GameDesignGroup2

1. CS246 Programming Paradigms

1.1. Part 1 Group and Topic

1.1.1. Group Members

Katherine Chinn
Julia Ferraioli
Audrey Flattes
Bhumika Patel

1.1.2. Game Genre

Puzzle:

The kind of game that we are interested in making is a non-multiplayer puzzle with maybe some kind of adventure/story line.

1.2. Part 2 Game Proposal and Design Sketch

1.2.0.1. Description of Game

So our game is ending up a sort of cross between an adventure game and a puzzle game.

The Premise: Murder Mystery. One very rich guy is going to be murdered. The player gets to name her/his character. At the start, you get a description of the crime scene and a number of suspects' profiles. Profiles include: Past crimes, identifying characteristics, dominent hand, etc... The player starts the game with a set clock (TBD). When the clock runs out, a call is automatically placed to the detective's superiors and the detective must name the criminal. The detective makes her/his way through the rooms by solving puzzles like anagrams, numerical puzzles and the like. Every room that s/he gets through gives her another clue!

1.2.0.2. Development Schedule

1.2.0.3. Assessment

1.3. Roles

1. Creative Writing

2. AI

3. Graphics

4. Graphic Design

5. Testing

6. Research

7. Audio

1.3.0.1. Creative Writing

1.3.0.2. AI

1.3.0.3. Graphics

1.3.0.4. Graphic Design

1.3.0.5. Testing

1.3.0.6. Research

1.3.0.7. Audio

1.4. Part 3 Design Spec and Report

1.5. Part 4 Progress Report

1.6. Part 5 Alpha Release

1.7. Part 6 Playtesting and Final Paper

2. Discussion Forum

Really excited about this game, whatever it may be! Maybe we can start by stating what are some of our favorite puzzle games, and why we like them.

1. Chips Challenge: A guy named chip is trying to get to the final level. Must open doors with keys, can walk on fire, water, ice, gravity wells, but only if he had the right equipment. Gathers chips to get to the next level. Very cool because you had to do all of this in a particular order to get to the next level. Great puzzle game.

2. Tetris. If you don't know by now, well, I feel pity for you.

Those are definitely my favorites! What about yours? ~Julia

-Bhumika

Audrey

New Topic: Secrets.

Should we put secrets aka cookies aka easter eggs in the game?

I think that we should put at least one secret in the game. We could do something like as the user is discovering clues, they could discover something shocking about the murdered's private life. Or they could find a joke, or even buy themselves extra time to solve the mystery! What do you guys think?

~Julia

Here's the link that has all the code in the java book that we will be using:

http://www.brackeen.com/javagamebook/

It also has the full game that the book develops as an example...

-Bhumika

3. Feedback

The theme and the examples given in your document of the game is great. I'm just afriad that impatient gameplayers like myself will not be able to go through the whole game unless there are enough feedbacks from the game. I feel that the role of clues would be very important because there will not be too much interaction in this game. They should be able to provide the fulfilment feedback to keep the player entertained(player motivation). I don't quite understand why one would discard some items if there's a chance to have some clue. How would one decide to catalog or discard or send to a lab? Would the time be the crucial factor in making the decision? If tbere would be "Call Boss" icon, it might be good to have certain numbers of possible calls that can be made -including the final notice. Maybe the boss can feed some information with some price paid(like time..?). If "Call Boss" option is only for when the player has solved the mystery, it can just appear at that time. I know the storyline of the game is more important than the graphics part, but 3D graphics might be able to provide more cool features - ie. when an item is picked up and evaluated, it can be toggled and rotated to search some mark only shown from the bottom of the item. Cluedo & Clue Computer Games : http://www.cluedofan.com/cmerch/computer.html I found this site with bunch of clue computer games(only the informations, not actual games) There are 2D as well as 3D games. I think this will be helpful to you in creating the layout, and give you some idea of possible graphic options. Good luck! -yuna

Hey guys, it sounds like a great game idea you’ve got!

3 things:

1. security video footage

2. means, motive, opportunity

3. items

Video

I loved the idea of having to piece together security video footage. One objection though: Why can the detective only view the footage in pieces? While this is a great game device, I think it needs a back story. An example: perhaps Bates was a paranoid eccentric, so he set up the security cameras to feed into bite-sized video files that were all password-protected (that way, they couldn’t all be deleted/destroyed so easily). He also hid Post-Its with these passwords around the house so he wouldn’t forget them. And because no-one else knows the passwords or the location of these Post-Its, that requires the detective/player to hunt for them. (Hey, no-one said it had to be believable!)

By extension, if no-one has seen the whole video, how does the boss know that the murderer has been caught on tape? It may be easier to have the boss tell the detective to take a look at the security footage, without knowing for sure if the murderer has been caught on tape.

MMO

Something that may help you create a richer detective experience:

Solving the murder at a murder mystery party http://editorials.arrivenet.com/ent/article.php/3187.html

The article discusses the three criteria for any successful prosecution: means, motive and opportunity. Tying these three factors into the crime might help you provide an even more convincing background story to your game (e.g. opportunity: why were all suspects in Bates’s house at the same time?).

When it’s time to call the boss and name the culprit, what’s to stop the player from simply guessing? Having the player produce a piece of evidence for the means, motive and opportunity may help deal with this issue (e.g. means: knife pulled out of Bates’s back contains fibers from Free-Form’s sweater).

Items

Aaaand, finally, in your next progress report, I'd love to find out more about the items that the detective could find. Could you give some examples, and say a bit more about how the detective would examine them?

Fantastic job! Can't wait to see the finished product.

spoon, 2/20 4pm

My other concern is the way you set up the puzzles. They should be connected to the game and the player should just not be able to guess the answer. The answer should be related to something in the scene. One idea would be to change something in a typical answer based on the things you find in the room. (i.e. change the first letter)

I am not quite sure how the option to call the detective is going to work. Since you have 3 suspect if the player gets bored he might just take a random guess. I feel that in this types of games you need to have the player go through all the rooms before he can place a call. You need to make the game interesting enough so the player wants to play until the end, and not just place a random call.

Can't wait to play the game!

-ioana

map We briefly went over the layout of this mansion. I'm going to bring a game called Kill Dr. Lucky to class sometime soon as it might just be the exact layout you're going for. Aside from hallways, it also places doors in very specific areas which serve to stop killings due to line of site. In other words, a death can't possibly have occured in room X if people were across the hall but could see straight in.

Also, I wonder what factors go into choosing the next room. I mean, I don't really think it should be completely random. Good assumptions based on previous clues should dictate where the player goes next. For example, the player finds a sooty boot print in a room without a fireplace. They should then check rooms with fireplaces.

typing You should be careful if the player is typing in responses. I always got really annoyed if I screwed up part of the game because I misspelled or mistyped something.

Other than that it sounds like it could be very fun. Will there be three different setups for the three different suspects so people can play more than once? I will look forward to it.

-JiggiDy

1. ConceptDocument . . . . 1 match
2. GameDesign . . . . 1 match
3. ProgressReport2 . . . . 1 match

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