Video Game Technology and Design the CRACK Team

Snowglobe Design Doc

“It’s addictive” ™

snowglobe

design

doc

Video Game Technology and Design The CRACK Team:

David Sturman & Bernie Yee

COMS W4995-03 Marc Eaddy

Fall 2003 Moe Nasser

Santiago Ordonez

Erik Peterson

Table of Contents

Game Summary 3

Delivery Date 3

Category 3

Similar Titles 3

Look 3

High Concept 3

Key Points 3

Game Summary 3

Background 4

Game Vision 6

Game Play 7

Technology 9

Technologies 9

Development Approach 9

System Requirements 10

Schedule 10

Future Work 12

Laser Guide 12

Target Mark 13

Brick Puzzles 14

Separating Camera and Paddle Movement 14

Snowflakes 14

Water effects 15

Power-ups 15

Multiple balls 15

Wider paddle 15

Laser gun 15

Super ball 15

Matrix-like "bullet time” ball 16

Game System 16

Keyboard Controls 16

Paddle Displacement 16

Catching the ball 16

User Information 17

Post-Mortem 17

Game Summary

Delivery Date

Friday, December 12th, 2003 (Fall 2003)

Category

Action – Arcade

Similar Titles

Breakout, Arkanoid, 3D Breakout

Look

3rd Person 3D

High Concept

Snowglobe is a fast-paced arcade style 3D game in the same vein as the classic Breakout and Arkanoid games. Set inside a virtual snow globe with a castle in the middle, the player spins a paddle around the globe and tries to hit a ball to destroy the castle brick by brick.

Key Points

Snowglobe excels in bringing the original concept of 2D Breakout to a highly dynamic 3D scenario. The game gives the player the opportunity of not only enjoying the challenges of a 3D arcade-action game, but also the advantage of taking pleasure in an extraordinary well-rendered 3D scene. Snowglobe is governed by environmental components such as 3D physics and circular motion.

Game Summary

The legacy that 2D Breakout has established among the arcade community has been considered and preserved in Snowglobe. Nonetheless, the game is original in the sense that difficult 3D variables such as real physics were brought into the game without affecting game play and the player’s intention. Furthermore, considerable work went into designing a game that offers an arcade experience in a pseudo 3D real environment.

Background

When approaching the creation of a game The CRACK Team decided to alter and re-introduce a simple game to the public in a creative way. The game that

CRACK chose was Breakout. Breakout is a classic game that has been around for a very long time.

Our game design started with a simple format where the player controlled a paddle similar to Pong. However, instead of trying to hit the ball past your opponent, you tried to break bricks above you while still protecting the ball from passing your paddle.

The first alteration that CRACK wanted to undertake was introducing a 3rd dimension to Breakout. CRACK's game began as a 3D version of Breakout. Simply adding a 3rd dimension to the already existing Breakout resulted in a simple and somewhat boring layout.

The first challenge that arose from this new format was the camera. Where could CRACK place the camera in this scene to show the important and critical areas of action while keeping the player oriented so that controls remained plausible?

Through group brainstorming, CRACK iterated the possible designs multiple times but there did not seem to be a simple solution. The only way to show critical areas was to move constantly, but that made control and orientation impossible. The layout needed to be changed.

When creating a new layout CRACK wanted to keep some important elements of the original Breakout: a ball falling down, a paddle that hit it up, and the destruction of bricks. To simplify camera angles and control CRACK decided to restrict the controls to external rotation of 360 on a track.

After the general camera motions have been decided it is easy to construct the rest of the game simply because all major actions must exist in the space that the camera can always see: inside the circle. The paddle, the ball, and the area that you are protecting with the paddle must be inside this circle. Since the camera is on a circular track, controls would be simplified by placing the paddle on a similar track. Since the paddle only moves over the area it is trying to protect, this circular track becomes a “moat”.

When viewed in 2D the new design is flawless; however, the whole point of this new design was a 3D game. In 3D, there is one major problem with this game. How will the ball get from the paddle to the bricks and back again? The introduction of a boundary around and above our circle is necessary.

An optimal boundary is one that focuses the ball towards the bricks and the paddle. The first suggestion for a boundary is spherical because of the tendency to send the ball towards the center.

Game Vision

The vision of the game was to create a 3D Breakout-style game that is unique, more playable and more entertaining. There are many 3D Breakout games. However, our game is set in a unique Snowglobe environment. This opens up many visually interesting opportunities from a game design point of view, such as the ability to introduce special effects like swirling snowflakes, simulating the water in the Snowglobe, and showing a distorted view of the outside room from inside the Snowglobe.

In addition, most 3D Breakout games do not handle the transition from 2D to 3D very well from a playability perspective. Although the rendering is done in 3D, you are still playing a 2D game. For example, you are still only moving a paddle, albeit a 3D paddle, back and forth using two keys.

The design layout of 3D Breakout kept the key elements of the original game such as: a ball falling down, a paddle that must hit it and the destruction of bricks. To simplify camera angles and control manipulation of the game the decision was to restrict the controls to a circular track. Considering the position of the camera rotating around a circular track, the controls were simplified by placing the paddle on camera view. The paddle floats around a “moat” track arena, which encircles the central brick structure. It is the responsibility of the player to protect this moat to continue game play.

The ball’s trajectory was free to move across the whole playing area. The region to which the ball could move depended on the design bounds of the arena. That is, any shape that will limit the playing area. Such shape could be anything and ideally, it would change according to the level of play. However, due to the nature of the design we decided that the appropriate shape was a circular one. Such shape fits accurately with the camera’s rotational position and the paddle’s circular movement. In addition, we decided to close the shape, not as an inverted cone, but rather as a hemisphere. This gives the ball an angular trajectory that for the most part points towards the center of the arena, which is the place where the brick structure is located. Based on this design decisions we name our game Snowglobe.

Game Play

Snowglobe has an external viewing model. The camera is always looking at the paddle from behind. The player has the camera’s view, thus the control of the paddle occurs from outside the world. The player’s dexterity is critical to keep the ball from falling into the moat. The left and arrow keys command the direction of the paddle. The up and down keys allows the paddle to move forward and backwards. However, the space for movement is limited as the space between the paddle and the edges of the structure is small.

Snowglobe allows the player to formulate intention. As mentioned above, the player has to defend the moat at all cost. His defense must be strategic as the direction of the ball depends on the angle that it intersects the paddle. A good intersection will lead the ball to hit a specific brick.

This leads to the second intention of destroying the structure. If the player is accurate, s/he will be able to capture the ball and directly shoot the brick of his/her choice. Furthermore, since the game is a true 3D experience the player is required to track the ball in three-dimensional space. This adds an extra level of complexity, and for that matter a challenge, that forces the player to develop new skills. Snowglobe requires technique and ability. With practice, the player should be able to plan for fast ways of destroying the bricks in the least amount of time and advance to the next level.

The feeling is that our game design is innovative and brings the player unique elements that no other 3D Breakout games has ever presented. For the most part, 3D Breakout games are a representation of a 3D environment with 2D characteristics. We wanted this game to move beyond that common design approach. Our vision was to implement true three-dimensional physical properties to produce a rewarding impact to the player’s experience with the game.

Acceleration was added to the paddle motion to give the affect of realistic motion on the ground and so that the camera is not at a constant velocity. Acceleration is also good for player control in that it allows a player to get to the plane of which the ball is in much more quickly. It also adds a little to the difficulty of the game because the player must anticipate the effects of acceleration when positioning the paddle optimally.

We incorporated ball trails to help the player figure out where the ball is in 3D space. Tracking the ball can get tricky at times because the player can become disoriented and not know where the ball is going to or coming from. A particular example of this is when the ball is coming straight at you or away from you; the player may not be able to tell the difference. Ball trails have added greatly to the game play in that now the player is able to focus on what they are going to do next and not about the position of the ball. Based on user feedback we tweaked the ball trails until they provided the best visual effect.

Another improvement to ball tracking was to add unique collision sounds for each different surface. Previously, in some cases it was hard to tell if the ball actually struck something, for example, if the ball was so far away that the trajectory change was too subtle. In addition, sound made it possible to determine if your paddle blocked the ball or if it just hit the arena near the paddle.

The ability for the player to move the paddle not only left and right but forward and back is of great importance for player intention. This adds another dimension to the game play, difficulty and player control.

We experimented with different paddle shapes and we settled on one that gives the player some control over the ball reflection angle. We also added the ability to “catch” the ball with the paddle. This was proposed after careful consideration of the paddle designs. The idea is that if the player catches the ball, he will be able to shoot the ball in a particular direction. We tested the last prototype in November and added it to Snowglobe as it proved very successful.

Technology

Technologies

The CRACK Team decided to take this opportunity to learn a new language that is well integrated with a 3D rendering engine. CRACK used C# and DirectX to implement this relatively simple 3D game because they are well integrated. CRACK used 3D Studio Max to develop the 3D geometries used in the game. Snowglobe is a Windows application that runs off the DirectX 9 drivers.

Development Approach

Our approach was to get the critical aspects of the game implemented first before we started on the bells and whistles. This ensured that at any time we had a playable prototype. We identified the following critical pieces: rendering, performance, camera position, and playability. Rendering means we're able to make our basic 3D game geometry (paddle, ball, moat, bricks) look good.

Performance means we can maintain a reasonable frame rate. We targeted 40 frames per second which became an issue most likely because we are using C# as the implementation language. To overcome this problem one implementation technique was to adjust the code so that the speed of the ball was still being displayed in a continuous manner even while maintaining a high frame rate. If the frame rate dipped or spiked, the ball would still seem as if it was traveling at the same speed from the player’s perspective. This is of extreme importance since easily tracking the ball is key in terms of control. Furthermore, control of the ball is of primary importance for player intention.

Camera position means that we position the camera in such a way as to allow the player to see all the action and at the same time accurately hit the ball with the paddle. This is a major fallacy of most 3D Breakout games so it was critical to get this right early on the development process. Our approach was to have the camera "mounted" on the paddle looking at the middle of the Snowglobe. From the player's perspective, the paddle does not move. Instead, the Snowglobe spins around the paddle. After we prototyped this approach we agreed on keeping that implementation.

Playability refers to balancing the difficulty of the game. The game is challenging but not too difficult. Because our game concept is unique this is the one aspect of the game which was the most difficult to implement. We added features such as paddle acceleration, which added realism at the cost of loss of some player control, and forward and backward paddle movements, which gave the player more control over the ball movement.

System Requirements

The game utilizes a moderate amount of video memory as well as processor power. The suggested minimum requirements are as follows:

Hardware:

Processor: Pentium III 500 MHz

Physical Memory: 128 Megabytes of Ram