Finalising the Research and Moving On

12/11/09 - Since the last post on this blog a lot has happened with the team and the project. Moving forwards from the researching stage the team now are finalising toolset ideas and starting on the beginning of the designing stage of the project.
Here is a list of accomplishments which have been gained so far;

- Narrowing Down The Subjects
The team came together after deciding which one their selected subjects will be carried forward and which one will be eliminated. From that meeting each member pitched their subject of choice to the team and explained the reasons for selecting one over the other.

- Designing Our Question
Once the subjects had been narrowed down to 3-4 a general theme became evident. We noted that all of the subjects, in one way or another, related to each other in the sense that they all revolved around environments, exploration and aesthetics. Therefore we decided to form these similarities into a subject which we would then eventually settle on as the project's subject.

However once the subject was settled on we needed to develop the specific question that the project would form around. After we received some feedback from Brian and Phil about our initial ideas for questions, criticisms being that the question should be shorter and more specific, we revised how the question should read as.
The final outcome that we decided to stick with was 'Motivational Structures For Exploration In Games'.

- The Design Document, Pitch And Plan
The design doc, pitch and plan was the first major milestone and required 'hand-in' for the team and as it requires such a huge amount of input about the project each member was given their own section to write. These sections are the explainations of each member's subjects and their researched carried out in said topics. other pieces of work was also created for the design doc, pitch and plan such as the gannt chart, the roles of the members etc.

- Research Into Toolsets
The next step for the team was to begin the process of selecting a toolset that would be used for the project. Selecting a toolset to create the artefact of the project was a major important point that the team needed to approach carefully. Considering the university itself has full access to the UT, Hammer and NWN2 toolsets these toolsets were the first to be placed as possible choices, however the team also decided to research into other open world games that have capable toolset applications. The list consisted of;

Matt Downey - Red Faction: Gurilla

James Hill - TES IV: Oblivion & World Of Warcraft

Mike Cox - Dragon Age: Origins

Mike Lawrence - Far Cry 2

The case studies allowed us to research into the different techniques used in the toolsets to create non-linear/open world games.

- Case Study Of Existing Games and Experiment/Testing Theories
The team decided that to futher understand the styles of design and the process in which developers go through to produce a game the team should use the games that were chosen for the case studies and add experimentation scenearios to them. Each member was tasked to design an experiment idea that could be implemented into an exploratory game.

The idea was to try and create a sceneario for the player, in which they didn't neccarssarily have to be told what to do, they would create their own goals by exploring the levels. Certain things were taken into account like the effects of subtle hints the player would follow without neccarssarily knowing e.g. straight paths, quest windows and town signs.

- Pitch Presentation
The pitch presentation was the overall finialisation of the research of the project so far. The team had research tirelessly into the subject and understood exactly what effort and work was going to be needed for the task of creating our exploratory game and why the team had chosen this path from the many different options availiable at the beginning of the project.

Unfortunately the decision on which toolset for the project wasn't settled for the presentation. However the time after would be saved for a final vote and discussion about which toolset would be best for this task.

In the following months the team will;

- Decide on a toolset for the project

- Find time to work with said toolset and get familiarized with the layout and settings

- Get started with each individual's line of work Geometry, Scripting (Kismet) etc