Homework 5: Skill vs. Chance in Games

Part 1) Sum War

Players: 2-4
Materials Needed: Normal card deck (no jokers)
Setup: Shuffle 1-2 decks and give each player their portion of the cards.

Progression:  Each round players may look at their next 3 cards and decide whether to play 2 or 3 of them.  If a third card is not played, it is put back into the bottom of the player's deck.  When the cards are put into battle, the highest sum wins that battle and the winner receives all the cards in the battle.  This means players must decide whether to risk losing an extra card in order to increase their chances of winning.

Wars:  When a war occurs, both player put 3 cards face-down as usual.  Next they take two cards from the top of their deck but cannot look at them.  Simultaneously each players puts their 2 cards face-up on the 'battlefield' and the first player to call out the total sum of the 4 cards wins.  Each player only has one chance so they must make sure the answer is correct before yelling it out.  An ace is one, and jack, queen, king are 11, 12, and 13 respectively.

In the case that both players incorrectly guess the answer, all cards involved in the war are taken out of the game permanently.  The winning player in a war gets all the cards as per usual.  This war variant combines a risk vs reward decision factor, as well as a quick-thinking component for winning wars.

To illustrate the war system: The players put down their 3 face down cards, then at the same time put down 2 more cards face up.  The cards add up to 28 but the first player incorrectly blurts out 27.  The second player now can take his time to make sure he gets it right.  The influence of a speed-based war system means that these moments are very intense and should get the players really into the game.

Resolution: The game ends the same as per the original version.

Results:  I played a match of Sum War with my little brother (since we used to played War a lot when we were younger) and it went over fairly well.  We both liked the choice of being able to play all 3 cards because it was awesome when it paid off.  On the other hand it was a major upset when 3 cards lost to 2 better ones, but that was all part of the game.  The wars themselves were really tense moments and were definitely enhanced by the manic-nature of competing to get the answer right first.  My brother is a math wiz as well so we were pretty evenly matched.

Part 2) Tic-Tac-Throw


Players: 2
Materials needed: Special tic-tac-toe board with notches for where the pieces go, and coin-shaped game pieces (X on one side, O on the other side).
Setup: Each player receives 5 game pieces, and stands several feet from the game board (can be on a table, floor, etc).

Progression: The players can decide who goes first, then taking turns they must toss their pieces onto the game board into one of the slots.  If the pieces bounces out of the board, the player gets his piece back and then the other player may take his turn.  It works similar to pool in that the first player to get a piece on the board will be X or O depending on which side landed face-up.  From this point on the players take turns throwing their pieces onto the game board. 

Skill:  A player who practices throwing the piece onto the board could get very precise (much like improving at any sport), making the outcome dependent on their throwing skill.  The core game remains the same but a player with experience will have better aim and consistency than someone playing for the first time.  A new player could end up getting the wrong side of the piece and making their opponent win!

The Twist: Since there is both luck and skill present, this game could be similar to other drinking games for adults such as the popular Beer Pong.  The loser of the game (or best 2 out of 3 games) would have to drink upon defeat.  Also bets could be placed on X or O winning, making this variant into a gambling game since there is still a degree of luck involved in most cases (unless someone gets really good!).

Resolution: The game ends when 3 in a row is made or a draw when the board is full.

Results:  Since the game board I envision is fairly tricky to make, I didn't really play-test this one.  I assume it would be fun at parties though because it is similar to Beer Pong and those types of activities.  The concept is pretty simple, its just a matter of spicing it up with adult-oriented rewards.


Part 3) You First, I Insist!

Players: 2
Materials: Game board and 4 game pieces
Setup: Each player chooses their colour then rolls to see who goes first (lowest goes first)
Original Game: The original called You First! was made by my group, consisting of myself, Alex-Bedard-Reid, Thomas Coupland, and Connor McCarthy in the second week.

Game play of original: You First! is a simple race to the end board game with the twist that the first player to reach the end loses, and vice versa.  Each turn the players roll a die to see how many spaces their game piece moves. Certain tiles on the board have special conditions when the player lands on them, the most important being the pink 'switch places' tile.

Concept of the original You First! game board.

 Variant: In my revamped version there are a higher number of special tiles scattered throughout the board, and instead of rolling a die to see how many spaces you move, you get to choose to move between one and six spaces.  The idea is that if one player gets further behind (winning) by only moving one space each turn, another player can choose to land on a pink tile and switch the two.  This is made possible by the tweak to the pink tile, which would be changed to "Switch with the player closest to the beginning."  The game becomes a balance of keeping a slow pace and trying to not stray too far from the rest of the players.

Results: Adding this variation to the movement rules made the game a lot more compelling but not necessarily more fun.  While it was amusing to be able to choose when to mess somebody up by switching with them, the game largely played as it normally would.  It was still a good bit of fun but became a little bit predictable by the end.  The original in my opinion was a bit more exciting because of its chance-based nature, where anything could happen.  I think to make this variant more exciting, new special tiles would have to be added with even more game-changing effects.

Big Burly Bosses

I didn't really have an idea for this blog so I brainstormed a bit and came up with a topic that I tend to think about sometimes and have an opinion on.  The topic in question is the prevalence/necessity of bosses in video games.

What first got me thinking about this topic was playing Skyrim back in November.  The Elder Scrolls series does many things and does them on a huge scale, but there's always a small voice in the back of my head yelling that the games could be more enjoyable with big boss battles.  I realize that Alduin is pretty epic and all, and maybe for some he was a challenge, but at any decent level he's a pushover and the experience feels a bit lacking.  The fight mechanics are basically the same as fighting any other standard dragon in the game. (note the comments almost always relate to the easiness of the fight)

I know that playing at your own pace is a staple of that series' game play, but would it really be that difficult to scale Alduin's difficulty higher based on the player's level?  Again I realize that there is a feature right there in the game to adjust the difficulty at any time, but this doesn't really make the game much harder or easier; numbers that you don't even see are changed.  It does not add to the game play in any way.

Let's contrast that sense of 'well that was cool guess' to the awesome and creative boss battles in the God of War series.  The first major boss in GOW1 is a giant sea serpent, which you defeat by jumping around on a ship and impaling its head.  Many of the boss fights in the game are complex and multifaceted, giving the bosses a strong presence and leaving the player with a lasting impression.  

The game play in Skyrim is supposed to reflect that the player can choose how to take down the boss in many different ways, but I think a boss with many unique attacks and interesting movement patterns is superior from an immersion standpoint.  As Kratos you truly feel heroic when taking apart a huge boss piece by piece.

Another game series that comes to mind is Prince of Persia.  The boss battles also have that immeasurable scale to them which really opens up so many different opportunities for boss mechanics.  Yet another is Shadow of the Colossus, which features many giant (hundreds of feet tall) bosses which you must climb and slowly take down.  While I haven't personally played it, I've heard that it is an excellently designed game which is fun from beginning to end.

This is not to say that 'boss fights' have to always involve fighting a big enemy of some sort.  Many adventure games feature platforming or skill-based challenges other than beating up a bad guy.  A good example is Super Meat Boy, where boss levels follow the same mechanic as usual levels, but you must dodge and jump your way to victory, thus defeating the boss.

I don't think the giant chainsaw wants to be friends.

On the other end of the equation is games without any major boss-type mechanics.  I won't go into as much detail because usually these games rely on different mechanics to stand out.  Most action-adventure types don't have bosses because they don't need them.  A game that does well without many big bosses is the Halo series because its action flows smoothly throughout each level, and each level usually ends in a cliffhanger/leads well into the next level.  This way it doesn't require a climatic boss fight at the end of a level to keep the player interested.

Personally I don't mind whether a game features boss battles or not, but if you're going to add this mechanic, make sure they are designed to be engaging and spectacular.

Say What?

Alright this is probably going to be the craziest thing I've ever said but here it goes: Shaders aren't all that bad.

Now this isn't just a random outburst caused by smashing my face off my laptop too many times; there is a story behind this.  It all began when I felt all traces of happiness exit my body and soul, right around the time when Hogue revealed his 'new and improved' exp system.  Before I go on: If you don't know me, I'm rather terrible at programming.  And moving on.

 
Being the (relatively) hard working student I am, I delved straight into this shader stuff, spending the first weekend setting up a framework for the homework questions as was suggested.  Now remember that whole thing where I suck at this stuff?  Yeah well I certainly hit a brick wall; I fought and struggled just with the shader setup stuff.  I think I had a hernia upon seeing the code in the 'vertex transformation' CG tutorial.  Eye twitches, tears of liquid pain, hating life, all that jazz.

It frightened me enough to put it off a couple weeks (I had rational excuses I swear).  But with the easy question deadline looming, I forced myself to get back into it.  Of course by this time a good majority of the easy questions were worth 0, and despair was increasing.  So I got all steely-eyed and said "Whatever, I'll just work on a more difficult one" D:<

Thus I began picking my way through the particle system tutorial code, adding it to my framework line-by-line, making sure I understood it every step of the way.  It was a long and arduous process, but there was no choice; all the (easiest)easy questions were worth 0 by now.  Once I got to the end I began changing things one at a time, gaining a deeper understanding of each function and etc.  I was starting to get it!

 
Then at long last Hogue realizes that his ridiculous exp system is a bit flawed and changes things.  All hope has returned!  Now at this point I'm feeling pretty badass working with easier shaders.  I go back to the first easy question to turn the screen blue.  Bombshell:  It's easy as cake.  I know exactly how to implement it and it shouldn't take much time at all.  It turns out delving straight into the tougher shaders made the easy ones..actually easy :O  (Edit: Maybe Hogue planned this...!!)



Ok so maybe it was a pretty lame story, but really I'm feeling so much better about shaders.  The whole first month was a stress-fest of knowing that my inadequate programming skill was going to cost me the chance of getting any exp.  But now there is hope, there is a chance.  I will prevail.  I'll even reveal my dirty secret: I kind of like programming shaders (now that I understand them).


BUT DON'T TELL ANYBODY.