Design Questions

This time in Game Analysis, instead of playing and analysing game we played George gave us questions from actual Design interviews and tests in the industry and we had to answer them:

When designing games, you will often need to create numerical values to represents aspects of characters & objects i.e:

Strength - Affects melee damage and amount you can carry

Max speed - The maximum speed the car can go when not impeded.

Q1: With each of the following examples, think of 3 statistics that you would feel are important and what they are for.

❏Astronaut 

Oxygen Consumption: 0% = Death, must return to the satellite occasionally to refill. 

Jet Power: Affects speed and direction, If you use the last of your fuel on going outward then you'll never return to the satellite and thus die.

Safety Rope Length: How far from the satellite you are able to trave.

❏Table

Enchantment Level: How fast you can move as a table.

Size: Area of surface equates to how much you can carry.

Wood type: Affects the weight of the objects you can carry (Bolster, Pine, Teak Oak).

❏Sugar Glider

Lift: Affects the distance you can glide.

Tail Length: Affects agility, so how quickly you can manoeuvre the Sugar Glider.

Health: Lost when crashing into obstacles or enemies, death occurs at 0%.

❏Rafflesia Arnoldii

Flower Size: Affects the size of the fly you can consume.

Odour Strength: Affects level of attraction, how many & how close insects fly.

Fertility: Affects how quickly you can grow.

Q2: First person shooters (FPS) are a large part of the games market and generally keep

player retention through competitive play.

- Think of 2 themes for FPS mechanics that do not involve guns, violence or killing.

- Research 2 games that also do this.

My Dream: MyDream is a first person action adventure, but not with senseless violence. MyDream is strongly committed to providing an enriching and positive environment for players of all ages. In places there is a gun/ telekinetic device which allows you to shape the world in which you live, e.g make caves or hills. 

Unfinished Swan: In this you are chasing a swan through a 3d environment which appears only white, like a blank page. Its a first person shooter in which you throw projectile paint blobs in order to see the way path through the level. 

Q3: What is ‘rubber-banding’ in competitive games?

Rubber banding is to give a winning player a disadvantage and a losing player an

advantage to level the playing field and give everyone a fair chance at winning the game.

Racing games use this very often.

-What Games use it?

Most MarioKarts, in my case Mariokart 64

-How do they use it?

In Mario Kart 64 when a players is losing they have a much higher chance of collecting the

lightening power, in which you can turn all the other opponents small and thus slow them

down. Or you may gain star power which is invulnerability or infinite mushroom which is

infinite boosts. You are unlikely to collect these when winning where you collect the worse

items such as a single banana.