So I'm all done. I've come to the conclusion through and research and development of my final outcome that my method of guidance through aesthetic is viable in a game level. I feel that the outcomes of my test suggest that an abundance of tutorials is not needed to help a player progress through a level successfully.
My feedback from my research and ideas from professional and the public suggests that it would be a marketable idea and unique to the industry. The added extra of a big brand game company creating a game with a similar guidance method also strengthens this idea being marketable in the industry.
Below is my Degree Show banner and outcome video explaining my final product. Enjoy!
SO. Over the past weeks myself and Jay have been working on the Level/Game in which we will use our methods of guidance, basically to confirming (or disproving) that they are viable ways of guiding/teaching a player without extensive tutorials etc. Over the past couple of weeks we have been testing this level to prove our theory as well as fine tuning to help it work better.
Below are my findings as well some of the videos of the play tests that we have done. I will also post some of the individual testers attempts.
My whole thing is guidance within Aesthetics. A player being able to figure out what to do by looking at their surrounds for guidance rather than an abundance of tutorials or little fairy holding the hands. And finding out if this is a viable method of doing so and proving that gamer's (and humans) can think for themselves.
The silly thing is, the majority of these elements are extremely simple. Yet companies sway to the tutorial route for guidance. So let me go through some of the elements we are using within the game to allow this.
Leading Lines
This method is used in a lot of different media from Photography to Architecture. It's most commonly used to guide the viewers eyes to look at a place of importance for instance in photography to the subject or in architecture to entrances or even something as small as where to push a door to open it.
In NOVA, we are using it do a similar thing. Them main leading lines in are.... you guessing it lines. Well. Chevrons. Throughout the level these chevrons are placed at intervals to tell the play there is a point of significance in that direct. Another leading line which is a little more subtle is the main rooms octagonal shape. When stood in this room the walls act as leading lines to the center of the room due to the sloping effect of the walls at certain angles. This guides the players eyes to the PC which is a major part for completing the game.
This element is hard to assess due to the nature of it. The majority of process of this method is done subconsciously upon viewing. Though with the vast amount of testers, the feed back has been that it they understood that the chevrons where an indication of a place of importance within the NOVA Facility.
Colour Association
Once again, this method is extremely simple and used amongst many platforms. The most known form of colour association is 'Right and Wrong', red for wrong green for right. In early tests within my MA research and practice I found that this can be a confusing method of guidance, as meanings of colours can be skewed dependent on the person observing them. Race, age, as well as many other factors can change the perception of each one. Luckily, the way of association we have used with NOVA is easy to grasp through exploration.
Within NOVA, the association are to create connection between rooms and symbols. The first place the average player will find these colours will be on the PC upon pressing on a symbol on the keypad. Once they get to exploring the facility they will come across the chevrons mentioned in the above method (leading lines). These Chevrons have a colours which is associated with the place of importance that it points towards. This use of colour to tie symbol and room together helps the player to determine where they must travel, and to which puzzle they are traveling to.
This element has been the strangest of the ones we have used within NOVA. This is because it hasn't quite lived up to expectation. While playing the most of the player do not seem to fully recognise the link for the colours. However, upon questioning their play through they mention that they are aware of some of the association but choose not to follow. Adam one of the first testers mentioned that he used them at the start of playing before he memorised the layout and location. This showed that it works as a starting point of guidance and awareness of the environment.
Landmarks
Landmarks are a significant part of guidance around us in the real world so it's no surprise that they are in games also. Landmarks in the real and virtual world give a memorable placement in the viewers mind that resides to help navigation in their surroundings.
In NOVA, there are a couple of things used as landmarks. For instance, scribbles around the base on the walls with seemingly no usefulness (I'll get to that soon) give these memorable locations. Upon coming across one the player can figure out their whereabouts and continue on a path with more ease. Chevrons also come into play as landmarks within the base also.
From our tests, we found that this was the biggest focus for the players in finding their way around the base. However, it was my feeling that we need a little more mainly when the darkness came. Similar scribbles as in the light have now been placed in the facility to allow better navigation when the alarms go off. Crates have also been added to the environment to achieve the same effect.
Guided Exploration and Subtleties
These methods are weird ones. Exploration is the main factor here as it leads to the subtleties within the aesthetics. Exploration is a bigger factor in the eventual understanding of the players surroundings. Within games this tends to be used in huge free-roaming games across gigantically expansive worlds; and it's up to the player to explore and get their bearings.
For NOVA we have implemented a process of guided exploration. What we mean by this is that upon inspecting the environment the player will find clues to the workings of the facility and where they could go next. This allows the player to think they are exploring the based and going to where they want to by themselves. In actuality, we have designed the level in a way that the aesthetics hints to where to go first. This is mainly to teach them. For instance in the central room of the facility there is a couple of things for the player to take notice of. The PC, the map and the lights. These give the player an idea of things of importance in the base as well as teaching them mechanics. Upon using the PC they see a keypad and type in whatever they want to. "Access Denied". This instigates they need to find something. They explore. See the map. Inspect it. On the map they will see a couple more clues. The location of the only 2 rooms open to them straight away, the Main Code (the most important) Code, and the location of another code. They now have the code to unlock the facility and turn on the lights. They now have 3 places in which we have 'guided' them to explore through their own 'exploration'. And so on. This carries on through out the base giving the player a sense of achievement for their actions and finding something 'by themselves'.
Once tests were completed, the majority of the players said they felt rewarded when they found codes and rooms from this exploration. They also said this gave them more incentive to 'explore' and find more. This method helped with the level a lot making it fun for the players (those that it didn't torture too much) because of that sense of achievement by finding something 'by yourself'.
Symbols
Here we have another simple method of guidance. As mentioned above (Colour association) we have used a range of symbols around the base to tie sections of the game together. We have two sets of symbols; The puzzle symbols and the botanical symbols. Each are separate from each other. The puzzle symbols are symbols used for association with rooms around the base and the code that unlock them. The botanical symbols are use as hints to placements of the 'Vapor Pods' in the Botanical Puzzle room.
THE TESTS
Below are a few of the videos we did of the tests we carried out. The show the process of our develop and tweaking of the mechanic to make it work better.
So a few months ago we created a poster for a display of all the outcomes throughout all of the MA courses. I'm going to post it here for anyone to read instead of writing it all out and stuff.
Recently I seen a lot of hype about the "game" PT by the creators of the Silent Hill series. It's basically a playable trailer. Get it?!. Playable trailer. PT. Ahh.
Well I've been watching some of the playthroughs of this game over the a few days (I don't have much time to play games these days :'( ), and I'm excited. You know why? Because it uses a similar method of guidance to that that I've been experimenting with. Take a look:
The culmination of my work over the past 13 months to come up with this method and implement it myself as well as have a big games company to use a similar method in a teaser for a Triple A game at the same time is magical to me. To me it show that the industry is thinking in a similar manner about how the state of current guidance methods work and are challenging the norm. Not only that but PT has also had a big presence in games media and public. This shows that this kind of guidance can work in the industry and that I'm on to something.
Over the past months I've been observing everyday humans running around there tasks for the afternoon. I want to to observe what people did in the real world when moving around their surroundings.
Amongst the things I noticed was that humans struggled to find signs. Signs that were huge. Gigantic signs at eye level and with huge lettering. And using colour bright enough to catch attention but not flamboyant enough to make it hard to read. For whatever reason the humans didn't pay attention. They resorted to the interrogation of any human in sight most often the ones wearing the brightest clothing. This got me thinking of my play tests and what happened if people got stuck. I found that in the real and game world humans will look for help in another human rather than investigate their surrounds. Often in play-tests the humans would turn round and ask "am I doing something wrong?" Or "is this for this?".
Another observation I had was that the places with the most instruction and guidance failed to guide. I was observing customers in an Ikea restaurant queuing for their daily meals and caffeine. I noticed that the humans would get confused at the line for the picking of food which was one of the places in store that huge amount of guidance; signs, leading lines, arrows and even the movement of the human horde picking their food. In other places I observed the same thing but not in the same mass collection.
I came to the conclusion that areas with huge amounts of instruction and guidance confused. I have seen this in games also. When you play a game and there is huge amounts of text that's needed to be read it can negate from its intended purpose, pushing the viewing away. This often meant they wouldn't read it and wouldn't receive the guidance that was intended.
One of the things that helped in the observation areas for guidance was the subtle or instinctive clues that were in the environment. The one that seemed to be the best instruction was leading lines. You will see leading lines in around you everyday but not notice that they are there. Car parks, supermarkets, advertisements all use this method of guidance. Architects, designers and artists all use leading lines to direct the viewers eyes to places of interest or importance. You eyes will instinctively move along them. I have looked into leading line main times in my studies in Art and Design and they are a very good way of combining both aesthetics and guidance subtly guide without the viewer really noticing.
In conclusion, I thing I have witness similar traits in both real world and the virtual. In both, intense guidance can be too heavy for the viewer and can do the opposite function. On the other hand, subtle and instinctive clues like leading lines can guidance without the over concentration of tutorials. It has confirmed for me that traits in the real world could be used in the virtual, allowing the creation of much less intrusive guidance or tutorail type experience.
So for quite a few months now, I had been reading up on the Psychology and Science of design. I have read through a few of the journals by Donald Norman and Herbert Simon on the subject and it has sparked me with intrigued.
In 'The Design of Everyday Things' Donald talked a lot about how we use objects in certain ways that are instinctive to us. We as humans use objects in ways because of what we see, for instance if there was a door that was just a blank slab how would you know how to open it? without an indication of how it works you will find it difficult to open it. This, in Donald's opinion, shows bad design. He believes that good design should be able to be understood by simple observation.
This reading got me thinking a little bit more into how some objects are designed. However, it also got me thinking, is a hard puzzle bad design? Sometimes there is a small boundary for what is good design of a complicated puzzle and a bad design of a simple puzzle. I big problem with this might be because of how we all perceive our environment; as unique individuals we all create a different understanding of the visual world.
This research gave me more thought paths into the psychology of perception and how I could create my technique of guide easier to understand in a game world.
Below are some of the journals for anyone interested in knowledge:
Donald Norman - The Design of Everyday Things:
Herbert Simon - The Sciences of the Artificial:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/133153238/Herbert-Simon-1996-The-Sciences-of-the-Artificial
So in my last post I was talking about the game idea I came up. At that time, together with a Jay and Hoey from the MA course and a team we put together, we were entering the idea into the Dare To Be Digital Games Competition. Unfortunately we were not successful in getting through the first stages of the competition. However we did get some great feedback for the idea.
In the feedback, the biggest criticism was that they thought it was too big for the competition and most judges were not convinced it could be done in the allocated time given to the entrants. We understood this would be a concern when entering as it was an ambitious project idea using techniques myself and Jay had been researching and it was aimed at confirming this research. Other than that though, the feedback was positive. All judges said they thought the idea was interesting and different to what they had seen before. They also said that there was market potential in idea which shows that the idea could work in the industry.
As well as feedback from the judges at Dare, we had industry feedback from Arthur Parsons of TT Games. He said that the idea was really quite unique and has the potential to do well as a game if we managed to grab the players attention and iron out anything that may confuse too much.
I think this feedback from professionals in the industry suggests that the ideas that the game is based of would work well in the industry. On top of this we had some fantastic feedback from the public on the idea which suggest that there is space in the market for the processes that we have come up with to use the environment and guide players.
So for some bad news.
After the news about Dare we spoke about shifting the idea more into our MA and creating a prototype as the outcome of our research. This was coming along really nicely at first and start to take a little more shape. However, recently we have had to halt our work on the prototype due to an unforeseen issue with the programming side of the project. :(
So now we are looking to switch motion on to another project that will be our outcome to show that our methods work within a game scenario.
So yeah we decided to play with the idea and it become much more than what I thought it would. We ended up make a team for Dare to be Digital now '9-bit Idol', comprised of five (4 Designers/Artists and 1 Programmer) to create a game idea from my mechanic.
This became 'A Broken Time'.
We came up with the idea of the player playing a German spy who has passed after the end of WW1 and is now in limbo faced with the task of setting souls of the people, who's deaths he was responsible for, to rest and reliving their memories. You can see our pitch here:
So for this I was tasked with the creation of the prototype for the mechanic of placing the object as well as the creation of the Environment Art. With the prototype I played with ways of guiding the player to help the player notice where the object might need to be placed, this included things like dirty marks where an object had been and missing parts of trim on the the walls as well as more intricate wall surface patterning to show where objects and such can't be placed this seemed to work well as a visual marker when testing. I would like to see if I could make it a little more vague however, to make it little more natural but this could make it too hard to notice. Below is a short video of the placing prototype where you can see the markings on the wall. It also shows the 'Hud' I have been working on, this is where the images will be stored and then can be scrolled through to find the image that the player wants to use.
Like I said I've also been in charge of creating the environments for the pitch. I have been working on the style of the environments with the help of Becky Michalak the Concept artist on our team from the BA Course. We went with a quirky stylised sepia toned world working with abnormal shapes and distortion. She has then gone and created some BADASS concepts for some of the environments as you can see.
Art work by Becky Michalak
Art work by Becky Michalak
From these amazing concept I have been creating the graveyard area which will be the Hub for all the players tasks and story. The player will frequently be coming back here and finding more out about the story and the people who's lives you are reliving moments of. With the environments look and texturing I want to play with the old worn sepia photograph look that you often see from photographs from the early 1900's. However I want a little dash of colour to give the environment a unique twist. Below is a video and some imagery of the environment to date. I want to play with the area a little more and add some more features.
That's all then. So now we will be continuing with creating this idea into something bigger throughout the next semester to build on what we have. Hopefully we will have the help of all the team as well.
So its been a long time since I last posted about my research. We need a catch up for sure. Last time I posted I was doing some tests looking at ways of using the environment in a game as mechanics as well as looking at ways to guide players using them.
• The last Test I posted on here failed because of the issue of feedback as well as issues with the Kismet and triggers which weren't activating for some reason; I figured it was the LOS triggers I was using which were being temperamental. I have since edited the Kismet to use triggers in the line of sight of the numbers to give allow the player to activate a number if the think its right and that they're in right place to do so. I have also added a sound to the activation of a number correctly and one for wrong sequences to give more feedback to the player as I have noticed that often the player wasn't realising when they had done something right.
From this I re-tested it and the outcome was much better. Confusion only came from the players own shortsightedness and not looking at their surround. All the Kismet ran smoothly as well, and most players (except one) found the process of entering the sequence was easy to understand. I think the "rule of 3" (making a player do a process 3 times to subliminally teach them) method help here with the gradual increase in difficulty.
So after the success of with this test I was having ideas of other things I could do with the environment. One of these I got really drawn into. This came from a compilation of things that I have looked into in my previous research on here; and watching TV. So I have might have been watching Channel 4 a little too much at the time and some of the adverts caught my attention because it used the environment to create something that wasn't there. I mean the Channel 4 'Idents'. If you are unaware of what these are, they are basically a use of objects with perspective to create a '4' in the environment. You can take a look below to get a better idea of what these are:
So they idea was based on using images in a game to use a way to place things in the environment but using perspective so that the player had to stand in a specific spot (similar to the Sequence puzzle) to line up where it should go. For instance my first example of this was this:
You need to get over a river. A very large one but there is no bridge
as it has been knocked down by someone or something and there is only small
reminisce of where it used to be. In a near by shack there is an image of the area before
the bridge had broken. You take it and see if you can find the stop it was taken from.
You stand there and hold the image up to get the spot just right. You look at the image and then the
spot it used to be and .... the bridge is there again. Just like new.
Even though this seemed like a great idea, after some discussion with Josh and some of the guys on the MA, I figure it was just too big and would become a mundane image gathering quest game thing. So it then became much small to a comparable size to The Room. Moving from area to area adjusting the world to allow the player to reach places that the usually shouldn't be able to. The image mechanic also turned into a camera which the player could take images of the objects in the world and store them to use in the world. This would allow the player to take an image of a door on a wall somewhere and move it to another allowing them access to the room on the other side of the wall they moved it to.
From this I started to do prototypes and plans of Kismet and looking into ways that I would be able to create this mechanic without the need of a programmer. I realised that it could be done in a similar way to that of the Sequence Test using LOS triggers and a much more complicated Kismet sequence.
Small section of Kismet for Prototype
Before I even got round to creating this idea properly myself and a couple of the guys off the MA decided that we where going to enter the Dare to be Digital game competition, and I pitch my idea and they liked it and we have been working on this idea since then and then we entered.
Remember that game by Fireproof Games I played last October. Where you're in a room. With a box. YEEAAHHH, that one!! WELL ITS GOOD SO PLAY IT!
They have done quite a lot to it. Now your not just looking at one box in each room. Now you can actually look around the WHOLE room!! How exciting, aye! This isn't sarcasm. Honest. No really. In my opinion, this makes the game better than the first one. This is because it gives the player variety. Being able to switch your focus from something your getting frustrated with or been staring at for an extended amount of time can help them enjoy the game more. I also felt a little more immersed in the exploration because of this.
One thing I got really interested, was the use of perspectives and using the camera view to create symbols from lines in the environment. They experimented with this in the first game a little mainly on smaller puzzles. Now they have fleshed out the idea and used it in few different ways. The most used is what they use as the key to reach new rooms. Its an arrangement of several crystal like lines that float on in
the middle of the screen. The player just then move the camera angle to create a specific symbol. As the rooms go on they add more of the lines to make it trickier to find the right arrangement. They also change this challenge up a little at the end. They do this by making the movement of two sliders the way to adjust the crystals and not the camera view.
The other way they use this mechanic in the game is to arrange a few lines to
create doorways on walls to progress to an item needed in another puzzle. This really caught my attention as it was a similar idea that I had had for a test I haven't created yet.
The only thing I didn't like was that it felt a little too easy. I felt I was being guided too much by 'cut-scene like' flashes and places some things were placed. However, I think I was being a little be nit-picky about it. This could have been because I have gotten used to certain ways of hinting in games similar to this and my familiarity with the previous game. I might try to find if this could be true by testing it with someone that hasn't played the game before.
Possibly.
And I will build my version of the doorway puzzle.
So I had done another test just before Christmas but forgot to post it on here so here it is. For this experiment, I got the inspiration from 'The Room'. It has little puzzle where the the player has to align number parts to find the number sequences for a lock. In my experiment though, instead of having a single point of movement and camera view. The player can move around in the room to see different angles of the parts of several numbers to align them to create the correct number. This then puts in a combination for a door.
I used a similar technique as my last test, in which I used the environment to give clues to the puzzles answer. I have also taken the feedback and results from my last test and made this experiment a three tier level. Starting off with a simple puzzle to place the idea behind the puzzles into the players mind. It then gets a little harder with a bigger puzzle/sequence and implementing the aforementioned environment hints indicating the order of the sequence and which numbers are needed.
Finally, the player then gets pushed into another room in which the puzzle is switched up a little. This puzzle changes the standard numbers (e.g. 1,2,3 etc.) to Roman Numerals making it slightly trickier, and again using environment hints on the walls in the form of dots and numbers - these indicate which numbers need to been entered and in which order according to the amount of dots.
So how did they do...
Test Subjects:
Jay: Figured the idea of the input fairly quick, but was getting confused with the delay on the feedback on the wall. Took a while to figure that the answers were on the walls. The only thing that frustrated him was the triggers not registering an input.
Josh: Understood the main idea behind the input from the first room. Like Jay got thrown off by the delay on the feedback for the sequences input. Took a while to figure out the clues were on the walls. Then took a while to figure them out.
Yannic: Took the longest to figure out the input. Got stuck with the way to open the 2nd room door mainly because he didn't notice the clues on the walls. Got stuck in both the 2nd and 3rd room because of the way the triggers were acting.
After Yannic I didn't do any more testing. This was because I saw a pattern of confusion coming from the use of the 'Line of Sight' triggers for the input device. I have redone these as 'Use' (a button press) triggers and added sound to the function to give the player more feedback. In the 3rd room I have tried a slightly different approach to feedback for actions by making the similar snap together in front of the player. Hopefully this will help limit the confusion around the input because the player will know they have done something.
I haven't had chance to test this build yet though so will hopefully be able to do a more extensive test with some of the 2nd and 3rd year BA students.
It has taken me far to long to post this. It has been written down for over a month now -_- . So my resolution is to post more :).
So here is the conclusion to the Experiment Number 1... Conclusion
What I found from this experiment is that a lot of things can shadow the meaning of a symbol and make it confusing to read for the player. The use of certain colours will be the main factor in this but the meaning of some symbols will need to be taught to be understood.
I also realised from this experiment that the player can get extreme frustrated and feel like they achieved nothing from completing a task if they are not rewarded. Because I didn't haven another room/task for the to do as a reward for completing the first or even just a congratulations text/star/hug most player didn't feel like they had accomplished anything. This doesn't include those players that relished the fact that they beat it in a faster time than their peers.
What I will take from this experiment going forward is that if I am going to make a frustrating task/level to annoy and confuse ( :P ) I need give the player at least a little bit of significant or rewarded. Also I will not create experiments in a singular manor, rather I will make them in threes. This allows for learning and gradual increase in difficulty, as well as giving motivation and reward to the player. Well, at least in a small form.
