Key Item: The Globe

The Globe allows a character to pan the world map in the planning room.
The map is supposed to show the locations of the vessels, the operation
sites, and storms.

What to show next on the world map:

CYAN: Safe water source

GREEN: Key resources such as working power plants

YELLOW: Disabled resources

RED: Major hazards or contamination sites

WHITE: (Under snow) Location where a survey team is needed

GREEN RING: Operational Gateway

YELLOW RING: Damaged Gateway

WHITE RING: Gateway under snow

SWIREL: Storm


The planning room is where the Captain and the Director decide where to
go. Since the missions are not assigned, this is where the player decide
what to do with respect to the overall mission.


How to use the globe:

Have a character walk to the globe. A panning icon will appear when the
characters stops. When the panning icon is visible, the player can pan
the map using the arrow keys.


Locations that can be reached:
o Pacific ocean west of Hawaii
o Hawaii
o Pacific ocean east of Hawaii
o Bogota

[ World Map ]

Wow.

I'd do something similar but I can hardly verbally explain my ideas, let alone type them up.

Maybe I should invest in some Thesaurus.

Though I have to say, this is the first time I've seen someone post something this detailed on the internet.

Good work.

Collecting Debris


[Collecting Debris (Flash)]


Backstory:
The Albatross is flying over Bogota. It is time to clean up.

Captain Crouton: "There are some debris blocking the way at the beak,
remove those first to open a path for collecting debris in the city."

Objective:
o Move the debris on the Albatross and those at Bogota city to the separator.
o The separator is a machine in the Albatross

How to play:
o Use the work signs to direct the drones to collect the debris.
o You could also collect all debris using the crew members in this scenario.
o Enter the city by jumping facing east.
o Enter the Albatross by jumping facing west.
o Drones that are on will continue to work even if you are not watching.

Extra: check the materials collected by going to the separator's entrance
and hold [DOWN].

Implementation Limits:
o There is only one stage in the city.
o The door in the city is fake.
o Only Falcon3 can return to space.
o The states of the debris are not saved.
o The switch in the city is fake.


Update:
Now Falcon 3 can now be propelled back to space by flying at max speed
(by holding [UP] and

) through the Albatross. F3 is a shuttle that
brings characters and items from the colony.


Reseting the game:
Right click on the game screen and choose Settings. In the Folder tab,
set the Local Storage to 0. Reset it to something if you want to save.
This will reset all versions of the game.

C2 - Design Direction: Inherent Rising Action

In this style where the challenge is designed to follow a simple plot structure, the experience has a rising action leading to a climax. The climax set at a moment where victory or defeat is decided discretely.

Rising action is inherent to some challenges. An example is the building of a house of cards, for each addition to the structure, the player moves closer to the goal but the player also put more at stake at the same time.

A gameplay that had an inherent rising action has the property where the game environment state dictates the difficulty and the closer it is to the goal state the more difficult it is.

In Tetris, the blocks fall faster as the player scores more points. If one considers that the game environment state is that of the current stack of blocks, then the speeding up due to higher score is not an inherent rising action, because there is no connection between the positions of the blocks and the speed of the fall. The connection is established outside the environment.

In an earlier demo, the player controls a character with the objective to switch on five drones, and let them repeated run in a work area. This challenge has an inherent rising action because moving drones poses the danger to the character. The more drones are switched on, the more dangerous the environment becomes, yet closer to the goal.

The design goal here is to design the such that all rising actions are inherent to the environment.

In the 'To Earth' demo, the player flies a shuttle through orbiting debris to earth. That environment also poses an inherent rising action, because as the shuttle flies closer to earth, gravity makes the shuttle flies faster thus increase the chance to collide with debris and fail.


What is the next situation that exhibits discrete victory decision and inherent rising action?



Time-trial and Puzzle Modes

Time-trial is a default setting of a discrete victory decision and inherent rising action. In a time trial, the player is racing against a previous performance in the same environment.

In the game, time-trial/energy-trial is used to set the baseline of performance. When Albatross enters a new work region, a stage is set where the is given a set amount of energy and time, and the goal of player is to maximize the work done given those resources. The player only needs to do that once per region. The performance is used for the game to simulate the progress.

In Puzzle stages, there is no time limit, and the player would solve the stages to get key items or resources. At any day, the player could re-do the trial hoping to improve the progress with new key resources or new ideas.

In this draft, the trial stages are not persistent, and may have some variables that are randomized. Everytime the player attempts to improve the performace, the player is taking a risk, because the overall performance may be worse than before. The puzzle stages are persistent, the player could take any amount of time to solve.

What are the situations where puzzles have inherent rising action?

Chemical Factory


[Chemical Factory (Flash)]


Backstory:
The pipes of a chemical factory are leaking. The committee is afraid that the chemical would contact another reactive material in the factory and blow up the city. Romaina is sent to retrieve the reactive material.

Instruction:
When the game starts, hit R to select Romaina. Enter the factory and take out the red reactive barrel.

Controls:
o To enter a building or a tunnel, wait for the "enter" icon and press UP
o Hit LEFT and RIGHT at the same time to pick up an object
o Romaina spawns a bunny when there is nothing to pick up


How to lose:
o Touching a droplet (-1 HP)
o Falling into chemical bath
o Having the reactive block touch the chemical

Additional Dynamics:
o Bunny can block one droplet and disappear
o Romaina can dodge droplet
o Character can climb through a wall tunnel
o Character can push an object through a wall tunnel

Rising Action By Design:
o On the way in Romaina could use the Bunny.
o On the way out, she is carrying the block

Variations:
o Random tunnels connectivity
o Random position of debris

Picking Apples

Scenario:
The crews are hungry. Parmesa told Olivia to pick apples at the greenhouse.

Gameplay type:
o Successive Action

Dynamics:
o Jump on an apple to make it fall
o When an apple detaches from the tree, the branch bounces the character up
o Successive bounces cause hidden apples to fall
o The tree spawns a fixed number of apples every day
o The tree does not spawn more apples when a max number is reached
o The tree tells the character how many apples there are

Rising Action by Design:
o The length of successive jumps to reach the apples at the top

Variations:
o Randomized positions of the apples everytime the stage loads


Represented Stories:
1) Olivia was sent to pick apples. She wanted to pick the top apple but she couldn't reach it.
2) Olivia had too much fun and picked more apples than needed.
3) Olivia picked just the right number of apples and feels smart
4) Olivia picked the apples but couldn't carry them because they are too heavy
5) Olivia return to check the apple tree, wondering when it would be the next time to pick a lot of apples.


Elements to set the Narrative voice:
???

Hunger

[ Apple Tree (Flash) ]

Backstory:
The characters could grow hungry and starve.

How To Eat:
o Let a character grab an apple and leave the character alone.


Quick Start:
When the game starts, hit O to select Olivia who is at the apple tree.
Hold DOWN to count the apples in the tree.

Stress

Concept
This is a step towards expressing the characters.
Each character is subjected to different sources
of stress. The overall stress level is related to
the number of unsatisfied goals a character has.

Stress affects the character's performance in
automatic sessions. Automatic sessions are not yet
coded.

The initial stress concept has the following:

1) Each character has a goal that make them feel stressful if not met
2) Certain activities could temporary lower the stress
3) When a character is under stress, the character shows "frustration" when selected
4) Every night, the stress level of a character is updated
5) Each character would exhibit a stress response when stressed out.

It is part of the game for the player to figure out
the cause of stress for each character.

Key Item: The Pillow
Concept:
Standing on the pillow shows the stress level of the character.

[ Pillow (Flash) ]

Battery Balloons

Story
The Albatross crew got the compressor station running but there was
not enough capacity.


Concept
o Store energy as balloons
o Each balloon has a string that ties it to the ground
o Each string is of different length
o A character can bring a balloon to different places by moving the knot
o If the character let go of the knot the balloon will float away
o When a balloons gets pierced the energy is lost

Balloons

[ Fill the Balloons (Flash) ]

Interactions:
o Hit "R" to go to the stage with the balloons
o Step on a ballon ring to anchor it to the ground
o Use the pump to fill the balloons
o Balloons lose gas if they are too crowded



Mild Weathers

Concept
o Sunny, Rainy, Windy
o 1 day forecast
o No effect on characters
o Albatross recharges in wind and sun
o A switch on Albatross that connects it to the grid