Well, the first playable of the first puzzle went to test round. It was exciting to follow the fellows solving the puzzle. Guys were reporting their process and asking questions in the IRC. Unfortunately the puzzle seems to have a couple of flaws, which I need to solve. One is just graphical, one of the numbers looks too much of another one, so there is a confusion. This is an usability issue and should be fixed even for the most hard core version.
Another clear flaw in the puzzle was the last part. Since the first part of the puzzle was all about - let's say bunch of numbers, the players also assumed that the last part would also be about bunch of numbers. I think I need to change that a bit.
Thanks for the testers! Now I have a clear idea what I should do to make the puzzle more approachable to the larger audience. Not the largest audience (FarmVillers etc), but the regular people who are interested in puzzle games. I will mark the changes to the design document, but will not implement yet, since I want to get some more puzzles done before that.
I will probably make the different versions of the puzzles public, so people can go and try them out even before the game is completely ready. After all, After Now Archeology is not focused on the large story, but on the individual puzzles.
torstai 24. marraskuuta 2011
We have a domain!
For the first time in my life, I registered a domain. Or actually three. Now we have http://www.afternowarcheology.com, http://www.afternowarcheology.org and http://www.afternowarcheology.net. The next thing is to get a couple of extra e-mail addresses, so people can send me some feedback and ideas. Registering was a bit frightening, because I had no previous experience on buying domains and linking them to my own directory. Apparently it works rather well and Godaddy.com has quite easy tools for managing the domains.
I am also planning to early-release the puzzles for the public. Since the project is currently a non-profit one, it could profit from getting some brainiacs to test the puzzles. Of course, I will add some heavy disclaimers before the puzzles, so people know that they are first playables, alphas or so, and can contain bugs and errors. Also, if the gamers want to experience the full-game, they should wait for the release.
I am also planning to early-release the puzzles for the public. Since the project is currently a non-profit one, it could profit from getting some brainiacs to test the puzzles. Of course, I will add some heavy disclaimers before the puzzles, so people know that they are first playables, alphas or so, and can contain bugs and errors. Also, if the gamers want to experience the full-game, they should wait for the release.
tiistai 22. marraskuuta 2011
The first playable of the first puzzle
I finally got my first puzzle to a playable condition. I have planned to use average 1 day per puzzle for programming and about 2 days for graphics. And at least for the first one this seems to be the pace. The code is horrible, since I just want to go forward without too much thinking, I can refactor later if needed. Graphics are also quite amateurish, but they do their job and I am still practicing the tools and stuff. And of course, there are some placeholders.
But what next? I am pretty sure the puzzle is currently way too hard - especially because I have not added the hint button yet. Actually, I have not made the root, or hosting or main or whatever program yet. The puzzle is only the part that is loaded inside the hosting program. And the root will include all the UI/HUD stuff, networking code etc.
Back to the difficulty. I have a couple of volunteers doing the testing. They are pretty hardcore gamers, so let's see if they can figure it out. For us mortals I have plenty of hints hiding in backstage. The hard thing is to provide a good challenge for those willing to use plenty of brain power and time, but still help other players through the hard parts, using hints. I would say it is not a sin to use the hints in this game. I would also say not everyone can solve the whole game even if they used all possible hints. Well, I can not beat Ikaruga, Street Fighters or Super Mario Bros...
But what next? I am pretty sure the puzzle is currently way too hard - especially because I have not added the hint button yet. Actually, I have not made the root, or hosting or main or whatever program yet. The puzzle is only the part that is loaded inside the hosting program. And the root will include all the UI/HUD stuff, networking code etc.
Back to the difficulty. I have a couple of volunteers doing the testing. They are pretty hardcore gamers, so let's see if they can figure it out. For us mortals I have plenty of hints hiding in backstage. The hard thing is to provide a good challenge for those willing to use plenty of brain power and time, but still help other players through the hard parts, using hints. I would say it is not a sin to use the hints in this game. I would also say not everyone can solve the whole game even if they used all possible hints. Well, I can not beat Ikaruga, Street Fighters or Super Mario Bros...
torstai 17. marraskuuta 2011
Graphic production
I am not actually a graphician. I did some pixel-bending around 90s, but after that my graphic production has mostly been cropping and adjusting a couple of photos. Since I currently don't have anyone else working for the project, I have started making some ok-ish placeholder graphics by myself. I would like the game to have a hand-drawn feeling in it, so I aquired an Intuos4 pad, so I can actually use a pen interface. After a couple of hours of work, I have made some "good enough for now"-level images. It is not too hard, but drawing everything by hand takes really a lot of time.
I have never got into Photoshop. It has felt way too complicated and all the functionality is hidden somewhere. So currently I am using MyPaint for the paint job and paint.net for editing. Crappy combo, I know, but they are rather easy to learn to use.
Since After Now Archeology is heavily based on real stuff, I am doing quite a lot of re-drawing old maps, photos etc. Not too hard - I have rather good eye for shapes, but my color eye is blind. Even if I use color picker to pick the colors from the original pics, my graphics feel somewhat dull. Maybe I need to add more contrast and sharper edges. But for now, I just make some placeholders, since the graphical production is not in the focus of my work. I guess after some months of working with the game, my graphics will be much better.
Or then I just get someone to help me with them.
I have never got into Photoshop. It has felt way too complicated and all the functionality is hidden somewhere. So currently I am using MyPaint for the paint job and paint.net for editing. Crappy combo, I know, but they are rather easy to learn to use.
Since After Now Archeology is heavily based on real stuff, I am doing quite a lot of re-drawing old maps, photos etc. Not too hard - I have rather good eye for shapes, but my color eye is blind. Even if I use color picker to pick the colors from the original pics, my graphics feel somewhat dull. Maybe I need to add more contrast and sharper edges. But for now, I just make some placeholders, since the graphical production is not in the focus of my work. I guess after some months of working with the game, my graphics will be much better.
Or then I just get someone to help me with them.
articy:draft
I visited GDC Europe, where I talked with guys from Nevigo. They are producing a desing tool for game designers, designed by designers. articy:draft is basically a tool for creating branching and networking story lines and dialogues, but I decided to test it for a bit different purposes too. The beta test period of it started around September 2011 and I got accepted to the program.
I have to say I love the way articy:draft works. It clearly is designed by game designer, and it may be the first job-specific tool for us. Since it still is in beta, there are some features missing, but I've liked using the software very much. Designing the structures for the puzzles and for the whole game has been a joy - even if the program crashes every now and then.
Since the articy:draft is made for dialog and story development, it has some limitations that I have had to overcome. One of them is the locations of inputs and outputs of nodes. Inputs are always on the left, outputs on the right. As After Now Archeology's structure is three-folding spiral, I had to do some adaptations. Well, here is a screenshot of the flow of the game in articy:draft.
What is nice with articy:draft is that I can double-click any of the puzzles in the flow chart, and dig deeper into the actual puzzle. Here is an example of one of the puzzle structures.
As you can see, I use articy:draft in not very structured way. There are certain rules I try to obey, but for me, articy:draft is kind of recursive post-it board with wires between the stickers. I use some color coding in my designs, dark green being the initial story, brown/orange are the puzzles, blues are some extra stuff and the last green one is the answer. Yellow notes are hints (I am going to have a hint system to avoid you getting stuck) and the red one is an idea for a hardcore-mode.
It is also very nice, that articy:draft exports the whole game design as a XML-file. If I was doing a story-driven game, I could just import the ready made XML into my game and parse it for dialogs and scene structures. Hopefully there will be a .jpg or .pdf exporter for the visual version too, since it would be really nice to print out all the structures, not just the content.
Beside the articy:draft designs, I have started updating more traditional game design document. Since it contains quite a lot of spoilers, I am not going to paste it here, but maybe I'll write something about it too in the future.
I have to say I love the way articy:draft works. It clearly is designed by game designer, and it may be the first job-specific tool for us. Since it still is in beta, there are some features missing, but I've liked using the software very much. Designing the structures for the puzzles and for the whole game has been a joy - even if the program crashes every now and then.
Since the articy:draft is made for dialog and story development, it has some limitations that I have had to overcome. One of them is the locations of inputs and outputs of nodes. Inputs are always on the left, outputs on the right. As After Now Archeology's structure is three-folding spiral, I had to do some adaptations. Well, here is a screenshot of the flow of the game in articy:draft.
It is also very nice, that articy:draft exports the whole game design as a XML-file. If I was doing a story-driven game, I could just import the ready made XML into my game and parse it for dialogs and scene structures. Hopefully there will be a .jpg or .pdf exporter for the visual version too, since it would be really nice to print out all the structures, not just the content.
Beside the articy:draft designs, I have started updating more traditional game design document. Since it contains quite a lot of spoilers, I am not going to paste it here, but maybe I'll write something about it too in the future.
Pre-production
As I mentioned before, I started collecting data for the game many, many years ago. During the years I read quite a lot about different sciences, religions, myths and also art and culture. I always tried to look for something strange or twisted. Whenever I saw something that could become a part of my game, I wrote it down in my precious spreadsheet. In the beginning I also classified the links, as beloning to the fields of mathematics, cryptography, mystery or whatever.
In the spring 2011 I got a Digidemo funding for concept design of the game. This basically made it possible to use a couple of man-months just for the game/puzzle design and material collecting. But it also set a deadline for the design process. AVEK (the institution behind Digidemo) demanded to have a report about the usage of the money and results of the design process in the beginning of November 2011. Half a year.
Since I had only collected materials, but had not thought too much about the structure of the game or the design of the puzzles, I had to start thinking about those things too. I used quite a lot of time organizing the data, trying to find some kind of patterns. I also played quite a lot of different puzzle games, just for inspiration.
Around August 2011 I finally had found a decent structure for the game. With the structure I mean the flow of the puzzles, grouping of themes and gameplay mechanics etc. The game will include 19 puzzles of three different areas: Science & Technology, Art & Culture and Myth & Religion. These themes form a three-fold spiral, with three entrance points and a superfantastic all-in-all-puzzle in the middle. There are also six puzzles in-between the different paths, e.g. about science and myths, or art and science.
Well, I had a structure, but had no real design for the puzzles. During September and October I had to design them too. I had made a couple of riddles about an year earlier, just to test the difficulty levels and to tease some people I knew being interested in the game. But there were only three of them, and only one was actually solved by the test persons. Beside that, they were actually riddles, as they were implemented in only HTML and JPG. The answer for the riddles was one word. This is actually one of the mechanics I am going to use in the game anyway. It worked well in Timehunt, Torment and First Door, so why wouldn't it work in After Now Archeology. But I also want to add some activities, so there will be more interactive parts in the game, and I also try to add some interactivity for the basic riddles too.
The puzzle design phase was somewhat exhausting. Trying to mix and mash and combine and separate some 200 thematic sources to 19 puzzles, designing the interactions and all. All who have done any creative work know the "zone" and flow. You just fill your head with the ideas and try to combine them the best possible way. I may have been really annoying and distand during the phase, sorry for that. But this kind of work can not be done lightly or with left hand.
In the beginning of November, I had somewhat working idea for most of the puzzles. There still are a couple, which I do not have the actual gameplay designed and a couple, where the gameplay can be really sucky. But now I have something to start the implementation with. I have a better monitor (fullHD) in order, got an Intuos4 for testing purposes, and I've started refreshing my 1337 Flash skills, so I can actually start implementing the stuff.
In the spring 2011 I got a Digidemo funding for concept design of the game. This basically made it possible to use a couple of man-months just for the game/puzzle design and material collecting. But it also set a deadline for the design process. AVEK (the institution behind Digidemo) demanded to have a report about the usage of the money and results of the design process in the beginning of November 2011. Half a year.
Since I had only collected materials, but had not thought too much about the structure of the game or the design of the puzzles, I had to start thinking about those things too. I used quite a lot of time organizing the data, trying to find some kind of patterns. I also played quite a lot of different puzzle games, just for inspiration.
Around August 2011 I finally had found a decent structure for the game. With the structure I mean the flow of the puzzles, grouping of themes and gameplay mechanics etc. The game will include 19 puzzles of three different areas: Science & Technology, Art & Culture and Myth & Religion. These themes form a three-fold spiral, with three entrance points and a superfantastic all-in-all-puzzle in the middle. There are also six puzzles in-between the different paths, e.g. about science and myths, or art and science.
Well, I had a structure, but had no real design for the puzzles. During September and October I had to design them too. I had made a couple of riddles about an year earlier, just to test the difficulty levels and to tease some people I knew being interested in the game. But there were only three of them, and only one was actually solved by the test persons. Beside that, they were actually riddles, as they were implemented in only HTML and JPG. The answer for the riddles was one word. This is actually one of the mechanics I am going to use in the game anyway. It worked well in Timehunt, Torment and First Door, so why wouldn't it work in After Now Archeology. But I also want to add some activities, so there will be more interactive parts in the game, and I also try to add some interactivity for the basic riddles too.
The puzzle design phase was somewhat exhausting. Trying to mix and mash and combine and separate some 200 thematic sources to 19 puzzles, designing the interactions and all. All who have done any creative work know the "zone" and flow. You just fill your head with the ideas and try to combine them the best possible way. I may have been really annoying and distand during the phase, sorry for that. But this kind of work can not be done lightly or with left hand.
In the beginning of November, I had somewhat working idea for most of the puzzles. There still are a couple, which I do not have the actual gameplay designed and a couple, where the gameplay can be really sucky. But now I have something to start the implementation with. I have a better monitor (fullHD) in order, got an Intuos4 for testing purposes, and I've started refreshing my 1337 Flash skills, so I can actually start implementing the stuff.
What is After Now Archeology
After Now Archeology is an augmented virtuality puzzle game. It means, one can not play the game without going outside of the game's realm searching for information. The idea is quite opposite to augmented reality games, where the game is taken to the outside world. I started this blog to document the process of designing and producing the game.
The idea and process for making the game started way back in 2003, when I bumped up to Timehunt, a puzzle game with huge amount of extra-game linking and information. Timehunt was ridiculously difficult, but as long as I managed to play it, it was great fun for challenge-hungry brains. Timehunt went offline around 2005, when no one had solved all of its puzzles. After Timehunt I've played a couple of similar-ish games: Torment, First Door, In Memoriam... But I wanted to create something of my own, so I started collecting stuff.
In 2010 I got accepted in Aalto University School of Art and Design, as the first batch of Game Design majors ever. As usual, this kind of education demands a master's thesis work to be done. Since I had developed the idea in my head for several years and had quite a lot of ideas for the game, I decided to propose After Now Archeology as my thesis work, and here we are.
After Now Archeology does not rely much on game mechanics. As Jesper Juul classified, games can be classified as "games of emergence" and "games of progression" (Juul, 2005, p. 67-72). Quite many of the so-called puzzle games are games of emergence, where the gameplay consists of interacting with the rules, without specific long-term goals (e.g. Tetris, Bejeweled, sudoku). After Now Archeology's structure resembles adventure games, rather than action-puzzles. There is a clear goal of solving the whole game, and the player's progression can be clearly measured based on the amount of puzzles she has been able to solve. Usually there is only one way to solve the puzzle, which is common also in adventure games.
Most of the game's puzzles are not really mechanical ones. Game mechanics and interactions are there just to give the player some flavor to the brain teasing riddle solving. It is not too far fetched to call After Now Archeology a riddle game.
The idea and process for making the game started way back in 2003, when I bumped up to Timehunt, a puzzle game with huge amount of extra-game linking and information. Timehunt was ridiculously difficult, but as long as I managed to play it, it was great fun for challenge-hungry brains. Timehunt went offline around 2005, when no one had solved all of its puzzles. After Timehunt I've played a couple of similar-ish games: Torment, First Door, In Memoriam... But I wanted to create something of my own, so I started collecting stuff.
In 2010 I got accepted in Aalto University School of Art and Design, as the first batch of Game Design majors ever. As usual, this kind of education demands a master's thesis work to be done. Since I had developed the idea in my head for several years and had quite a lot of ideas for the game, I decided to propose After Now Archeology as my thesis work, and here we are.
After Now Archeology does not rely much on game mechanics. As Jesper Juul classified, games can be classified as "games of emergence" and "games of progression" (Juul, 2005, p. 67-72). Quite many of the so-called puzzle games are games of emergence, where the gameplay consists of interacting with the rules, without specific long-term goals (e.g. Tetris, Bejeweled, sudoku). After Now Archeology's structure resembles adventure games, rather than action-puzzles. There is a clear goal of solving the whole game, and the player's progression can be clearly measured based on the amount of puzzles she has been able to solve. Usually there is only one way to solve the puzzle, which is common also in adventure games.
Most of the game's puzzles are not really mechanical ones. Game mechanics and interactions are there just to give the player some flavor to the brain teasing riddle solving. It is not too far fetched to call After Now Archeology a riddle game.
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