First of Art

As it often happens with the non-salary projects, they have to wait for a while when the creators must earn their living. Thus, it has been a bit quiet and slow with After Now Archeology for a month or two. To do something productive code- or art-wise, I need to have many days free from other responsibilities, so I can focus on the actual task. Having small tasks for some hours 2-4 times a week break the concentration efficiently.

Anyhow, I have managed to do something for ANA. The design for the first Art-path puzzle is maybe ready, and I have even started to re-paint one photograph I took around New year, as a background image. The puzzle will be an association map but with meaningful hints. The player is given an image with one or more lines with hints starting from it, and the player must write the correct answers to the end of the lines to open new images. Repeat until the end.

The genre has been around in the internet for a while - usually without hints. The games are interesting, but they can be really frustrating, since the player really can't know what the designer has been thinking when building the network of things and connections. Hinting also works well with the information gathering idea of the game.

Anyways, here is the planned structure.

And here is a work-in-progress-version of the background.

The evil gatekeeper of the Art-path? At least, gatekeeper he is.

A game needs a logo

As I may have told before, I am not a graphician. So drawing all the illustrations for the game, designing a logo etc are not trivial efforts. However, I have managed to produce a couple of sketches for a logo. Here is my current best effort:

Gray it is. Typography is boring. But it tells something about the game. Actually it is the map of the game too. Three intertwined spiral paths for three subjects: culture, science and myth. A triangle of all three in the middle.

Of course it will not look this boring in the game. There will be doors that can be opened by solving puzzles or riddles. Between the paths will be special puzzles about both of the paths they are connected to. Solving these special puzzles is mandatory for solving the centerpiece. But the other doors are voluntary - as long as you can make your way to the center. So, if you don't like science so much, but you are keen of culture, just open the culture doors to the center, and try to get to the mandatory puzzles some other way. You might gain some extra information from the regular one-subject doors, but the game is possible to solve without solving them all.

Lenses for puzzles

I have been reading Jesse Schell's excellent book "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses". It is possibly the best game design book I've read so far. Recently I got to the chapter 12, which is about puzzles. Since After Now Archeology is also a kind of puzzle game (or riddle), I found the chapter really interesting and relevant to my work.

In the chapter, Schell gives 10 principles for puzzle design:

1. Make the goal easily understood
2. Make it easy to get started
3. Give a sense of progress
4. Give a sense of solvability
5. Increase difficulty gradually
6. Parallelism lets the player rest
7. Pyramid structure extends interest
8. Hints extend interest
9. Give the answer!
10. Perceptual shifts are a double edged sword

When looking my design through these lenses, it is clear I have done something right - and something wrong. The first test version of the first puzzle exposed some clear violations of these principles. And I have to say, I violated the rules purposely.

1. The goal was not easily understood. As Schell also writes, sometimes figuring out what to do is a part of the puzzle. But maybe I should skip that part and give the player some more hints about what to do. There seems to be enough challenge without the extra mile - which I could save for the most hardcore players.
2. Make it easy to get started. This relates to the principles 5, 6 and 7. There are just a couple of things the player can do, she just needs to start exploring the navigable space. After a while, the puzzle starts to become clearer. Since it has quite many different parts, the player can do many things at the same time. But I promise, I'll violate rule number 2 in many places. After all many of the puzzles or riddles in the game are purposely hard to get started.
3. Give a sense of progress. This is definitely something I need to focus more in the future. Many of my current designs don't tell the player if she is on a right track. Many of them will stay that way.
4. Give a sense of solvability. All puzzles are solvable. But as the first test revealed, small graphical glitches or minor flaws in presentation, instructions etc can make the puzzle feel unsolvable. This is something I need to keep in mind, since I'd like to have the player to use her brain power on the problem itself, not all the unimportant things around it. This relates to good UI design and transparency. 
5. Increase difficulty gradually. I have tried to organise the puzzles in the game so they are in increasing difficulty order. Also different parts within a puzzle should be in increasing difficulty. This is hard, since the game is based on the knowledge outside the game, and different players have very different knowledge basis. For example, if the puzzle consists of lingual part and mathematical part, there is no way to ensure that all the players feel the lingual part easier than the mathematical part. 
6. Parallelism lets the player rest. This is why I decided to go with three separate paths. If you get stuck on one path, you can continue on another path. In the very beginning the player can choose from three different puzzles. But after solving one of them, she has 4 choices and after solving one of them she has at least 5 possible puzzles to continue with. And you don't need to solve all the puzzles to solve the last one, although it might help.
7. Pyramid structure extends interest. Well, the whole structure of the game is kind of pyramid. There is the final puzzle, for which you need to solve at least 9 of the other puzzles and there are some extra puzzles too. Also many of the individual puzzles in the game consist of several parts, leading to the final answer. Building the puzzles around three different main themes can bring in players interested in different areas, leading them to explore the other areas too.
8. Hints extend interest. This is one of the cornerstones of the design. Personally I love difficult puzzles. But I hate to get stuck in them. Small hints every now and then could help me to continue playing. I have been thinking to include a "easy mode" button that automatically gives the player all the hints. 
9. Give the answer! Well, Schell says I should give the answer to the player after she has struggled with the puzzle for a long time. All the answers will be in the internet anyhow. I will not. The progress in After Now Archeology is based on solving the puzzles and if I give the answers, there is no game at all. The internet will give the answers, but that is something I can do nothing about. It is up to the player if she wants to spoil her experience by going to some forums to look at the answers. On the other hand, quite many of the similiar games have player created forums for discussion, and these forums are very nicely self-regulated. People do not want to spoil another players' game, hints are usually quite subtle and I have not accidentally stumbled on complete answers on these forums.
10. Perceptual Shifts are a double-edged sword. This is something I know and am willing to exploit. Thinking outside the box, adding extra dimension to the thought etc etc. 

Well, they say you learn game design by designing games, not reading books. But I say you get some excellent tools for the game design by reading books.

After First Playable

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.

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.

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...

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.