Team high five - physical prototype

Experience Report

Creating the physical prototype proved to be relatively easy: a hexagon map (containing three areas for players, water, boss) and a simple set of initial rules to play the game, fit to the "Ice Beam Encounter" (which is the encounter we will do for the low target). We invited some friends of ours for a playtesting session, and all in all it was great fun. We found some glaring issues very quickly and some subtle ones later on, see below for a short recap. The initial rules we devised are the following:

Map

The map consists of 3 different areas:
  • Boss area (yellow/black striped)
  • Water area (blue)
  • Players area (brownish)

Initial Features:

  • Move
  • Range attack
  • Melee attack
  • Boss projectile
  • Boss ice beam
  • Boss shield
  • Water freezing from ice beam

How to play:

  • The game was mapped into a turn based board game.
  • Players and the boss take turns, with player 1 acting first, followed by player 2. The boss acts last.
  • The individual turns are described below.

Player Turns

  • Player can move in each direction OR
  • Player can make a range attack (projectile) in each direction OR
  • Player can make a melee attack in each direction (only every second step), dealing damage to anything on the adjacent field OR
  • Player can skip and do nothing
  • If a player moves into the water or is on the frozen water at the time it melts, it dies

Boss Turns

In each turn, the boss can choose between ONE of the following actions:

  • Shoot a projectile (iff less than 4 projectiles are on the field).
  • Shoot an ice beam (there must not be more than 14 rounds without an ice beam on the field)
  • Do nothing

Description of Game Elements

  • Projectiles
    • A projectile is represented by an arrow of the size of two fields.
    • A projectile moves two fields per step in the direction it points to.
    • A projectile is alive as long as its back part is on the playing field OR hits a target.
    • A projectile can optionally be adjusted in direction once during its lifetime. (this is only for the board game because there are fields from which it is impossible to directly aim at the enemy)
    • A projectile causes damage if its back part hits a target.

  • Ice beam
    • The ice beam grows 3 steps per turn, killing everything in its way.
    • Once it grows out of the map, it reveals frozen water on its path.
    • The frozen water melts again after 10 turns.

Other rules

  • Players can deal damange to themselves.
  • Players cannot deal damage to the boss with range attacks while its shield is up.
  • The boss starts out with 20 health points, the players have zero healh points (they die from each projectile/ice beam hitting them).
  • Each player has its fixed spawn point (beginning of game, respawn).
  • The team has 5 lives to share among the players. players that die respawn if there are lives left.
  • The boss has an shield (of what type (ice, magic) is to be determined) that shields all range attacks. it can be temporarily disabled/destroyed by one melee attack, dealt from a player that stands on the frozen water near the boss.
  • The shield recovers after 8 steps.
  • Player damage to boss:
    • one melee attack: 2
    • one range attack: 1. in the xbox game, this will deal 5 times less damage. compensated by higher shooting frequency (on board game, too many arrows get too complicated).

Lessons learned

  • Biggest issue: the boss could shoot projectiles on the player currently on the ice path, preventing him from coming closer. Solution that works well with our coop theme: the boss shoots projectiles at the three players that last hit him with a projectile (even with the shield on). When you hit the boss with a projectile, you get visual feedback on your player so you know that this has some effect. You will learn that only 3 of the 4 players will have this visual cue and that this is the key as to how to get the fourth player over the ice path.
  • Projectile and ice beam could clash: projectile is weaker.
  • Players standing very near the water should have no way of evading the ice beam (reaction time). --> ice beam grows 5 fields per step. (only relevant for board game)
  • Boss should aim ice beam at a player, not randomly.
  • The players not near the ice beam/ice path are boring to play -> more ice beams, min one per 7 (before: 15) steps.
  • We balanced the time the frozen path is there, the frequencies of the ice beams/projectiles and health points in such a way that the game wasn't over too quickly (needed to do the "walk over ice beam"-trick up to 5 times) and also not too long.

  • We found out that all players need to stick near the water so that at least one of them is near the frozen path following the ice beam. But it was also harder to evade the ice beam and the projectiles of the boss. This was one of the cooler thing to come from this: we naturally had to play cooperatively (positioning of the players + ice beam trick) in order to have an effect.

  • gamelab_prototype_1.jpg:
    gamelab_prototype_1.jpg

  • IMAG0194.jpg:
    IMAG0194.jpg

I Attachment History Action Size Date Who Comment
JPEGjpg IMAG0194.jpg r1 manage 876.0 K 2011-03-21 - 16:56 FlorianMichaelKoehl  
JPEGjpg gamelab_prototype_1.jpg r1 manage 983.8 K 2011-03-21 - 16:49 FabianAndreasHahn  

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2024-03-28
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