Homework 11: Game Design

Two great games I have played

1.     The Legend of Sword and Fairy

This game is also called Chinese Paladin, which was developed by a Taiwan company called Softstar. I love this game not only because this is the first RPG game I have ever played, but also I am still touched by the impressive story illustrated in the game. This game has a very memorable tragic ending, which has moved many players to tears.

2.     Grand Theft Auto V

The Grand Theft Auto V, aka GTA five, is also one of my favorite games. It is an open world action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North. One important reason I am into this game is the flexibility. “Impossible is nothing” fits this game perfectly. Players can do everything they want including driving an aircraft, committing serious crimes, business activities, etc. This game also talks about society values and ethical issues of criminals.

Two bad games I have played

1.     The binding of Isaac rebirth

I only played this game for 10 minutes or even less. The whole graphic design makes me feel uncomfortable. Players can see poops everywhere. The maps are called mom’s womb, guts, etc., and the bosses are also very gross like a drooling bug, or poops.

2.     Don’t Starve

Every time I play this game, I am extremely frustrated. I do not see any fun facts in this game. The goal of this game is very easy. All a player need to do is just to keep Wilson alive. But this is also very hard, because there are too many things to do and consider. I feel terrible and overwhelmed if I do not find enough wood in the day time, or the weather is terrible, because when the darkness come, all I can do is nothing but watching the torch goes weaker and weaker until died, and hearing the beasts howling around Wilson. Sometimes I even feel that I am Wilson, who is sitting in the darkness and praying. To me, this is a very depressive game.

Homework 10: Interfaces

1) list ten examples of interfaces between people and the real world.
1. Pan is the interface to cook
2. Cell phone is  the interface to call
3. Deck of card is the interface to card game
4. Cup is the interface to drinking
5. Knife is the interface to cut
6. Table is the interface to put something
7. Road is the interface to drive
8. Car is the interface to transfer
9. Towel is the interface to sweep something 
10. Micphone is the interface to expand voice

2) Give an example of a good interface between player and game. Explain why it is a good interface
One good example is Fallout 3's Pipboy - or, more specifically, the short animation of your character raising the Pipboy to eye level whenever you access it:The animation lasts for only half a second, so you might not put much thought into it. But watch how it challenges the patience of your players after sitting through it countless times over the course of an 80 hour game. Never conclude that your player will "get used to" doing something in a non-optimal way. They will only seethe and bad-mouth your lack of design sense.

3) Give an example of a poor interface between player and game. Explain why it is a poor interface
Oblivion's UI is a classic example of one platform's UI being incompatible with another. Even though Oblivion was ported from consoles to PC, it still retained its controller-focused UI. This is completely analogous to releasing a game on iOS or Android and making the player move an on-screen cursor around like they're using a laptop's trackpad instead of taking advantage of absolute touch positioning.
So what makes Oblivion's UI so bad? It's a combination of wasted space, improper scaling, and inappropriate controls.

Homework 9 Balance

Game Mechanics Must Be in Balance
Balance Type #1: Fairness
 Fairness is an important aspect of a game. So to make our game symmetrical，we need to give equal resourse and power to all players. In our game we will set some obstacles, and these obstacles may be some opponents that has equal power as our player. So that make game not too easy or too difficult.

Balance Type #2: Challenge vs. Success
To make game interesting, our game need to neither too difficult  or too easy. So to reach this goal, we can make different levels. First severeral levels should be very easy, it will make player to practise the operation of the game. With the level goes higher, the difficulty will get higher and higher. And before the game release, we can let different players test the game.

Balance Type #3: Meaningful Choices
There will be a variety of choises for the player in a game. In our game we can design different difficulty of opponents, and different opponents have different credit. If the play choose to fight easy opponent, they will get less credit, and if they choose fight difficult opponent, they will get more credit.

Balancing Type #4: Skill vs. Chance
Our game will need more skills than chances. The obstacles may still, the players may  improve their skill to overcome them.

Balancing Type #5: Head vs. Hands
The players should use both their head and hands in our game. Except for the operation by hand, they also should think about their optimal ways to achieve by their head.

Balance Type #6: Competition vs. Cooperation
Our game is a competition game with PC. And for the reason of balance  type#1 our game will be fair.

Balance Type #7: Short vs. Long
Our game will have several levels. Beause of the limitation of time, we may not make it too long. But we will make it more funny.

Balance Type #8: Rewards
In our game player will want to get higher score to show their intelligent. And they can get higher skills with higher level.

Balance Type #9: Punishment
Because of the short of game, the punishement for players who died in the game, they will restart their game from the beginning of the game. 

Balance Type #10: Freedom vs. Controlled Experience 

We can set some hidden scenes along with the main scene. It gives our player more freedom to discover it.

Balance Type #11: Simple vs. Complex
For the first several levels the game will be simple. But with the level goes higher, the game will be complex.

Balance Type #12: Detail vs. Imagination
Our game is a fairy game, so it is built on imagination. We can use different characters to increase imagination. And some imagianted backgrounds work as well.