Post Mortem

It’s been a crazy trip but we finally got through the development lifecycle of Lithic! It turned out to be a great experience for us grad students and raised the bar for our future work. We’ve accrued much deeper knowledge in realistic production cycles, technical design, look development, player satisfaction testing, and gameplay streamlining; and, since we’ve gathered this knowledge, there are also mistakes we made along the way that we can share with our readers.

The Right Stuff

• Our scheduling was on-target. We create a set of goals we intended to deliver, and over the course of 11 weeks delivered on them.
• From the onset, we had a vision of discovery and an aesthetic to match that vision. We managed to stick to it, adding only when players needed more information.
• We had strong communication within teams; both the technical and art leads created concept designs that the programmers and artists respectively could follow, question, and implement effectively.

The Wrong Stuff

• Communication across teams was difficult. We lacked the skills in appointing members to submit content to the blogs, to reach out to potential playtesters, and to keep the group informed of its members’ progress.
• Not enough attention was given to informing users of their progress and available actions. The master inventory wall, for instance, was implemented in the last two weeks of development and could have used more time to be playtested.
• We decided to experiment with a different way of animating images across the cave walls: instead of using materials that travel on the wall’s UV, we used a complex light system that had many setbacks (textures can be reversed, their color palette per-light can’t have any range, and they can only take up a certain portion of the image canvas or else they stretch). In future developments, this system -- while an interesting way to solve the problem of making images flush against a surface -- would need to be complemented by more standard methods of texturing.

Meeting May 22

Attendees: Bingjie, Justin, Sanjay, Alex, Dan, Kirk,

• Running out of arrows
• replayable
• die animation before hitch out
• mountains don't convey needs
• more appearances of beast
• obstacles for chase
• turn off rules (let spear be used in more situations)
• tribes have different benefits
• skipping levels 
• relight fire
• berry benefits

May 27 Meeting

May 19 2013 - Meeting

Meeting from May 19 2013

Bingjie, Justin, Alex, Kirk, Daniel

Kirk's cave model is in-game
Will need a ceiling.

Dan's 2D Animations
-After Effect's Puppet Pin Tool

-First four cinematics
-Scene 1 -Dispora
-Scene 2 - Desert
-Scene 3 - Forest Collecting
-Scene 4 - Hunting

Justin
-bug fixing
-beast aggression display
-population display

Bingjie - camera swapping?

Alex - Water effects?

5/8/13 Meeting Notes

Meeting - May 8, 2013

Full Attendance

• New Web Build
• Issues:
• How to convey what can be done in a scene?
• How does player know how they're doing?
• Will the 2D/3D feel good?

We had a lot of progress today!

1. We came up with a quick solution to telling users during scenes how much stuff they have left to do. 
• In the background of every scene, there will be a mountain with three sections on it.
• This mountain's thee sections are (1) the village, (2) a first set of collectibles and (3) a second set of collectibles.
• Both sets of collectibles have two options: collect berries or hunt game
• for every 3 berries, only 1 game is required.
• However, hunting game may negatively impact the predator aggression meter
2. We sorted out the programming requirements for making the mountainside happen.
3. We assigned programming tasks to Bingjie and Sanjay
• Sanjay: Work on the respawn system and figure out how to make it work.
• Bingjie: Work on the bug with projectile shooting as well as put finishing touches on the start menu. 
4. We assigned some art tasks to Dan
• Generate some sample assets for the mountain side
• Work on overall scene level art and cutscene design
  

May 1 Meeting

Attendees: Dan, Justin, Bingjie, Alex, Kirk

Discussion Points:

• Finalized Inventory Measurements
• Predator Aggression [1 - 100]
• Village People  [1 - 100]
• Sticks  [1 - 100]
• Berries  [1 - 100]
• Meat  [1 - 100]
• Presence of Fire [Boolean]
• Created Village [Boolean]
• Found Forest [Boolean]
• Problem Points
• Player Feedback / Communicating Internal Parameters
• Proposed Solution:  central column that has repository representation of player stats.
• Not much carry-over between 2D and 3D Worlds
• Proposed Solution: Beast in shadows that (1) limits progression and (2) changes in behavior based on player's choices in scenes
• Baby's role is unclear
• Proposed Solution: 
• Make it a rare spawn in (1) 2D scenes AND (2) baby eyes in 3D shadow.
• Audio cues?
• Environmental Markings?
• Baby tracks in 2D.
• Keep in mind DIFFERENT SHADES of endings
• final painting, not beast behavior
• Domestication evolution idea - creature should have a form of evolution as well.
• Level Design Talking Points

For Next Week:

• Playable Demo
• Setup Survey [Web Build]
• Consistent Web-Build 

Meeting 4/29/13

Attendees: Kirk, Bingie, Justin, Dan, Alex

Notes:

• Discussed the cave layout
• Discussed the various 2-D interactions
• Discussed creating one large grid map for the 2-D
• Assigning group members production tasks
• Discussed how the interaction with the Beast at the end will play out.
• Parameters set in the 2-D interactions will determine whether player is presented with a bone knife or bone flute
• Showing that there is two optional outcomes, while only letting the player take one, will increase replayability
• Discussed Torch Relighting mechanic

Week To-Do List:

Kirk

• Character modeling for 3-D Beast and Baby
• Alter
• Torch

Dan

• Concept Art for Alter, Torch, Tools
• Misc. 2-D Assets
• Various 2-D grid layouts

Bingie

• Concept Art for Baby Beast
• Bone Flute
• Bone Knife

Justin

• Basic Set-ups for each gameplay style
• Coding for End scene
• Coding for each scene type
• Coding for Torch (Flickering out/Relight)

Alex

• Basic Cave layout
• Update Gantt chart

4/28/13 Meeting

Attendees: Dan, Justin, Jason, Bingjie, Alex

Meeting Points:

Agenda:

-Discuss Level Design

-Assigning assets to People

-Beast's Den Scene - polishing it & decide how to tie it into the story

-Scene/Mechanics Breakdown

-What we can have our eventual high-schooler focus on

Discussion:
map design concept
Scene Description Spreadsheet

• 3D Assets
• torch
• flute/bone/weapon/thing
• skeletons
• tribe remains
• Beast
• Baby beast
• Programming / Technical
• scene setup in that allows for array images to be background
• Shaman scene
• wasd controls dance movements
• background characters doing those movements in a certain order
• player follows movements

April 21 Meeting

Dan, Bingjie, Justin

• To get Bingjie and Dan into a coding spree, we started them off with some stuff:
• Bingjie: limit player movement in painting using high/low/left/right bounds. 
• Dan: mess around with making a cool stampede effect for the predators.
• We also watched a documentary and made a shared file of some ideas that came from it.
• Moving forward, tomorrow's meeting (@ 11 or so) should probably cover (1) the story's exact details, (2) ways that story can influence over the game, (3) how to introduce these concepts, and (4) how we can build this stuff up to some epic ending.

Meeting Apr 15

Attendees: Bingjie, Dan, Justin, Jason, Alex

• Map out plot, discuss item significance, flesh out level design concept.
• Plot
• Item Significance
• General Designs
• Shell could signify defensive/thoughtful nature
• pottery - creativity
• feather - escape / speed
• quartz - shaman / mysticism / connection with earth
• tooth - violence / warrior
• arrowheads - inventiveness, aggression
• fur - warmth, kindness, violence (used on animal)
• Level Design Concept

Meeting Apr 11, 13

Apr 11 Meeting (11:00 pm)
Attendees: Justin Patterson, Dan Newman, Jason Kirk

• Briefed Kirk on some of the new ideas
• offering mechanics
• Web-like plot structure
• Kirk Offered Other Game Mechanic Concepts:
• What if objects were more abstract?
• Offering to paintings could perhaps be swapped with placing abstract offerings inside a central unit/column (could be a tomb, etc)
• Placing items is a minigame of sorts where the object needs to be rotated to fit
• Perhaps have different ways each object can fit
• Different permutations have different effects on plot

Apr 13 Meeting (12:00 pm)
Attendees: Dan Newman, Justin Patterson

Discussion:

• Discussed narrative structure and its relationship to the programming / technical implementation
• Art style of  physical world relationship to story line
• https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7gSSV9g9vfCY2xrLTVYM0FucGc/edit?usp=sharing 

4/10/13 Meeting

Attendees: Dan, Justin, Alex, Bingjie, Kirk

• How does paintings work?
• 3 Parts
• Brief cutscene (Find cave, everyone is afraid)
• Then you can play; character tires to go into the cave and they can't or something
• Goal is to get the story across
• Then the varying ending scenario
• Central hub kind of thing?
• Everything together unlocks some sort of end-game
• wolf being projected by shadows (but actually rocks or something)
• wall is coming to get you
• Maybe solution is to put out the torch
• Maybe putting out the torch is the answer
• Previous people go into cave; maybe you see the signature (hand prints) of people throughout the cave
• Build up to a boss fight, but no boss fight
• Myst - lead-up to something opposite (collect pages and then destroy book)
• Possible setup for interaction
• Dropping objects into an alter as an offering
• Rooms consist of an Act; Act consist of many scenes.
• Each scene takes an offering.
• Based on offerings, the payoff is an epic Act painting that plays on the ceiling
• input story, output story right after, input, output right after
• Each input story with offering has its own output

April 9 Class Notes

Presentation Slides

• Dynamic narratives aren't necessarily moving from one to the other; object oriented notion of narrative is based off of object oriented programming; classes have variables. When you collected enough variables of a class you can enter another class (trigger that class). Having a certain inventory system triggers certain elements
• fire - important for many things; fighting and cooking and etc. Making food made us smarter (cascading effect); benefit of warmth, protection, striking fear, hurting oneself.
• What if we made it more object oriented; make it less like a series of linear narratives
• first person world puzzles issues?
• what does the player DO at each painting?
• One interaction per painting where users can choose to activate that bit of story -- more paintings needed, easier to manage
• OR multiple interactions per painting that unlock different parts of the story? -- fewer paintings needed, harder to manage
• CONCERN: this could turn into a bunch of little minigames and that's a bad thing. needs a basic mechanic that is relevant in all paintings
• walk, run, pick up stuff, choose direction, engage/not engage :
• sneak (not run) from a predator
• try to kill a predator that might fail, or go back to village to gather peeps
• characters dying might have issues down the line for the plot
• node sets ('classes') can be a collection of variables
• takeaway - come up with VERY simple mechanisms that work. simple things to do at various points.
• kill an animal, your pickup motion can "eat" it
• boss battle at the end is a bit meh.
• maybe the reason why this thing appears is because something has desecrated sacred ground - what if player can undo it?
• maybe if you do fight, you realize that fighting was the wrong answer
• what if beast has a baby?
• something that uncovers what the thing is
• class input -
• single input system to represent life is "gamey" but interesting
• varied gameplay isn't possible with limited time and limited resources
• what does the player KNOW at the beginning of the cave? why do they know they're in a cave?
• how does the viewer know that you're trying to tell them the story of the first person character?
• symbol on the wall matches symbol on the hand?
• letter to open the story?
• first painting needs to be important
• jpatt sidenote - what if first painting is map-like; what if there's some sort of painting cue along the walls to imply walking direction.
• How do they know to interact with the walls?
• how does the player know what the goal is?
• platforming permanence - doing things has impact on how you can progress (failure to get food in first person platforming sequence, etc). do these things also happen in paintings?
• decide how we want player to play through experience

4/8/13 Meeting Notes

Meeting: 4/8/2013
Attendees: Jason, Alex, Bingjie, Dan, Justin

Discussion Notes

• Maybe the remains of characters on the ground in REAL world have the memories
• What if with the first person game idea, when you lit the beacon you took agency of the characters in it?
• Shadow dynamics - like the boar's head shadow from a rock 
• Puzzling NOT platforming, perhaps (in the context of the painting aspect)

Story Discussion

• Original story - is village burning current or historical?
• Story's interactive parts should hark to interactions of the game's 3d world 
• Story perspective could shift between predator and human
• Before having the characters get attacked by the bear, have more story to establish the village and the characters
• Audio narrative?
• As told by the shaman, wallpainting character (maybe)

GAME BEGINS

• Player knows nothing. Torch on wall. Walk up and pick up since NOTHING else is visible. Upon lifting, all of the paintings become slightly luminescent (and therefore giving the player places to move toward).
• Paintings have family tribe doing things and struggling for a few stories (making fire, surviving winter, etc)
• Then bear has his sequence later in

Apr 6 Meeting

Venue: Google Hangout
Time: 7:30 PM
Attendees: Dan Newman, Justin Patterson

Discussion Points:

• Adding "gray area" to the gameplay
• Shaman/Warrior dynamic is very binary, and its implementation and implications are unclear
• Perhaps focusing more on puzzles that have societal implications
• Puzzle Mechanics:
• Transmission of ideas (symbols)
• Exchanging ideas between warring factions to find common ground?
• Etc. just spitballing
• Physical nature of cave
• More narrative dynamic
• Perhaps have the pause/zoom-out be pangea, each continent a different tribe
• Each level is interaction with a tribe, these tribes could have relationships with one another (pos/neg/neutral)
• Perhaps a central monument that is either awesome looking or falling apart based on how well you unify everyone
• Did super predator hurt all of these tribes in some way?
• Perhaps there is a painter/painting dynamic
• The painter can destroy/create things in the world
• each painted object has a color that represents a culture or a tribe
• erasing one of those things weakens the tribe and thus takes their image away from pangea over time
• Light is still our most powerful narrative and visual symbol
• Maybe walking in a straight line, illuminating parts of the story (there are two stories, your seeing parts of both stories)
• What if this is 3D, the character is a caveman with a torch
• You can light certain beacons that initiate animation on the walls next to them
• Or, you can simply view stills of those paintings if you don't light their beacon (getting less of the story)
• 
  

Spring Term Week 1 Notes

• Our focus for the term should be to push the envelope in regards to the narrative of our game.  

• Currently the weakest area of our game is the player's decision on how to play the game: violently vs. passively.
• It's like trying to make two good game experiences vs. one.  
• Also, seems simplistic rather than creating a more complex narrative and creating a drive to act and respond a certain way.

• Suggestions
• Give the player different strategic choices throughout the game that influence the play.  
• Borrow from history
• Look into various empires throughout history and their philosophies on how to rule the people they conquered.
• Example: Persians

• Try to build up a history (this could play a major role in the game)
• Choices that generate parts of the narrative further along
• Example: By killing the chiefs son, war breaks out between tribes. 
• Could even have missing story chunks as if those parts were told with shadows/shadow puppets.
• Play up the language of the cave as a visual narrative.

• Symbol mechanic could be used to build a Rosetta Stone that is revealed later. 

By next week, we need to come up with ways to push our narrative further using.  We need to figure out what the player knows, what the player sees, and what the player does.  

We can use storyboards, the game mechanisms, and the choices made throughout the game to describe our planned changes.  We need to be able to supply a solid example of what one play-through of the might be like.  

End of Term!

Phew!

Team TFU has been hard at work on our (as of yet untitled) cave game project. We've gotten an alpha build finished that successfully shows a platforming adventure about a cave painting discovering his identity. This identity fluctuates between warrior and shaman, rage and calm, and the player's actions influence (1) the behavior of the villagers he encounters,  (2) the ways they can deal with obstacles, and (3) and the structure and syncopation of the platforms.  A full detail on this design choice and more can be found in the slides of our closing presentation.

It's been a great term and after a week's break, the team is going to really get the ball rolling and push for a beta build in the coming weeks. 

Feel free to play our alpha and leave feedback in the comments of this post!  The alpha can be found here.

2/18/13 Meeting

• Assets
• Modular Platforms (Bingjie)
• Background Plane (Kirk)
• Multiple planes per level that represent different platforming elements
• Tribal Characters - TEMPLATE (Dan)
• Troggles (Dan)
• Chieftain (Dan)
• Shaman 
• Warrior
• Villager (repeatable)
• Staff (Kirk?)
• Symbols (Dan)
• Shaman Symbols (curly)
• Warrior Symbols (gnarly)
• The Beast; The Shadow (Dan)
• Predators (Bingjie)
• If you meet a kind person (level 2) and you only have level 1 shaman, you can't mix with them and they become violent
• Research Platform Programming (Justin)
• Animation Research (Alex)
• Program Architecture (Fin)
• Tool Dev (fin & justin)
• Powerups
• Warrior
• Throw Spear?
• Stronger Spear
• charge spear
• Shaman
• Shield
• Stronger communication skills
• flash of light to solve certain puzzle

Tuesdays with Diefenbach

• This class is about innovation, pushing boundaries of game design
• Interesting to him: Locations changing based on user choices (tribals becoming more violent toward you, environment evolving based on actions, etc.)
• Expand on this a bunch!
• Maybe not killing, but also have other "mean" options like enslaving etc
• Pushing more of the design aspect in terms of what changes
• How can we explore cave painting thematically?
• Research cave painting locations more (e.g., the ones in France and their detail)
• Interesting to him: Wall paintings interacting with the PHYSICAL world, how the real world's effects the painting
• Torch on wall for instance would light everything up
• Choose one all the way of the interesting things, or a bit of both
• Both directions could be even taken for THESIS stuff (two different theses)
• Put the two directions back together in the end
• He doesn't care about where the platform game - wherever it goes, if it's in Unity or Adobe Air it has universal deployment
• Some issues with porting but it's expandable
• Trying to release it goes beyond course
• This is really to build up resume

Notes for Feb 17 Meeting

instead of 2 paths, have 1 path with both challenges intertwined and they choose what things they want to do; they can switch between powers on the fly; meeting with spiritual chief in the end you can power yourself up in one class or the other

Maybe contact paul to talk about development stuff (unity multiplatform dev, etc)

DISCUSSION POINT: meeting with paul

class - shaman, warrior, in-between character

controls: button to jump, button to shaman move, button to warrior, button to run

characters have bad and good symbols

skill tree on chieftain antlers; warrior vs. shaman

shaman does his gandalf pose, symbol comes together if the other character is good; if the character is bad the gandalf pose pisses them off and they hit you

Assets:

Dan: Concepts, Tile game, sketches of different stuff to model

Group: Level Design; Maps 1 and 2 [Not Procedural]

[Stealth game and Killing Options both available in levels]

List of Assets

List of Badguys, Good guys, rescued characters, platform types

Grid-based level design, drawing maps

List of variables (anything that can happen and how to make it happen)

Concepts for legend (in-between levels screen); spiritual tree head scenes should be mapped out and understood

Week 4

MDA Paper; http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf

1. game mechanics and balance are the focus of this round of physical prototyping. Hence the mechanics of your *entire* game should be prototyped as detailed as possible.

mechanics: behaviors and control mechanisms afforded to the player within a game context. Together with the game's content (levels, assets and so on) the mechanics support overall gameplay dynamics. 

some changes:
bigger grid, more emphasis on platforming
character does auto-illuminate upon approaching
upon reaching unknown, cutscene memory of last encounter plays
upon revealing unknown, agency leans to character, he tries to do something by default and you can choose to intervene in a time frame

2. use the MDA methodology to guide your design (I sent out the article in my last email). Think about what is the main aesthetics you want to have and how do you design your mechanics and therefore dynamics to achieve that. For those of you who has a relatively complete demo, this is very important. Change some of your rules to see how the resulting dynamics and aesthetics change accordingly. Please clearly lay out your MDA in your presentation, and present the results of how you changed the rules (yes, you have to play it using different rules rather than simply hypothesizing the affects.) Find at least two external people to play your prototype and document this process (e.g., photos).

Mechanics describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.  
Dynamics describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others 
outputs over time. 
Aesthetics describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game 
system.  

Aesthetics: (Choose the ones that relate to game)

1. Sensation
  Game as sense-pleasure 
2. Fantasy
  Game as make-believe
3. Narrative 
   Game as drama
4. Challenge
  Game as obstacle course
5. Fellowship
  Game as social framework
6. Discovery
  Game as uncharted territory 
7. Expression
  Game as self-discovery 
8. Submission
  Game as pastime

3. find 3-5 similar games and study their game mechanics. What works and what doesn't?

4. flesh our a weekly digital production plan (e.g., Gantt chart) for the rest of the term

Cave Tale Paper Prototype Description

1. Player begins with: [4 health], [fire], [2 spears], [2 offerings]. They need to reach the end of the board game with at least 1 health.
2. Player moves across a boardgame style board; each space is traversed by rolling dice (rolling 3 moves 3 spaces, for instance)
3. Upon encountering a "?" the player has a chance of getting an item.  Rolling the die, if the results are:
1. [1, 3, or 5] = Spear
2. [2, 4, or 6] = Offering
4. When a player lands on an Unknown board space:
1. (1) By default, beast or tribal have an equal chance of appearing.
2. (2) Player can [Illuminate], [Spear], [Offer]
1. (2a) If Player illuminates, it then shifts to the unknown's turn.  The unknown has a chance of attacking or remaining docile; by default it's a 50/50 shot.  Attacking can be broken down as: Predators and Tribals each can do 1 damage to the health bar, Super predators can do 2 damage.
2. (2b) The breakdown of spears and offerings to Unknowns is below:
1. Predator
1. Spear + predator = [+1 Offering], [+10% Chance of Attacking], [+1 Predator to Unknown Pile]
2. Offer + predator = [-10% Chance of Attacking]
2. Super Predator
1. Spear + Super Predator = [+2 Offering], [+20% Chance of Attacking], [+1 Super Predator to Unknown Pile]
2. Offer + Super Predator = [-20% Chance of Attacking], [-1 Super Predator to Unknown Pile]
3. Tribal
1. Spear + Tribal = [+10% Chance of Attacking], [-1 Tribal from Pile], [+2 Offering OR Spear]
2. Offer + Tribal = [-10% Chance of Attacking], [+1 Tribal from Pile], [+1 Offering OR Spear]
5. When landing on a "!" Space:
1. IF you helped a tribesman last turn, then [+1 Health]
2. IF you offered to a predator OR were aggressive towards a tribesman, then [-1 Health]
3. Note: "!" only have this effect after the first Unknown Encounter.

Cave Tale Paper Prototype

Cave Tale Paper Prototype
Meeting Jan 21, 2013
Attended by Full Team

• Game Structure
• Players - 1 Player vs. AI
• Objectives - Reach the campsite at the base of the cave with the stick of fire.
• Procedures - 
• Player encounters "Unknowns": shadowy entities whose intentions are unclear.
• Select one option among [Illuminate] or [Spear]
• Illuminate reveals what the entity is
• Tribesman - can be useful as an asset, they have resources like spears and can help during platforming sequences
• Predator - dangerous beasts that can be killed and harvested for meat or avoided using bait
• Game - Killed for meat, less dangerous
• Spear will automatically destroy it
• Once revealed, player can make [offering of meat], [use spear], or other options as the game progresses
• Player traverses platforming sequences that compose of the cave's structural makeup, e.g., they jump across stalagmites.
• Rules
• The more damage done to one species, the more aggressive and numerous they become
• Each room has a roulette-style chance for what unknowns are
• The player's behavior influences the design of the agonist
• Resources
• Spears, Meat, Flame
• Gameplay Mechanic Visualization
• World System
• Player Activities
• Rewards/Meters
• Why is this subjective?
• Cave Tale dynamically reacts to user actions in a way that not only affects the gameplay but the narrative structure. 
• The choices players make directly influences the outcome of the game; as the light expands so does the agonist's understanding of the world the player leads it through. 

Jan 18 Meeting

January 18 Meeting Minutes

Objective

Discuss paper prototypes. Decide on general subjective game to design for and draft before Monday meeting.

Attendees

• Dan
• Justin

Discussion

• Dan's Design
• Unknown encounters, illuminate or attack?
• Random chance of being a deer, tribesman, predator, superpredator(!!)
• Doing attacks versus illumination influences game
• Tribesmen give you symbols for future powers? 
• Maybe they give wildcards that are used in a deck of powers
• Justin's Design
• Player is the painter; trying to lead the caveman to the end of the cave. 
• Player controls movement and jumping of the caveman painting as well as the brush stroke of the painter
• Caveman painting has no offense, but the painter can slash out animals and plants
• Damaging trees vs. damaging animals
• The more damage to trees, the more difficult the nature obstacles
• The more damage to animals, the more fierce they become 
• Depending on who painter damages more, the look of the caveman changes to match
• If caveman painting takes damage, his light fades and makes progression more difficult

Requirements for Next Meeting