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Semester 2 “Doyle Doyle Doyle & Sons”

During the final workshop with Donal Beecher we were divided into groups of two at first in which we had to discuss our happiest,proudest,toughest moments. I believe this was an exercise to get everyone out of their shells and attempt to create an environment where sharing anything would be okay. Needless to say the discomfort in the air was palpable with people gauging how much to share or what would be a little bit to heavy to share with a room of peers. After this we sat in a circle and had to mime receiving an object that was one thing but now that we held it,it had to be something different, eg. the banana was first a banana,then a phone,knife etc. Then we had to remain in the circle and start a story but the person beside to continued it with a negative twist then posistive ... “but then unfortunately...but then fortunately”. This was basically just “yes and” and served to get us all used to the idea of going with the flow of a narrative we may not have started and being open to the changes. Then finally we had to split up into groups of four and improv and advertisement for any product we could think of. The group I was apart of opted for “Doyle Doyle Doyle & Sons advertising Inc. “ this was an advert for an advertising company. We started by having Oisin appear frozen mid scene and Conor and Jamie appear off scene to stage left and me off to stage right. Then I narrated/ presented the advert in a sensational fashion with over the top voice work. We said has this ever happened to you, you’re a company trying to sell a shoe horn but you send off the idea to a advertising agency and you get this “ * Oisin pretending to row a gondola with a shoe horn singing*” or perhaps trying to sell a zimmerframe and you get “ * Oisin pretending to used the frame as some form of machine gun* “ I then asked conor and jamie to come on and ask if they would buy these products and they very sensationally said ” I dont even know what was going on, I would not buy that” then I said with “Doyle Doyle Doyle & Sons advertising Incorporated you get this” and we showed the products being used simply and properly and I then asked conor and jamie if they would buy them now and they very happily said “yes I would buy these products” and I finished by saying “ Obviously you would and so would you and you and I pointed at the audience and said you’d buy ten.... So called Doyle Doyle Doyle & Sons Advertising Incorporated for all your advertising needs” and that was that. It was a very enjoyable experience and we tied for best advert with one other group. I would after that be very open to attending more workshops on character design/presentation. Overall I think it gave me a greater understanding of what people wanted to see.

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Semester 2 “Character Creation”

This semester we have been given workshops with Donal Beecher to learn more about what in my opinion essentially boils down to making characters feel more real and well rounded. I unfortunately missed the first workshop with Donal, but during the second workshop we broke up into groups and had to assess several pictures around the room and give the people who where the subject matter back stories, this began by giving them names,ages and professions. Then the class would reach a joined decision as to which of these chosen things best fit the characters. During which we reached the somewhat uncomfortable moment in which the only darker skinned male in amidst the characters was a 40 or so year old who everyone decided was in some way involved in tech support or retail. Which was quickly dispelled as being a bad thing by our lecturer as in terms of this workshop we where just making characters well rounded and believable in the roles we gave them. This was for me an interesting challenge to work with, as people very quickly began using their own life experiences to determine certain aspects of the characters which Donal informed us is exactly what happens in writers rooms. After we had all reached a decision on what the characters we had formed from the pictures given we had to put all the characters in the same situation and see how we all believed they would react. This essentially had no wrong answer as it was how we perceived our own characters would react in different situations. The situation our group came up with was to have their bag be stolen by a mugger in broad daylight. This scenario had all of our characters react very differently, some of them opting to resort to a physical altercation with the assailant others breaking down emotionally over the ordeal and in the case of our 40 year old IT Consultant Balwinder Singh, calmly call the police wait at the scene and notify his insurance provider of the theft. This was an eventful workshop that I wasn’t expecting to encounter in a game design course, but i’m sure the knowledge gained will be useful.

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Semester 2-RPG “The Skeletons”

So this week we played The Skeletons by Jason Morningstar. This game interestingly enough has rules to play with a Game Master or without which was a nice change of pace,so have the choice. My group opted to have a Game Master(Myself) and four players one of which was also me. This allowed us to all have fun playing the game while also creating a world in which our skeletons had been reborn into that had some depth. 

This game offers something that I hadn’t previously encountered in games of a similar nature. That being a premade outline of your character, based on which skeleton archetype you chose, for each of us to draw onto as our characters learned about themselves and explored their story this appearance could be changed to better suit your story. 

During the world building aspect of the game we where all adding small details to the world we lived in, all of us seemingly deciding that it was set in some form of fantasy skeletons to fit in with the animated skeletons we where. All of us expect one person had without a word decided this, when suddenly the crypt our skeletons protected also a car in it. This was in response to one character being told a relic to help the dead move onto the afterlife had been buried here aswell and of course the obvious choice was a car. This led to the hilarious decision that our world was infact not fantasy,it  was a apocalyptic setting long after the fall of the modern world, sort of like the popular fan theory about Disney’s Alladin. After this my character who was covered in ornate jewelry, had infact actually been covered in prestine watches and gold chains in a similar vein to that of Flava Flav. 

Ultimately in this game our characters who were the guardians of a tomb of modern and fantastical treasures that was in dire need of repair,where defeated by our descendants, these same descendants during the fight with us destroyed the already damaged tomb causing all of the entrances and exits to cave in trapping them inside,we where defeated and our descendants where trapped to die and take our place. The tomb demanding to always have a protector....

Until next time.

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Semester 2-RPG “Dungeon World”

So this week we decided to play dungeon world which as a group I believe we all found that if we where to play for longer we would have enjoyed it more. The game as a whole seems solid but as a group we found this game offered a lot of narrative freedom in how you told the story and how the players created situations but then, in contrast the choice of actions or “moves” they were able to make reduced the creative freedom of that heavily. 

This is illustrated best when you consider the players all arrived at a port on a ship together and their back stories all tied them together nicely and was a fun and hilarious experience for everyone at the table. But straight after that when the players had to decide which “move” would best lead them to the source of the commotion that had drawn them to the industrial township of “Nosjad”, and couldn’t really do what they wanted to do as the “move” didn’t exist. As someone who plays the role of DM/GM frequently in and out of college, I personally found it to be very unsatisfying to see my players unable to enact what they wanted to do and opted to allow players to create there own “moves” within reason to better fit into the narrative the story had presented. I also found it strange that these “moves” had no stat measure or class/race restrictions on them, allowing any player to use any of the actions that take on a more divine narrative, even if their character had no tie to the divine whatsoever. 

As far as negatives go I found these to be easily traversed and changed to create a much more enjoyable experience for my play group. We intend on as a group independent of college, revisit this game to better gauge the experience. 

Until next time.

-Clobberthar the Orc Barbarian,Gandalfini the human Wizard,Arthas the human Paladin & Mizgog the Elf Ranger.

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Semester 2- RPG “Fiasco”

So week two of RPG and LARP Design class has been and gone and this week we played “Fiasco”. After the success of the quiet year last week our group were all rearing to go and get into the meat and bones of another RPG and with the tagline “A game of powerful ambition & poor impulse control” we were all very excited to play a game that called for people to become hardened criminals with crazy quirks and addiction issues,considering that is something we hilariously integrated into our quiet year story line without any prompt from a rulebook.

The issues we ran into where,we found alot of the hype we had to play an RPG again was slowly stripped away during the lenghty and at times ambiguous set up phases. This was caused by various misinterpretations of the rules, causing us to have to revisit events we had already played out to see if we had fallen into the same mistakes there also.

The characters we created were fun,zany and enjoyable and as we progressed and became more involved in the world we had stumbled into we found ourselves enjoying ourselves but the whole system this game uses for play was found to be hard to digest even by the most seasoned rpg players of our group. 

I believe if we where to go back and play it again we would ignore the partly constructed scenarios and create our own to allow for more player engagement in a narrative driven game such as this.

Until next time.

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Semester 2- RPG “The Quiet Year”

So this year we have a RPG and LARP design class and in our first session we played the narrative driven game “The Quiet Year”. Although I hadn’t played this particular RPG before I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I found that as the game went on people in my group became more and more comfortable with contributing to the game in a big way and through numerous additions we created a world that was fun for us to explore as the sort of Gods this game puts you as.

The best part of the game in my opinion was the group envisioning of a shared universe in which no ones vision of the world was incorrect, but through the discussion action in place, it could be challenged and questioned. This led to us as the world generators to question and bounce off of each others ideas in a sort of impromptu “Yes and...” sort of way. 

During our time playing the game we introduced a font of magic, warrior invaders, disease spreading through the lands, a god for our people to worship and in contrast another deity for god A. RhinoRoo ( we found a rhino and kangaroo toy in a box in the class, sat the kangaroo on the rhino and it was too funny to not introduce) to be in opposition with the Hiphopapotamous ( their was also a hippo in the box and also “Flight of the conchords” references are welcome obviously). This is properly the best example of something silly being added that quickly spiraled into a pillar that held up our world. The gods each having temples,one a sect of cultists and so forth. 

If I was to change anything about the game it would be to create a more rounded set of rules for players to use as a basis for their world. This is because while playing our group who had thought our civilization magic, given them a floating citadel made of gemstone to teach in and discovered a gemstone that empowered and focused their magic. Then after putting all of this in the world we had the headmaster of the school the greatest wizard in the land, create a device that would “quicken the pace of the seasons”, this meant that when it was your turn to draw a card that would be your “week” we would draw two. Then upon being asked about this we where informed that may have been against the rules or in some way game breaking. So while the free form all inclusive narrative is immensely fun I would add some ground rules to stop actions like this.

Until next time.

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Week 12 End of Semester 1

So that’s the end of semester 1,it flew past much faster than I was expecting. I finished my programming assignment after several close calls at the end right up to the deadline. This was due to my entire project getting deleted 48 hours before the deadline due to an unfortunate incident involving a magnet and my hard drive. But I managed to pull out all the stops and recreate my project from what survived and achieve a standard I was happy to hand up. My Origami programming project is inspired by the myth or folk tale in Japan that if you were to fold 1000 paper cranes in a year you’d get to make a wish, this is why I created a crane flying through a dull greyscape that changes into various vibrant colors and then leaves a trail of cranes to create a chain of them which is how I was told the cranes are normally presented in Japanese culture. 

This week we had to bring in a Christmas related object that we later learned were to be apart of a Christmas themed obstacle course we where to create. Not having known this was the case I brought in two dvds “The nightmare before Christmas” and “Love Actually” two films that I completely adore around Christmas time, initially I wanted to bring in “Die Hard” as it is my favorite Christmas film,but  I couldn’t find my copy of it. The game we made as a group to be apart of the obstacle course was one in which a team would try and land ping pong balls in cups being held at varying heights by their teammates,while another person from the opposing team would try and swat the balls out of the way. To get the swatter to go away you could land the ball in a special cup that would make them have to sit down on an office chair and be spun around for 20 seconds to leave them in a dazed dexterously useless state for a while, until said affects wore off. This proved to be very fun, our group was laughing and running all over the place, the entire time. 

Getting into this course was a monumental achievement for me, something I have worked towards for a long time. Going into the initial interview I could feel my heart in my mouth and was lost for words, by now this is something that anyone in my course could attest to is not normally the case, me lost for words. This has been the best experience of personal growth and career focusing development I have undergone. I cant wait to get back for more of it.

Until next semester.

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Week 11

This week in Game Design we had a lecture about the mechanics,dynamics and aesthetics framework or MDA for short. This is a design system that showed us how the mechanics implemented by the game designers directly create the dynamics of the game, how players decided to use the mechanics alone or together creates the dynamics of your game. As a game designer we were told we have very little control with the creation of dynamics,we can only add things to the game to create incentives for a certain play style we want to be used, but ultimately this is up to the players to create their own play style and will differ from person to person. An example of this might be how in Zelda jumping backwards is faster than walking,running or jumping forwards and as a direct result the speedrunning community jumps backwards exclusively for quicker runs of the game.

On friday we had the DIT Open Day which led to us having to be in college earlier than usual on this particular Friday. This was because we had to come in for the start of the Open Day to set up our games and make sure they were in a working condition for prospective students to come in and try and get an idea of the course. This doubled as a new play test group for us as we had fresh faced people looking at our games from a play perspective not the perspective of a game designer, I personally found this to be very helpful. A pleasant surprise throughout this Open Day experience was that we where specifically told to be honest about any question we where asked with regards to the course, not to sugar coat anything or sell a false idea of the course. This was a relief as I had no interest in  becoming some sort of impromptu snake oil salesmen. That being said any questions I was asked about the course by visitors I had nothing but positive answers to the questions asked.

Until next time.

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Week 10

In Game Design we were given the assignment to create a decision based game. This was after we were shown a set of slides to illustrate the types of decisions found in games. This types of decisions were obvious, blind, interesting and meaningless. These mean: a decision that clearly has an “obvious” correct answer,blind meaning the decisions outcome and effects aren’t seen until the decision is made, interesting to say that the decision will have weight and has differences for example a sword with dexterity on it or a sword with strength would be an interesting decision as each have merit as a choice and finally meaningless, this is when the decision has no real gravity to it and can be made without ramification. The game I settled on designing was a horror survival game in which you tried to escape the basement of your house through different means and almost every decision appeared to be meaningless or blind,but through the game forcing you to replay it these decisions would change to be obvious or interesting decisions with each new piece of information gained from the reset mechanic I used, this was when the character blacked out and woke up in the same circumstance he found himself in initially.

 Then on Tuesday we had our programming lab test I thought I was quite prepared for this having a decent bit more programming experience than many of my peers, this proved to be folly. I ended up not getting to finish the lab completely due to time constraints and to a degree poor time management. I spent more time than needed working on the aesthetic of my code and the piece I was recreating. This will likely show in my final grading.

Then we had our double Ludology On Wednesday in which we where tasked with creating our own characters or character classes in some cases to fight in a round robin type tournament to see who had created the best character without having been completely over powered or “Broken”. This was a fun exercise in trying to anticipate how far my classmates would go to winning with a character as close to overpowered as you could get without going too far. To combat this I made a character who at the start of the game morphed into my opponent with a +1 to attack and health, which I grant you initially seems very powerful but to mitigate this broken mechanic I decided to make it so rolling the same number twice in a row would morph the character into its natural state which had 0 attack and couldn’t morph back for one turn and would take double damage in this weakened form. Although I didn’t win the tournament I enjoyed this exercise as anyone who saw my character said it was very broken and then when they read the weakness gave a hearty laugh.

Until next time.

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Week 9

During this week in game design we had a play test of our card games in which we got to try other peoples games and they tried ours and left feedback. During this we played a card game my team enjoyed the initial game play decisions made by the creators but due to ambiguity in their rules we later learned we had played the game wrong. But the way we played it and the decisions we made to change the game led us to creating a very enjoyable game, this led to our group thinking up a name for the other game and even thinking about game designs and an art choice for it and how it would be presented as a fully fledged product. This was a immensely enjoyable mental activity we found ourselves starting. We offered these changes and suggestions to the original team who seemed to take some of them on board immediately which was satisfying for us.

I unfortunately missed this weeks programming class in which they worked on “Conway’s Game of Life” this wasn’t too much of a setback for me as I had already worked on a similar project in earlier education. The next day in the lab I completed the work I had missed out on in the class and decided to work further on my origami art project, I created several variables that I used to make the wings of the origami crane I had coded to flap. Then to make the motion of the crane seem more organic and realistic I added a bobbing motion to the head and tail of the crane.

On Friday we exhibited our alpha game play videos to showcase the changes we made after the play test session we had just had. During this class we received positive feedback on the art style of the game and the base mechanics, we received negative feedback in relation to the visibility of the ball and the the connection of baseball to our chosen name “Vikeball”. This was largely due to the projector screen we where viewing the project on making the skull details on our baseball appear to be almost invisible and the details of the artwork to appear not connected to the vikings playing baseball aesthetic we were trying to create. Upon mentioning this and changes we had decided to implement we where told that we were on the right track to making a good game. This was also when my teammate and I decided to add sound effects to the game to increase player engagement and add realism to our game.

Until next time. 

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week 8 - Reading Week

So week eight was reading week so we didn’t have any classes, I used this time to create the background for my Origami art piece, I opted to create a pixel galaxy or nebula in paint.net and then use it in processing,through the insert image code, but upon doing this realized it was the simplest thing I could have done but not necessarily the most creative. So I opted to create thousands of rectangles and ellipses randomly across the screen with random varying randomized sizes. I then made the color of each of these shapes match the co-ordinate on the image I had made in paint, this led to the cool gaseous effect you see in the video above. All in all I found this to be a pleasing visual effect created through relatively simple means, and It will really make the overall project stand out and be a memorable visual experience. Next I think I’ll work on the overall movement of the crane I have coded. 

Until next time.

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Week 7

This week during Game Design we separated into groups to make a card game,we where asked if we wanted to make our own groups or if we wanted to be randomly put into groups,we ended up going for random groups, We had to make a card game by either editing a current game or inventing our own. The group I was in opted to make our own game and we created a game in which you have to collect the suit of royals that matches the ace you’d be given in secret to start the game, you had a hand limit of three and the ace was a hidden card not apart of your hand(to be revealed at the end of the game). Each of the cards allowed you to draw cards beyond your card limit after which you’d discard down to three,this allowed you to hoard some better cards,but allowed a lot of cycling to quickly give chance to find the royals needed by you and the other players. Some of the cards where special cards that allowed added extra flare to the game,for example the seven specified you’d roll a D6 dice and draw that many cards, allowing for it to be a gamble to potentially pay out with six cards,or a measly one card.

In Games Programming this week we moved onto more complex code in the form of bugzap a simplistic space invaders esque game. This was a very interesting class/lab as it was our first hands on coding experience that directly showcased itself in the form of a playable game. After the lab this week, having learned how to create a collision system within a game in processing I realized this same system could be converted to work with my origami art piece to reset the position of the crane as it flies across the screen.

This week proved to be quite stressful as we had to present our games for a play test to our peers and lecturers. This was something new to me, direct feedback in the moment from people who would have varying opinions on how my game should be played and how it should feel, followed by a professional who would do the same. The day rolled around I presented the game and took the feedback from anyone who tried my game and speaking to my lecturer Baz about the game and how the aesthetic in it’s current state made the visibility of the ball quite hard, reassured me as it was one of the issues I had made the decision to change with my partner on the project earlier that day, this let me know I was on the right track, the feedback in relation to the art assets for the game I had spent days doing being largely positive was a excellent send off to the week.

Until next time.

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Week 6- Teamwork

This week we made our own groups of four to attempt the marshmallow challenge, I had heard about this teamwork exercise before but never participated in it. And I’m happy to announce it was just as fun and engaging as advertised, essentially this exercise involves a team of people attempting to make the tallest free standing structure using dry spaghetti, limited tape and to top the structure is a marshmallow. Any of the reading I had done on this suggests the two best groups to perform this task are architects because duh, and children between age 5-10. This is because the architects know the best structure to begin with is some take on a triangle and the children’s structures will change constantly begin redesigned again and again until they find something that works. This at first didn’t really mean anything to me until I realized this is a lesson as to why designing various iterations is sometimes the best course of action to allow you to learn from your mistakes etc. The importance of teamwork in this test is that without proper communication verbal and non verbal alike,this test is likely to fail from the very beginning as to start,this project can’t easily be completed by one person as it requires many hands to hold the project in place while someone else gently applies tape to create supports. Due to a failure in communication during the early stages of design our project was to made from a cuboid with a  pyramid atop it(in hindsight it was doomed from the start) our structure reached a mere 7cm off the ground after it collapsed in on itself when two of our support struts failed. We were told before this started that the winning team would win a bag of sweets which quickly motivated every group into a frenzy for dominance in the field of food based architecture. This proved to be the undoing of many teams, our included with many groups losing track of the process of designing a good structure and instead tunnel visioning into shutting down any idea not presumed to win. With overly complicated building skeletons littering the room and the most simplistic Eiffle tower esque structure being deemed victor. 

From this our group discussed the pitfalls we all ran into working in this environment and all walked away at the end of the day with a sense of accomplishment over our glorious disasterpiece of a structure. The whole exercise proved to be a hilariously funny break in an otherwise straight cut college week.

Until next time.