#game pie

[treasuresfromthearchives]

Game Pie Dish

c. 1860-1880

Minton Pottery and Porcelain Factory (British)

[philamuseum]

Calling Paul Hollywood! This decorative, earthenware dish was used in the early 1800s to make game pies, a savory meat pie made with wild game such as rabbit, venison, and pheasant. Game pies reached peak popularity and elaborateness in Victorian England and feature frequently as a challenge on The Great British Baking Show today.

“Game-Pie Dish," around 1815, made by the Wedgwood Factory

[therecipelibrary]

Grand Pacific Game Pie

-Table and Kitchen 1892

[keyblack]

Merry Christmas! We made game pies, Colonial Williamsburg style! 🎄

[the-bread-faerie]

Hot water crust pastry for a black trumpet mushroom and venison pie 🥧

Made from scratch for my friends to share after a hike ⛰

[kallomgaming]

[game pie] - reading guide

Introduction

Design challenge

Design a space arena first person shooter game inspired by the Battle Room in Ender’s Game movie and the movement mechanics of Overload and Hardspace: Shipbreaker where you shoot enemies with laser guns in six degrees of freedom (6DoF) in order to save humanity by using your fast-paced reaction and spatial awareness skills.

Phases & Process

Analysis

Design

Realisation

Validation

Reflection

[kallomgaming]

[game pie] #12 - playtest

Challenge: How can I receive feedback on the gameplay experience of my space-themed six degrees of freedom arena FPS game?

My game pie team and I wanted to receive some qualitative and quantitative data about our first playable demo in order to see what we could improve about the experience of the game.

Methodology

In order to receive feedback on our FPS game, my game pie team and I made a build of our game using WebGL, created a feedback form with questions (survey) about the in-game experience and sent our playable demo to another team for testing it and filling in what they think about the game in the feedback form. I contributed to the playtest preparation by suggesting ideas about how to formulate the questions in our feedback form such as having an even number of options on rating scale questions in order to get exact results (e.g. 1 2 3 4 instead of 1 2 3 4 5 because if people choose 3 that doesn’t give us any information since it is the middle option), avoid the use of biasing words in questions (how easy is it/how difficult is it, etc.) because these words may bias the choice of the tester, making less open questions because I know from experience that people prefer to click when answering instead on writing text. Furthermore, I contributed to the writing of the test results conclusion.

DOT framework methods used:

Products

Playable build of our game

Feedback Form

Questions

Results

Conclusions based on results

Overall, the play-testers had fun while playing our game because of its concept. They thought that the movement was not easy to get used to, in part due to the preservation of momentum. They felt like it was difficult to dodge enemies while maneuvering around the map because of it. Also, they thought that the collision damage that the player receives was too aggressive, likely because of the trouble they had with momentum. They would like an instant speed booster, but we feel that this isn’t what we’re going for. Instead, we think adjusting the speed ratios in different areas would make the game also feel nicer while keeping our original views. The enemies and their placement should be adjusted. Ideally, we’d like to get them moving around with a better stat range. Some of the enemies (like the statue at the top of the sphere) could fire their weapon without being able to take damage. The intent we had was to make the player use the obstacles in the area as cover. However, the testers said it was hard to pass through, so we should consider improving it or providing a tutorial for hiding behind obstacles. Other suggestions for improvement that we received from the testers were: - Making a slightly bigger sphere with more open spaces as well as more floating covers and a more spread-out enemy placement. - Increasing the player’s health points to account for enemy and collision damage.

Next

The game pie project served as a great opportunity for me to explore and experiment in game design. The next step for me would be to use what I learned during this project by applying what worked and improve what didn’t into the following projects.

[kallomgaming]

[game pie] #10 – blocking lasers by objects

Challenge: How can I create a laser beam that can be blocked by objects for my space-themed six degrees of freedom arena FPS game?

I wanted to make the lasers in our FPS game stop at a point where they hit an object. My goal was to allow the player to block the emission in order to get pass through a certain area in a level of the game without receiving damage from the laser. I thought that this would bring new opportunities for level design and more flexibility regarding gameplay.

Methodology

I approached the challenge by tweaking the code I already had from the tutorial about how to make a laser beam in Unity. In the example from the tutorial the laser had a Line Renderer component and it already could be blocked by an object. The laser game asset I used required a Mesh Renderer component instead. I couldn’t achieve the same results when I added a Line Renderer component and I had problems with the Collider of the laser using Raycast to check if it has hit something. I started researching about that and I looked at posts in the community in order to incorporate what they have learned. Furthermore, I tried out different things that they suggested and tried to come up with my own ideas for the implementation. I also looked at the Unity documentation in order to see how certain methods work. I implemented the findings in a prototype with Unity.

DOT framework methods used:

Resources

Videos:

Unity documentation:

Vector3.operator +

Transform.localScale

Community:

Move and Rotate LineRenderer with Transform property - Stack Overflow

Raycast but ignore yourself - Stack Overflow

Find Size of GameObject - Unity Answers

How to change scale of a GameObject in run-time? - Unity Forum

Game concepts:

Laser - Giant Bomb

Products

I wasn’t able to complete the challenge but I still explored different implementation approaches.

Overview of the challenge

My idea for the code

Next

I wasn’t able to complete this challenge because I had difficulties with changing the length of the laser only on one axis to the point where the laser is blocked by something. Nevertheless I still learned quite a lot about Colliders, Raycast and the Transform class. In the end we decided that we wouldn’t need this game mechanic because the lasers were only going to be used as obstacles that have to be avoided rather than blocked with an object. We decided we want to make them move instead.