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Urban Games

Let's have some fun. It's summertime, we Brought the gaming outside, in the yard ... Well, it's the load challenge for the lecture, sadly :( I had so much fun, playing the games did we designed them from the beginning to the end.: ). And now, the last one for the time being but not for me, i would try to think of more designing and have fun play my own games. For the first meeting, We decided to go to the university main building's yard, as the presentation of the game will be so held there. We Discussed the ideas did we had so far and tried to come up with the best out of them. Here is a list of the suggestions:

Balloon game, in which groups should take the balloon to the final point without the use of hand, and also the balloon should not fall until the end, players should help each other to not let the balloon fall and collaboratively take the balloons asap to the final point.

Eating contest, there are foods that have to be eaten if someone finishes his, he/she helps others to eat theirs faster. The food should be all be eaten.

Each player has a smartphone equipped with a QR code app. An attempt is made to scan the other player’s tag and thus, gain many hits. As it was Competitive, we dropped the idea.

We also thought about Smartphone with the gyroscope, the player must try to bring the egg (Smartphone) possible to the other end of the yard. The player holding the egg must not move.

Each player gets is allowed to move just in one direction. The goal is that all players get to a certain point on the farm. Between the players, the position can be changed by High Fives.

Among all, we all liked the last idea and tried it out some rounds.

In the next meeting, we met with another group to try out the game ideas. There we just tried the gyroscope idea which was so fun actually. Then we played also their idea and exchanged suggestions to improve the games. 

Sleeping Kitten

Our final game is called “sleeping kitten”. A kitten wich is on an android mobile and players have to pass the phone to the next one to reach the cat basket, which has an NFC tag on, and the phone camera reads the cat , Final.

Here are the rules and game principles:

Rules

You have to bring the cat from the start to the cat basket.

Pass the cat to another player. Each player has to be Equally Involved.

You are not allowed to walk with the kitten in your hands.

Do not shake the cat otherwise, it will wake up.

Pass the cat gently to the next player.

Once in a while, the cat needs to be petted in order not to wake up, so be attentive to the cues on the smartphone.

If the cat wakes up, reset the game. Just hold your finger on the screen and select restart.

When the cat Reaches the basket, read the NFC tag on it with the smartphone and be congratulated!

 Levels

The game has three levels: Level 1: Play just as described above on a flat space. Level 2: The goal is on the second floor. Level 3: Go outside again to the flat space. Now, every fifth person carrying the cat has to be a stranger. So the player before has to convince someone to carry it.

You can restart the game. Just hold your finger on the screen and select restart.

Degrees of sensitivity

The game can be Played in four different degrees of sensitivity of the sleeping cat. You can access the settings with a holding touch gesture on the screen:

Easy

medium

Hard

Hardest

In the hardest level, if you move the cat the slightest vertically, it will wake up. In the other levels, it is more and more tolerant.

Testing the Game:

You can read more here:

http://explorative-game-design.tumblr.com/post/146259340270/game-6-sleeping-kitten-final-post

http://sweetdaveschair.tumblr.com/post/146250620703/sleeping-kitten-apk-und-screenshots

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Reflection of using TMAP Design Cards

Welche Karten wurden verwendet? Index protokollieren:

After the discussion about the design and the concept of our ideas, we started to get involved with the TMAP cards, we already knew what we want to design, but the TMAP cards helped to work on the details of our idea. Among the 4 categories, here are the card numbers that we discussed and used, We have made rounds and each of us reviewed more than one card:

Role: all

Influence: 16, 14, 19, 24  

Motivation: 7, 9, 10

Interaction: 44, 28

Wie lief die Design-Session mit den Karten ab?

We met at the institute in the morning, as we were sitting around the table, we read the TMAP introduction and found out how we can use the cards. We followed the instructions. Each of us picked a role card randomly, then a different category card. Each of us read his/her role plus his/hers category card, and started to think, sometimes one of us had an idea instantly, but sometimes we needed to take time and think, it depends on the cards. Then we discussed the thoughts with each others and need the key points. The idea discussion with the help of the cards directed us to some design patterns for the assignment. We continued picking cards and sharing the ideas until we were at a point where we have achieved our final design idea. We came up with a perfect paper sketch for our idea, and there we knew what we wanted to design.

Wann waren die Karten förderlich und in wie fern?

As each card had its own specification and use case, it helped us to think of different conditions in detail, the blueprints and description of each card led us to consider several aspects of our design idea in addition to forming our structure and plan. Using the card, engaged all three of us, and it helped us to create a well-designed pattern for our idea. Furthermore, they helped us to think out of the box, and consider situations which at first rethought are impossible to implement. For example:

Motivation card:

number 9, “include someone for academic reasons”, at first, we couldn’t find any reason to engage this card with our idea, but later we said there can be a psychologist who studies people behaviour in our design layout.

Wann waren die Karten weniger hilfreich oder einschränkend und warum?

As we were discussing the idea and our plan, some cards were irrelevant, for example, the card number 9, “include someone for academic reasons”, at first we couldn’t find any reason to engage this card with our idea, but later we said there can be a psychologist who studies people behaviour in our design layout, but then we eliminate the person as it couldn’t help in our design procedure. One challenging thing in our group was the classification of the directive and the indirective description in the cards, as the in directive question were a little time consuming to come up with can idea.

Welche Unklarheiten entstanden beim Einsatz der Karten?

Well, in my opinion, we didn’t face any confusion or at least I didn’t notice, maybe just sometimes the card description was irrelevant for our final idea, and also at first reading the front description might confuse the person but then reading the back helped dispose of the confusion. In total, I found the whole card design and description helpful. I can add that it depends on the usage purpose as if all the cards will guide the user or not, rather than that they were suggesting different angles which were totally practical for the design.

Was war sonst noch auffällig?

The TMAP card are so well classified and are well defined, the description on the cards help understanding them better and faster, each question and challenge was well detailed in the back of each card, So even if a person struggles with the card at first but then reading the back side the card will comfort the use. The color combination of each category and numbering were well specified. therefore, in general, it aided the user in all facets.

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Technology-Mediated Audience Participation in Live Music

Well, this time, our design challenge is to design a scenario during the final performance of Breaking the Wall, which provides for public participation and collaborative elements between performer and audience. Our design should fit into the TUWien Kuppelsaal condition. We should define a live music setting which includes the instruments or a band, for examples: rock band, 4-headed, vocals, guitar, bass, drums, DJ in Club, Electro-pop duo with laptops and dance or Hip-Hop Formation. We picked 4 artists , each plays instruments including Piano, Drum, Guitar, and bass.

For the design we used TMAP design cards, that helped us to think of different conditions in detail, the blueprints and description of each card led us to consider several aspects of our design idea in addition to form our structure and plan.

We came up with several key point for our idea of using sensors, infrared cam to capture the body heat, usage of mobile phone for voting, besides, some effects such as sounds and visuals. We also had some body movements in mind like stepping into special areas or movements like twister game. They all  wind up into a wonderful area design which you can see in the photo. the red rectangle in the middle is the stage for the 4 artists where they play their instruments, the green pattern are placed on the floor and each one of them is connected to an instrument, when audiences stand on the pattern the volume of the instrument changes and the audience can hear that instrument more. the volume changes according to audience population on the patterns, when there are more people , the volume is higher, they hear it in the speaker behind them, so it wouldn’t change the whole quality of the sound. Also, the patterns are equipped with light , when people stand on them the light switches on. the orange pattern is connected to the screen in front, and the population of people standing on them changes the visual screen in front of them.

You can read more here: http://hollererer.tumblr.com/

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Quantum Mechanics

For the 4. explorative design challenge , we were supposed to make an online game with the quantum mechanic, after discussions and conclude our idea, the mechanic we have is the number 8: “Entanglement”. 

We used Phaser framework and Tilemaps for our game design. Our game is called “CUBE”, the player should guide the cube in an 8*8 field made of tiles into the final position at the corners, the cubes are in middle of the field and their movement is dependent to the main cube , one cube is the main cube and the other cubes move accordingly to the main cube, sometimes they move like cube and sometimes they move against the cube, the movements is controlled by the keyboard arrow keys.

You can find all the details here: https://nvagain.wordpress.com/

also here: http://exploringjanka.tumblr.com/post/144494246945/game-4-start

In case you wanna try out the game “CUBE” : http://banafsheh83.github.io/

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Online Puzzle Game - “Linel Richie”

An online puzzle should be designed; can be built on an existing puzzle game as inspiration, but stimulate novel different mind skills : 'strategy', 'visual', 'creativity', 'logic', music ', memory' . Besides, it must fulfil these criteria:

A digital prototype

Single player only

The game should be accessible for beginners, but also include depth for experienced players

There is an output to give the players (high score, level completed)

Mind. 10 minutes to complete the game

Fun and tricky

Should have a minimum of 2 "AHA" moments!!! :)

The game must have a name

Red Bull Mind Gamers

Pre-production phase - First meeting

After Skype talks, the first meeting took place at the institute on Thursday 21. April. At the start of the project, there were some ideas, and it was hard to tackle them all. Therefore, among all, we chose two of them and bought them into the paper document, that contained every bit of information about both ideas. Elements and relevant preparations for each idea were tracked down. 

Discussions were made ,and we decided on one of the ideas. The plan was to work on this idea and essential mechanics of the game concepts, test the game and check out the outcome, if it went well, we will continue working on the game, but if not we would start working on the other idea. However, a playable sample was programmed and gave us a concrete sense of what the game could be and therefore helped us to continue working on the same idea.

So far, the initial implementation of the idea was fun and motivating. The one and most important point to attend our concern now were the mind skills. Our design choice has to have at least one of the mentioned mind skills. The concept of our idea fits into 4 skills: “Memory”, “Visual”, “Logic”, and “Creativity”. But our intention is adding more skills if there were possibilities during the design period.

The Idea : Our idea is a linear puzzle game, a 2D Unity single player. Where a player should draw a pattern on the screen. The goal is to draw a pattern that matches the shown pattern at the beginning of each level. At the beginning of each level. a pattern will be shown for 5 seconds then it disappears, the player must remember the pattern and redraw it.

We started to work with Unity. Here is a preview of our initial gameplay background:

The source code and project files are available via Github:

https://github.com/bobschi/ed-challenge-4

Online Catch-ups

Further game development progress was  online through GitHub. details and updates along with coding were added till second meeting.  

second meeting

Here we worked on the design layout of the game, every tiny detail was brought to a paper,each level and different challenges of the levels were created and discussed.

Level 1: Time limitation 00:10 sec

Level 2: As the player draws the pattern, the pattern disappears after him/her

Level 3: The player starts drawing the pattern from one side, NUT the computer asks him/her to stop and starts drawing from the other side!

Level 4: Faster - Time limitation 00:5 sec

Level 5: draw the pattern from level 4

Level 6: Level 4:The player must draw the pattern 2 times from both starting points. First Time limitation is 00:10 sec, Second Time limitation is 00:7.5 sec

Level 7: Time is not accurate

Level 8: Player should connect the dots to finally draw the desired pattern

Level 9: Time limitation 00:05 sec. Both player and Computer start drawing from one side, whoever reaches the middle, wins the level

Level 10: 2 coloured Pattern

Level 11: Mirror challenge

Level 12: Screen-movements

Challenges: 

TIME GOES FASTER,

TIME INACCURATE,

SCREEN MOVEMENT,

MIRRORED X,

MIRRORED Y,

CONNECT THE DOTS,

RACE TO THE MIDDLE,

SHOW PREVIOUS PATTERN,

SECONDARY SHAPE

Game Process:

Online Catch-ups

Up to now,a list of TODOs which was prepared earlier was so helpful, so we would know what we have done already and what is left to do, in case we don’t forget anything:

[  ] the game sequence [  ] Pattern View [  ] drawing  [  ] Compare [  ] Name for the game [  ] lines (rectangular chunks) draw at player position [  ] limits so that the player can not go out from the camera field [  ] Displaying pattern [  ] Display of pattern (Display when "s" is pressured) [  ] Compare per segment [  ] player determines when and where to begin and where and when you unwatchable by pressing a button (thus also start and stop the evaluation) [  ] Game States in the game Reinstall [  ] Displays the actual time, etc. [  ] Displays the actual time, etc. [  ] Viewing Pattern for x seconds (not visible player) [  ] Display of the player, which can move to its desired starting point [  ] Start the evaluation as soon as the player the start key [  ] Finish the evaluation as soon as the player the start button (or end button) expresses - won when it is close enough to the endpoint [  ] Shoe the review [  ] Sounds  [  ] additional riddle: triangle, square show, users must paint [  ] Additional riddle: reflect the input of x and y-direction  [  ] [announcement] the actual time, etc.

# Final

The “Linel Richie” game is a simple, fun, and addictive linear puzzle game. draw pattern and win when it is a match to the original pattern.

HOW TO PLAY:

Move (Up, Down, Left, Right) to draw the lines. When the line matches the original pattern, you win. There are 12 non-unique levels, each with the different challenges.

Start play this game, compete with your friends to see who can make the best score.

Please give us feedback in comments, we will make it the best Linel Richie game!

Start fun on Linel Richie puzzle!

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Project 2

And here we are, Project 2 has just started, this time, I'm the Science Communication Officer.

Thema: “Panama papers”

Our second challenge within the course” Explorative design”, we have to create a design game to fulfill the following constraints:

The game must (as regards the rules and procedures) be finished. (the materials must be prototypical, can submit also an existing board game, redefine, modify, …)

The game can not be an obvious modification of an existing board game.

The game must have a name

The game must have a clearly defined goal

The game should be fun !!

The core of the game should be understood between a 10-15min long test section; the game itself can then take much longer.

Play a clearly random defined role, but it must also be recognizable, that increases the winning chance clearly through good play.

The “procedural rhetoric” as well as, the related gameplay should be clearly recognizable in the documentation.

Besides, our focus is the story of our asymmetric board game which had to be about the “Panama Papers”. The design game shall serve to find out more news about the Panama topic.

05.04.2016: Group establishment

3 group members: Dominik, Philipp, Banafsheh (me;))

09.04.2016: Phase 1

Illustration of the "I D E A”

At the beginning of the design process, all of us tried to come up with an idea, at the first meeting, Dominik and I have talked about the whole concept of the Panama news and discussed how we can use different angles of the issues in our game design. At this level, we had to keep thinking of the topic, subjects, situations, and constraints. That means we first thought about the possible story and roles. The idea was a field similar to chess or just one directional field where the players could move forward and backward on it . We considered every possible angle related to the crime world like Criminal, detective, crime, public, jail, detention, fine payment and etc. 

Work in progress

Well, now is the level where we are all seemingly connected to the topic and somehow know what is the basis of our design, we came up with the idea of engaging Capitalist as players and Agent as the law presenter. The first word was “ chase and run”, as capitalists need to run from the law agent who chases them. Then we shared more familiar interesting themes to the idea and came up with the game board where the capitalists eager to hide their money to run from the low and taxes. By drawing round board game consisted of several round spots and a center of gravity that was supposed to be a Panama, we obviously found our board game, Yeeeeey. :) 

I have to confess that one childhood board game also added some inspiration for our design, which is called “Fox & Chicken”, and Philipp, one of our group member explained it to us. :) 

So ,as the players were set and their role were defined, 2capitalists, and one agent. the capitalists roles is to carry their money to the Panama tower, and the agent must intercept them and not let them reach the Panama tower, where they can hide money. The next step was to check the game mechanics of the idea,to find out flaws and improvements, we decided to play the concept we had so far.

It was a great boost. We found that the layouts fit perfectly to the theory, the only thing was that the game seemed a little straight forward and not so exciting, The players just roll the dice and go forward, we needed more buzz.   That’s where we added some action cards. By adding the cards the theory changed, also the role of the players. Each card had an action. Players or capitalists which we call now the greedy, must pick a card each round and then roll a dice.And now the idea of collecting the money into the Panama tower changed, because when a specific card defined as “Panama news leak” was happened, the greedy must take out money back from Panama tower to their bank account. The game flow was somehow on a good level, we were all exhausted so we decided to continue the next session.

Goal

The goal of our design game is to hide money in two contrasting situations:

First: to escape tax before Panama happens

Second: after Panama happens, the goal is to bring out the money from the hidden place to escape the investigations and law

Game board

After the determination of the structure of our game board, we brainstormed the design of it. The decision contains the 52 number of suitable fields. According to the taste of all team members, the fields are linked together as a circle. There is also a bank account field in each quarter of the board, where the greedy gets to collects money. To symbolize the starting point for each player, we add a number on the field. Also, the movement directions are accordingly drawn in the field. In the inner circle field, each quarter is marked, it shows the Panama territory, where players save money.

Here are some sketches for the board game. Both sketches are drawn by Dominik, one of our group member, you can also check out his blogging about the project here: https://snozzlebertcoggleswort.wordpress.com/

Also Philipp’s blog, our third member of the team, who is drawing the final board : http://androgynouspenguinnightmare.tumblr.com/ 

13.04.2016: Phase 2

By the previous meeting, we already came up with some conclusions:

Players play against each other

In some part of the board game players can move just in on direction which is shown on the field

The Agent can collect the money and take the money to the law firm by getting out of the Panama territory

Panama territory is in the center of the game and it goes till to the smaller round circle

Greedy money will be stashed into the Panama center

If players meet on the same field the money will be collected by the second player who just landed on the field

Greedy players cannot beat the Agent

In the second meeting, we started out reviewing all the facts and concept of the game for a specific goal, also, we played some round and changed some of the facts:

The agent can collect the money right away, the agent doesn’t need to reach to the second round field to take the money to the law firm , everywhere in the field if the agent catches any greedy player, the money will be collected and it will be returned to the law firm.

Each greedy has amount of 1million stock at the beginning of the game

some action cards apply to all players and some just the current player

At this phase, a table consisting of the money situation was designed to show the process of money cycle and game balance during each action in the game. Then we played different rounds to check out the balancing of the game. Several things came to our mind. One idea was that if a player hits the agent in the field they can jump over it but the idea was refused after some rounds as we found it hard for the agent to collect money. Another idea was to move clockwise in the field beside the mentioned direction. One idea was that if a player lands on the starting point of the other players the money goes to them. Another idea was that player without money can land on the same field. Several ideas were tested, some were chosen to be added to the rules and some were refused. The most important result of this stage was that the figures were deleted and the money itself will be set as the player, meaning that each player moves the money around the field instead of figures.

The game now is really well designed and all of the constraints are considered. The board size is perfect for facing all the rules and game strategies. It is fun and challenging, you need to keep running from the law and hide your stocks, in between you might be caught by the law agent, be careful! ;)

Here you can find the “Panama” game info sheet :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m4M3oZ9x_AlVQabP4xQ-auJjdntDn9KhJNnIkIwURy8/edit?usp=sharing

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Level 2. Final

Waiting for the result of the idea played with friends and deciding for the final prototype. 

We met for testing the game again and finalising the idea, well, what can I say! it was breathtaking but also fun, we tried different patterns again and gain and played every time. the good thing was that each game was supposed to take 10 min, anyway, it was a whole new challenge somehow after the previous meeting maybe our attempt was to create a very best out of it, after around 5 hours we came up with the best idea ,set of perfect rules along with a fun game. Called “Zamon”,  our card game! :)

My teammates’ blogs:

Florian Holzner: https://medium.com/@bobschi (here you can find rules and details for our card game, “Zamon”)

Manuel Gavornik: http://xalgorithm.tumblr.com/

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Level 1. Ideas

Our first idea , we worked on an idea in the first meeting , the game was fun and we played the game several times together in our group so we could find out flaws and rules for the game based on the restrictions we had.  

Afterward, we talked about testing the game with others like our friends. Trying to find out the bugs, fix them and improvements.

Then we arranged another group meeting to work on maybe another game idea.

In the second meeting , another card game was designed and played several times within our group, we set out the game rules, played the game over and over like what we have done for the first idea.

At the end, we decided to try the game again with friends and catch up afterward.

[xplorative-thoughts-blog1]

Level 0. Hello!

“Ladies and gentlemen...

Welcome to your new space. Grab a cup of coffee (or tea, whatever), and let's talk about design, game, about you and me, and about the process in between. Well... What I'm trying to document here is our attempt to design a card game constraint on time travel aspect and 10 minutes play-time plus some other restrictions.

who we are: we are 3 Media Informatics master students trying to design a card game as described above. Being creative was a basis for our design.

At first, we contacted, met, talked, thought, decided, started prototyping, laughed, played, redesigned, tested with friends ...AND The rest is described in the further posts.