I read a paper on GUIs and usability for games. It said to expect to remake the GUI 4 times with a 50% improvement per revision on usability.

Luckily a on-paper design counts as a revision, and can be analyzed for usability factors and UI rules of thumb. So I am up to v2 on paper and v3 will be a playable mockup in my game engine. I expect v4 to be made after I have some user-feedback.

Now I suspect the same revisions will apply to my gameplay ideas – I have some great stuff on paper, but I know it will feel a lot different when translated into my game engine and actually played. If I can get a 50% improvement on gameplay on each revision it makes sense to have as many revisions as I can afford before shipping the game. Of course this could take the form of game sequels instead of a 7 year development cycle!

Mongul Raiders - Click for Larger Image

Today I was sculpting the first of the Bandit Tribes, a Mongol themed raiding party. They have excellent horsemanship and combat skills, but are weaker in trade and diplomacy skills. As the player works for an open-minded corporation you have the chance to hire a Mongul clansman and a troop of his warriors – but will you trust them not to double-cross you and strangle you in your sleep? Party morale plays a big part in the game, winning battles is only one of many ways to prove your leadership.

If you travel deeper into the Mongul lands you can uncover valuable Furs, Timber and Slaves so it is worth persevering against the border raids and developing a relationship with the clan leaders – a relationship based on Gold, Might, or even Friendship – you decide.

I agree that ignoring the minute mechanics underneath a game while focussing on a high concept is dangerous (and tempting). However a lot of AAA games fixate on the given mechanics of a genre be it platform/FPS/RTS and just bulk up the art and story around it – making dense gameplay but really just clones of old design ideas.

Usually I come up with a game mechanic, then fill it out with story, levels, upgrades, scores, bosses, achievements etc. It is this kind of volume that actually adds length and fun to the game – compared to psychologists lab tests of skill or abstract puzzles.

However I agree very much that non-essential vagueries of mechanics are unhelpful – both for the player and for the developer. Unfortunately some genres seem to need a lot of little mechanics to play out – Simulations & RPGs are particularly bad for this, as the ‘High Concept’ clearly precedes the mechanics. Still it is an interesting challenge to minimise the mechanics and still create an engaging simulcrum of the concept.

Exactly the king of challenge I am working out on the Spice Road design. As there are a wide range of activities the player can carry out and lots of stories to engage with – it is important that the basic interactions remain consistent and I should minimise adding new mechanics that will hardly get used. To this end I am focusing on four mechanics that will drive the vast majority of the gameplay – Travel, Combat, Trade & Conversation. The minor mechanics like party management, city policies, inventory management will all share a consistent dialog style interface, while the complexities of politics, diplomacy and  questing will fit into the Conversation system.

So, while not as minimalist as Mario – Spice Road will be a lot simpler and cleaner than a lot of Simulation/Strategy/RPG hybrids.

With all the varied genres and styles of game it is easy to lose track of the fundamental elements of gameplay they contain. Playing a game usually involves the player performing a sequence of actions to reach a goal. For example a platformer has the actions of run and jump, with the correct sequence guiding the avatar over platforms and around hazards to his target. Taking a broader view, these actions also include navigating the start menu, clicking through tutorial screens, and any story events. All of these actions take time and the total play time for a game has a calcuable mix of time spent on each action. We can add here the non-action of simply waiting to see the game unfold, whether in a cutscene or during play – for example watching where the ball travels after taking a shot at golf.

This is a very reductive view of gameplay, if we add the context of an action to a unit of play we get a more varied list of elements – for example jumping to get up a step, compared to jumping onto a moving platform in time to excape the falling spikes and while timing the jump to avoid spinning blades. For the player the first action is routine and easy, whilst the second is skillful and risky. The simple action I call a Task, the tricky action a Challenge. Tasks are routine, habitual parts of a game – there is no substantial threat compared to the abilities of the player. Challenges need the players attention, they have a reasonable chance of failure that has consequences to the player such as losing health or the delay of having to replay a section.

I can broaden the definition of a Task from a micro-action like pressing the jump key to any duration of gameplay that contains purely tasks. For example – traveling back over conquered screens in a platformer with a key, navigating the shop screens, defeating grunt level enemies in an RPG perhaps while grinding for goods or XP. In some games the Challenges are well spaced – perhaps a boss battle every quarter of an hour, the rest of the time gameplay is safe and routine.

At this point it may seem that I am attacking rote gameplay and tedium in games – but I am not. Neither do I equate Task with Easy and Challenge with Hard. I am not a fan of Hard games, but I love plenty of Challenges. I mentioned the non-action of waiting, to me routine riskless gameplay is closely akin to waiting and so I would like to discuss Tasks in that context. Waiting sounds most tedious – and often even a shiny well crafted cutscene with a genius plotline will leave us hammering our controller looking for a skip button. But sometimes we are happy to wait and watch – indeed in the real world we will wait and watch entire sports events, theatricals, movies – with decreasing opportunities for interactivity. I suggest that some active parts of a game can be less fun than other purely waiting parts. For example – retracing your path over routine platforms with a key is less fun than watching an intricate sequence of bombs explode to solve a puzzle. Perpetual interactivity is not crucial to a game’s enjoyment. Risk free Task oriented sections of a game – while interactive – are not demanding and are only subtly different to waiting and watching.

So long as a Challenge is not too hard or frustrating it can be engaging and fun on its own merits and would stay fairly fun even with primitive graphics, an abstract setting and no context. The skill required to beat it and the risk of failure would be the same in either case and a big part of the fun comes from those aspects. Now on the other hand – imagine a stunning cutscene with amazing graphics and plot… then turn it abstract and you are left waiting in front of a blank screen. Clearly no fun at all to be had from abstract waiting in that case. You might get a little satisfaction watching a puzzle bomb sequence explode as a list of dissapearing circles – but much less than in the original, and mainly as satisfaction for solving the puzzle rather than any visceral enjoyment. The flip side to this is the fact that the simple routine parts of a game, the reassuring smooth sections between the rapids, have the opportunity to either be as boring and painful as the cutscenes we just have to skip, or as interesting and enjoyable as a bright unfurling story.

If it is not clear by now, I am not a fan of 100% Challenge based games. I enjoy having time to get absorbed in a game world without constantly fearing for my life, and sections of story and sightseeing are a welcome break from crazy hard boss fights. As the percentages shift, perhaps as far as 95% Task based I am happy spending the time building my skills in a fairly safe zone preparing those 5% tricky sections – but I am only happy to do so if the wider qualities of the game engage my interest and give me enjoyment. Grinding, retracking, repeating simple tasks for that 95% in a game that is boring is worse than a terrible cutscene – there is no skip button.

So there you have it – I admit that I like games that are mostly unchallenging – but a much greater challenge is to create an exciting and interesting game that stands up through the routine Tasks and manages to entertain throughout.

Slice: Fortress Defence

How hard is a wave of enemies? If the enemies get twice as strong as the player gets twice as strong there is no change in difficulty. The difficulty of a defence game is related to the ratio of power between the enemies and the player. Over time the player buys upgrades and gets stronger, and the strength of the enemies must match that closely to make the game challenging, fun and progressively more difficult.

My original plan for Slice: Fortress Defence was to tie the important variables to math equations like so:

Enemy Power: Linear Growth

Gold per Wave: Linear Growth

Unfortunately the linear gold drops resulted in polynomial player buying power, as each wave added to all previous gold spending (and so power increases).

Player Strength = Gold per Wave + Gold for all previous Waves = Area under Gold per Wave graph, approximately (G^2)/2

Player Strength: Polynomial Growth

Polynomials always grow faster than Linear in the long run – so this would leave the game hard at the beginning but getting easier and easier as the player upgraded. That’s no fun!

So I moved to an exponential model. Exponentials have an interesting property whereby the sum of an exponential is also an exponential – this makes balancing the ratios much easier!

Enemy Power: Exponential Growth

Gold per Wave: Exponential Growth

Player Strength: Sum of Gold for all Waves => Exponential Growth

By making the Enemy Power exponent slightly larger than the Gold Exponent the ratio of Enemy to Player power would also follow an exponential curve – and thus the difficulty would rise slowly then start ramping up fast at the end of the game.

Now all I had to do was ensure my units Purchase and Level Up costs gave a good ratio of Power to Gold. Three factors effect unit power: Damage, Range, Rate of Fire. All three must be combined to give a single Power rating to match to balance against Gold – I just multiplied them together, so a 10% rise in all three would give a unit 33% more powerful, and consequently it should be 33% more expensive.

With a little tweaking this system could now produce defence games of any length by changing the Enemy Power and Gold exponents.

In actual fact – once I had a Power to Gold ratio I could calculate the Players total expected Power from the Sum of all Gold Spent – so I uses this expected power to generate my Enemy wave power. This keeps the enemy and player in close step without getting bogged down in maths.

HeavenGames: Spice Road Interview

I had a great time chatting to Scipii of HeavenGames about Spice Road, and he managed to squeeze a lot of details out of me about combat, town management and the trading gameplay. Check out the full interview here: HeavenGames: Spice Road Interview

Pondering the best methods for game design.

I manage all this with a pile of A3 Notebooks full of calculations and ideas, and piles of A4 with Lists (lots), Mindmaps (Rarely) and Flow diagrams. Then I scrunch all of this into a big bunch of Spreadsheets. If there is a better way I would love to know!

Complexity effects the player too: once a feature has been detailed – I have to decide if it will be fun or a chore when the player does it the 100th time.

I think the two tier approach of micro-management and auto-management is useful here. Let the player learn the basics of micro management, but then give them a choice of using auto when their power base expands and the micro would be overwhelming. Similarly micro-fighting and auto-resolution of battles lets a lot of the complexity buildup relax, leaving more time for having fun with the more interesting bits. Happily some chore-like activities are actually crazy addictive, and will stay in the final mix as a pleasurable time sink.