort of game development tools before*. I’m feeling confident…I mean, with odds like those I’ve got nothing to lose!

As an introduction to all this, here is Guardian columnist, Mac hater⁴ and former PC Zone writer Charlie Brooker explaining exactly what adventure games are and how they have evolved from ye olde times (the 80’s). These are clips from his spin-off show Gameswipe, where instead of ridiculing television Charlie set out to present games from the perspective as a gamer i.e. that games are not murder simulators created fro the purpose of turning children into soulless killing machines hell-bent on not doing their homework.

This first video has been magically embedded in a way to skip straight to the relevant part, and I don’t mind mentioning that this took half an hour to work out so please do remember that I did this for your convenience (whoever “you” are. A tutor, presumably. Or an internet-dwelling ghost in the machine who feeds on obscure, uninteresting blogs. Either way, hello!).

The video touches on game narrative (20:02 – 23:55) from the perspective of a writer – in this case from the chap who gave us Father Ted and The IT Crowd. Most of his points don’t really apply to my project, given that he’s talking about the modern gaming scene and not old-style choose-your-own-adventure games. However, this does raise the interesting point that I might want to avoid quoting popular culture and the like in my game. Perhaps a deep literature narrative is my USP for this outdated gaming format.

Anyway, this is hopefully the start of a good project, or at least a nice segue into a downwards spiral of disaster (the Titanic looked great up until it hit that iceberg, after all). If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a Web Developer Conference not to attend. Updates coming this weekend.

* Somehow I don’t think “once played around with Games Maker 5 for a few days” and “made some bloody good multiplayer maps on Timesplitters 3” constitutes as a deep knowledge of how games work, do you?

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Digital Media Project 1.1 – Why We Play Games

Published 25/10/2009 23:53

Aim: Establish what makes a good game narrative, what will draw returning players to what might be considered an archaic game format, begin plotting out narrative ideas for my game.

I enjoy games with a good story. I’m more than willing to let gameplay slide if the story draws me in enough and compels me to push on further just to see what happens next. Prime examples are the Metal Gear Solid series (notorious for, in many cases, having too much plot and being happy to halt actual gameplay for an hour so the protagonists can have a nice lengthy chat about free will, nuclear disarmament and/or how one should actively strive to live a full life while ironically giving a post-modern nudge to the player who just passively sat through the game for the last five hours) and Max Payne (a typical neo-noir story with very repetitive run-and-gun gameplay, the saving grace being the atmosphere of the game and the unique gritty comic book style presentation for the chunks of story that interspersed the gameplay).

When it comes to the text-based adventure game narrative is the point that has to be strong, otherwise the player’s interest is not going to be held by the very linear, almost flat presentation of text on a screen. So I’m going to need to explore what drives an absorbing story…a little bit of an odd task for a Web Design course, but hey, thus is the magic of the Digital Media Project!

Rather than plumb the depths of the Website That Shall Not Be Named (Wikipedia) for a starting point, I’m going to cheat and start with some familiar ground. The big brother to the text-based adventure game is the point-and-click adventure game, one of the more historically famous of which is the classic Secret of Monkey Island (which, interestingly, has been recently re-released with HD visuals and a new voiceover. The franchise itself has also been revitalised with five new Monkey Island “episodic” games, all implying that adventure games aren’t a dead format after all!). My favourite point-and-click game of all time is Discworld Noir, a 1999 mystery game set on Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld that heavily references and satirises classic film noir. Over the Summer I spent time uploading a playthrough to YouTube on the grounds that it hadn’t been done before, and I received a lot of positive feedback from viewers – in particular how witty the script was and how the story was enjoyable. This was particularly interesting, especially as Discworld Noir lacked the usual game “thrill” element: you could not die! Or lose in any way, for that matter.

Here’s a random video from my playthrough, illustrating the intuitive notebook interface for talking to characters:

Now we’re on to the relevant bit. Discworld Noir was written by Chris Bateman, who now helps run a specialised game design and narrative company called International Hobo Ltd (“ihobo” for short). He’s also written a book called Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames. I’m not going to use this book as I’m skint, but I will make liberal use of the articles Mr. Bateman has provided on ihobo.

In his article Why You Play Games, Bateman presents the idea that games in some way trip the pleasure centre of the brain, through “structured reward systems”, combating and overcoming challenges, exciting rushes of adrenaline/mischief and from satisfying a sense of curiosity. The relevant pleasure centre trip for adventure games he sums up in the following:

“There is a part of the frontal cortex of the brain which I have termed the decision centre (the orbito-frontal cortex) which transpires to be closely linked to the pleasure centre. Our brains are wired up in a particular way such that making good decisions is especially rewarding, and much as with extremely difficult play, the harder the puzzle, the bigger the reward. It seems that the pleasure centre will give a greater payoff for what is perceived as a bigger achievement, hence games that ask the player to solve difficult puzzles can be intensely rewarding for the players with the skills (and often, the patience!) to overcome them. However, such players are no longer the majority in the videogame audience, hence the decline of the adventure game genre.“

So a good game narrative will present consistently challenging puzzles that ostensibly test the player, given that the player is presumably happy to give commitment to solving the challenges. Solving these challenges is, in theory, biologically satisfying!

In another of Bateman’s articles, Positive Game Design, he mentions that narrative progress itself can be considered to be part of a game’s reward system. Indeed, in the case of text-based adventure games it is arguably the only reward system.

“The vast majority of players enjoy a story, and advancing that story becomes a reward in itself. However, there is a risk in this kind of reward in that if the player is enjoying the story, failing to progress becomes a form of punishment. Care must be taken when using narrative progress as a reward.“

Hence why traditional adventure games are now part of a niche market. They truly are interactive fiction in all senses of the term – the player “plays” them in order for the fulfilment of the narrative itself.

Tomorrow, I will try to define what makes a narrative compelling, all while not quoting wholesale from the marvellous Mr. Bateman. Might be worth using multiple sources for research, eh? I’ll also be outlining the rough ideas I have in my head for what my game will eventually become.

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Digital Media Project 1.2 – What Makes a Good Story

Published 26/10/2009 17:27

I read a lot of articles concerning video games. I’d have happily undertaken a course in video game design, but alas I was cursed with the mathematics skills of an elderly parrot, so “hard” maths is out of the question. This is why I was delighted to be able to undertake this project, as I can now apply some of my accumulated gaming knowledge within web design.

As if by sheer coincidence (because it was), I was reading the newest Extra Punctuation article by Ben “Yahtzee” Crowshaw (the accompaniment to his regular acclaimed video review series Zero Punctuation, which I heartily recommend) and it just happened to give Croshaw’s view of a good game story.

From the article Extra Punctuation: Wet (the following has been censored where language gets a bit colourful):

“I like my game stories, that should be painfully obvious by now, and I can’t like a game if I can’t relate to or understand the protagonist. Rubi is not a bad*ss. A “bad*ss” is something to aspire to, someone who can handle a situation. She’s more like the female equivalent of 50 Cent as depicted in Blood On The Sand: thoughtless, insecure, thick as pigsh*t and quite, quite mad.

Not that being psychotic need preclude you from being an enjoyable character. Kratos from God of War, for example, or Tommy Vercetti from GTA: Vice City, both apparently lacking any kind of moral code and both fascinating enough to carry a game while still being fairly unrelatable. But even those two have their moments of humanity that help keep us interested – Tommy petulantly explaining that he likes his Hawaiian shirt; Kratos’ exhaustively-explained tragic backstory that, while not excusing his actions, gives them something of a framing device. Rubi has no backstory and no apparent justification. Without those we’re forced to come up with our own explanation for her actions, which for most of us will be “because she’s a massive b*tch.””

This quote is in the context of the female protagonist of Wet, a recent next-gen game. Crowshaw makes a valid point – often a narrative is considered “good” depending on how the player relates to the main character. Interestingly, in the case of adventure games, the protagonist is relatable because the protagonist is you (and I can’t think of a character who’s more relatable!). Even the ones where you’re taking the role of a character, or “experiencing the game by proxy” as I like to call it, put you straight into their shoes, because you have direct control of their actions. Compare that to the games of today, where all the important actions are taken out of your hands in cutscenes and control is only given back when the game has a player-friendly environment again (i.e. where the character isn’t doing amazing acrobatics or having an extended dialogue), and you can see the appeal of the traditional text-based adventure format.

Michael Drucker on Gamespy offers a humorous take on what makes a good game story, outside of a protagonist character that isn’t a psychopath or a moron in his article The Friendly and Honest Guide to Writing a Videogame Story. In the article he poses the following:

“Stories establish why your character is punching ninjas in the face. Is your character a former ninja who dislikes current ninjas? Or maybe ninjas keep cutting your character off in line at Quiznos. Those are just two of dozens of good reasons to punch ninjas in the face. But your game’s story makes your character’s ninja face-punch unique.“

Although being a piece of humour, the article does pose some important points that need to be considered in any story – where does the story take place (and thus what rules does the environment pose?), what “evil” will the protagonist have to face, what made the protagonist leave the comfort of their home (the article states that burning their house down is the way to do this, but the point is that there needs to be a motivation for the protagonist to take action), how the villain will use the hero (a bit of an old trope but still a good twist if the villain’s plan is outlandish enough), and how many alternate endings will there be (obviously the more endings, the more complex the game will be to design).

A nicely contrasting article on IGN.com by the “IGN Playstation Team” lists the Top 10 Overused Plot Devices in games:

10. Secret Organizations Plotting Conspiracies, Possibly Relating to World Domination
9. Uncovering Long Lost Remnant of Something
8. Fulfilling a Prophecy
7. Killing the Aliens
6. Unlocking One’s Hidden True Powers, A.K.A. the Chosen One
5. Accidentally Unleashing a Terrible Evil
4. Must Seek Revenge
3. World War II
2. Main Character with Amnesia
1. World Ending

I don’t really think many of these apply to the game format I will be designing for, as I think a lot of these story elements are Hollywood-inspired plots picked up by games as they became more that a simple narrative for the character to interact with – as games gained 3 dimensional graphics, and were required to up the size and scale of the framing device to contend with other formats, like film (remember this is the point that was put forward by Graham Linehan in the second video in my very first blog entry). Still, it offers food for thought in terms of tropes to avoid.

I’m looking to wrap up on what makes a good narrative now – I’ve still got two other items to consider for this week’s aim!

To summarise, I’ll refer to a few articles that tackle game narrative head-on. Firstly, Evolution of the Video Game Narrative by Justin Thurman:

“Game narrative isn’t trying to be novel-like or even movie-like; it is its own medium. The stories in video games are experienced in a different way because they are interactive — and this concept goes beyond simply pointing out that the player can (in some cases) drive the story in one direction or another, though that is certainly true. The narrative experience presented in video games is different in kind than from a novel or film precisely because it is interacted with rather than told.“

Thurman contends that the best plots in games are not overlays (so that “story” is separate from “gameplay”), but are integrated within the actions taken by the player character. I will have an easier job of producing this – the format of the adventure game is set up to allow the player to try and do what they want to do. Admittedly, there’s a sort of reinforced linearity – yes, the player character could find the key for the door, or they could find some explosive to blow the door open, or they could bypass the door altogether by going through a different route, but that’s still a limit of three set choices prepared for the player. The illusion of unlimited options is what is integral – a player may become annoyed if they feel that they are strictly limited to the game designer’s rules. For example, I remember games where I have tried to possess an object via commands like “pick up key” or “take key”, and the game has said “I don’t know how to do that” because the correct command was “get key”. The same applies to the narrative: if the player character has only one interaction with characters and the game environment, the player may find the narrative unrelatable.

I think that this exploration of what makes a “good” story has provided food for thought. Obviously, I will have to think on some of the presented concepts while writing my story – what the characters will be like, how the environment will come into play, and what motivations will drive the story. Most importantly, I need to make the narrative involving, so that it draws in the player.

Next up on the blog – what will draw returning players to what might be considered an archaic game format, or “why people still play these old-school games”.

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Digital Media Project 1.3 – Why We Still Play These Games

Published 26/10/2009 18:17

I’ll be honest. I don’t think there’s much call commercially for new text-based adventure games. It’s quite a niche hobby area kept alive online, and the only commercial interest I could perceive would be from advertising within the game (banner ads, pop-ups, and all those other annoyances). You would think that this would rather negate the point and premise of the project, making it dead in the water if you will. Maybe, maybe not – I’m exploring interactive fiction nonetheless, even if it is a hobby genre!

There’s a resurgence of these traditional games online, using the browser as the interface. The other day I clicked on an advertisement that took my interest for Improbable Island – lo and behold, it was a PHP-based adventure game (tell a lie – it’s actually an online role-playing game that starts out like an adventure game). This isn’t unique – my girlfriend used to play Kingdom of Loathing, a one-player role-playing adventure game that has received cult fandom because it is just plain silly (often poking fun at tropes from other role-playing games). I myself used to play ForumWarz, a graphical adventure game that mimics and satirises the internet itself (you would “attack” forums, and talk to characters via an MSN window, etc).

Graphic-less text-based adventures are still kept alive by small corners of the internet that act as repositories for “interactive fiction” (which is funnily what my project is called), prime examples being The Interactive Fiction Archive and iFiction. These websites are free to use and download from, and many of their adventures are home-made creations built for online competitions or just for fun.

I’ll admit that I’m not specialist in these more traditional adventure games, as I’m more familiar with the graphical counterpart the point-and-click adventure. However, I’ve read my fair share of choose-your-own adventure novels and have dabbled in one or two of these textual adventures; I particularly recommend the game Shade as it has an interesting, disturbing twist that presents itself about halfway through and I’ve been playing around with Charlie Brooker’s recommendation of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

So why is there still a call for these games? Well, they’re free for a start. That’s a big reason, because people like free things (at least, I do). John Walker provides a convincing reason as to why people still enjoy playing these games in his article A Word Is Worth A Thousand Pictures:

“Imagine the person who sits and reads a book, looks up in horror, and shouts, “This word ‘tree’ looks nothing like a tree! It looks like some letters on a piece of paper!” and throws the book at the wall, disgusted. He’s either a fool or reading a Dan Brown novel. We simply don’t work that way. The semiotic power of a word is enough for our beautiful minds to conjure the very best tree imaginable. Literally. We have excellent brains that will always be capable of better graphics than the most exceptional technology (until The Future, obviously, when we’ll plug our brains into the machines and then just spend the whole time playing Space Minesweeper in Extra-Realism Graphics 5.6). What powers these mental chips is narrative.“

He puts forward the idea that people still play these games for the reason people still read books – because they stimulate our minds. Our imagination provides the visuals, so arguably this is a subconscious level of interactivity that still appeals to people.

That works for me. I like that. It’s almost poetic.

Next post: some ideas I have for my game.

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Digital Media Project 1.4 – The Embryo of My Game

Published 26/10/2009 18:42

This is just an opportunity for me to spill out all the ideas I’ve had in my head as a basis for my game. In my project proposal I already admitted that I wouldn’t be doing a full game – I’ll be aiming for an encapsulated section of a game. So how am I going to do that?

I’m a big fan of classic pulp mystery stories. Philip Marlowe is one of my fictional heroes (he’s a wisecracking guy who drinks whiskey constantly -even while driving- and has a generally misanthropic view on everything. How this reflects on me is open to interpretation). I’d like to do something within that context, to put the player into a position where they are trying to solve a case, and if they fail they won’t get paid, or worse, they’ll be killed while investigating (hittin’ the streets, grillin’ snitches and chewin’ out every classy dame who thinks they can step all over ya, sweetheart).

Now. Encapsulation. This is where it gets interesting.

Suppose now the detective needs to investigate a reclusive doctor character. This requires breaking into the doctor’s illegal laboratory…oh no! It’s a trap. And suddenly you’re locked in the mad scientist’s laboratory while he watches you through his security cameras, mocking you over the intercom he’s set up throughout his domain. You’re stripped of your possessions, and are forced to work through each room, trying to find the doctor and interrogate them to further your investigation.

That’s my idea. It’s the classic locked in a room situation, only it’s a series of rooms, a sort of human rat-maze. It will allow me to keep the game within a definable, constrained environment that has a beginning and one end: you’ll start by entering the laboratory and getting locked in, and end by confronting the doctor. It also nicely limits character interaction – I’ll only have to worry about the player and the doctor.

As for the doctor character. Well, let’s just say that there’s an eccentric hunchback mad scientist character of my own creation who would be perfect for the role (I’m an amateur cartoonist – this DeviantArt account is mine).

As for the protagonist, they will be a blank slate. The player will be the character, male or female. I’m still unsure as to how the character will be allowed to speak – either I’ll provide the dialogue options (in different tones, such as angry, polite, indifferent, etc.) or I’ll try and tackle the more imposing task of having dynamic conversation based on player input (like an artificial intelligence speech bot).

These are just some ideas. I’d like to do a different setting from fantasy, and keep the plot centred in a more modern (if surreal/offbeat) setting.

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Digital Media Project 1.5 – Summary

Published 26/10/2009 19:03

Aim: Establish what makes a good game narrative, what will draw returning players to what might be considered an archaic game format, begin plotting out narrative ideas for my game.

Good game narrative:

• Avoid quoting popular culture too much
• Present consistently challenging puzzles that ostensibly test the player; solving these challenges is, in theory, biologically satisfying
• The player “plays” in order for the fulfilment of the narrative itself; if the player is enjoying the story, failing to progress becomes a form of punishment
• A narrative is considered “good” depending on how the player relates to the main character
• The best plots in games are not overlays, so that “story” is separate from “gameplay”
• If the player character has only one interaction with characters and the game environment, the player may find the narrative unrelatable

What will draw returning players to what might be considered an archaic game format:

• Not much call commercially for new text-based adventure games; it’s a niche hobby
• Resurgence of these traditional games online, using the browser as the interface
• Graphic-less text-based adventures are still kept alive by small corners of the internet that act as repositories for “interactive fiction”
• Appeal in being free to download/play
• People still play these games for the reason people still read books, because they stimulate our minds
• Imagination provides the visuals, so arguably this is a subconscious level of interactivity that still appeals to people

Narrative ideas for my game:

• Locked room situation
• Detective vs. mad scientist
• Player is protagonist
• One entry point, one ending point
• Keeps a nice restricted environment that I can make as big or small as I like
• Possible avenue of exploration is how to interact with the antagonist character

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Digital Media Project 2.0 – Getting Ahead of Myself

Published 30/10/2009 19:14

The last four posts were made while in the grip of the dreaded Man-flu (also known as “the common cold”) and as a result, although being quite thorough, were obviously affected by the combination of a strong Benilin/Covonia concoction as I forgot to cover some glaringly simple things from previous workshops. I’ll derail this week’s work momentarily just to cover some of the things I learnt from the workshops at the beginning of this module.

Firstly, some of the points that were raised by other students towards my project.

Who is it aimed at? Kids or adults?

Adults…with concessions to children. Given the amount of text that the game may end up having, there may be some sophisticated jokes or descriptions that might be considered “above” that of children. However, taking a cue from Douglas Adams, I will not be seeking to develop a story that intentionally invokes an adult audience (via obscene or adult language). The great thing about Adams’ works was that although they’re quite technical in their humour, there is nothing intrinsically “adult” about them – any child can pick them up one of his books and read them as well. I think a comparative piece that’s more well known would be The Muppet Show: children loved the puppets and the jokes and song they understood, and adults liked the euphemism and more sophisticated but very subtle humour.

I want to try and encapsulate the middle ground. Write for adults but without making it inaccessible to children.

Is the project too big?

Probably. Still, I’ve already recognised that this project is quite a task to undertake, and I will be making concessions to the size and scale to help myself.

Is there a template you can work from?

I doubt it, but I will look for one. If I can find an existing framework I can use, then I will work with it. This would help reduce the size of the project.

Are you basing it on an existing game or are you making it from scratch?

It would be a bit of a cop-out if I just recreated another game, in fact it would probably be classed a plagiarism (and I don’t want to be in any position to give anyone the opportunity to use that accusation on me). Besides, part of the attraction of this project for me was the chance to make my own story. However, I don’t think it would be plagiarism if I borrowed a few puzzles from existing games, especially since many games make use of classic puzzles anyway e.g. locked doors, weight puzzles and math-based puzzles.

Tutor Michaela Reiser also provided some feedback, and I’m basically putting this up to benefit Rob Stephens (hey Rob, guessing you’ll read this at some point). Here’s a summary of the notes on what she had to say about the project:

• Have I thought of the story? (At this point, yes – see previous blog post for details)
• Have I considered some form of A.I. involvement? Investigate chat bots
• Work out the narrative and the limits of the story
• Construct game “paths”, puzzles and red herrings, consider the player’s ability to retrace their steps
• Translate to code
• Book suggestions: Campbell – A Hero with a Thousand Faces and the work of Vladimir Propp.
• Where will the target audience find out about it, and who would I promote it to?
• Consider the “story blurb”
• Perhaps consider looking at some “choose your own adventure” novels
• Consider what makes a good story
• Find a list of games (text-based and online)
• Break the project into weeks, but focus on the story

I have also just discovered that Dan Dixon has contributed some valuable links via e-mail for my project that I’ll just put here mainly for my own convenience.

• Montfort – Twisty Little Passages, An Approach to Interactive Fiction (it’s apparently already out on loan but I might just buy my own copy anyway)
• Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction
• Onlamp.com – IF Languages
• Wikipedia – Development Systems for IF
• Brass Lantern – Choosing a Text adventure Language
• Dan’s last bit of input implied that I might want to reconsider PHP, but we’ll see how all this goes once I’ve written the plot.

That about covers the workshop outcomes, more posts to come over this weekend as I deal with the tasks I have set myself this week, and I’ll read those links Dan provided at some point too.

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Digital Media Project 2.1 – A Puzzling Instalment

Published 01/11/2009 03:48

Aim: With references to existing text-based games, begin listing puzzle types that can be recreated. Start plotting out action/dialogue paths. Investigate “AI” speech bots. Work on narrative.

That’s this week’s aim – first I’m going to rattle off some puzzle types I can work with, as well as some specific puzzles I can use, and then the next few posts will be where I start to develop the paths and the game. Oh boy.

Wikipedia, although useful (if only it could elevate its status up to that of “academically reliable source”), can only offer a list of puzzle games. This is where one of my favourite websites takes centre-stage, my Wikipedia of preference if you will – TV Tropes, another academically unreliable source but at least this one can actually help me.

With reference to the articles on stock video game puzzles and stock puzzles I will now find visual examples and briefly explain why I think the demonstrated puzzle would fit into my game. Note that the examples present will probably from a variety of modern games just to illustrate how the puzzle works.

Weighted Switch Puzzle

This would be rather simple to implement – a door will only stay open if pressure is continually applied to some form of switch. The difficulty will arise in the object required for the continued pressure: I could allow the player to use multiple objects that they collect and alow them to work out where certain objects are required elsewhere, or I could limit the object needed to be placed on the switch.

Example from “Portal” by Valve Software

Water Level/Current Flow Puzzle

The player is in some water and needs to reach a higher ledge just out of reach. They achieve this by raising the water level (usually via switch or plot device). The hardest part will possibly be writing the scenario into the story, and having to account for the fact that the player may need to back-track out of the water back the way they came.

Example from “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune” by Naughty Dog Studios

“Robinson Goldberg Contraption” Puzzle

The player encounters a bizarre contraption that is a mish-mash of various household items and appliances, all lined up so that they will work together to produce something. Examples include the contraptions of Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit animations and the board game Mousetrap, where the game’s climax is a series of items affecting each other until the mouse is caught. From a puzzle perspective all the player has to do is find missing parts or play around with the machine until it furthers the player’s progress e.g. unlocking a door, producing a key item, etc. I think that with my current narrative of “locked in a mad scientist’s laboratory” this would be a very good puzzle to consider implementing.

EDIT: I have just played Rematch, an Interactive Fiction game that requires the use of a specialised parser. The game is actually set up around one of these puzzles along with a time-rewind dynamic. You have one turn to explore surroundings before an SUV ploughs through the wall, killing you and your friends – the idea is to then rewind each time and survey the area, eventually working out a chain of events just waiting to happen. Once this chain is acted upon, the game is won. It is interesting but I feel the time-rewind dynamic would be a bit ambitious for me right now.

Example from a Honda Accord television advertisement “Cog”

Counterweight Puzzle

A variation of the weighted switch puzzle, only this version involves a series of weights and a pulley system. A seriously plausible puzzle to look into.

Block Puzzle

A stable of video games – the player is required to move some blocks around in order to proceed further; the may require stacking them or pushing them in such a way that a clear path will be made between them. I can foresee the main difficulty of implementing a complex block puzzle being describing it to the player, as well as devising the code to retain the block positions. However, a simple “stack some crates to reach a shelf” puzzle would not be a bad idea.

Example from “Vagrant Story” by Square-Enix

Control Room Puzzle

The player encounters a panel with switches, and is required to place said switches into the correct configuration in order to proceed (unlock a door, drop a McGuffin, etc.). Sometimes the configuration needed is hinted elsewhere or it is just a matter of trial-and-error. Again, given the laboratory setting of my game I think a lever puzzle would fit nicely and the complexity of the switch configuration would depend on both how many switches there are and how many settings there are to put them in (ON/OFF is usually enough).

Example from “Myst IV: Revelation” by Ubisoft

Spot the Odd Door Out Puzzle

Rather arbitrary – the player is presented with three doors that are practically identical, but one upon closer scrutiny is very slightly different. An even bigger penalty ups the tension if opening the wrong door unleashes a polar bear or a spring-loaded knife that kills the player. I will only implement one of these depending on whether or not I can devise a save/load system, otherwise it could be seen as a very unfair puzzle to overcome.

“Enter Solution Here” Puzzle

The player is asked to answer a question by typing in the answer. I find this type of puzzle particularly infuriating in games like Sherlock Holmes because it often requires the player to type in the answer exactly as the developer’s want you to; spelling errors of variations on the correct answer will not allow you to proceed. I cite Sherlock Holmes as being particularly baneful for this puzzle because the objects you pick up include entire chapters from books, and often the answers to this type of puzzle in-game are either one specific word or phrase from these vast chunks of text, or sometimes the answer requires you to take a massive guess at the culprit despite no particularly incriminating evidence being posed to the player. However, I believe that incorporating one of these puzzles would be fine if I learn from my experiences – in this case not asking for a typed answer without heavily hinting to the player a specific phrase or code.

3 and 5 Litre Jug = 4 Litres Puzzle

A bit of a specific puzzle and one of my favourites (since it has appeared in films like Die Hard 3) as it is a rather simple solution to what seems like a hard task – the player is given a 3 litre jug and a 5 litres jug and is requested to place a jug filled with exactly 4 litres on to a scale (or a variation with different sized containers and weights). I will not explain the solution here but it is one puzzle I would definitely like to challenge myself with implementing.

Item Combination Puzzle

I am almost reluctant to refer to this as a puzzle, but in a way it is – the player is required to use one item with another in order to progress. Items may have to be combined with each other, and carry-able items can be used with each other and with items in the environment that cannot be picked up (for whatever arbitrary reason the game gives e.g. it is too heavy or it bites). This is the commonest of stables for point-and-click adventures, and can sometimes actually be the most difficult as they require the player to act within the developer’s train of logic. “Oh right,” the player cries in realisation, “you have to give the lemon to the mouse because the troll only likes mice with sour expressions on their faces. That makes perfect sense!”. You probably catch my drift.

That concludes this rather lengthy post of puzzle archetypes and gives me something to refer to when designing the game layout later. If I find any other puzzles I would like to emulate/implement then I will probably just add them to this post.

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Digital Media Project 2.2 – Weaving an Environmental Structure

Published 02/11/2009 02:46

So adventure games can be pretty complicated. I figure that if I have any chance of keeping track of this thing I will need to adopt an actual technique to track the progression of my game. Luckily, while reading about Grim Fandango, one of my favourite adventure games, I came across such a method to document progression via plot devices and puzzles.

Excerpt from the “Grim Fandango Design Document”, by Tim Schafer et al.

This marvellous flow chart system actually charts linearity (where the player follows a single path) and non-linearity (where the game shrugs and lets the player go do their own thing for a bit). The excerpt above refers to “puzzle chains” – I think I would like to try and limit the player to a maximum of two concurrent chains at a time.

Given that progression focuses around the completion of puzzles, I sat down during a lunch break and made some notes on how I could approach this puzzle layout, or the “environmental structure” of my game, if you will. Apologies for not typing these up, but I figure that it will save me time by just posting scans of the notes and it also offers a chance for me to “show my working”.

Clicking any of the following thumbnails load a larger version of the image.

Of the two paths I present, I honestly prefer the structure that focuses several rooms around a MacGuffin room. This limits the amounts of directions the player can take and allows me to concentrate on creating a richer environment rather than spreading myself thin over a vast selection of rooms.

So that is the basic structure I will utilise. “But Sean!” I hear you cry, “you haven’t made any design references in at least 3 or 4 posts!”. Have no fear, here is some design theory to back up my work.

A chap called Jakub Majewski has made his Master’s Thesis available to view online – this rather usefully touches on game models, and thus rather than quote from his thesis wholesale I will interpret his concepts here for myself.

Majewski writes that there are three basic models of pre-designed video game narrative:

1. The “String of Pearls” model – player moves from one fixed event to the next, the most freedom being between events. This is often referred to as a “linear” narrative.
2. The “Branching Narrative” – player is occasionally allowed to select which event they want to move to next from a choice.
3. The “Amusement Park” model – player is dumped into an open environment with many event paths and is allowed to choose wherever they go.

Majewski also posits a fourth model (the “Building Blocks” model), but this is not at all relevant as it refers to games without narrative, where the player makes all the story decisions e.g. like in online role-playing games where players are let loose and any story is constructed purely in the player’s mind.

Considering these models, the one I will be adopting will most probably be an amalgam of the String of Pearls and the Amusement Park models. This rationale I gain from the fact that the beginning and end events will be under the developer’s (i.e. my) control, but the central component of my game will most likely offer the player two or three different paths to follow at the same time.

Yes, I also like the idea that a mad scientist’s laboratory might also be referred to as an “amusement park”, especially since that was one of the early ideas I had for this game as where it might take place.

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Digital Media Project 2.3 – Talking Heads

Published 02/11/2009 04:19

No.

I can’t do it. Michaela Reiser’s suggestion of considering AI speech bots will have to remain just that – a suggestion. For me to develop one as a major component of the game will require me reconsider the entire project, and the only way I can see it working is to redesign the “game” element to be focused around talking to a character, but that rather ruins my efforts thus far.

It was a nice idea, as I had briefly considered adapting the “mad scientist” antagonist character into a speech bot as part of the game. He’d ridicule you for being stuck in his laboratory, and you would be able to hurl abuse at him and, if you were particularly clever, trip him up into giving you a hint on how to solve a puzzle or get past a door.

I am familiar with chat bots – I used to spend lunchtimes in sixth form with friends playing with iGod, where we did what everyone who has tried a chat bot has done: swore at it, tried to make it say rude things and euphemisms, tried to make it explain its purpose, that sort of thing. And now you can do the same with Captain Kirk of Star Trek.

The problem is not finding hosting or getting one running – Pandorabots and Personality Forge offer free hosting and bot creation facilities if I want to cut some corners, and trying to find anything about the source code for creating one from scratch is like presenting me with a page of Mandarin – I don’t understand it and don’t particularly want to under the circumstances of this project. I could buy a book on the subject and venture into Computer Science territory, but I reckon I am going to have enough on my plate just creating the game without worrying about tertiary elements to enhance the game’s USP.

However, not to just completely (and rather flippantly) dismiss the idea, I will briefly look at the prominent bot language of AIML. AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) is an XML derivative software agents. Here’s a video by Pandorabots on how to use the language:

My thought process while viewing the video:

• This isn’t difficult at all!
• But it seems very time-consuming, having to teach it responses. And the way it can interpret a person’s sentence and create the response from it can get really complicated and sound wrong if implemented wrong.
• How would I stop the bot from divulging puzzle hints at the wrong time? It might tell the player how to solve a puzzle long before they have even reached it!
• Is this cutting corners? I’m not really gaining anything by using their service as they have done all the hard work behind the scenes – I would just be using a variation of the pre-built A.L.I.C.E bot.
• This is all very fascinating but I honestly don’t see how I can use this. I’m going to have enough trouble learning how to adapt the game for PHP – and I’m not even sure if I can do this game in PHP so I might end up learning a new scripting language altogether! I don’t need to worry about this on top of all that.

I think speech bots are fascinating. The history, the Turing test, the novelty all intrigue me, and I may very well look into creating one for personal websites in the future, but I do not honestly think that this is at all appropriate for my project. The logistics are all too much, and I am glad I did take the opportunity to at least briefly examine them.

Finally, here’s a last novelty to end this entry on a high note – two speech bots having a chat that frequently borders on the surreal and nonsensical.

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Digital Media Project 3.0 – So, To Recap

Published 25/01/2010 16:57

Blimey, it’s been a while.

The rush of the Christmas season has finished and the obligatory UWE exam period has passed, and it’s back to normality. In a few months I’m due to present a game that is barely 1/3 toward completion. Time to get the lead out, maybe.

To ease into the oncoming rush of productivity, like one slipping down from a train station platform on to the rails to retrieve their dropped hat without realising that the bullet train is heading towards them at 200mph with no intention of stopping, I thought it best to summarise what exactly has been done over the last few months.

In the middle of December I was due to present a prototype, preferably of the technical persuasion. This rather jarred with my personal plan of action as I had hoped to leave development as long as possible and instead provide a walk-through visual prototype to give an impression of what I was hoping to do instead. However, having seen the work of some other students and realising that I still did not know whether I could achieve what I wanted in the medium of PHP, I must have decided to take the plunge and try and make something, because I remember that three days before the presentation I panicked and spent a good 7-8 hours a day trying to relearn the basics of PHP.

I’m happy to go down on record as describing my ability as a scripter as “abysmal”. It’s quite a thing to confess in the final year of a web design course, but I am just clumsy with assembling code, and I often struggle to comprehend the most basic of tutorials. However, last year I purchased Larry Ullman’s Visual QuickPro Guide for PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for web programming, a book that spent more time closed on my windowsill than it did open in front of me. This time around I actually reproduced the scripts in the book and read through to the end of chapter 2.

This exercise was most beneficial – I now have working examples of the variety of variables and basic form validation, the most important to my needs being conditionals. I realised that I could use conditionals as “triggers” for a rudimentary game mechanic, in the respect that most games in one way or another function on the basis that something has or hasn’t happened to the player. For example:

If the player has collected the Golden Idol of Gesundheit, activate huge rolling boulder. Otherwise, boulder is not activated as Golden Idol of Gesundheit has not been snaffled away by player.

This is an example of a basic true/false mechanic. Enthused with this realisation, I quickly set about devising the jug puzzle, utilising if-elseif-else conditionals (although in hindsight the book recommends substituting long if-elseif-else with switch statements, appropriate as “game triggers” are sometimes known as “switches”). I struggled to devise an algorithm for interpreting the jug amounts, and the solution I eventually went with was to present every possible combination of jug amounts within the scripting. A lengthy process, and I intend to go back and shorten down this code if I can come up with alternatives.

I also quickly realised that I would need a “memory” to retain player-based inputs, in this case the amounts in the jugs. The solution presented itself with PHP sessions, which I read up on and implemented in a very rudimentary manner (this method also saves storing user input locally via cookies, but this is a possibility for future considerations). The only drawback is that if a session-based variable changes, the player/user cannot see this change unless as page refresh takes place – every conditional therefore forces a refresh, the time of which is based on how long it takes the player to read the action that has taken place. This also presents drawbacks – the player will try to make their next move before a refresh, and the refresh in itself is a small inconvenience.

However, problems aside, the prototype works! This encouraged me to no end, and was what I showed at the presentation alongside a html walkthrough of what the game might look like. Both can be seen on my CEMS space.

The other aspect of the presentation was a poster describing the project. Much of the poster content was based on this blog, and I present a smaller version of the poster here for completeness:

The concept image can also be seen in full at my DeviantArt account.

I took something away from the presentation, when Rob Stephens mentioned that Will Wright (creator of The Sims) has said that the trick is to “make failure fun”. I like that idea, it’s every much the basis behind the popularity of these text-based adventure games, the sensation that the narrator is snarkily taking the mick out of you for being so silly.

After that? Christmas and other modules decided to get in the way. So I haven’t really made any progress. Bugger.

So what’s next? I’m going to hit the book again, document my learning here, and next week I’m going to either try and make another puzzle, or develop one of the beginning parts where the player is introduced to the game. Time to see what I can do!

By the way, I have not completely abandoned my coveted “plan of action”, and I will consult it shortly.

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The Final Deliverable

If you made it this far, you’re probably interested in my final report. You can view a PDF of it below (or, if you really want a copy, you can download it here). As mentioned earlier in the blog the actual deliverable can be played here!

DMP Report

 

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Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | July 29, 2018 at 5:00 pm | Articles, Portfolio and Work, University Work, Video Games | No comment