Homework 8: Chapter 10

1. Is the space in your game discrete or continuous?
     The space in our game is most certainly continuous.  Our player can move around freely in her local environment.  There might be discrete subspaces in our game where our character must solve puzzles or perform tasks in a discrete space.

2. How many dimensions does your space have?
    Our game has 3 dimensions.

3. What are the boundaries of your space?
    In the city, our character is bounded by the buildings and other obstacles that confine her to an area of interest.  In the world map, our character is confined to the city space by chasms that define the area where the disaster occurred.  In 'levels' the character is bounded by walls, foliage, and building which define the level.

4. How many verbs do your players (characters) have? What are they?
    As of now, I believe our character will have 5 verbs. Our character can 'move', 'swing' (an object), 'jump', 'pick up', and 'throw'.

5. How many objects can each verb act on? What are these objects?

• move- can act on our character and on any movable item that interacts with our character
• swing- any stick-like object (stick, hammer, crowbar, etc...) that our character finds and picks up.
•  jump- acts on our character and anything she jumps on
• pick up- ward pieces (health), weapons, throwable objects.
• throw- throwable objects (rocks, weapons, etc...)

6. How many ways can players achieve their goals

     The player will be able to navigate the map and choose the order of the levels they go to so the number of ways they can do this will be at least a permutation of the number of levels we are able to create.

7. How many subjects do the players control? What are these subjects?

     The player only controls 1 subject, our character.

8. How do side effects change constraints.

     If the character is hit by an enemy, her ward meter goes down and the fog is able to encroach closer to her making it harder to see.  If the character picks up a piece of ward, the ward meter goes up and the fog recedes making it easier for her to see.

9. What are the operative actions in your game?

• Move around the map and levels
• Swing your weapon 
• Jump
• Pick up objects
• Throw objects

10. What are the resultant actions in your game?

• Discover new areas of the game, items, and storylines.
• Avoid the fog
• Knock back enemies
• Break into buildings
• Prevent your ward meter from reaching critical values
• Navigate rough terrain to find levels and complete tasks.
• Find new weapons which have larger ranges.
• Find ward peices to replenish your ward meter
• Complete distant tasks that are out of reach.

11. What actions would you like your players to do that they cannot presently do? (based on your current knowledge of Blender)
     None of above actions are currently implemented, however, an additional action I would like to see would be "look at map" and "look at ward" so that the player can keep track of location and ward meter without the necessity of a HUD.

12. What is the ultimate goal of your game?
     To find the characters son who is lost in the post disaster mysterious fog.

13. Are there short and long term goals? What are they?
     Short term goals include finding the next location of survivors, navigating the map, preventing the fog from consuming you by keeping your ward meter up, completing tasks/puzzle at each level.

     Long term goals include rebuilding the city, finding out the back story of this town and fog, and finding your son.

14. How do you plan to make the game goals known and understood by the player?
     Through dialog with other characters, notes and newspaper clipping, and possibly a short tutorial at the beginning of the game.

15. What are the foundational rules of your game?
     The player prevents the end of the game (captured by the fog), ensuring that a countdown (the amount of ward remaining) does not reach 0 by increasing the current countdown value (by finding more pieces of ward).

   The more survivors that the player finds, the more the city rebuilds itself.

16. How are these rules enforced?
     If the character runs out of ward, the fog captures her and the game ends.


     Once the player completes a level, they will have "saved more people" and will notice that the town is getting bigger and more developed.

17. Does your game develop real skills? What are they?
     The games develops time managements skills as the player must watch their ward meter and respond appropriately to ensure it does not reach 0.  The game also requires timing motor skills since you must swing at enemies to prevent them from stealing your ward.

18. Does your game develop virtual skills? What are they?
     Not really.  The character is just a mom trying to find her son.  She is not a warrior honing her skills and therefore does not improve over the course of the game.