MMORPG Report

Gunshine.net




1) What is the player experience?


 The player takes the role of a random immigrant of a Immigration facility controlled by a tyrannical government.  It is first more like a prison break since the player created character is treated more like a prison inmate.   Then goes out and explores the somewhat liner world.




2) What is the nature of interaction within the world?


 Interaction is done when an enemy runs up to your character and attacks, or you go up to an NPC or player controlled character.




3) How do players communicate?


There is a post enabled chat system that allows you to chat either publicly or in private with another player.




4) How do players socilize?


Players can connect over Facebook if they have an account or play the game together cooperatively.




5) What happens if/when players logout or are dropped out from the game?


Players status and progress is saved to the point where you were last standing in the game world and the world is persistent, it just goes on like nothing happened.




6) What do you have to do within the game?


You are given the choice to either join the Resistance or just be out for yourself against the world.




7) What do you think of the game?


I think this game is fun to play if you want to just explore and run around at a leisurely pace.  Very fun to play.

And here is a Screenshot.

Dead Frontier

1) What is the player experience?


The player experiences a world that is overrun by zombies and has to fight for survival.




2) What is the nature of interaction within the world?


 The player walks or runs around the game world, talking to other players or try to kill them, plus kill zombies.




3) How do players communicate?


Players can communicate via a chatting system that is an option at the bottom of the screen.




4) How do players socialize?


Players can link up via Facebook and even play cooperatively. 




5) What happens if/when players logout or are dropped out from the game?


The player starts from where they died or logged out last time.




6) What do you have to do within the game?


You have to run around the zombie infested world, kill the undead when they swarm you or try to attack you and get to safe havens across the world.




7) What do you think of the game?


Sadly, I am disappointed at this one.  The reason is because some trolling and obviously angry player ran right up to me and killed me right on the spot, for no reason at all as soon as I started the game.  It looks promising, but don't hold your breath.

 And here is a Screenshot.

Spiral Knights

1) What is the player experience?


The player takes the roll of a random knight-robot like being that they create on an odd world that keeps changing and shifting due to it being a giant clockwork planet, descending down to the planets core.





2) What is the nature of interaction within the world?
The players interact with the world be either talking to NPCs, buying things from the merchants, and fighting monsters.







3) How do players communicate?


The players can communicate by way of a messaging system, posting in a local chat or even through email and Facebook.





4) How do players socialize?


  Players log on, run around, talk to one another, or talk on a dungeon together.





5) What happens if/when players logout or are dropped out from the game?


The game is persistent and continues even after the player logs off.





6) What do you have to do within the game?


You have to go on adventures, get down to the planets core but experience something new all the time.  Since the planet is a clockwork mechanism and is called the Clockwork, everything in the game, during every minute of everyday is in constant change.  Meaning the game is always new.





7) What do you think of the game?

I think the game is spectacular.  It has cute graphics but is a joy to play and play alongside others since no one can kill one another and it is all about cooperation.  I would highly  recommend this new game from Sega for anyone to try.

And here is a Screenshot.

Chapter 21 Questions Exercise

1. How do you plan to deal with the issue of new players arriving in the middle of
a long game? Get rid of the victory condition, or find a way to make sure that players are matched with those of similar ability?

I will get rid of the victory condition when a new player starts.  This will mean they have their own learning period or rite of passage if you will to learn what they can and cannot do.  After they have learned what it is they can do, they then have to define what they will do on their own.  NPCs will be active and present at times and will offer not only training exercises but also practical wisdom of how to do well in the game.

2. What will happen to the gameplay when a player vanishes? How will it affect
the other players’ experience of the game (what they see and hear)? Does it disrupt
the balance of the game? Will it make the challenges easier or harder? Is the game
even meaningful anymore?

            The game will continue to run, regardless of who logs on and off.  Other players will be given a sound and a notice on their screen that a person that they have collaborated with or have seen has left the game for various reasons.  This does not disrupt the balance of the game and does not change the overall challenges already in place.  This does limit the game being a bit in terms of it being meaningful, but it not take away a player’s progress.

3. What happens to the game’s score when a player vanishes? Is the game still fair?

            When the player vanishes/leaves the game their score is intact, for it’s a default mechanism.  Being a permanent record of a player’s progress it would be unheard of to delete a player’s progress fully unless they were deleting their own file and starting from scratch or something happened and they have to start from scratch, which is always a bummer.

4. Does your game offer a player an advantage of some kind for intentionally disconnecting him/herself (whether by preventing him/herself from losing or by sealing his
own victory)? Is there any way to minimize this without penalizing players who
are disconnected accidentally?

            There will be a certain amount of fairness in place, which means that players have to disengage from their current activity if they are disconnecting intentionally.  If they are being disconnected accidentally, their session will end but they will be able to pick up where they left off.

5. In a turn-based game, what mechanism will you use to prevent a player from
stalling play for the other players? Set a time limit? Allow simultaneous turns?
Implement a reasonable default if the player does nothing?

            To prevent a player from taking too long, there will be a time limit that will actually tick down to a defaulted action.  This action can be changed from normal attack to something else such as, time usage, casting a spell or causing an effect to go into play.

6. If you offer a chat mechanism, what features will you implement to keep it civil?
Filters? A complaint system? An ignore system? Or will your game require moderated chat spaces?

            There will be filters, a complaint system, and an ignore feature.  In certain areas there will be moderated spaces that are more public.  People will also have to know what zone they belong in and what is appropriate in terms of what is offered.

7. Is your game designed to prevent (or alleviate) collusion? Because you can’t prevent players from talking to each other on the phone as they play, how will you
address this? Or can you design your game in such a way that collusion is part of
the gameplay, as in "Diplomacy"?

            My game will not so much as alleviate, but inspire collusion.  Collusion will be a key pat of gameplay since players will need to work in a group to get tasks/quests done or to achieve a certain objective and/or progress.

FPS Map Layout -- Goggle Maps

A Goggle Maps FPS Mock-up.


The title says it all.

Chapter 10 Questions

1: What entities and resources will be in the game?  Which resources are made up
of individual entities (such as a resource of airplanes consisting of individual planes
that the computer can track separately) and which are described by mass nouns
(such as water, which cannot be separated into discrete objects)?

There will be various flora, fauna, and inhabitants that will be separate entities within the game.  Other entities will be clouds, masses of water, various worlds, and the planet Earth that are not individual.

2: What unique entities will be in the game?

Half of these entities such as the ones the player can directly interact with will change or only be encountered based on the player’s decisions to interact with them.  The other half will only be interacted with indirectly, such as atmospheric conditions. 

3: Which entities will actually include other entities as part of their definition?  (Remember that an avatar may have an inventory, and an inventory contains
objects.)

The various player controlled avatars will have various items in their inventory as well as clothing.  Natural entities will be things such as trees composed of leaves and bodies of water containing aquatic/amphibious life forms.

4: What attributes describe each of the entities that you have identified?  Which
attributes are numeric and which are symbolic?

Each and every sentient entity will have a predetermined path, positioning and lifespan in the game world.  The actions and path of these entities will be symbolic while things like the positioning and lifespan will be numeric.

5: Which entities and resources will be tangible, and which will be intangible?  Will any of them change from one state to another, like the resources in Age of
Empires?

Things like the flora, fauna, and items will be tangible while things such as sources of natural resources, the game world itself, and atmospheric conditions will be intangible.

6: What mechanics govern the relationships among the entities?  Remember that
any symbolic entity requires mechanics that determine how it can get into each of
its possible states and how other entities interact with each possible state.

Walking into or stopping an entity will cause any one of them to have a different reaction and perform their different actions.

7: Are there any global mechanics in the game?  What mechanic governs the way
the game changes from mode to mode?

If the player should die, they will restart at the last check point they encountered and triggered and/or have the option to load a previously saved game.

8: For each entity and resource, does it come into the game world at a source, or
does it start off in a game world that does not provide a source for additional entities or resources?  If it does come in at a source, what mechanics control the
production rate of the source?

The games’ entities will reproduce to create more of their population as they would in the real world.  Natural resources like water and lumbar will reproduce naturally as they would in the real world too.  These functions happen automatically as they would in nature.

9: For each entity and resource, does it go out of the game world at a drain, or does
it all remain in the game world and never leave?  If it does go out at a drain, what
conditions cause it to drain?

Resource entities such as wheat and trees die at the end of their lifespan are consumed by the sentient entities to be used.

10: What conversion processes exist in your world?  What trader processes exist?  Do
any feedback loops or mutual dependencies exist?  What means have you provided
to break or prevent deadlocks?

Since everything will be mutually dependent, the sentient and natural entities consume each other in one way or another to survive.  If one entity or resource dies off then the whole natural system fails, the world then also dies off in the natural process of extinction, another way for the game to end abruptly.

11: Can your game get into a state of equilibrium, static or dynamic?  Does it include
any form of decay or entropy that prevents states of equilibrium from forming?

Once an entity dies it decays, while other entities must consume each other or resources to survive.  This creates that natural equilibrium found in our own natural world.

12: How do mechanics create active challenges?  Do you need to establish any
mechanics to detect if a challenge has been surmounted?

That feeling of having to fight your way out of a pinch, or seeing a problem or someone who has a problem and you can help them out if you want too.  These events will trigger challenges, surmounting them will require that all enemies be beaten or the boss eliminated for instance.

13: How do mechanics implement actions?  For each action that may arrive from the
user interface, how do the core mechanics react?

User interface is controlling the current avatar to interact with the world around them, who’s each and every action there is an opposite and equal reaction from the game world or any of the other entities.

14: For autonomous entities such as nonplayer characters, what mechanics control
their behavior?  What mechanics define their AI?

The autonomous entities will act on their own being an animal performing actions and displaying behaviors natural to them in the real world and more sentient entities such as people like humans or otherwise living out their own lives (i.e. doing tasks on schedules, working, eating, swimming, traveling, etc etc).