Art Adventure

For one of my classes, we are tasked to design and build our own board game. After throwing around ideas, I'd like to create a tactical grid-based shooter, based on utilizing the environment to the players advantage.

Therefore, what I came up with reminded me of trench warfare in WWI, so, the game theme will correlate with that! I want to create a game where the player must "engineer their own success" by building the best fortress, and stocking it with the right mixture of troops.

The game will take place in the thick of World War I, on the Western Front. Both players will be able to build up defenses and station troops for the first phase of battle, then they will fight with soldier classes picked from both sides, so that none gets an advantage. The art style will be harsh, but distanced, nothing crazy gory, but maybe downtrodden.



 I would still like it to be fairly realistic, but if it becomes too much to handle, then I'd switch it to more of a stylized look, that still has a gritty, dark feel to it, such as this.


I might even be able to add in a sort of morale system into the mechanics if time allows. But, overall the colors should be fairly muted, with high contrast, with the primary color being the color of the earth, with one team of blue, and one team of green clad soldiers.

This post is for the deconstruction and analysis for the print and play game, Space Dogfight, created by Mats Lintonsson and found here.





The Goal: The goal of Space Dogfight is to either destroy all your opponents ships, or to have more of your ships survive, and reach the enemies starting zone.

The game starts with both players drafting a fleet, and placing them inside the starting zone.


Core Mechanic: The core mechanic of the game is drawing tiles. Each turn a player can discard any number of tiles they own, then they draw up to three tiles (each player can only have 5 tiles in their hand at a time). Drawing tiles allows a player to complete actions, such as move, defend, or attack. There are 4 types of tiles, an Action Point tile, which allows movement and attacking. There is a blank tile that hinders a player if it is drawn. There are defense tiles that bolster a ships defense for one turn. Finally there is the move asteroid tile, that causes an asteroid to move.

The ships start moving forward slowly, both apprehensive for the fight ahead.


Space of the Game: This game takes place on an 8 x 10 grid of zero dimensional points. This means that each space in the grid only keeps an object inside, it does not matter where it is placed inside of that square, only that it is in that square. What surrounds that square is more important, as movement and combat depends on adjacent squares. Diagonals are not considered adjacent in this game.

Blue team splits his fighters, bringing them close to the asteroid field...


Objects, Attributes, States: Space Dogfight's pieces are all objects. Most of these objects are player controlled space ships. There are a couple of asteroids on the field as well which are periodically controlled by players if they draw a certain tile. Because there are 4 ship types, there are a couple of attributes and states associated with the pieces in Space Dogfight. The main attributes of the ships are as follows: Points, Movement, Attack, and Defense. Each ship type has it's own modified value for each attribute, but they are all generally similar. Each ship also has its own number of states, which are as follows again: Alive, Dead, Out of Play, Under Attack, Defending, Moving, and In Victory Zone.

But they pass unscathed, and one flanks the enemy!


Operative Actions: A player can, at the beginning of his turn, discard any number of held tiles. Then, he may draw up to three tiles (as long as their hand does not exceed five). Then, the player may play any number of tiles. If a player draws a move asteroid card, they must immediately move an asteroid. If they play action point cards, they can move a ship any number of squares up to its movement value, or attack any adjacent enemy ship. Ships cannot move backwards or diagonally.

However, he misses his shots, and the enemy advances, leaving Blue's fighter useless in the upcoming battle. However, blue pushes and engages the Red front line.


Resultant Actions: Arranging ships in a line or stair formation blocks enemies from passing. Moving ships "together" only allows for one enemy ship to attack at a time, not allowing them to get attack bonuses. Surrounding enemy ships traps them, and gives the attacker a huge bonus. Moving a ship so that it is diagonal to an asteroid serves to add another defensive measure, as ships that wish to harm it might be destroyed if they move adjacent to it to attack, while the ship diagonal to the asteroid is perfectly safe, unless they are very unlucky and multiple "move asteroid" tiles are drawn, which is very rare.

Blue pulls it off despite the loss of one of their fighters, and takes an enemy ship. They begin to press their advantage.


Behavioral Rules: Obviously one must not cheat while playing Space Dogfight, or badger the other player while they are taking their turn.

Blue takes another fighter, and decides two is enough, and begins to pull out.


Advisory Rules: Because adjacency is very important in this game, moving ships in a formation helps to defend your ships, and give bonuses to attacks. Staying away from asteroids generally is safe as well. Formations of ships also act to block enemies from passing to the other side of the board. I found that it is easiest to win by flying in and picking off one or two enemy ships, then escaping and flying past the enemy, in order to reach the victory zone and win. Because pieces cannot move backward, unless the enemy catches you on the retreat you may escape fairly easily.

Blue is almost home free, victory is in sight!


Skills Learned: Players can learn how to think ahead of their opponents, and simple strategy as they play this game. It is like Chess, where movement and positioning are vital to success. Therefore, thinking ahead or baiting your opponent are great strategies to win.


However, Red catches one ship on their passage, if they can catch another a stalemate will be forced!


Role of Chance: There are three roles of chance in this game, one is when a ship is under attack, and a die must be rolled to determine a hit or miss, and another is the drawing of random tiles to determine what a player can do during his or her turn. The third factor are the asteroids. If a player draws a move asteroid tile, then an asteroid is randomly selected and moved around the field. If an asteroid collides with a ship it is destroyed. Other than these three factors, the rest of the game is up to skill and strategy. These elements of chance can also be augmented by the use of strategy, for example, when a ship is under attack, if there are allied or enemy ships adjacent to them as well, then bonuses are granted to the dice roll. Also, a vulnerable ship could try to escape death by braving through an asteroid field, maybe destroying enemies if they choose to follow.


However, Blue's ships escape, and with one more ship than their enemy, they win!

So for our Game Design class, we were tasked to find and play some print and play games in order to understand the mechanics of game design, and understand what makes a game fun. With just paper and rules, Print and Play is the ultimate test of weather a game is fundamentally fun or not.

The first game I played with my buddy was called Sword and Sails, and is at heart a poor-man's Risk. It only has one page of rules, and is simple to understand. It's a very fun game which takes no time at all to set up and play, at least with only two players. I feel with more players it would be a blast, but would take a lot longer than 20-30 minutes! Also, the game relies on small pieces, so cutting those out and keeping track of those would take ages and would be a pain with more than two players.

I ending up winning the game by controlling all of the Empire of Hellas. I noticed after a couple of turns that to win you only had to take over one empire, and with empires such as Hellas and Germania that only needed 4-5 tiles to take over, I used the cards to my advantage and took over. I always loved strategy games like Risk, and this game scratches that itch, and without the inevitable phase of stacking units to completely destroy the Earth in Risk.




After playing Sword and Sails, my friend and I switched to a more puzzle based game called Triles. The game is a two player game where each player takes turns to place tiles until they win by having none left. It is extremely simple, and fun, it is kind of like pictorial chess, where one must make moves in anticipation of future moves to win. You place tiles in order to continue your colored wavy line, trying to cut off the opponent from forming their own lines, or to create certain shapes which let you take an extra turn, or discard a tile. It is a slow game, sort of like Sword and Sails, a thinking game. While interesting, it was not as fun as Sword and Sails for me.



Finally, my companion and I played a game that I found that interested me called Light Speed. It was advertised as an extremely fast game, came with not too many pieces, and only two pages of rules! Honestly, it was my favorite game out of the three we played. The game is an extremely fast paced game where players place ships on the field, and the orientation of the ships determines where they fire their lasers. Because of the fast paced game, most of us ended up shooting empty space as much as we shot our own ships by accident!

The great mechanic behind the game is that it depends on the players to set the pace. The "placing" phase ends when the first player to place all their ships yells "Stop!" Because of this, everyone races against each other to place all their ships on the field and get the advantage. However, speed is not necessarily the key to success, as one player who did not place 3 of his ships ended up winning one round! I just love the simplicity of the rules, and how nothing is left to chance, only the order of the ships drawn. However, there are two ways to win, either by destroying your enemies, or dodging lasers deftly and mining asteroids. Seeing as how this game can also be extended to play with up to 5 players (and honestly, you could even play it with as many as you want for an unforgettable experience!) it is a clear winner for fun and simplicity. Lastly, the pieces are large and not a pain to keep track of, which makes the game that much more enjoyable.


Entering the battle phase!


Ships ready to fire...


The aftermath...




After playing all these games, I realize that simplicity and accessibility are 100% the keys to enjoyably. While my partner and I were searching for games, we found tons of great sounding games, but either could not find all the pieces and rules to print them out and play them, or were presented with tens of sheets to print, cut, and assemble into games that looked simple! For example, we found a game called "Quick Joust" which looked promising, until we found the game came with 10 sheets of cards to print and cut, along with 12 pages of rules! Therefore, the main thing to think about while creating a small game to play for about 30 minutes is MAKE IT SIMPLE. No one wants to read 12 pages of rules and cut tiny pieces out for 2 hours just to play a 30 minute game. Also, if making it print and play, keep everything you need to play in one PDF! Some games were spread so thin it was a huge pain to hunt down and isolate what was needed, what was optional, and what was a translation.

After a very busy couple of weeks of modeling, texturing, lighting, and also programming, I've got some nice pieces to share! Firstly, my class and I finished our initial models and textures for the Celestial Temple concept I created a couple of weeks ago. It's amazing how quickly our class can create these prototype models, especially with the other 4 classes of work we have to accomplish. After throwing a couple of people's pieces together, I made this level in the Unreal 4 engine.






I also went ahead of the curve, and modeled this Sphinx in zbrush, then retopologizing it in 3d coat, and finally putting on a quick texture in Photoshop just for now. I'll have to go back and paint in more details once the class moves onto smaller items.







Lastly, for one of my projects in my creative coding class, I decided to code a silhouette generator! The code essentially draws one line out in random directions every frame, making a randomized sketch every time it runs. First it draws in white, then in black, mirroring the line as it goes in order to make a symmetrical silhouette. It is basically alchemy's mirror and sketch line tool automated. After running for a couple of seconds, it saves the image, and starts anew! However, it cannot save when it runs on the web here, so if you want to use it, you can click on the window it is running in, then to pause it at any time, press the 'ALT' key. To resume press the Left arrow key. I'll probably continue upgrading this little tool for fun, and hopefully make it very useful!

Well, it seems there is a strange error with the way the code is converted to javascript, then ran on the website. I'll try to fix this error. For some reason it is not affecting my other programs, so here's another fun rectangle program I made earlier. It will randomly generate a base color, then split that color into squares of similar colors. To reset it, press and hold any key for about a second.