3rd person cameras

This week I created and tested a 3^rd person camera level.

The goal of the level is to collect all the cakes and head to the exit. The players however don’t know this when they start, and work out the goal at the end when they see a number counter increase when they collect a last piece.

The level uses the same light vs dark idea from one of the previous levels, and I wanted to know if I got different results with a new camera. My hypothesis is that players will feel more detached from the character on screen, so would fell less danger, and thus will venture into the darkness more often. There are two different variants; one that uses a fixed camera that the player can’t control, and another that uses a controllable camera attached to the character.

The fixed camera lets me look into controlling the image on screen as a way to influence the players decision. At a few points, I have the image framed so that the prominent part of the image is a dark or a light path. I wanted to see if this has an effect.

I only managed to test the fixed camera version this week, so next week I’ll be testing the controllable camera, along with any other ideas I have in the meantime.

The level is made up of a few different sections, each with a dark and a light path they can go down, like in the original. I took note of each players general action qualitatively, as well as which path they chose the first time they entered a section as raw numbers.

What I found was similar to the original test, that the amount of players choosing dark and light paths first is about half and half. Out of the 6 players who tested it 3 mostly went down dark routes first, and the other 3 mostly went down the light routes. However, within the players own choices there was a near 50:50 split as well. All of the players who mostly went down the dark paths had a 3 – 2 split out of the 5 choices they made. Within the players who mostly went down light paths was an outlier who only took routes that where illuminated.

There were a few notable behaviours. Players didn’t seem hesitant in going down the dark paths as much as they did with a first person camera. They would usually go past the entrance to the dark path, and then back up to see what was down there. Also, there was only one player who went into the first dark area in the level.

Other players came back to this area either after reaching the end of the level, as they need to in order to complete it, or after going into the dark area of this 2^nd section.

It would appear that either players didn’t want to go into the woods, or they didn’t know that they could. It is known that players eyes are drawn towards areas of contrast, so it could be that in this 3^rd person game, light is more about catching the players eye more than creating an area of safety that the player feels emotionally.

More Vine level testing

After having more people play the vine level, it seems that more people share the same though process as my original tester. Generally speaking, players recognised that there was a variety of density in the vine bridges, but when players played the game they ended up being put into 2 mental boxes, bridges that broke and bridges that didn’t. They didn’t recognise that there was an analogue. Player still avoided the bridges that looked the thinnest, but used all the others.

My next step is to take some of my previous maps, and see if I get the same result if it uses a 3^rd person camera.

A possible new direction

My lecturer Josh, after looking at the ‘wood vs vinebridges’ level, had a brilliant idea. Why not make a level where some of the bridges broke depending on how dense the vines were. Some vines would be thin, and snap easily, and others would be thick and not snap at all.  This was great because in many games' mechanics, interaction is very digital; one thing looks like this, so it does this. The idea of having an analogue interaction is something that feels new, and the level could be constructed with the aim of making it 'feel' more realistic than usual.

The main aim of the level, however, is to see if players understand it and like it. Will they be cautious about the vines? Will they be frustrated at the level? Will it feel like they are having to make judgements?

Currently I have only had one playtester play the unfinished level. They partly understood the idea saying that they thought the number of leaves on the vines indicated whether or not it was stable, but they didn’t understand the analogue nature of the bridges.

To the player, the thought process was ‘Will this bridge hold me?’ rather than ‘How well will this bridge hold me?’ To them it was a binary decision to make, because their action too is binary – to cross or not cross the bridge.

On the same day as the testing, I meet Arthur Parsons, game director at TT Games, as he was giving a lecture at the university. The lecture was based around whether or not creating a game for an existing IP stifled creativity. One of his points that really interested me was how an IP game is grounded within the IP in the same way that any other game can be grounded in reality. They are 'grounded in the reality of fiction’. As my research is currently looking at how much of a player’s reality is brought with them into a game, I asked him if the same applies to IP games, if they have ever used the players knowledge of an IP as a way of guiding them through the game. 

He said that it was a case of yes and no. In the Lego Harry Potter games they used Nearly-Headless-Nick as a form of player initiated guidance, where if they were stuck player could walk up to him and he would float off in the direction they needed to go, an analogue to how he helps Harry and the gang in the books. However, unlike the books, as he was floating off he dropped a trail of lego studs, a collectable item. More traditional guidence methods were also used, such as entrances to new areas being lit up with different colours to make it more visible to the player.

I told him about what I was doing and he gave some great suggestions. He recommended that I did some tests with a 3^rd person camera, to see if the detachment between the player and the character that they were controlling affected the results of previous experiments. He also recommended that I look into how the camera is positioned; how framing the information differently can be used to guide.

With the levels I have been making thus far all using a first person camera, I have become too focused on how the player interacts with the world as if they themselves were part of it. Instead of just looking at how different stimuli effect players, I’m now going to look into is how these stimuli are presented to the player, and how that changes there reaction to them.

In the level with the wooden bridges vs the vine bridges, players only went over the bridges if after they noticed that they were being laid out across gap that they otherwise couldn’t get past. It was the context and position that the vines were in that clued players into their functions. Also, in the ‘dark vs light’ level, the fact that the choice between going down a dark path or a light path was presented as a T-junction, and therefore presented as an explicit choice, might be the reason why so many players decided to go down the dark path, against popular wisdom. Players’ had mentally modeled the environment as a binary choice.

In an average game, choosing between dark or light areas isn’t presented as a choice, but rather as part of a wider more flexible environment. Light is used to literally light the way, and very rarely will a level be designed so that a dark area is a choice with consequence, it’s usually use to indicate dead end space. In this sort of environment Players’ don’t model it as a binary choice.

I think I made a mistake to say that players are drawn to dark as much as they are to light. It’s much more complicated.

Bridges and Materials part 2

I decided to take the idea of material semantics a bit further, and incorporate some new things into it.

I want to see if the general mood and feeling of a level will influence the actions of the player. I took the previous ‘metal and woodenbridges’ level and changed the bridges to be made out of wood and vines. Vines aren’t normally associated with the ability to walk across them in reality, but are in fantasy and adventure stories.

I made two versions of the level, one in a realistic environment and one in a more abstract unrealistic environment.

In the realistic environment, players were generally cautious of the vine bridges at first, but by the time they got to the 2^nd or 3^rd bridge, and noticed that they could be used as bridges, they used them more often, I imagine due to the novelty of it.

However, when in the abstract environment, most of the players ended up being more reluctant to go across the vines. This was unexpected, as I thought that players would see the odd world with the floating rocks and platforms and think that the world didn’t adhere to realistic rules. The level itself was floating in an empty sky, with no visible ground underneath. Maybe it was because of this the players felt unsettled didn’t want to risk falling through the vines.

Skyrim Dungeon is finished!!

Over the Christmas break, I finished my Skyrim level

The level was inspired by an idea from Christopher Totten, from his article ‘Designing better levels through human survival instincts’. In it he argues that people will instinctively seek sheltered areas, such as caves, in-between passing through large open areas while travelling, and that this behaviour can be taken advantage of in video games.

In the encounter that forms the climax of the level, the player has the choice of fighting two dangerous enemies inside a small area, or escape it for the additional choice of fighting them on more open ground or in narrow corridors. I wanted to see if Totten’s prediction rings true. If it does, then players would avoid the main open area and fight in the enclosed areas.

I also wanted to try a few things with materials, in this case with ice and rock. In the level there are icy, snowy, blue areas and warmer, rocky, orangey areas. Players start off in a cold area and move into a warm area, and there are optional cold spots that the player can investigate.  I want to see if the player does go through with investigating the cold spots; are they drawn to the spots because it’s more visible, or are they repelled because of the rock’s association with progress?

I’ve manage to do a small amount of playtesting, but I wouldn’t consider it enough to make any firm conclusions. It however did manage to whittle out an error in the design.

In this area, the player can go off the critical path and investigate a colder area for loot. But when they came out of the cold area, they ended up going back to where they came from. This was because they hadn’t noticed the door that would allow them to progress. I tried to light up the door, but it didn’t work. So instead I moved the level geometry around so that when they exited cold area, the door was right in their line of sight. This worked perfectly.