I uploaded Hugglebunny to Flash, and decided to make a more festive version:
Friday 16 December 2011
Design Methods Script - Aiyana and Hugglebunny's Grand Quest
Act One:
· Flashback of main char’s (Aiyana’s) past
· Lead’s to present time of the story – shows Aiyana and Hugglebunny sitting under a tree in a forest
· Aiyana sees a village in trouble and goes to help
· Helps village – villagers tell Aiyana that the attackers were under the orders of HADEON, and that he is planning to invade with a full scale evil army of doooooooom!
Act Two:
· Aiyana decides to attack Hadeon in his own territory, before he has a chance to attack.
· Aiyana gathers a group of allies and sets off
· Aiyana and the group fight/sneak/adventure their way to the Hadeon’s [EVIL CITADEL OF DOOOOOM!]
Act Three:
· Aiyana fights Hadeon
· Aiyana defeats Hadeon, either by killing him OR by bringing him back to the side of good.
(My Script will be focusing on the first Act of my story)
EXT.SHAAN FOREST – DAY
The camera pans across a picturesque forest - flowers blooming, birds singing, the nearby stream winding its way off into the distance.
CAMERA PANS OVER TO AIYANA, SITTING AT THE BASE OF A TREE
Aiyana is sitting under a tree. She is cutting an apple and feeding it to Hugglebunny. Aiyana hears a loud explosion and looks up.
CUT TO CLOSE UP OF AIYANA’S FACE: she looks shocked and concerned.
MID RANGE CUT: Hugglebunny gets scared and hides under Aiyana’s cape.
Aiyana climbs to the top of a nearby tree to get a better view of what’s happening.
OVER THE SHOULDER SHOT: Aiyana sees smoke billowing in the distance. She puts the hood of her cape up. Hugglebunny peers out from under the hood cautiously. Aiyana sets off in the direction of the fire.
We see a village in chaos: buildings are burning and villagers are running around in a panic. Sinister-looking, armour-clad figures are rushing around rounding up the villagers and herding them together into a long line, ready to march them away. More of the sinister soldiers are ransacking buildings for supplies.
CUT TO AIYANA: she is watching from the tree line.
CLOSE UP ON AIYANA’S FACE: She furrows her brow angrily
LONG SHOT: Aiyana yells a battle cry and charges in, raising her sword high above her head as she charges.
Aiyana leaps on the nearest enemy, bringing her blade hurtling down onto his shield, splintering it into pieces. The soldier tries to retaliate, but Aiyana whirls around and smashes the hilt of her sword into his chin before he can react, sending him crashing to the ground. More soldiers come and one by one they fall, until the last enemy falls to the ground, and lies still as a rock. Aiyana is left standing alone, grasping her sword securely, still ready for another fight.
CLOSE UP OF AIYANA’S FACE: Aiyana sees a soldier scrambling back to his feet and attempting to flee. She grabs a throwing star and hurls it straight at him, the blades whirling through the air noisily. The throwing star careers into his shoulder, the force of the impact pinning him to a nearby tree. Aiyana approaches the soldier, who is flailing around helplessly.
AIYANA
Who sent you?
SOLDIER
(defiantly)
I’m not telling you anything.
Aiyana holds her sword up against the soldier’s throat. He looks confident at first, but he starts to panic as the sword starts to cut into his skin.
SOLDIER
(choking)
Alright alright!
Aiyana reduces the pressure of the sword just enough for the soldier to talk comfortably, but not enough that he may feel inclined to try and escape again.
SOLDIER
(breathing heavily, panicked)
He is going to spread terror and chaos through this land until
no living thing is left standing.
AIYANA
(sternly)
Who is he?
SOLDIER
(proudly and with confidence)
Hadeon.
The mention of the name strikes fear into Aiyana’s heart.
FLASH TO:
FLASHBACK to Iniko Village. Buildings are crumbling beneath endless flames. Corpses are strewn across the village, and a tall, armoured figure is standing over the bodies, laughing maniacally.
Cut to young Aiyana, hiding at the edge of the forest, watching in horror. She can’t bear to watch the slaughter any longer, but can’t bring herself to look away – her eyes are glued to the horrifying scene.
Aiyana catches some movement out of the corner of her eye. She wheels around in terror, expecting to meet eyes with one of the armoured figure’s soldiers. Instead, she sees a small pile of wreckage, shifting feebly. She reaches down to slowly move the wreckage, and reveal the cause of the movement. A tiny baby bunny comes crawling out from the wreckage, and upon seeing Aiyana, immediately bounds over and clings to her ankle. Aiyana kneels down, and the little creature hops up onto Aiyana’s shoulder, and buries itself beneath her cape.
Aiyana fastens her cape securely to keep her new friend safe, and sets off, running as fast and as far away from the village as she possibly can, never stopping to look back.
FLASH BACK TO PRESENT:
Aiyana’s thoughts snap back to the current situation.
AIYANA
(sternly)
Get out of my sight.
The soldier scrambles to his feet and rushes away as fast as he can.
Aiyana turns to one of the villagers.
AIYANA
(in a friendly tone)
I need to get a message out to a few friends.
Hadeon needs to be stopped, but we will need reinforcements.
VILLAGER
(Enthusiastic)
Of course, anything we can do to help.
We’ll send out messengers first thing in the morning.
CUT TO MID LENGTH SHOT OF AIYANA: Hugglebunny peers out from under the cape. Hugglebunny squeaks happily as Aiyana tickles her nose.
AIYANA
(Wearily)
I knew we couldn’t avoid it forever.
Oh well, guess now is as good a time as any.
Hugglebunny scrunches up her nose determinedly.
Aiyana takes a deep breath, puffs up her shoulders and heads off to prepare for the coming battle.
Character Bio: Hugglebunny
Hugglebunny is Aiyana’s trusty sidekick, and travelling companion. She loves hugs!
Archetype: companion, friend, sidekick.
Characteristics: timid but brave, friendly, good natured, energetic, eager, loyal, intelligent.
Bio: Wherever Aiyana goes, Hugglebunny is sure to follow. Aiyana found her when she was just a tiny baby bunny, and the two have been inseparable ever since.
Hugglebunny loves hugs, carrots and exploring.
Hugglebunny is scared of birds of prey, the dark, and being alone.
Character Bio: Aiyana
Archetype: warrior, willing, hero, defender.
Characteristics: brave, adventurous, compassionate, happy, enthusiastic, honest, righteous.
Characteristics: brave, adventurous, compassionate, happy, enthusiastic, honest, righteous.
Motivation: wants to defend her world, and keep its people safe from harm.
Bio: Aiyana is a seasoned warrior, and has won many battles against the forces of evil and darkness. When she was just a child, her village was raided. Aiyana managed to hide, but she was the only survivor, save for a little baby bunny that had got trapped amongst the wreckage. Aiyana gathered what supplies she could and left the village, determined to one day become a fearsome warrior, and defend the world from the evil forces that seek to destroy it. Little Hugglebunny has stayed by her side ever since.
Fears: being defeated by the forces of evil/darkness, and failing to protect the people of her world.
Monday 12 December 2011
Iterating The Royal Game of Ur
Iterating the Royal Game of Ur
By Giselle Czajka
In this essay, I will be analysing the ancient board game, The Royal Game of Ur, and iterating it to see if the gameplay can be improved.
The Royal Game of Ur (also known as The Game of Twenty Squares) is an ancient board game that was discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley. He discovered the gaming boards while carrying out excavations in the ancient city of Ur, in Mesopotamia, in the 1920s. These boards were sealed in the royal tombs of the First Dynasty of Ur (Murray, 1952). The boards date from around 3000bc, making them likely to be some of the oldest game boards in existence (Masters, 1997).
Original Game Board:
Newer Game Board:
No official rules have been found for The Royal Game of Ur, but a variety of rules have been interpreted from the available information. For this study, I am going to use a basic set of rules interpreted by Finkel:
- Each player has seven pieces.
- Use four tetrahedral dice, with two marked corners and two unmarked corners. Marked corners equal one point and unmarked corners equal no points. So with four tetrahedral dice the minimum roll can be zero and the maximum can be four. Each turn, players move the number of points rolled.
- The pieces do not start on the board. Pieces start lined up along the edge of the board, next to the player’s start space. When one player moves their piece onto the board it starts at START SPACE A, and the other player starts at START SPACE B. As play continues the pieces move towards the left until they reach the edge of the board, at which point they move into the middle lane, and proceed along it to the end (ADD ARROWS ON DIAGRAM).
- Players can remove the opponent’s pieces from the board by landing their own piece on a square that the opponent’s piece is on. This ‘captured’ piece is removed from the board and must traverse the board again from the beginning.
- The Rosette squares (denoted by stars in the above diagrams), are safe squares and any piece on this square cannot be captured. Landing on the Rosette also allows the player to roll the four dice again, giving them an extra turn.
I made several iterations to the game, but the following iterations were the ones that I felt had the best impact on gameplay.
The first aspect of the game I wanted to focus on was the amount on skill and chance involved. The game seemed to be tilted slightly more in favour of luck than skill, with the dice rolls being the main focus of the game. Luck and skill elements are both important, and enrich games in different ways. Luck is a valuable game component, because it makes the game more appealing to a wider audience, and players of every skill level can feel like they have a chance to win (Braithwaite & Schreiber, 2008). Having luck elements in a game also gives a game more replay value, because the game cannot be fully mastered. Skill also plays a part in making a good game, because skill elements give players more control, making them feel more involved in the game. If a game relies purely on chance, then the player will feel like they are just there to move the pieces, and will feel distanced from the game. For my first iteration I attempted to add an extra skill element to the game. I did this by adding the option to ‘double up’ pieces, meaning that a player can put up to two of their pieces on the same square. If two pieces are on the same square then the opponent cannot capture these pieces. This gives the player more control over how they play: they can either choose to play cautiously and double up their pieces to make them safe, or take a risk to try and capture the opponent’s pieces. I found that this iteration worked well, as the middle lane is fairly long, and the pieces have quite a distance to travel before they can get to the end of the board. This way the player doesn’t feel pressured to always move a piece once it gets to the middle lane, in an attempt to keep it ahead of the opponent’s pieces and not get captured.
For my second iteration, I wanted to add something to give the losing player a chance to catch up, so that they do not become disinterested in the game. This is called a negative feedback system (LeBlanc, 2006). If one player has at least double the pieces in play of the other player, the player with the most pieces in play gets to take two turns every turn. For example, if player A has six pieces in play, and player B has two pieces in play, then player A gets to roll the four tetrahedral dice, take their turn, and then roll the dice again, for a second turn. ‘In play’ refers to both the pieces on the board, and the pieces yet to be played (pieces that have already reached the end of the board and left play do not count). For example, in the diagram below, all of the pieces that are not in the red box are counted as in play. The player with the purple pieces is ahead, as they have four pieces that have reached the end of the board, while the player with the black pieces only has one piece that has reached the end of the board. So, for the counters in play, the numbers are six black to three purple. This means that the player using the black counters gets to have double turns.
With this iteration I found that if both players had few pieces, i.e. Player A had two pieces and player B had one piece, then this would give player A too much of an advantage, even when he is not very far behind player B. I then tweaked the iteration, so that the double turn only applies when one player has at least double the pieces of the other player, AND one player has at least three pieces more than the other player. This improved the iteration a lot, only giving the double turn to players that are very far behind.
I noticed that players could often get stuck in a run of bad luck, with both players rolling zeros, and the gameplay would be unable to progress during that time. To counter this, I added another iteration, one in which a player could re-roll if they rolled a zero, giving them a chance to roll a better number. I decided that this should be limited to only one extra roll per turn for this mechanic, because if a player could always reroll, then the zero roll would be pointless.
For the final iteration I wanted to make a change that adds a positive feedback system to the game. A positive feedback system helps to bring games to a conclusion, so the gameplay does not become stagnant (LeBlanc, 2006). I added a mechanic where, if a piece is captured, instead of going back to the start, it goes into a ‘held hostage’ pile. Once a piece is in this pile, a roll of 2 needs to be made before the piece can return into play. So for example, if a piece is being held hostage, and the player who owns the piece rolls a 2, they can either use that roll on a piece that is not held hostage, or use the 2 to ‘free’ the hostage. If the piece is freed then it goes back to the line of pieces that are yet to be played. There is no limit to how many pieces can be held hostage. The hostage pile acts as a positive feedback system, because a player gets most of the opponent’s pieces into the hostage pile, then they will have no competition as they move their pieces to the end of the board. This also adds more risk and reward to the game, as leaving a piece open to be captured now can have higher consequences.
I think that all of the iterations mentioned above have improved the game in various ways, while still keeping the game true to its original form. I feel that my iterations have modernised the game, using knowledge from research that has been made into gaming since its discovery.
Bibliography
· Bell, R. C. (1979) Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Revised edition. pp. 23-25.
· Braithwaite, B. & Schreiber, I. (2008) Challenges For Games Designers Charles River Media pp. 69-99 (chapters 5 & 6).
· Finkel, I. L. (2008) Finkel, ed. pp. 16-32.
· LeBlanc, M (2006) “Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics” In Salen, K., The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. MIT Press, pp. 439-459.
· Masters, J. The Online Guide to Traditional Games, [online] Available at: < http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Royal-Game-Ur.htm > [Accessed 8th December 2011].
· Murray, H. J. R. (1952) A History of Board Games Other Than Chess. pp. 19-23.
Saturday 3 December 2011
La Decima Vittima - It's the 21st Century and they have a license to kill
Cast
Marcello Mastroianni – Marcello Polletti
Ursula Andress – Caroline Meredith
Elsa Martinelli – Olga
Salvo Randone – Professor
Massimo Serato – Lawyer
Milo Quesada – Rudi
Luce Bonifassy – Lidia
George Wang – Chinese attacker
Evi Rigano – Victim
Walter Williams – Martin
Richard Armstrong – Cole
Antonio Ciani
La Decima Vittima (The Tenth Victim) is a sci-fi thriller, set in the 21st century. The film was produced in 1965, and is based on a short story written by Robert Sheckley in 1953. The film revolves around The Big Hunt, a global competition in which people compete to be the first to claim 10 victories. Surviving through 10 rounds leads to fame and fortune, but it is not an easy competition . In this world, assassination is legal, and each competitor must kill 5 victims, and escape from 5 hunters. The film is centered around Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress), a competitor looking for her tenth victory, and Marcello Poletti (Marcello Mastroianni), her final target. A romance ensues between them, as Marcello tries to deduce whether Caroline is his hunter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)