Battle Setting, a tiny game launched

throughout february I worked on an iteration of the game Table Setting, using the actual unity project to test out some ideas and make a new game. it's very short, didn't work as well in terms of design, but I found it pretty well constructed in general and with very simpatetic visuals :)

 

get the game for free on itch:

 

 

gameplay video where I play three matches:

 

 

screenshots:

 

Enquadra, lançamento do joguinho

ao longo de fevereiro eu trabalhei em uma iteração do jogo Mesa Posta, usando o próprio projeto da unity de base para testar umas ideias e fazer um jogo novo. ele é bem curtinho, não deu tão certo em termos de design, mas eu achei ele no geral bem construído e com um visual simpático :)

 

obtenha o jogo de graça pelo itch:

 

 

vídeo de gameplay onde jogo três partidas:

 

 

screenshots:

 

enquadra pt.3: refletindo sobre o jogo pronto

o jogo tinha dois problemas grandes de design que eu tentei corrigir. o primeiro é que o posicionamento inicial das peças tornava trivial que o primeiro jogador chegasse perto de formar uma linha. o único jeito disso não ocorrer era se um oponente conseguisse remover uma de suas peças. isso fazia o jogo começar muito rápido, em pouquíssimos turnos alguém ganhava ou uma peça já era removida. não dava tempo do jogo de desenvolver, mesmo sendo um jogo naturalmente bem curtinho.

corrigi isso mudando a posição das peças iniciais e botando uma no canto do tabuleiro. posicionar uma peça no canto tem considerações estratégicas interessantes. fica impossível do oponente conseguir travar ela, já que não tem espaço em lados opostos, mas também não é tão útil na formação de uma linha, também pois não é possível botar peças aliadas em dois lados.

o posicionamento inicial já trás considerações estratégicas como por exemplo, que peça já vai começar o jogo travada pelo oponente e que peça você deixa livre. onde você já pode começar tentando fazer uma linha e que habilidades já vão ser úteis nesse momento inicial. eu costumava deixar peças que recuperavam vida dos outros inicialmente travadas, já que nos primeiros turnos poucos aliados teriam perdido vida, e tentava formar uma linha inicial com peças que curavam a si próprias, caso o oponente tentasse me bloquear com peças agressivas.

outra mudança necessária foi tornar as peças agressivas mais fortes. os poderes delas foram herdados do Mesa Posta, porém a tendência naquele joga era as peças perderem pontos constantemente. como no Enquadra a tendência é elas perderem vida mais lentamente, mas eu ainda queria a mesma ameaça das peças serem removidas, só que de forma mais controlada, os poderes agressivos precisaram ficar mais fortes para compensar.

o joguinho ainda é super curtinho. ele é funcional, mas ainda não me agrada tanto, acho que gosto mais do Mesa Posta inclusive, ele é mais dinâmico com a instabilidade das peças sendo constantemente removidas. apesar das mudanças no Enquadra realmente tornarem o jogo mais tático, não acho que ele dura o suficiente para isso ser bem desenvolvido.

as peças perderem um de vida quando são movidas não faz tanta diferença, eu achei. eu queria com essa mecânica que o jogador precisasse balancear o uso de uma peça com a recuperação dos seus pontos de vida, mas acabou que as habilidades agressivas dos oponentes eram quase unicamente responsáveis pelo perigo de uma peça ser removida. entretanto, essa mecânica ainda traz o benefício de dar mais peso para a escolha de mover uma peça. se o movimento não for útil, a jogada só fez enfraquecer essa peça e isso traz um certo peso. além disso, peças que curam a si próprias ganham uma qualidade particular de não precisarem dessa consideração, já que podem renovar os pontos perdidos pelo movimento na mesma hora, e acabam sendo flexíveis por isso.

no desenvolvimento do jogo tive algumas ideias para iterar ainda mais esse design que pretendo experimentar em algum momento no resto do ano. acho que a mecânica de travamento é interessante, apesar de não fazer tanta diferença aqui, e começa a desenvolver uma temática interessante de avizinhamento. a formação de uma linha de três peças, isso é, uma peça central e duas vizinhas, o travamento das peças por estarem enquadradas pelo oponentes e as habilidades que atingem peças adjacentes todas criam um conjunto variado e denso de mecânicas em volta do conceito de adjacência. é isso que eu quero explorar mais e aprofundar futuramente.

 

visual final da tela de título

 

battle setting pt.3: reflecting on the finished game

the game had two big design problems that I tried to fix. the first one is that the initial positioning of the pieces made it trivial for the first player to get close to forming a line. the only way this wouldn't happen is if the opponent managed to remove one of their pieces. this made the game start to fast, in very few turns someone won or a piece got removed. there wasn't any time for the game to develop, even if it's still a naturally short game.

I corrected this by changing the position of the initial pieces, putting one on the corner. positioning a piece on the corner has interesting strategic considerations. it's impossible for the opponent to lock it, since there's no space on opposite sides, but it's also not as useful when forming a line, likewise becase it's not possible to put friendly pieces on both sides.

the initial positioning already brings strategic considerations, for instance, what piece already starts locked by the opponent and what pieces are free. where can you already start to form a line and what abilities will already be useful when you do it.

 

 

 

I was inclined to leave supportive pieces that recovered other's health initially locked, since at the first few turns few allies lost health, and tried to form an initial line with pieces that healed themselves, in case the opponent tried to block me with agressive pieces.

another necessary change was making aggressive pieces stronger. their abilities got inherited from Table Setting, however, the tendency in that game was for pieces to lose points constantly. since in Battle Setting the tendency is for them to loose points more slowly, but I still wanted the same threat of pieces getting removed, only in a more controlled manner, the aggressive powers had to get stronger to compensate.

the game is still very short. it's functional, but doesn't please me very much, I think I like Table Setting more, it is more dynamic with the instability of pieces getting constantly removed. despite changes in Table Setting successfully making it more tactical, I don't think it lasts enough for this to be well developed.

pieces losing one life when they get moved doesn't make that much of a difference I think. with this mechanic I wanted the player to have to balance the use of a piece with the recovery of its life points, but it ended up that enemie's aggressive abilities were always the biggest threat to a piece getting removed. however, this mechanic still has the benefit of bringing more weight to the decision of moving a piece. if the move wasn't useful, it only made the piece weaker, and this creates a certain weight. besides that, pieces that heal themselves gain the quality of not needing this consideration, since they can recover the points lost by movement right at that very moment, and end up being more flexible.

during development I had ideas to iterate this design even further that I intend to try out at some point this year. I think the locking mechanic is interesting, despite not making a whole lot of difference here, and starts to develop an interesting theme of neighbouring. the formation of a three piece line, that is, a piece and two neighbours, the locking of a piece for being framed by the opponent and abilities that hit adjacent tiles all create a dense and varied set of mechanics around the concept of adjacency. this is what I want to explore further and expand on the future.

final look of the title screen

loose ideas 02: textual references on procedural and interactive narrative

in preparation for a project on interactive and procedural narrative, I reread and rewatched a lot of really important materials to me on the subject and took the opportunity to organize here what I think is most fundamental, in case anyone might be able to use this for reference.

I tend more towards more controled and authored structures and techniques, like sunless skies and fallen london, and less towards more simulationist methods, like dwarf fortress and crusader kings, so this is reflected on the selection.

I broadly recommend the developers and designers Cat Manning, Emily Short, Jason Grinblat, Jon Ingold, Liz England, Max Kreminski, Tanya X. Short e Tarn Adams. as well as the critic and rpg gm Austin Walker.

- Practical Procedural Generation for Everyone

probably the best introduction on the subject? the concept of 10.000 bowls of oatmeal that Kate Compton created is infinitly quoted by anyone that talks about this.

 

- Applying Filters to Character Dialogue

applying filters on procedurally generated text and dialog so they express the character is drunk, or excited, or angry, etc.

 

-  Writing Modular Characters for System-Driven Games

regards the process of composing characters with modular parts (traits, profession, etc), how to choose which ones to surface to the player and compositional models to create more meaningful and less random characters.

- Meaning Alchemy

I think this is a very dense, important and rich talk. talks broadly about how meaning is expressed by narrative generative systems, compositional techniques to create systems that generate specific types of stories intented by the author and the concept of "story volume", that to me is fundamental vocabulary to talk about procedural and interactive narrative.

 

 - Tarot Based Narrative Generation 

the way that tarot cards work like little narrative monemes that instigate the formation of narratives. I find it more inspirational than technically usefull, but still, it always instigates me a lot of ideas.

 

- Five Strategies For Collaborating With A Machine

one of the most important talks on the list in my opinion, about one of the most interesting projects on procedural generation. the very concept of colaborating with a machine is highly poetic. the five suits/ compositional principals that she describes here were a huge game changer on my understanding of procedural generation.

- Beyond Branching: Quality-Based, Salience-Based, and Waypoint Narrative Structures

se a fala de cima foi um divisor de águas em termos compositivos, essa postagem foi a coisa mais determinante para mim em questões estruturais. as estruturas descritas aqui foram o que mais atraiu na área até agora e me norteiam completamente em termos práticos.

if the above talk was a game changer on compositional terms, this post was the most formative thing for me in structural matters. the structures described here are what attracted me the most on the subject so far and thoroughly guide me on practical terms.

ideias avulsas 02: referências textuais sobre narrativa procedural e interativa

em preparação para um projeto de narrativa interativa e procedural, eu reli e reassisti alguns materiais muito importantes para mim sobre o assunto e aproveitei para organizar aqui o que eu acho de mais fundamental, caso alguém possa fazer fruto disso como referência bibliográfica.

eu pendo mais para técnicas e estruturas mais controladas e autorais, como sunless skies e fallen london, e menos para métodos mais simulacionistas, como dwarf fortress, então isso fica refletido na seleção.

recomendo também de modo geral os designers e desenvolvedores Cat Manning, Emily Short, Jason Grinblat, Jon Ingold, Liz England, Max Kreminski, Tanya X. Short e Tarn Adams. além do crítico e gm de rpg Austin Walker.

- Practical Procedural Generation for Everyone

provavelmente a melhor introdução sobre o assunto?  o conceito das 10.000 tigelas de aveia que a Kate Compton criou é citado infinitamente por qualquer pessoas que fala sobre isso.

- Applying Filters to Character Dialogue

aplicando filtros em textos e diálogos gerados proceduralmente para que eles expressem um personagem bêbado, ou animado, ou bravo, etc.

 

-  Writing Modular Characters for System-Driven Games

trata do processo de compor personagens através de partes modulares (características, profissão, etc), como escolher quais delas dispor pro jogador e modelos de composição para tornar os personagens compostos mais significativos e menos aleatórios.

- Meaning Alchemy

um fala muito densa, importante e rica eu acho. fala de um modo geral como significado é expresso por sistema de geração procedural narrativo, técnicas de composição para criar sistemas que gerem certas histórias pretendidas pelo autor e o conceito de "story volume", que para mim é vocabulário fundamental para tratar de narrativa procedural e interativa.

 

 - Tarot Based Narrative Generation 

o modo como cartas de tarot funcionam como pequenos monemas narrativos que instigam a formação de narrativas. acho mais inspirador que tecnicamente útil, mas ainda assim sempre me instiga muitas ideias.

 

- Five Strategies For Collaborating With A Machine

uma das falas mais importantes da lista, na minha opinião, sobre um dos projetos mais interessantes de geração procedural. o próprio conceito de colaborar com um máquina é altamente poético. os cinco naipes/ princípios compositivos que ela delineia aqui foram um divisor de águas muito grande no meu entendimento de geração procedural.

- Beyond Branching: Quality-Based, Salience-Based, and Waypoint Narrative Structures

se a fala de cima foi um divisor de águas em termos compositivos, essa postagem foi a coisa mais determinante para mim em questões estruturais. as estruturas descritas aqui foram o que mais atraiu na área até agora e me norteiam completamente em termos práticos.

past projects 02: interstellar rising

Insterstellar Rising (a name that intentionally doesn't mean a lot) was an attempt to test a series of little experiments in traditional rpg mechanics in a largelly text based interface, initiating experiments in interactive fiction and narrative systems, things that interest me a lot.

you play as a sort of mercenary, doing jobs that vary from murder to escorting, in a procgen space system composed of planets, moons and asteroids. the game is structured in missions, that consist of a single narrative encounter, probably solved with a single narrative choice. in the meantime, the player can also go to any place on the system, visiting locations where they can request services, and ask favors to a small cast of procgen characters with varying aptitudes.

 

the game's title screen

 

 

 

structure:

the system you live and play in is composed of seven locations among planets, moons and asteroids, although the difference is purely cosmetic. each one of these locations has four places that can be visited by the player, a degree of influence the player has there, a degree of influence each group holds there and an opinion this location has about the player.

the player can raum freely through this system, visiting locations and using the services of any establishment. however, a single establishment per location can be used until the player finishes another mission. likewise, the player can turn to the characters to ask for favors, but each character will only do at most one favor until another mission is finished.

the missions, then, structure the game and give it rhythm, creating a sort of chapter, or session, even to the actions performed outside of it. what I wanted with this was to a make a game that was an open world, but still kept a tighter grip on its rhythm and kept the player on a more cohesive line. I also hope that this structure invites the player to relate the actions they're performing with the mission they hope to accomplish, giving more cohesion to what they're doing.

 

narrative:

every mission is a narrative event that can be accessed through the location it occurs in. narrative events are encounters where the player must choose one option of action to perform, having then either success or failure at this encounter. almost every event is very simple and requires only a single choice of action.

I chose at the begining of the project that I would be programming it with a tool I didn't understood very well and this stilted me a lot through the development. I wanted the events to be more complex, possibly procedural and thus way more varied. what I managed to implement was something way more simple. there is a small variety of events that repete frequently and the only variation on the experience is how you choose to achieve success on them.

narrative choices in events have a certain success chance depending on what type of action it is and your aptitude on them. some choices have a garanteed chance of success, but can only be chosen if the player has a certain influence on the location it's in.

establishments are also narrative events where most of the options can be performed with the right amount of influence, like buying an item at the market, but there can also be actions with possibility of failure, like robing a bank.

I wanted that anything the player needed, like an item, or influence somewhere, could be accomplished through a variety of means, each one needing different preparation or incurring on different consequences. buying an item requires that the player has enough influence at the location of the market, either through completing missions there or asking for the favor of a rich character, but they can always try to steal the item, which would mean they could never use that market again. some actions can be performed by both establishments and characters, but both involve a different procedure with different chances of success and failure, etc

 

narrative screen with different types of narrative choice

 

 

 

actions and attributes:

I hate the traditional way that games deal with attributes. if almost all attributes just lead you to deal more damage, but with different weapons and skills, they're just a teoretically less restrictive way to restrict weapons by class or create weaknesses in enemies to certain types of attacks. I find this very unsatisfactory.

I wanted an alternative to attributes that actually made me feel that I was inhabiting a different role by investing in one and not the other. I tried to do this in this game by creating four (sort of five actually) ways you can resolve narrative encounters, allowing the player to have different aptitudes in each one of them.

enforce, deceive/ hack, negotiate and convince. I tried to give each action type an actually different texture to the others by giving each different inate costs and consequences independent of the narrative choice they're attached to. this way, a narrative choice has different effects if the player got success or failure on them, but its action type implies a recurrent effect that the player will always take into account.

<enforce> means achieving success by enforcing your will on others and will always lead the target to lower their opinion of you if you get either success or failure.

<deceive> and <hack> work the same way, you seek to achieve what you want by tricking the target. if the action is successful, they don't find out and you don't loose opinion with them. if the action is a failure, they lower their opinion of you. <deceive> has the benefit in relation to <enforce> of allowing you the possibility of not loosing opinion, but they also tend to have a lower chance of success and require more preparation.

<negotiate> never makes the target lower their opinion of you, since it never involves violence, but their chance of success slightly requires the target to have a good opinion of you and you have to give one of your items to the target if the action is a success. <negotiate> then, depends on a good opinion with people and locations and a good flow of items.

the last action type is the one that involves the least amount of cost and consequence for the player, but completely depends on a good relationship with the target, <convince>. this action only has a minimally viable chance of success with friends and will still tend to be lower than the other ones, but doesn't cost items and will never have consequences on failure.

given the limitations of the narrative system, I don't think this was well explored, but I love the idea and want to explore that better in the future.

locations and establishments:

the locations are procedurally generated, in a really simple way, four random establishments, a purely visual panorama, an opinion on the player an their influence there and the influence of every group on the location.

to try to make the locations more concrete than just an agregate of establishments, I added the rule that the player may only use one establishment per location until completing another mission. this helps to limit a little the capacity of the player, preventing things from getting out of hand, and creates a stronger relation between the four establishments of a location.

the procedural generation of these places is a little stronger now, despite selecting the establishments randomly. the A, B, C and D establishments might not have anything to do with each other a priori, but aquire a strong relation with each other when together by becoming mutually exclusive. place A gets the trait of not being usable at the same time as B, C and D. the random choosing of four places becomes inherently significant, without the need for pre existing meaning.

generaly it bothers me this feeling in open world/ended games that you can do anything at any time. the player can be everything, have everything, see and read everything, evolve everything. at most the player makes mutually exclusive decisions in very discrete points like choice of class, faction, etc. what that feels to me is that the world looses a geographic quality, that the elements of the world loose a strong relation to each other and the game becomes a bucket of things for the player to fully experience in the order they feel like it. not allowing every establishment of the game to be used at once was a small, but constant and granular, way that I attempted something different.

the location screen, with access to the establishments

groups and characters:

characters have a certain opinion of the player, a degree of influence in every location in the system, belong to a group and have a trade. the player can ask them for favors using three options of action: threathen this character if they have information on them <enforce>, negotiate with them in exchange for an item <negotiate> or just ask for it <convince> .

characters can perform two types of favor, allowing the player to use this character's influence somewhere for the duration of the mission or performing a service according to their trade. the services provided by these characters are the same from the establishments. characters with political trades can increase or diminish the influence of a group somewhere. hackers and spies can obtain information on a person. artists and social influencers can improve the opinion a location has of the player and so on.

groups are just an agregate of characters and possess a certain influence on every location of the system, going from 0 to 100%. this number is abstract, but the group with the biggest percentage on a location influences the opinion it has on the player. likewise, the opinion of a group's members on the player influences the opinion the group itself has.

if most members have a positive opinion, this group will tend towards a positive opinion with time, depending on the intensity of their opinion. the same for negative opinions. the influence of the groups on the locations work the same, the opinion of the location will tend towards the opinion of the dominant group.

I wanted this to be way more dynamic than it ended up being and wished the player would feel more motivated to engage with this system of opinions. opinion affects the success chance of <negotiate> and <convince> actions and can lead to agressive narrative encounters to trigger in locations with really low opinions, but I still wish it was more significant. new characters get inserted in the game very rarelly and they never change group, so the group's opinions flunctuate to rarelly for this to be dynamic.

opinions affect the player more strongly at the level of characters, probably. being able to get favors with convince actions is really useful.

 

the character contact screen

 

archetypes and traits:

archetypes and traits were an attempt to deal with the question of both objectives as well as classes or skill trees. traits are characteristics that the player acquires and change their aptitude towards certain actions. archetypes are a special traits that the player acquires when they play in a special and specific way and meet certain pre-requisites.

normal traits reflect a hidden system that records every action the player performs. when the player uses a certain type of action, this type increases in a hidden counter and all other types of action decrease just a little. therefore, if a player uses a certain type of action all the time, this action reaches an arbitrary treshold and the player gets a trait that improves their aptitude in this action. likewise, if a player never uses a certain type of action, it decreases enough on this counter and the player gets a trait that decreases their aptitude with the action type.

unlike normal skills in rpgs, in which a player chooses a skill to become stronger, or increases an atribute, traits reflect the player's actions. to be stronger in <convince> they actually have to use it more, but at the same time, thet get worse at it if they never use it. this system tries to make all player actions meaningful in a small and granular way and express that the game is listening and paying attention to what you do.

archetypes attempt something similar. each archetype has a list of pre-conditions and grant a special trait when they're met. "Knee-Breaker" requires the player to threaten lots of characters. "Gentleman Thief" requires them to pull off lots of successful heists without using <enforce> actions. the idea is that archetypes recognise interesting acts by the player and register them in a concrete way on the player character.

graphics and interface:

I was doing a more complex game for the first time, programming, doing art and design by myself, so I wanted a style that was visually simple, but dynamic. I chose something more graphic, with representational elements very sporadically, like the panoramas and the character portraits.

the interface of little boxes side by side is a very organic influence from older games, specially pc games, but also comics and photography. the nature of the photography is the index, photography produces this little index of a moment or thing, that can be exibited next to other indexes, but as a self contained fragment. I like an UI that presents the game elements to the player with a more abstract relation to each other, allowing me to manipulate it very easily. the game communicates the relationship between the elements, but doesn't have to represent it. I can show a place or person and say a certain symbol or word is associated with it, things like that.

to make the game more dynamic I decided to animate purelly graphic things. the screen constantly has glitchy little things that show up and vanish and the conections between the UI boxes are animated and suggest that information is being passed between them (or I hope it does). the only animated representational thing are the rotoscoped portraits, where the really low framerate contrast with both the naturalistic movement and the constant movement of the scan lines.

summary and conclusion:

my goal with the game was creating a tiny rpg system, where each actions matters, not because of big choices that veer the story, but in a granular way in the game's system, with small consequences for each action made and mutually exclusive choices.

I didn't want a "role-playing" game where the player chooses skills and classes that communicate what type of character they are, but a game that actually requires the player to behave a certain way, acknowledges this and records it in a concrete way.

the game ended up being a valuable experience to me as a designer and programmer, aside from an interesting draft of the design ideas, but was restricted by my lack of experience and bad tool choices. I really want to revise those ideas on the future.

the game had music composed by Ra Irigaray and can be found here in a hopefully playable state: https://umunum.itch.io/interstellar-rising

battle setting pt.2: reflecting a little on the design of the game + demo 0.5 available

I've finished a playable version for two players, just having to do the artificial intelligence now. this means I have not been able to play very well right now, since there's nobody to play with me here, I use the two player version purely to test the system, but I already started to think some stuff about the design of the game.

the goal with battle setting was taking the basic idea of table setting, tic tac toe pieces that lose life with time until removed, and try to make it more tactical by making the pieces only lose life when they're moved again. this gives space for the player to plan the rhythm the pieces degrade and try to renewel their life points with other pieces abilities.

what I found interesting by now: the pieces get locked when they're neighboured by enemy pieces on opposite sides. since the board is very packed, the pieces get constantly locked and unlocked. I like the density of the effect of each piece. when a piece is moved to a new space, they activate their ability, probably around its new cell, potentially gets closer to form a three piece line and both locks and unlocks new enemy pieces.

however, the fact that pieces are more durable, something that should make the game more tactical, also seems to make it way easier to form a three piece line. in table setting, I constantly found myself having to save pieces with 1 or 2 of life to form a line. here the pieces never seem to reach that point. I'm considering making the attacks stronger, or making the pieces start the game with less life points.

I'm only going to be able to perceive this when I finish the artificial inteligence and manage to play the game for real, but it seems to me I have a pretty fundamental design problem to solve.

I also changed the asset pack I used in table setting. since pieces in that game never moved after being played, the theme of food plates seemed appropriate, but for table setting, where pieces are more active, I decided to change to a pack of little creatures. the rest of the images in the game are still the same, I'm only touching that after finishing programming and design.

the game only has a two player version so far, the instructions are still the old ones from table setting, the graphic part is a mess, and I don't put my hand on the fire for the design just yet, but if someone wants to test the middle of the road version, the zip is in the drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19IOV6vYRU2YtUDCkdDm0CSh2XFuSVVbE?usp=sharing

 

 

enquadra pt.2: refletindo um pouco sobre o design do jogo + demo 0.5 disponível

terminei uma versão jogável com duas pessoas, faltando agora fazer a inteligência artificial. isso significa que não consegui jogar direito ainda, visto que não tem ninguém para jogar comigo aqui, uso a versão de dois jogadores puramente para testar o sistema, mas já comecei a pensar certas coisas sobre o design do jogo.

a intenção com o enquadra era pegar a ideia base do mesa posta, peças de jogo da velha que vão perdendo vida com o tempo até serem removidas, e tentar tornar o jogo mais tático ao fazer as peças perderem vida apenas quando são movidas novamente. isso dá espaço pro jogador planejar o ritmo com que as peças se degradam e tentar renovar seus pontos de vida com a habilidade de outras peças.

o que achei interessante até agora: as peças se travam quando são avizinhadas em lados opostos por peças do oponente. visto que o tabuleiro é bem apertado, as peças são constantemente travadas e destravadas. eu gosto da densidade do efeito de cada peça. quando uma peça é movida para um novo espaço, ela aciona sua habilidade, provavelmente tendo efeito ao redor da sua nova célula, potencialmente chega mais perto de formar uma linha de três e tanto trava quanto destrava novas peças do oponente.

porém, o fato das peças serem mais duradouras, algo que deveria tornar o jogo mais tático, também parece tornar bem fácil a formação de uma linha de três peças. no mesa posta eu me sentia constantemente tendo que salvar peças com 1 ou 2 de vida para terminar a linha. aqui as peças parecem nunca chegar nesse ponto. estou considerando tornar os ataques mais fortes e agressivos, ou fazer as peças iniciarem o jogo com menos pontos de vida.

eu só vou realmente conseguir perceber isso quando terminar a inteligência artificial e conseguir jogar de vez, mas me parece que vai ter um problema de design bem fundamental para resolver.

também mudei o pacote de assets que usei no mesa posta. visto que a peças naquele jogo nunca se moviam novamente depois de serem posicionadas, a temática do pratos de comida parecia apropriada, mas para o enquadra, em que as peças são mais ativas, decidi mudar para um pacote de criaturinhas. o resto dos gráficos do jogo ainda estão os mesmos, só vou terminar isso depois de finalizar a parte de programação e design.

o jogo só possui a versão de dois jogadores até agora, as instruções ainda são as antigas do mesa posta, os gráficos tão uma bagunça e eu não boto minha mão no fogo pelo design por enquanto, mas se alguém quiser testar a versão meio do caminho, o zip tá aqui no drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19IOV6vYRU2YtUDCkdDm0CSh2XFuSVVbE?usp=sharing

 

 

bate-bate: demo 0.3 disponível!

uma nova demo do protótipo bate-bate está disponível. o desenvolvimento nesse jogo foi mais lento esse mês, já que me ocupei com outras coisas relacionadas a jogos, como minha campanha do apoia-se, o canal do youtube, os pacotes de assets. em função disso só consegui lançar um dos dois updates que pretendia para fevereiro e um pouco tardiamente também.

esse update traz os efeitos especiais e alguns cenários para explorá-los. estou levemente descontente com o resultado dos cenários envolvendo eles e como esse efeitos são visualmente representados, mas pretendo melhorar isso nos próximos updates.

outra mudança interessante é que esse é o primeiro update que vem com uma demonstração em vídeo! começarei a gravar vídeos agora e espero que isso mostre melhor o jogo que estou desenvolvendo e talvez interesse pessoas sem disposição para baixar a demo em si.

link pro drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JoPGdF136_zH3PZ9WQ3QY38nRTy9Uf2E?usp=sharing

 

 

vídeo de demonstração:

 

bate-bate: demo 0.3 available!

a new demo of the prototype bate-bate is available and this one has an english option! the development on this game was slower this month, since I occupied myself with other game related things, like my brazilian crowdfunding campaign, my new youtube channel, the asset packs. on account of that, I could only launch one of the two updates I intended for february and a little late to.

this update brings special states and some cenarios to explore them. I'm slightly unpleased with the results of cenarios involving them and how these effects are visually represented, but I want to improve this the following updates.

an interesting development is that this is the first update with a demonstration video! I'm starting to record videos now and I hope this better displays the game I'm making an maybe interests people without disposition to download the demo itself.

link to the drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JoPGdF136_zH3PZ9WQ3QY38nRTy9Uf2E?usp=sharing

 

demonstration video:

bate-bate eng.2: dodging and status effects

two big mechanics have been added to the game in the past weeks, fighters being able to dodge enemy attacks and status effects that change the way they react to contacts. both of these aim to strenghten the core of the game, the chain of contacts between fighters in combat and create a bit more drama through unexpected reversals in the contact chain.

when a character dodges they avoid suffering the effetcts of an enemy's main move, but still get activated and get to act afterwards. this can happen either because the target has a lower level than their attacker, or because either the target has an evasion bonus or the attacker has a dexterity debuff.

dodging also introduces levels into the game. every fighter has a level now and I hope that dodges add a space in the battle for low level fighters to be useful. a low level fighter can dodge away from attacks and still manage to stand against a higher level enemy, but running the risk that an enemy attack will end up going through and potentially eliminate this much weaker target. this follows one of the design tenets I had in mind for the game, push your luck mechanics.

 

an enemy dodging and attack

 

 

as for the status effects, there are four statuses: immobility, confusion, disorientation and protection, they all play into the contact chain. immobility will make you suffer the effects of an enemy's main agressive move without getting activated (so the opposite of dodging, basically). confusion will make you use your main move on the wrong target, a supportive move on an enemy and an agressive move on an ally. disorientation will make you dodge away from a friendly contact. protection will prevent the next status you would otherwise obtain. like bonuses and debuffs, a status is removed as soon as it takes effect.

the moves that give and heal damage as well as bonuses and debuffs remain the backbone of the move set and the effects triggered by the contact chain, to make the fights move along and be functional, but I hope that dodging and status effects add interesting variety and unexpected moments of drama to the basic contact chain, making it more exciting.

bate-bate pt.12: mecânicas novas, status effects

adicionei mais três efeitos possíveis para os golpes dos lutadores, terminando todos os efeitos possíveis que um golpe pode ter. confusão, atordoamento, imobilidade e proteção vão ser estados especiais que um lutador pode ter e alteram o fluxo do circuito de contatos.

confusão faz um lutador usar seu golpe primário no alvo errado. usar um golpe agressivo em um aliado e um golpe de suporte em um inimigo. atordoamento faz um lutador esquivar do golpe primário de suporte de um aliado. imobilidade faz um lutador receber o golpe primário ofensivo de um inimigo sem ser ativado, levando esse inimigo a agir de novo. proteção te impede de receber outro estado especial. assim com buffs e debuffs, esses estados são removidos assim que tem efeito.

o foco do sistema de batalha é o circuito de contatos e os golpes tem efeitos mais simples que apenas dão textura a esse circuito. que nem a esquiva, a ideia com os efeitos especiais é criar golpes mais interessantes sem tirar o foco do circuito, criando twists emocionantes (espero eu) na sequência de contatos.

tirar e curar dano e dar buffs e debuffs vai sempre ser a base dos efeitos em uma luta, para garantir que ela está indo para frente e chegando mais perto de acabar, mas a esquiva e os estados especiais tem sido ferramentas importantes para criar mais emoção e momentos inesperados em uma partida.

loose ideas 01: works in interface and screen composition that make me proud

I'm gonna leave here some stuff I did before on interface and screen composition that I particularly like a lot. everything is quite amateurish :P but it gives me satisfaction to look at them.

I like the idea of thinking of every screen as a composition. I like when the interface takes the front, or the game is pure interface and there's no longer a distinction between the main game world and an interface that is just an overlay trying not to obstruct too much. collages, comics and old pc games are a generalised inspiration here.

the games are presented in chronological order.

 

lick my eyeballs

the first game I made, in a game jam with friends. the game is basically mastermind, but the password that you form is a combination of youtube videos. I really like the big eye, the button you press to check the password and expose the subject to the chosen videos. I like the space that a button is occupying on the screen. a big interest I have when organizing UI is thinking about it as a collage of artifacts, buttons, information, without a main game screen.

 

 

 

treco

another little gamejam game made with friends. continuing to think about the fitting of UI elements, in treco, when the map opens, it lays on top of the suitcase with your items.

interstellar rising

coming from the games I made in gamejams, I explored more the interface as a variety of boxes without any of them being the main area. the interface is the game itself, it doesn't lay on top of it.

the challenge here was coming up with an aesthetic that was quick to make, but still dynamic. my solution was animating things that were purelly graphic. among these flourishes are tiny graphs that pop up constantly in the screen, conection lines between the UI boxes, the blue circles that represent your traits and spin constantly and glitches than can happen in the interface when open a new screen.

another thing I liked are the buttons in the form os banners that scroll to the side when you mouse over them. it's possible the inspiration was Maiden and Spell, but I don't remeber correctly when that game came out.

yorocutai

my idea for the UI in this game was emulating/ taking inspiration from books, both in the aesthetic flourishes and the organization of the screens in linear sucession, one after the other like pages from a book, with an index at the middle.

as telas-páginas em sucessão

I also cherish this moment, when you advance the game's time count. I really like that the tiny wheels stop spining when the sun wheel advances.

I really like the clouds spinning around the island, I tried to give the poetic suggestion of a horizon.

autonomous agent aramis

something about this game I liked a lot is that the top menu remains when you advance trough new windows, including the main level. I wanted the game to look like the interface the robot's operator uses, or suggested that. I tried to associate this with an internet browser for example.

 

I also really like the visual theme of the spinning medals.

well, that was it :3

I wound up presenting almost all the games I made jshskshsl, consequentially the quality varies a lot, but I wanted to at least bring attention to one aspect in each that I liked.

 

battle setting pt.1: the concept for a new project expanding Table Setting

I began a tiny side project that I intend to finish this month. it will be a follow up to Table Setting and I'm in fact going to use the unity project as a basis, which will be an interesting test that I hadn't done before.

with practically the same size, Battle Setting is intended to further explore the ideas I had in Table Setting to give life points and little powers to pieces in tic tac toe, but to extend the tactical aspect, I want each piece to be more durable and stable. in Table Setting each piece lost constitution every turn, here I want them to lose it only when they get used.

the basic structure is that you begin the game choosing four pieces, amongst many you own, through drafting. during the match itself you only have these four pieces to use. each turn the player can choose a piece and move it somewhere else. the piece triggers its power again, but loses one life point.

the idea then is that you have to balance using the piece's powers with managing their life points, but being able to control the degradation of these pieces, unlike Table Setting where this is automatic, leading to a more impermanent game.

the powers will be really similar to Table Setting: giving life to itself, taking life from enemies or giving life to allies. so you have the possibility to potentially replenish the life of your pieces as they degrade with use. however, if a piece is bordered by two enemy pieces on opposite sides, it can't move. this is so you can't count on using a specific piece on a specific moment, simply developing a regular sequence of pieces to use. I hope this leads the player to have to take interesting decisions by improvisation.

the main objective is forming a line of three pieces, like Table Setting, but since pieces can be eliminated, losing two pieces will lead to automatic defeat.

I'm really excited to explore the drafting at the beggining. this would leave you to only use four pieces among a much bigger lot, but without being able to chose them at will, leading to potentially very different matches depending on the combination of pieces, and their powers, you have to use.

an aggressive set can be really good at eliminating the enemy pieces, but constantly losing life without being able to help. a defensive set can last a lot, probably aiming for a victory by forming a line. more conservative powers that only work on adjacent pieces would lead to a slower game with focus on positioning and manouvering. stronger powers with random targets would lead to faster more unpredictable matches. I'll see.

ideias avulsas 01: trabalhos em interface e composição de tela que me orgulham

vou deixar alguns trabalhos que fiz anteriormente com interface e composição de tela que eu particularmente gosto bastante. é tudo bem amador :P mas me dá satisfação de olhar.

eu gosto muito da ideia de pensar em cada tela como uma composição. gosto quando a interface é destacada, ou o jogo é pura interface e não existe mais uma distinção entre o mundo do jogo e uma interface que vai por cima tentando não obstruir ou se sobressair demais. colagens, quadrinhos e jogos antigos de PC são uma inspiração generalizada aqui.

os jogos estão apresentados aqui em ordem cronológica.

 

lick my eyeballs

o primeiro joguinho que eu fiz, numa game jam com amigas. o jogo é basicamente senha, mas a senha que você forma é uma combinação de vídeos do youtube. gostei muito do olhão, o botão que você aperta para inserir a senha ao expor o sujeito aos vídeos escolhidos. gosto do espaço que um botão está ocupando na tela. um interesse grande meu na hora de organizar a UI foi pensar nela como uma colagem de artefatos, botões, informação, sem uma área de jogo principal.

 

 

 

treco

outro joguinho de gamejam feito com amigas. continuando a pensar no encaixe dos elementos da ui, em treco, quando você abre o mapa, ele deita em cima da maleta com seus itens.

interstellar rising

continuando dos primeiros joguinhos que fiz em jams, explorei mais a ideia de organizar a interface como várias caixinhas sem que nenhuma delas fosse a área principal do jogo. a interface é o próprio jogo, ela não fica por cima dele.

o desafio aqui foi pensar numa estética rápida de se fazer, mas que ainda fosse dinâmica. minha solução foi animar coisas puramente gráficas. entre esse floreios estão os pequenos gráficos que aparecem constantemente pela tela, as linhas de conexão entre as caixas da interface, os círculos azuis que representam suas traits e giram constantemente e uns glitchs que podem rolar na interface quando você abre uma tela nova.

outra coisa que gostei foram botões em forma de faixas que deslizam para o lado quando você passa o mouse por cima. é capaz que a inspiração tenha sido Maiden and Spell, mas não lembro ao certo quando esse jogo saiu, talvez seja coincidência.

yorocutai

minha ideia para a interface desse jogo era emular/ me inspirar por livros, tanto na questão dos floreios estéticos quanto em organizar a sucessão das telas de forma linear, uma depois da outra como páginas de um livro, incluindo um index no meio.

as telas-páginas em sucessão

também tenho carinho por esse momento, em que você avança o jogo temporalmente. gosto muito que as pequenas rodinhas nos relógios param enquanto o sol avança.

gostei bastante das nuvens girando em volta da ilha, tentei dar uma sugestão poética de um horizonte.

autonomous agent aramis

acho que um elemento desse jogo que gostei bastante foi o fato de que o menu superior permanece quando você abre novas janelas. queria que o jogo parecesse a interface que o operador do robô gigante usa, ou desse essa sugestão de leve. tentei fazer associações com um browser de internet por exemplo.

 

também gosto muito da temática visual das medalinhas rodando.

bem, foi isso :3

acabei apresentando quase todos os jogos que já fiz jskshsk, consequentemente a qualidade varia muito, mas queria salientar pelo menos um aspecto em cada que eu achei legal.

enquadra pt.1: conceito do projeto novo expandindo o Mesa Posta

iniciei um novo side project pequenininho que eu pretendo terminar ainda em fevereiro. ele dá continuação ao mesa posta e vai inclusive usar o projeto na unity como base, o que vai ser um experimento interessante que eu não tinha feito antes.

com praticamente a mesma escala, o enquadra pretende continuar a explorar a ideia que eu tive no mesa posta de dar pontos de vida e poderzinhos para peças de jogo da velha, mas para tentar estender o lado tático, eu quero que dessa vez cada peça seja mais estável e durável. no mesa posta as peças perdiam pontos de constituição todo turno, aqui eu quero que elas percam ponto apenas quando são utilizadas.

a estrutura básica é que você inicia o jogo escolhendo quatro peças, dentre várias que você possui, através de um drafting. durante a partida em si você só terá essas quatro peças para usar. a cada turno o jogador pode escolher uma peça e mover ela de local. ao baixar a peça em outro espaço ela aciona seu poder de novo, porém perde um ponto de vida.

a ideia então é você precisar balancear o uso do poder das peças com a vida delas, mas podendo controlar a degradação da sua vida desse jeito, ao invés do mesa posta em que isso era automático, levando a um jogo mais impermanente.

o poderzinho das peças seriam muito parecidos com o mesa posta: dar vida para si, tirar vida das peças oponentes ou dar vida para peças aliadas. então você tem a possibilidade de potencialmente repor a vida das suas peças conforme elas desgastam com o uso. porém, se uma peça estiver enquadrada de dois lados opostos por peças oponentes, ela não pode se mover. isso é para que você não possa contar de forma tão previsível que poderá usar uma peça específica em um momento específico, podendo simplesmente desenvolver uma sequência constante de que peças usar. espero que isso leve o jogador a precisar tomar decisões interessantes de improviso.

o objetivo principal seria formar um linha de três peças, assim como o jogo da velha, mas como as peças podem ser eliminadas, perder duas peças levaria a uma perda automática e vitória para o outro jogador.

estou muito interessada em explorar o drafting do começo. isso te levaria a só poder contar com quatro peças dentre um conjunto bem maior, sem poder escolhê-las a dedo, levando a partidas potencialmente muito diferentes dependendo da combinação de quatro poderes que você tem para usar.

um conjunto mais agressivo pode ser muito bom em eliminar as peças do oponente, mas só perdendo vida continuamente sem poder evitar, um conjunto mais defensivo conseguiria durar bastante, provavelmente tentando uma vitória com a formação da linha. poderes mais conservadores que funcionam sempre em peças adjacentes levariam a um jogo mais lento, previsível e com muito foco na manobra das peças. poderes mais fortes com alvos aleatórios no tabuleiro levariam a um jogo intenso e imprevisível. verei.

past projects 01: autonomous agent aramis

presentation

playing team fight tactics led me to take great interest in games that play themselves automatically, allowing you to watch your own game and check the consequences of your strategic decisions without interfering directly in the game. the first game I made to explore these themes was Autonomous Agent Aramis.

you play as the machinist of the last autonomous agent, a robot built to protect society from space threats. machinist because the idea is that you don't control the robot directly, it has an artificial inteligence and battles by itself, your job is making sure this is happening in the most ideal way possible.

the autonomous agent is controlled through five decks of cards, the game being also a deck builder, each deck representing a facet of its structure, its weapons, its physical constitution, its artificial inteligence, its special attacks and its item dispensary. but unlike a conventional deck builder, where cards are played to take effect, in this game cards take effect simply by existing in your hand. by simultaneously manipulating five hands of cards, one for each deck, you control the behaviour of the autonomous agent.

the larger structure of the game is like a dungeon crawler, where you go through a fixed number of levels until you reach the end and have a last battle with a boss. along the way you collect more cards and remove undesired ones from your deck.

 

 

the game's title screen

a level, the medalions provide benefits, the geometric shapes initiate battles

automatic battle

the battle takes place automatically and can't be stopped until it ends. the autonomous agent and its enemies alternate taking their turns. each turn they decide to either move or enact their attack.

the cards of the autonomous agent's hands add tags to its functioning, accumulating on top of the screen of the battle area. the tags affect, for instance, the attacks dealt by the AA when it decides to attack during its turn, how many cells it moves when it decides to move, with what frequency it moves and with what frequency it attacks, if it tries to distance itself or get close to enemies, etc.

 

 

the battle screen

 

the tag <shoot>, for example, hits a random opponent in an area around the AAA when it attacks. the higher the number of the <shoot> tag, the bigger the damage and the reach. the tag <speed> defines the number of cells the AA can traverse when it moves, the higher the number of the tag, the longer the distance it moves.

 

detail of the tags

 

the effect of a tag increases exponentially alongside its frequency. this happens to create the necessity to concentrate the attack tags. each attack tag is an independent attack that deals damage independently, so otherwise the proportion of cards sorted in the arsenal deck wouldn't make any difference. four cards with four attacks would amount to almost the same amount of damage everytime. since the effect actually increases exponentially, having a tag four times gives way more damage than having four tags one time.

each deck is controlled in its respective panel. by pulling the lever the player can sort a new hand of cards and they can do this any time they want throughout the battle. however, everytime the player pulls a lever the AA accrues a bit more heat. because of this, the player isn't restricted to accept a bad hand of cards and is free to seek the best combo possible, but they have to pay the cost in heat and there is always the chance that the new hand is worse.

heat (the first bar in the lower screen) determines the amount of pressure that is constantly accumulated by the AA, represented by the valve left of the screen. more heat, more pressure per second. when the AA reaches the pressure limit it discards every single card currently in its hands, sorts a new hand of cards in every panel and accrues a bit more heat. which means it will accumulate pressure faster the next time, reaching this limit even faster.

this can be exploited by the player, who can pull the lever right before this to prevent good cards from being discarded. this has the cost of accumulating even more heat, making the next discard happen even faster.

 the AA also accumulates ultra energy (third bar on the lower screen) throughout the battle. when the ultra energy reaches its limit the AA releases its ultra attack, much stronger than the normal one. following that, the limit the ultra energy needs to reach to unleash the attack decreases, meaning the next ultra attack will arrive faster and faster.

when the AA takes damage it increases its damage bar a little (second one on the lower screen), that also has a "break limit", like preassure and ultra energy. when damage reaches its limit, damage cards are added to the player's decks. these cards are just empty cards, without tags, that occupy space in the decks and the panels. when the break limit is reached it decreases, arriving at this point faster the next time.

 

damage and degradation

as the decks fill with damage cards the AA starts to become less effective, since its hands start to get bogged down by useless cards. because of this, instead of damage being something imperceptible until it reaches a final limit and the character dies, it's something that constantly affects the functioning of the character, making it worse and worse.

a class of enemies explores a similar mechanic. it injects virus cards on the AA with a heating tag, increasing the heat it gains and making the discard of the hands arrive faster. a negative effect that goes beyond numbers and actually makes the character harder to handle.

this was inspired by the game Slay the Spire, where many enemies will attack you by inserting negative cards on your deck. specially the slime monster that inserts cards that are just useless, forcing you to spend actions points to remove them.

I found the damage mechanic to be interesting, but it also has the side effect of making the AA continually simpler and less effective. despite making sense from a narrative stand point and being an effective way to punish for taking damage, it creates an arc that isn't very satisfactory where the character get progressively weaker and simpler wich isn't very fun.

accelerated rhythm

heat/ pressure, the ultra attack and damage accumulation all work in an accelerating rhythm where the break limit is reached faster and faster. so increasingly the AA will be discarding its cards, triggering the ultra attack and accumulating damage.

your cards get discarded so fast as heat accrues that eventually you won't be able to controle it, on top of that your decks get increasingly full of damage cards. to balance, the ultra attack happens faster, cleaning the field of enemies with a powerful attack. the goal is for the player to arrive at the end of a though battle crumbling, unlike other deckbuilders or engine builders where the feeling is of an increasingly more powerful engine.

deckbuilding

I tried to strenghten this feeling of a crumbling and shody, even if still potent, machine with the deckbuilding part. the autonomous agent being made up of so many decks and so many cards means that the player can't manage them as precisely as in other games of the genre.

 

card kit installation screen

 

 

instead of the cards being inserted and removed individually, they come in thematic kits that can contain cards of any deck, but usually form a bit of a combo, to ensure its usefulness.

the impossibility of managing the cards individually means that not only will there be many undesired and single cards, coming together with otherwise good kits, but also that it's too difficult for the player to even know all the cards the autonomous agent has. with this, I wanted to transmit the feeling that the AA is truly massive, a whole vehicle that is being more directed than truly piloted, instead of a succint character.

the game comes with music by Ra Irigaray and can be downloaded here: https://umunum.itch.io/aaaramis