kAI - a component based AI Tool

kAI - a component based AI tool

For my third year project for my degree, I developed kAI - a component based AI tools. kAI is a library and visual tool for developing AI’s specifically for games.

The way it works is coders produces code behaviours which designers can then import in to the tool. kAI behaviours are then a collection of these code behaviours and other kAI behaviours arranged into a network. 

The tool is similar to Kismet/Blueprint - the visual programming tool found in Unreal. The key difference is that is specialised towards AI. As a result, you can't use programming primitives like for loops (hence no programming style bugs and hangs). Instead, all behaviours can be either active or inactive and are updated accordingly. 

The update system (detailed in 3.2.2.1 in the report) means that what frame any behaviours become active is deterministic, despite the non-determinism of the order in which the nodes are updated. 

kAI also supports real time debugging using the editor. In this, you can see what the behaviours are doing in real time. The editor will show what nodes are active and what current values data ports have

An example behaviour from the editor

The project can be downloaded from GitHub (including pre-compiled executables) and it includes 2 example projects. The source can be found at https://github.com/thk123/kAI and the executables at: https://github.com/thk123/kAI/releases/tag/v1.0

The report is a lengthy document (~90 pages) that explains a lot about the project. Chapter 4 is a user guide and is probably the most useful part of the document. It contains detailed walk thoroughs of most of the features of kAI. The report is called ProjectReport.pdf and is at the root of the repository.

My final report

It was a lot of fun to develop and I developed some pretty neat code including operator constraints for generic functions that I'll tidy that up in to a standalone library at some point, and converting functions into nodes with ports. 

In-spite of the limited development time (which can be seen in the "functional" interface that the editor has), the tool proved surprisingly useful when creating AIs and the debugger is very powerful for this kind of thing. I believe kAI to be flexible enough that you could make just about any AI in it and still get some benefit (even if you just used kAI as a general purpose visual debugging tool).

Update

Long time no see. A lot has happened, I have some stuff I want to write about and in general I want to get back in to the habit of writing. I find that if I don't write for too long, my sentences start to lose non-essential words and everything reads like it was meant to be a series of bullet points.

I am currently working as an intern programmer at Born Ready Games! (nb, standard disclaimer about these being my views not those of BRG or any affiliates etc. etc.). As a small company, I have had the opportunity to try lots of different things. Our most recent game is Strike Suit Zero (Steam, GOG), which came out in January (I got my first hand experience of crunch).

Next year I will be entering my final year of my degree, and as such am required to do a 3rd year project. I have about a bazzilion ideas for this and all of them are too complicated to do in 5 years, but I am slowly zoning in on one (or more accurately, a linked pair). I plan to talk about these more at a later date and then when I start work on them, have my development diary up here too.

I've also developed a couple of games in some jams (eg, Global Game Jam). I am planning on setting up a basic site that'll support hosting of games since I've made now I have a few.

I'm going to blog about this TED talk by Amanda Palmer: The Art of Asking later this week. I am going to address how I think it relates to games, specifically indie games & the current trend of Kick Starters.

Front Row on Games

I while back I posted about how the BBC Radio 4 program Front Row doesn't cover video games. On Friday they ran this show:

Front Row - Naomi Alderman on video games

It is well worth the time to listen to it. Molyneux, as usual, gets a bit carried away! I always find these shows part reassuring and part frustrating. They have so much ground to cover and have to touch on so many issues that, as someone who is invested in all this, find infuriating that they spend so little time on things that warrant entire shows. However, the closing point is fantastic: Probably the main reason games don't get the cultural recognition they deserve is simply because critics find them too difficult. But instead of saying games should be made easier, she instead concludes that people should invest the time now so they don't miss out on the future of the most exciting art form of the moment.

Anyway, apologies for not posting, very busy with uni stuff. I took part in Global Game Jam 2012 and worked with a team of people from Lionhead which was very exciting. You can play Gloop here. It is a racing game made in UDK where the path you took on the previous lap determines the next lap. You are only allowed off the track for a certain amount of time. The aim is to race for as long as possible - you can increase your time by collecting power ups that are off the edge of the track. Sometimes they will be too far off to drive to collect and instead you must morph the track towards them.

I also took part in the Warwick Game Design Societies game jam where we made games for the Pirate Kart 2012. We made two games. The first: Magic Mooshrooms is a snake-esque game where you control and cow and the more mushrooms you eat, the more trippy the game becomes. The second (not yet published) game was called mad Cow Stacking Attacking defender (or something) and you had to fight off oncoming cows who would form a set of stairs to climb over your wall. These are both proof of how could XNA is at a tool - I worked with two people who hadn't made a game (certainly not in 48 hours) and we were able to produce two games that I am very proud of.

I will try and write up a post mortem for both jams but currently super busy. I am working at doublesix for my internship next year and hopefully, since I won't have piles of home work, will be able to blog a little more

The disconnect between story and gameplay pacing in RPGs

Soren Johnson has recently written a couple of posts about the disconnect between theme and mechanics. One example he gives is applicable to just about any free roaming RPG like the Elder Scrolls series. The theme, or story, is about being a hero and defeating some huge evil. However, the mechanics are about scavenging, hardly heroic stuff.

In this post I am going to consider another disconnect that occurs in this genre: pacing in gameplay and narrative. The story will be telling of an impending threat and that speed is of the essence; the gameplay will be rewarding you for taking your time and actively avoiding advancing the story. I must have played Oblivion for about 100 hours and countless in game days, I have become leader of the Mage's Guild, gone on a killing spree and numerous other things and the imminent threat still hasn't actually developed (except when I try to deal with it).

All of this stops the story meaning anything. The threat never feels genuine; yes it would be nice for you to defeat it, but if you don't, it's no big deal. Instead, I think that stories should be crafted to match the inherent gameplay pacing of an RPG.

One example that came to my mind recently is global warming. It has the same giant scope as a normal story - the end of the world - but the time scale is in terms of years rather than days. This will allow players to explore without feeling like the threat is made up. It could also be worked so that the gameplay of scavenging, or recycling, fitted with the theme as well.

A puzzle game - Weeping Angels

The basic premise of this game is based around the BBC drama Doctor Who. One recurring race (well, recurred once) of aliens are the Weeping Angels. They move incredibly fast and then kill you. The catch is, they can only move when no one is looking. While someone looks at them, they appear to simply be stone statues. This makes for some properly scary drama and feature in my two favourite episodes of Doctor Who. However, it also suggested quite an interesting strategy game to me.

Or a puzzle game. Troy Goodfellow describes strategy games as elaborate puzzle games (or something to that effect). I think it is more a gradient and this got me in to an interesting discussion on twitter about the merits and demerits of single solution puzzles. That for me is the difference between a strategy game and a puzzle game. In a strategy game, you are given a set of rules and tools and then you have to work out how to defeat the opposition: a puzzle to solve, but one with an infinite (or seemingly infinite) number of solutions and where there is very rarely a right or wrong answer.

At the other end of the spectrum is something like Braid where only one solution exists and you must work out what this is. Games like this are much harder to get in to - you can't just mess around and hope to achieve the answer (at least once you get to the more challenging end of the game)

Obviously you get in to hazy semantic battles here: is Peggle a strategy game; it does have multiple solutions. I would argue yes because you don't work out the entire solution; instead you analyse the situation and work out a logical next step.

The basis of the game would be you would have a set number of people who you have to get from one side of a room to the other. They would each be capable of looking in one direction and while the angles were in their line of sight.

So the question is do I make this a strategy game or a puzzle game (by the above gradient). Do I create each room so you have to move and place your people in a specific place to get across the room, or do I make it more tactical. It would certainly be possible to mix it up, or even choose something in the middle such as elements of the room that have to be solved in one way, but a lot of it could be done in a more free way.

Scale (Or "I am important too")

When multiplayer digital gaming was new, there were huge technical hurdles with everything developers tried to do. As a result, games blindly sought greater technological achievements such as number of simultaneous players. While these issues still exist, they are quickly becoming less significant with wide spread broadband and fibre optic cables quickly becoming main stream.

(For this post, I will assume we are talking about a shooter, obviously MMO games have many more simultaneous connexions, but that is something different).

Everyone likes the idea of hundreds of people all playing in the same game at the same time. You can truly create that war time feeling with bullets whizzing past you and players shouting. Suddenly it isn't you charging some enemies, it is you and loads of other people. It sounds really awesome.

However, I don't believe we should simply be going for as many people as technically possible. Halo 3 supports 16 players in a 8 versus 8 battle. I think this is pushing the limit for standard first person shooter mechanics. Already, you start to feel insignificant. In a balanced 4 versus 4 game in Halo, each death matters and each kill feels like cause for celebration. In Big Team Battle, this simply isn't the case. You charge in because one death is trivial; there is no tension.

I believe the more people you add, the worse the problem will get. Does this mean that I think that large count first person shooters are doomed to failure despite sounding awesome? Well, no.

Instead of giving up, a large scale game needs extra work to make the player feel significant. If every player is doing the same thing, then each players actions become virtually irrelevant: if they fail, either someone on their team will do it, or it won't be their fault because everyone failed.

Instead I think large numbers should be used as a backdrop for smaller games. You and a small group of people would be tasked to doing something. There would be an equal group on the opposite team tasked with doing the opposite. The players could still kill people who are not directly related to their mission, but it would not count towards the final score.

The problem with this is then you are not really a team, just lots of games going on on one map. Sure, you still create a sense of scale, but without a sense of being a team, you would feel no compulsion to attack the other team. I think this would almost completely counter balance the benefits. How many wars have enemies walking past one and another not shooting because they are not related to what they have been tasked to do. The player would be frequently and strongly reminded that they are not in a war, defeating the entire point.

The obvious solution is to have each teams success count as a point towards its team. The problem with this is then you get back to the original problem: getting that point doesn't matter, you won't win because of that point or loose by your failure. While it may not be a complete solution, I think it does reset the counting. If you have 8 players per team, then your kills don't matter. But if there are only 4 teams of 4 per side, then you have 16 players per side (so double) but you would hopefully have the tension of a 4 on 4.

Stillness

I was walking back from baby sitting tonight and I realised that late at night was actually one of my favourite times to be walking. Everything is so quite and still. I think the reason it is such a nice enviroment is because it is such a juxtaposition to the norm of everything moving and making a noise. It gives me a chance to reflect on the day, I don't have any music, there is no one else about, no rush and my mind is already winding down.

It got me thinking about how rare stillness is as a game enviroment. As we strive after ever more realistic graphics with more interactive elements, nothing is ever still. The idea of intentionally leaving an area empty of people, animations and sound is almost unheard of. Even the peaceful evenings on Assasins's Creed 2 still have people milling about.

One thing I have been thinking about is the idea of pacing in games. For a lot of games, the designers expect players to manage their own down time. Playing though Call of Duty for example, if you want a breather, you have to stop the game; the story doesn't have any slow paced sections. I think the idea of of stillness is tied to this: designers are unwillinging to provide a sensorly underwhelming experience in the same way they are unwilling to intentionally let of the action.

I hope anyone who went to GDC had a nice time, some very interesting talks and I can't wait for Fable 3.

Outlook of 2010 for Botworks

One of the main reasons I started this blog was as a way for me to keep track of my ideas and projects. So, in that context, this is more of a post for me, as it is a rough plan of what I plan to do this year.

Frozen Kangaroo, the real time strategy game I am making has been put on hold. This is for a number of reasons. The most important is simply that I have learnt so much since I have started that I have emerged on to the second stage of ignorance: aware of my failures (the step before being incompetent AND unaware). As a result, I can look at Frozen Kangaroo and say it is a lot more complicated than I thought and needs full planning.

I need to find you what works for me. My Computing coursework has helped me in this respect, but there is still much I need to learn. However, Frozen Kangaroo is too big for me to experiment with

Instead, I am planning a couple of much smaller projects. The first one I am allowing only a month to complete. I will have more details out soon, but I will briefly explain what I am trying with the planning. I am using a free piece of software called Freemind which allows me to create mind maps. Now, none of this is new, but I have never really done it properly. What I am going to do is break down each part of the game in to tiny little components that may be one algorithm or object.

The aim is, if I can make sure I know how to do each component, then theoretically I can make the whole game. The problem I had with Frozen Kangaroo, the nail in the coffin if you will, was that I needed to enhance an existing feature to include extra functionality. However, the feature was woven in to the very fabric of the game and when I changed it, everything broke. My hope is, with these tiny parts, each part will equate to one function that will have a fixed output and once they are done, they are done.

The second stage will be drawing up a schedule. I said that I would limit myself to one month. That means, that at the end of one month, I will publish everything I have made if it works, and if it doesn't, I move on with only a post mortem to remember it by (where I will try to decide what I did wrong)

I hope to start this one month project in February but I want to draw up a plan before I start and I have exams in January, so it may be more like half way through February. If all this goes to plan, I will begin planning a 6 month project. Hopefully, this will lay quite a lot of ground work for Frozen Kangaroo as it will have similar planning challenges as FK.

I also want to learn how to use Unity. I don't plan to make anything particularly noteworthy, my rough aim is to make a game set on an island where you must collect 8 items to help your escape. Hopefully, there should be just enough there for me to learn the basics of Unity.

The big thing for me this year is going to university. Don't ask me where I am going, I don't actually know (:S). Also, as it will be the last year at school I plan to go on holiday with my friends during the summer. None the less, I would still like to get the proper Bot website up and running, whilst maintaining Veteran Gamer, this blog, my school work, playing games and all of the above.

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Hopefully this time next year I will have 2 games to my name, an understanding of planning (and Unity 3D!) a place at a university and ready to restart Frozen Kangaroo. Bon Voyage!

A very small Chirstmas present from Botworks

Well seeming as I haven't finished any of the projects I am working on yet (more on what they are in the new year) so I can't offer discounts or bonus content. However, I can offer a little something for XNA developers. One of the things that I found most frustrating in XNA was drawing a line, so I created a little function to do just that. It isn't especially clever, but it gets the job done

void drawLine(Texture2D line,int lineWidth,Vector2 startPosition,Vector2 endPosition,SpriteBatch spriteBatch)
{
float length = Vector2.Distance(startPosition, endPosition);
float theta = (float)Math.Atan((double)((endPosition.X - startPosition.X) / (endPosition.Y - startPosition.Y)));
float alpha = (float)(2*Math.PI) - theta;
spriteBatch.Begin();
spriteBatch.Draw(line, new Rectangle((int)startPosition.X, (int)startPosition.Y, lineWidth, (int)length), null, Color.White, alpha, new Vector2(lineWidth/2,0), SpriteEffects.None, 0);
spriteBatch.End();
}

• line - this a pre-loaded texture2D which is your basic line pixel. It needs to be 1 pixel high. It can be of any width (for example if you want a glowing line) but a standard line is 1 pixel wide
• lineWidth - unsurprisingly this is the width of the texture loaded in the line property
• startPosition, endPosition - these vectors are the start and end co-ordinates of the line
• spriteBatch - this is just the instance of the spriteBatch which, unless you have specifically changed, is just called spriteBatch

And here is a quick demonstration. I am using a 21x1 image file which is just a red pixel in the middle with fading transparencies going out to create something of a laser effect.

Merry Christmas and a happy and productive new year to you all.

Thankyou, BBC

In my last post, I explained why I felt that video games should be covered by mainstream media as a proper medium. I sent a link to the BBC as I believe they could do a program, I even suggested including it in the Radio 4 programme, Front row.

So you can imagine how pleased I was when last nights episode of Front row included an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto. You can listen to it here, it is at the end.

My only complaint is that the presenter called other companies Game manufactures (as opposed to developers or even producers). Other than that, it was really quite good. I am sure it wasn't down to my letter, but hopefully it will lead to further coverage. If they are looking for additional people to interview, they should try Peter Moleyenux (a keen advocate of pushing the boundaries of game design rather than graphics).

Mr. Miyamoto was fantastic as well, quick to defend the accusation that games and films will merge. All in all, I am very happy and hope it continues.

Thanks BBC, you guys are awesome.

The perception of games and why it needs to change

It is my belief that the general perception of video games is that they are exclusively aimed at children. In this post, I hope to challenge this view, explain why it is damaging, examine the causes and outline what you can do to change this view.

The Perception is Wrong

Before going any further, let us be clear what I am saying. I believe that video games as a medium have as much potential for depth as any other media (film, books, music etc). I am not saying that all games are mature pieces of artwork, but, this is the same for any medium. Film has great thought-provoking movies, like Shawshank Redemption, but it also has Final Destination 4. Books have Lord of the Flies, but they have Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. Do any of these less mature titles mean that the rest of the medium is childish? Of course not.

Games can provide a unique way of telling stories that involve the player; not only can they immerse the player, they can let the player effect the story and the whole experience becomes more real. It even goes beyond this, games don't have to be a linear traditional story, but an abstract experience. It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss this fully, but games have a near infinite capacity for making players feel a huge variety of emotions. I think this means they qualify as a mature form of art.

Why it matters

I care because I have a true passion for playing games. When playing a really good game, I experience a truly fulfilling enjoyment and it saddens me that so many people dismiss it on the basis it is different. However, there is a real danger when parents take a games-are-not-for-me attitude.

Typically, parents do not get involved in the process of choosing and playing games, hence they are not best able to make judgments of what may or may not be suitable for their children. I am not going to deny that games can be damaging to a child's welfare, like every other medium. However, like movie ratings, game ratings are guidelines. Some children are going to be able to play 15s when they are 12 and they aren't going to grow up to become murderers. It has to be done on a child by child basis.

Films have a PG rating which means that younger audiences may require an adult to watch it with them. I think the same applies in games, sometimes having an adult take an interest in the game and discussing the more mature themes with the person may help them to understand the game in a sensible way.

What causes this perception?

The games industry itself is, in part, responsible for this perception. Not only has the industry promoted the clichéd image of teenagers mindlessly shooting people, but until recently it has not addressed the "controller" issue which, to many adults, can be highly intimidating.

However, there is another element contributing to this perception - the main stream media. The only stories covered by the popular press are when either financially significant games are released or scare stories saying that games are turning children in to dysfunctional slobs or mass murderers.(see this video for the other side of the story).

I feel the problem is that there are no programs on television or radio dedicated to indepth discussion of games. This reinforces the idea that games are for children. There are programs on the BBC for films, music, books and plays. However, there is nothing for games, even though programs such as Front Row could easily cover it under it's remit of:

"Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music"

If the BBC or any other mass consumption media want proof that interesting intellectual discussion can be had about video games, Three Moves Ahead, a real time strategy podcast, is a good start. (Try episode 8).

What can be done

It is all very well me criticizing, but what do I think should be done?

I genuinely believe the BBC has a responsibility to host a program that facilitates informed discussion of games. (This means more than a quick review of the latest releases). Games now have a larger market share than DVD purchases; it isn't a niche market anymore. I will be sending this post to the BBC and, if you agree with what I am saying, I ask that you do the same . Likewise, repost, link, retweet and spread the word.

However, there is something we all need to do; talk to people who hold this negative view of games. Don't call them a n00b, try to engage them in a meaningful conversation relating video games back to a medium they enjoy, such as films or books.

If you feel you are getting somewhere, there are 3 games which I feel are both accessible for anyone to be able to play and also demonstrate the potential of video games to engage, entertain and stimulate the player.

• Portal: This game is available for both the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 and has modest PC specifications. This game has a beautiful and very funny story and the best puzzle design I have ever seen. It shows games to be an intellectually stimulating pass time. It has a very gentle learning curve and does not require first person shooter skills to get started.

• Fable 2: This game is very easy to pick up: the combat system only requires one button and death penalty is minimal. However, it demonstrates the power of story telling in games. Encourage them to let go of themselves and become their character. Tell the player not to feel self-conscious and make the decisions as they actually would. If they do this, they will be treated with the kind of emotional depth that few books have achieved

• Bioshock: This game demonstrates a world to explore - one of the things that games excel at. This game also has very little punishment for dying (although I would recommend letting them have a little experience with first person shooters such as Portal first, you can get both games on the PC, Xbox 360 or the PS3). It also has an absolutely fantastic twist that a book could not pull of due to the nature of games.
  

If the skeptic player is still in any doubt that video games are a serious topic suitable for serious discussion, then encourage them to read about a game designed by Brenda Brathwaite called Train or listen to the aforementioned Three Moves Ahead podcast.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading. To summarize:

1. Games are not just for children
2. Games are a serious medium and have as much potential for emotional depth as any other medium
   
3. Main stream media should be encouraged to devise new programs to cover games
   
4. Parents - get involved in games. Only you can know what is right for your children, and you might even enjoy it!
   

Spread the word and, if you disagree with anything I say, please leave a comment, I would love to hear other opinions.

Music as a source of inspiration, Part 1: Lost Coastlines

Many things inspire specific game ideas for me. In fact, hardly a day goes by without some crazy, ill-thought-through idea planting its seed in my head. It normally starts with a desire to create a feeling or an emotion. For example, today I was watching a film called Speed Racer (surprisingly good actually) and I wanted to recreate the thrill of racing at absurd speeds requiring stupid reaction times where you had to jump, spin and smash your way to victory. I had even started mapping out the controls and how the single player would work by the time the film ended.

In the following two posts, I will be outlining a couple of game ideas that have been inspired by pieces of music. As with everything else, what normally happens for me is that it conjures up an image in my head, that then translates in to a game play concept.

The first song is an obscure song that was released on the Single of the Week offer run by iTunes. The song is called Lost Coastlines by Okkervil River (Spotify Link). My idea started at the end of the game, I, however, will start at the beginning.

It is a RPG of sorts set on the seas back when wind was the main means of getting around. At the start of the game, you have a simple choice, are you a right honourable sailor, or a pirate? You then arrive in a port and you are tasked with choosing a crew for your ship (which you inherited from your father who died at sea). In the port there would be about 100 people. (This is where the fact that I don't intend to build this in the coming weeks comes in to play): Each one of these would have a in depth and varied history and personality.

The basic game play would consist of a number of potentially unrelated quests separated by expanses of time. This comes back to an idea I discussed on GD.net, with a more "real" world and potential for more varied quests. I'll do a post why I think this kind episodic game play could work at some other point, however, it is not really relevant to this post.

If you're listening to the song, you are probably wondering, other than the vague sea theme, how the song inspired me to make this. In truth, most of what I just said existed before I heard the song, the sea theme is what made the following element glue with the rest of it.

Through out the game, there would be vague hints, mad ravings and general NPC chatter about a "Lost Coastline". At the start of the game, I imagine most players will completely ignore it. However, I hope, as the game develops, and the references are repeated, people will pick up on it. There would be stories of sailors who went mad looking for the coastline, there would be hysterics who claim to have seen it etc. The only thing in common is that everyone who knows anything about it, says it is the most beautiful place ever and that no sailor has been known to return.

Once you complete the game, as with many RPGs, you are free to continue looking around. It would be an open world in which you spend most of your travelling time auto sailing between ports and using maps to find known destinations. However, it will be perfectly possible to freely sail anywhere. Somewhere in the vast sea of the game, there will be the Lost Coastline (of course) and players can try to find it.

At first you are probably repelled by the idea as being cheap. However, if it were easy to find, the whole point would be destroyed. I also regard it as in addition to the main game; for most people, the game will end without more than a cursory search. As it will be so hard to find, I envisage a giant internet cult spawning to try to find this beautiful lost coastline (I love designing without reality messing things up!).

Then one day someone will find it, and it will be a beautiful experience for them. They would be the first person to set foot on the lost coastline. The first person to see all the wonder. True discovery is something that few in the 21st century have experienced. I would employ an artist specially to create it (who would be killed after development is finished, obviously) While I have mapped out what will happen, I don't really feel comfortable typing it out. Suffice to say it would poetic, or at least try to be.

Afterwards the person would run and tell the internet all about it and everyone would rush there, but the magic would be lost. But for that one person, I (hopefully) would have created a unique experience that they will treasure for the rest of their life.

Inevitably, it would be found by some stupid spoilt kid who played the game for five minutes, constantly tried to skip the damn thing because he was bored, until he found out he would be internet famous, but that's life!

----------------
Now playing: Okkervil River - Lost Coastlines
via FoxyTunes

Games as a form of art

This is a very hot topic at the moment and one that a lot of people have posted opinion on. I have my own opinions, but they basically boil down to that a good games makes you feel something (be it excitement, intrigue or success) but an art game makes you feel something that is not necessarily regarded as a positive feeling. For example, you could make the case that Fable is an art game because you feel responsibility, sadness at loss etc.

I have more to say about it, but I really posted this to link to an interesting post of the Zen of Design about this topic.

I largely agree with what it says. I think it is practically true that just because we have plenty of games that definitely aren't art (Gears of War 2) the same is true for all artistic mediums. In books, we have the Olaf Stapledon but then we also have Andy McNab. Does that mean that books can't be a form of art. No. There are hundereds of pictures that are just well painted nice landscapes, which I wouldn't call art. Or rather I would, which is part of the problem, as I see them as the painting eqivalent of Gears of War, nice to look at but won't make you think.

That is also the other thing, everyone has a different deffinition of art, which futher complicates the matter and risks reducing the arguement to one of pointless semantics.

[Sorry for the lack of posts recently, been on a French Exchange and going back to France in two days!]

Twitter - Not Just Jumping on the Bandwagon

Technologies come and go on the Internet and I like to think I only sign up for technologies which I can actually think of a use for, rather than just what everyone else is using.

For example, with Twitter, I wanted to use it to post updates on the development on Frozen Kangaroo. I often found that I had made progress in its development and wanted to keep a record of this, but it was not nearly enough for a blog post. In that sense, Twitter was ideal.

However, today I found another use for it. I can't work out if Twitter is actually any good at this, or whether this is basically what forums have been doing for ages. Basically, there is now a #gamedesign tag where frequent discussions about different game design topics take place. Its been going for a few weeks now, but I only really got involved today (discussing professinal gaming as a public sport, after I watched some of the Star Craft final live). It was then I realised how fantastic it was.

I think the reason it is good is because it forces people to express short points, which means it is easy to keep up with it, instead of having to read pages of text, as is often the case at Gamedev.net. Also, Tweetdeck does live updating, meaning you don't have to keep using F5. As a result, any games designers or wannabe games designers, if you are looking for an excuse to join Twitter, here it is.

(Oh, and make sure to follow me @thk123)

Go with the Flow is Audiosurf...

A while back I posted a game idea I had for a rhythm based platformer called Go with the Flow. The basic premise was that it would be a platformer that went at such as speed you had to use the rhythm of the music to predict what you had to do. A raise in pitch would signify a jump and a lower would require you to dive. Whilst I tried to implement it in Flash, timing the level creation proved near impossible and my work in to byte interpretation of a song (where the program would look at the binary version of the song and calculate whether the sound was a raise in pitch or not) was not making sufficent progress to use

I posted the thougths to Gamedev.net and while I did get some game suggestions, no one suggested a game I later found out about (reading an unrelated blog post) called Audiosurf. If, like me, you haven't heard of the game, you control a little ship and must collect things to the rhytm of the music.

While it isn't a platformer, and you don't really use the music to know where to go, it captured the essence of what I was trying to explain with Go with the Flow. I also realise that this basic concept is also in Guitaur Hero. It is simply a more involving way of listetning to music. It is like tapping your fingers to the tune, but slightly more interesting.

Anyway, just a short post today, just wanted to have a go at all of you for not reccomending it to me.

Driving Games: Change we need

Apologies for lack of posting recently, my exams are over, so I really have no excuse.

Racing games, in my opinion, are no longer designed. While racing games aren't my favourite genre, I certainly enjoy them. For me, however, I believe the game play is beginning to get stale. Obviously the racing component is essentially right; it's the rest which I have a problem with. In this post I hope to explain exactly what I have a problem with and what I think can be done to fix this.

When new racing games are released, the major focus is the physics engine that can realistically model the cars. This seems to be almost exclusively what is demonstrated. Now don't get me wrong, of all the genres, racing is the one where the physics engines are most important. And it is important, as I discussed in my post about excessive graphical focus on Veteran Gamer, it increases the tension within the race, making it much more enjoyable.

However, there is more to a game than one aspect. And a genre needs change, not just improvement. Every racing game follows the same basic plan. Loads of realistic cars, extensive realistic modding for said cars, hundreds of realistic tracks and a realistic physics engine. With the exception of Mario Kart, all racing games seem to target the realistic market.

On top of that, the game play does not change. You race, you earn money to buy cars, you do more races. You fail a race, you retry. The game is always linear but without a story. I don't think racing games need a story, but if it doesn't have a story, why is it so linear?

One of the things I would like to see is a more believable world with a fixed calendar of events. Obviously you wouldn't have to wait months to play the game, but if you loose a race, you might have to wait a game year to play in that race again instead of instantly retrying until you succeed. Make individual failures acceptable and you should make the game less frustrating.

One of my favourite off-track racing experiences was in some formula one racing game on the PS1, where you had to qualify for a tournament and you were given 12 game hours to do so. In that time, you had to get a qualifying time, fix any damage done to your car whilst doing this and do any upgrades/changes you wanted. This made the game feel more real and made the race more tense as you had already invested a considerable amount of time and effort in to it.

At the moment, racing games lack interesting decisions, you race as well as you can in every race, if you fail, you just restart. There is no reason to do anything else. If however you had a calendar, you may have to choose between two tournaments (with different rewards, one might come with more money, the other with more prestige or a rare cup).

And that is just an example. There are surely many ways to mix up the game play so it is not all the same. Take, for example, Burnout: Paradise, where you had an open world to explore.

Another thing that seemingly all racing games do (Mario Kart excepted) is use super-realistic cars. While the real world is often a very good source to base your game ideas on, it certainly shouldn't be the sole source in a whole genre. The world lacks variety (there is, after all, only one). However, if you delve in to the fictional, your options are limitless.

But even sudo-realistic universe could be significantly better in game play terms. In real life, cars are made to be as good as possible at everything. In a fictional, albeit similar universe, this could be impossible and instead cars have to be highly specialised or or below average in all areas. This would make choosing and tuning a car not so much a matter of finding the best, but the one best suited to the race ahead.

However, I am not optimistic we will see this any time soon. As I've already said, good physics are important in a racing game and these are still expensive to create. This means that indie developers who want to try something new can't choose this genre (or else fail on the racing part, which is more important, no matter how I try to argue this). Publishers will not want to invest in other areas of the game that they cannot so easily demonstrated, particularly if it means cuts to the physics development or their own profits.

Thoughts and opinions welcome. Have I missed the point, are racing games fine?

Posting hiatus

Well you will have probably noticed posts seems to have dried up. To avoid the situation which happened last year on my other blog I am posting an official hiatus notice. Due to exams, posting on this blog, (and my game news site) will halt. Posting will resume on June 15th with a post about the resource model in Frozen Kangaroo.

In the mean time, I will leave you with some links.

I am really enjoying the Three Moves Ahead podcast from Flash of Steel. If you want a taster of what the podcast is like, my favourite one was about symettry and asymettry in games. The podcast is well worth a subscribe because it combines genuinely interesting discussion about games design with some funny personalities. Better yet, it doesn't just focus on the latest game release.

Finally, an odd link. I am linking to this site primarily so that it can be found by Google. It is a website I designed (email me @ thekileyenator@gmail.com if you fancy one for yourself) and so I need Google to index it. However, if you are looking for plants in your work place, and you are based the home counties, this is the site to go to - Renaissance Plants

Frozen Kangaroo Concept: Nuclear Weapons

In a series of posts I intend to explain the more detailed elements of Frozen Kangaroo, the real time strategy game that I am working on. You can read an executive summary here. I hope to make it so that the posts only rely on things explained before them. However, please excuse me if my posts either digress to explain some concept, or don't make any sense because of no digression. If you have any questions, leave a comment (if it is an old post, I would recommend posting it on a newer post) or email me @ thekileyenator@gmail.com

As with the real Cold War, nuclear weapons will play an important part in Frozen Kangaroo. Not only do they add a devastating weapon to your arsenal, they can be used as a diplomatic bartering tool and even a direct path to victory.

Types of Nuclear Missiles

There are three types of nuclear missile in this game, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. They are: long, medium and short range nuclear missiles, or ICBM, err normal, and tactical nukes. Sadly, Blogger doesn't support tables, so I will have to explain it in paragraphs.

The long range nuke has, as you might expect, the longest range. Indeed, it can shoot anywhere on the map, including the proxy nation's colony cities (Will explain this in a later post, but they are basically where the civilians live. Each proxy nation has an associated colony city which contains millions of civilians who have been moved to keep them out of the way of the war). These missiles also inflict the most damage. Sadly, the pay off is in cost and speed. Cost is fairly self explanatory, but the effect of speed I will explain in a moment.

The medium range missile can reach most of the map, but cannot reach the proxy nations colony cities. Damage is similarly weakened, although it is still very powerful. However, it is faster and cheaper.

Finally the short range missile, which can only fire in provinces within a 4 province radius (subject to testing), and deals far less damage, particularly to buildings. It is, however, significantly faster and cheaper.

Missile Launchers

To fire these missiles you have three options; fixed, mobile and submarines. Fixed missile launchers can be constructed by your builder units. They can fire any of the above missiles.

The mobile missile launchers are a trainable unit. They can be moved about on the map, but need to be "deployed" before they can fire. These can only fire medium and short missiles.

Finally, the submarine is a normal unit. It can carry two small nuclear missiles with it. Further nukes must be collected from a port. However, it does not need to set up. Also, as they are water based, they can quickly manoeuvre very close to key enemy provinces and threaten them before they have a chance to respond.

With the exception of the sub (which needs to take its nukes with it) the launchers can only store one nuke at a time. Further nukes must be stored in a silo and then transported to the launcher. These silos come with stationary launchers, so you don't have to constantly arrange the transport of nukes. Trucks carrying nukes can also be "parked" in to either of the launchers, allowing all the connected nukes to be fired.

However, if you wish to use a mobile nuclear launcher to target deep within the enemies territory, you will have to advance it with a truck carrying a nuclear missile. It may also be wise to accompany the truck and the launcher with some form of defence, as neither have any attack capabilities.

The Nuclear Missile Management Screen

So how does speed factor in to all of this? Well, nuclear missiles aren't instantaneous. When you fire a nuke, your opponent is immediately alerted to this development and are taken directly to their nuclear missile management screen. On this screen, for each of the provinces there is a count down till the missile will hit... if its been targeted. The opponent, however, does not know which province has been targeted and so all provinces will have a countdown clock running. I hope to make this quite a tense screen to be on, with flashing red lights, constantly ticking clocks and maybe even a siren!

What can you do with this information? Well, each one of your provinces can be sent into "bunker mode". This significantly reduces the damage done by any potential nuclear strike. However, going into and coming out of bunker mode takes time. During this time (and the time in bunker mode) all buildings production queues halt, units stop moving and you can't enter the province.

You must then decide which provinces to put into bunker mode. Obviously, the opponent is more likely to target high value provinces, but if one of them is producing something very important, does the nuclear missile pose a big enough threat to warrant halting production.

This is also where the speed of the nukes comes into play. A short range nuclear missile gives the player virtually no time to react, let alone put any of their provinces in to nuclear bunker mode.

The other important thing with nuclear weapons that I want to cover in this post is retaliation fire. When a nuclear missile is sent your way, you have the option to hit a big red button marked FIRE. Prior to any nuclear strike, preferably during a quite period of the game, you can target your nuclear missiles at specific provinces. Then, whenever you hit the red button, they all simultaneously fire at these predetermined locations. This means that if the opponent launches a huge, devastating barrage of missiles at you, you can retaliate before they even hit.

From the nuclear screen, you can set up retaliation fire, deploy provinces in to bunker mode and watch the approach of oncoming nukes with suitably tense flashing red lights.

Nuclear missiles are clearly a very powerful weapon. However, they come with a severe cost. Using nuclear missiles is highly frowned upon by proxy nations and their colonies. As I explained in my post about the proxy nations, firing nuclear missiles, particularly in a province associated with them, has a strong negative impact on your relations. If you fire at their colony city, that will make them sworn enemies to you, and will strongly effect everyone's opinion of you.

I will be explaining this is more detail, but nukes are, in some ways, more useful when not fired. You can use them in diplomacy to threaten your enemy or "persuade" other proxy nations to join you, lest they fall foul to your rain of terror. Also, as I said earlier, you can use them to win. Although I will be covering ways to win more fully, if you manage to significantly out-build your opponent on nuclear missiles, you can force them in to surrender.

For my next Frozen Kangaroo concept I hope to be covering either the resources or diplomacy (including how you can use nuclear missiles in diplomacy - I never said it was friendly diplomacy).

Blender fun and a quick update

I have recently been using Blender. Here is my image that I created this afternoon. I was trying out a few things (transparency, multiple light sources and actually finishing an image). No, it isn't a hint as to any future project, it's just a ray gun of some sort.

Also, I found out how to make really quick games in Blender. I had always thought you needed to use Python and so didn't bother, I have enough to learn as it is!

However, what you can do is use the very simple "Behaviour Editor". While I haven't produced anything meaningful, indeed anything even resembling a game, it does some very cool stuff out of the box. Namely, it has a physics engine complete with rotation, bouncing and friction. Hooking up keyboard input is easy and you can quickly get to grips with the basics.

In the way of Frozen Kangaroo, the real time strategy game that Botworks is currently making (read the articles linked on the right under Frozen Kangaroo Concepts for an overview), progress has been made, but not huge progress. My exams are coming up, and so a lot of my time is devoted to revision etc. However, my laptop should be turning up within the next 2-5 working days. When that happens, I will hopefully be able to spend much more time working on it.

Probably the most signifcant improvement I have made is the terrain engine. Before, each province had an asocitated image file which had all the terrain features in it. However, I have now moved the actual features off the image and in to a seperate file. When I want to place down a clump of trees, I now create a new TerrainFeature, giving it width, height and type of terrain. The engine takes that, tiles the correct image the set number of times, adding some random spacing to give it that natural feeling. It also can be queried to see whether a unit is within it. This will allow for easy checking to allow for speed modification.

It also means it will be easier to update map designs without having to
a) go in to the image file and edit that and
b) recode it to hit test different areas of the map for movement modification (in the original, if I wanted units to slow down when travesering a ceartain type of terrain, I would have to manually set where the terrain was going to be and enter how much I wanted the unit to slow down by).

Finally, there may be a hiatus of posts during my exam period. Hopefully I will get one or two more posts in before, but if I don't, posting will resume on the 11th of June.

Context to the battles

I was listening to Troy Goodfellow's (Flash of Steel) podcast 3 Moves Ahead today (episode 3) and they were discussing Empire: Total War. E:TW was highly criticised by Tom Chick, one of the contributors to the podcast, in his Crispy Gamer review.

What interested me about their discussion was "do the tactical real time battles need the strategic layer". Putting aside the debate of whether the strategy layer is actually good (you can read my other blog, Veteran Gamer, for this type of thing.), I will be looking at whether it is needed and what alternatives exist.

Is it needed?
What does the strategy layer offer? If you assume, for the moment, that the strategy layer is not fun enough to play on its own, why include it? In the case of Total War games, the most impressive element of the game is clearly the real time tactical battles. That is what makes up the adverts and that's where the development money went. So surely people view the campaign as just getting in the way. However, people insist on playing it.

The reason is they give the battles context. This is an example of the strange phenomena of games. People needs rewards. This is completely bizarre when viewed with a purely logical mindset. Gamers play games to have fun (or to escape or whatever), that is the real reward. However, players need something in game too. Achievements are another example. Your gamer score counts for nothing, and yet people insist on playing the game again to get all the achievements. Why do they need the excuse, if they are enjoying the game enough, why can't they just play it again?

I'm not a psychologist, so my answer is simply that humans are illogical and, as game designers, you must cater to this.

Context provides this reward. What is the point of winning the battle on its own, where is the reward? However, if your battle contributes to winning the war, then suddenly it is worth while. Yes, this is ridiculous, what does winning the war grant you; nothing. But it doesn't matter any where near as much, as you don't finish the campaign half as often as you do a mission.

A possible explanation for this need of context is that it helps immersion. In real life, there are no isolated fights, there must be some external purpose, no matter how basic.

Alternatives
OK, so context is needed, but what if you want all of your game to be fun. What alternatives exist to the campaign mode found in Empire and the like? Well obviously you have the traditional linear mission mode. Now sometimes, I think it is very easy to be snob like in your favourite genre. Recently, Resident Evil 5 came out. A lot of people lashed out at the controls. Immediately, Resi fans struck back with "this is how it has always been, you just can't HANDLE the controls". Just because this is how it has always been does not mean it isn't time for change.

I make no such judgements over RTS fanatics, I have played enough to consider myself, at least partly, amongst them. I also freely admit that I don't normally bother with linear campaign missions.

I think part of the attraction with these spiralling campaigns is they make an emergent story line (the best kind of story, in my opinion, when it comes to games). Also, I think with linear missions, some of the immersion, i.e. the point of not just playing the real time element, is lost. You can only win, if you lose, you restart, you will only advance in a set way and you cannot deviate from this. It isn't helped that the stories are usually predictable and unimaginative.

One campaign I did like was Dawn of War 2. I think this excellently combined the two methodologies. It keeps the linear missions, which means you are very rarely distracted from the heart of the game, but keeps a strong sense of context. The whole campaign just feels more real than other real time strategies, including Dawn of War 1 (ignoring Dark Crusade and after, they suffered from a different problem entirely). The use of optional missions which provide optional benefits creates the reward system and interesting decisions for the player. As does war gear and levelling up your troops. True, there is a scripted series of events and you can't lose. The difference is, it feels like you have some control over the story and, because it is the same units with the same names, you get an emergent story that feels unique to you. Does your scout squad get annoyed they are often viewed as cowards? Do you try and balance which units get deployed so they don't get upset?

The campaign is excellent for a number of other reasons which I detailed in my review of the game. However, the key thing is, it doesn't distract from the meat of the game, it just gives the missions context and reward.

Overall, I don't think the campaign mode needs to be as complicated as Dawn of War (and believe me, that isn't complicated) All it needs to do is provide you with a believable back story before you begin the mission, and a reason to finish it other than pure advancement. Other great things include continuity between missions and interesting decisions that don't take hours to have visible effects. It is a real time game, and if your decisions don't have an immediate and obvious impact, then they become a drag and just taking you away from what you want to do. In some ways, I think this is where TW games fail. A turn can take as long as a turn in Civ. In Civ, that's what you want, in TW, it is taking you away from that.