3D Development

 Desk Chair

Radiator

Keyboard

Monitor

Mouse

Window (RGB)

Class Door 

Broken door variation

Hallway window

2nd Wind

Overhand Light

Main Monitor

What have I learned?
I have refreshed my memory of the software 

Board game reflection

The construction of the game from mind to board went reasonably well in terms that we both had a clear idea of the kind of game we were trying to produce. The creation of the board and kill cards went the smoothest and best with different variations as the game evolved.

The economy of the game was very lackluster in the beginning with the main objective to sell food for cash but not much do do with the money once you have reached that point and with what you could buy taking to long to afford. with this we raised the cost output of things and added passive income per go. we also lowered the price of development/skill cards and Black-market cards for buffs to help you achieve one of the many end game tasks explained in the rulebook.

we added more player choice with the option of what character to play with different abilities and debuffs and we turned the restaurant areas from being on the board to their own tokens for the player to choose where they want to be located and with a colour tile for the location of their front door.

we allocated our own parts to do for the game based around our own strengths and divvied up the work evenly. we worked on the efficiency of the game before the aesthetic of the game which I feel was better than the reverse

I would have printed things off sooner as we left printing till the last moment as to perfect everything before the final product.

Our game compared to the original brief went well, all that was requested of us was to produce our own board game and I believe we accomplished this to the best of our current abilities with Games development.

If I were to recreate the game, first off I would simplify it, keeping the main parts but making it easier to follow as I feel there are many moving parts to the game that could be made easier or taken out entirely

If I had more time I would make the player cards better, turning them into player mats finishing them off as they were not done by the end of the task.

Below are character art concept ideas

Board game construction

 Notes made during playtesting

• Instead of buying Dev Cards, you can level up your character as you cook, each level up milestone grants you a Dev Card. 

• The economy is fucked. It takes forever for anything to happen. Increase the amount of money gained, having a restaurant grants you a passive income of +1 per round. 

• You can upgrade your restaurant / build another one to gain more passive income, with as maximum of 3, however if your suspicion rating gets too high you could lose it.  

• There are 2 maps. A starting one, and one you add to the starting one to expand the map. 

• You have police patrolling the map. First off, its 1 police token, then each time a player gets to a certain level milestone another Police Officer is added to the map. 

• If you are carrying over 7 ingredients OR are standing near a kill token whenever a police officer is in your zone, they will start to follow you until you leave that zone. If caught with a suspicion higher than 100 you are out, if you have a suspicion under 100 you miss a go.  

• If your suspicion gets too high your killer level goes down 

• If you kill at a certain level within 3 rounds (before the event card clears the board from kill tokens), you must roll 1D6. If its odd, you have won over their favour, and will graciously sacrifice themselves for your restaurant, and you get an +1 kill in that zone, and they will lie to the police for you, so you get half as much suspicion for each kill. However, if you roll even, they hate your guts, they will drive the police to you, run away from you at sight. You get double amount of suspicion from killing in this zone and if a police officer enters this zone when you’re in there, they will follow you no matter what. 

• Black Market is in a set place, if you end your kill phase at the Black Market you can spend Money to buy better upgrades.  

• Having a place where you can stash ingredients.  

• Having a maximum carry limit of ingredients to 10. 

• Having targets to kill, an objective on the map that you can travel too and get extra ingredients and items for. If a zone reaches over 10 kills before an Event card, the ‘Mega Target’ is in that zone. No other kills can be made in that zone until this target is killed, and killing it uses all your kills for that round. The target does not go away after an Event card. 

Lesson 3 - Settlers of Catan

Game Overview:

Catan is a hexagonal tiled domination board game based around building settlements and roads and other assortment of things to gain more points against your opponents and trade between yourselves for different resources.

When building settlements though they must be placed on intersections where roads connect, and you can upgrade these settlements to cities for extra points. You can use others roads to build settlements also.

You can also gain points by doing challenges like having the longest uninterrupted road or the larges army of knight cards from the development cards

Analysis of Features and Mechanics: 

o    5 Resource Type cards (Wood, Sheep, Brick, Stone, Wheat), 19 terrain hexagon tiles, 6 sea frame pieces, 9 harbour pieces, 18 circular number tokens, 25 development cards, 4 Building cost cards, 2 special cards (Longest road, Largest Army), 16 cities, 20 Settlements, 60 Roads, 2 dice, 1 robber, 1 Game Rules & Almanac Booklet

o    Players can interact between each other through trading resource cards or interrupting others roads and not allowing other people to build next to them if there is a settlement adjacent. You can also interact when you roll a 7 as you can place the Thief on anybodies tile, preventing resources coming from that tile whilst placed there and allowing you to take one of their cards at random

o    First to 10 Victory points wins the game, You get these through the special cards, building settlements and cities or with some development cards

o    Turn Structure: Roll Die and receive resources, Trade amongst yourselves, and build

o    To determine who goes first, all players roll both of the dice and the highest rolled goes first, going clockwise from there

o    Randomness of the game comes from the dice rolling and seeing who gets resources of what type, Strategy elements lie in where you place your stating roads and settlements, who you trade with, and what you aim for to get points (e.g. What to build or what special card to go for)

Strengths and Weaknesses:

• Strengths:

Trading and building around others is a fun and strategic part of the game

Weaknesses:

I would rather you have to be connected to people by road to be able to trade instead of being able to trade with everyone immediately, the Rules book could also be more spread out as it is very crammed

• The competition element is one of the best parts of the game and making alliances and making mistrust throughout eachother 

Suggestions for Improvement:

I would make it so players had to have connected roads to be able to trade with each other so whereas you do have to build and thoughtful of how to win and screw over other people, you also have to be threateningly close to one another if you want the ability to trade between each other, it would also make alliances and betraying more of an aspect of the game

Implementation Ideas:

• I Would add PvP Combat where with either a new card or a set number of knight cards, you can destroy roads, settlements, or cities of other colour so that you can build your own structures there

Conclusion:

• This game is one of my favourites in terms of boardgames and I believe it deserves a lot of praise for what it is and has become, although I would alter/add one or two things to the game to enhance it, it is still a very well structured game.

Lesson 1

 

Deconstruct board game

 

Settlers of Catan

Resources allow players to construct things to put on the board to get ahead

Dice roll determines outcome of resources

Thief if rolled a 7 allows the player to choose a hexagon to not give off resources and take a resource card from a player with a building on an intersection connected

Trading on coastlines allows you to trade resources for other needed resources

Trading throughout players is also allowed

You only receive resources from hexagons if a building of your colour is connected

Tokens show which roll gives which resources

Hex tiles represent which resource is given

 There is lots of information squished together throughout the rulebook which makes some rules hard to find and relatively easy to accidentally gloss over but there is a section in the back for and easier version of the game for beginner players

What I liked: competition, trading aspect

What I didn't like: nothing

How to improve: allow attacking other peoples settlements, and only allow trade with people that you are connected to by road instead of trade between everybody

Sonar

2 players per team

Must let the other team know direction travelled

1 move per turn

Each team gets 2 hits

Captain and Radio Operator must work together to hide their sub whilst attempting to shoot down the other team

Rulebook is quite straight forward and no complications happened whilst playing 

What I liked: collaboration between your team and the split up responsibilities 

What I didn't like: 

Captain

Per move announced their team gets a point

Silence: move without announcing move (2 points)

Sonar: other team must say x or y axis position

Rocket: shoot one point on the map to damage enemy (4 points)

Radio Operator

Must try to track and record the enemies Submarine

Monopoly

Each player has their own placeholder for where they are on the board

Dice determines how far the player must move/which place they land on

Locations are spread across the entire board and players will get an opportunity to buy these places

If the place you land on is owned you must pay reparations to the owner of the location

rulebook is straight forward and easy to follow

What I liked: I enjoyed the competition of playing with friends 

What I didn't like: how long the game takes and if you dont get the right people to play it can be mundane

Independent Task

 

Game creation idea

2D

 

One to two weeks before the zombie apocalypse starts

Player get 2 or 3 main options but will have side options throughout the game

Per day the player can make 1 or 2 decisions before heading home for the day

Main options:

Spend last days on earth with family

Go to work to try and work on an antidode

Head into the woods/Prepare for the apocalypse before all hell breaks loose

 

Main choices

Spend time with family: the player chooses to spend their last days together with their loved ones

Choosing this option most way through the game results in the family all hugging whilst zombies surround their house and subsequently fall to the apocalypse

 

Going to work: Choosing this option mostly throughout the game results in their family dying whilst youre at work but you do save humanity and find a cure to save most people and eliminate people already turned, it is a rough few years but Humans live and repopulate the Earth

 

Preparing for the apocalypse: You have lost hope in humanity or the chance of a cure, you choose to look out for you and your family by finding an abandoned cabin far in the woods and restoring it and scavenging the outer city for weapons food drink and medical supplies to stockpile before everything goes to crap. Your family is killed off whilse you scavenge but YOU survive and that’s what counts

 

If the player finds the perfect mix of these choices they could find a cure whilst keeping their family alive or Work on the cure taking longer but also keeping your family safe off the radar and maybe save others too, Spending time with your family but also preparing makes for less stockpiled equipment but also getting your family to a safe place

 

Mini choices

Sometimes the player may awaken to banging on their doors either being a zombie or being survivors looking for a place to stay or help (If you help this person there is a small chance they will rob you or worse) (If there is a zombie you must fend it off or die and restart the game)

You can talk to co-workers and raise their hopes at work or they will lose hope and abandon work to try and scavenge to survive

Lesson 2

 

Dylan Woollard-Kingston

 

What are your future goals?

To either start my own or join an already existing indie company and maybe eventually work for a AAA company. I would prefer to do something more with indie companies as there is more versatility and artistic freedom in that sector of making games in my opinion regardless of there being less money there.

What do you want to achieve this year?

I want to hone in and develop my ability to use game engines and programme to become a Programmer for my own company or an already existing one and collaborate with team members in creating something this year.

What is your desired career in? (developer, programmer, artist, sound engineer)

I would like to become a Developer/Programmer as I loke working around problems and adapting my work to my strengths and I feel I work best in this aspect of Games Development.

Although I believe these sections of the Industry I feel is some of the hardest work I also feel that it is more involved in the actual creation of games and more fulfilling.

If you don’t know, what have you enjoyed in your studies so far & what interests you to learn more?

I enjoy the freedom of games dev and the ability to create whatever I want for the most part and the idea of making something that is my own interests me both digitally and in the real world.

I would also like to instead of doing something big like revolutionising the industry or making a new genre of game I would like to adapt to the current environment of the industry and play to my strengths in something that hopefully people would like to experience.

Do you want to go to University/Apprenticeship/Internship/Working world/Other?

 I would like to go to Uni and/or do an apprenticeship at some point in my life as well as some other things to beef up my CV and give me life experiences. Along with this I would also like to get some Military experience at an undetermined point in my future.

In University I would like to pursue either Games Development further or I would like to do a foundation course in Engineering or something more physically hands on like woodworking or metalworking.

For an apprenticeship I would like to do something similar in respects to Woodwork or Metalwork like Carpentry or Welding as I like to work with my hands and I am very motivated of the idea that I could make something of my own that I use regularly on an everyday use (i.e a nightstand, table, whittling, repairs to my own furniture, etc)

What’s your favourite game/game series?

Digitally: Last of us/Little Big Planet

Analogue: Settlers of Catan, Zombicide, and Dungeons and Dragons

Favourite things about these games

Last of us (1^st one)

Story based I believe this is one of the best games of its age and how good and smooth the gameplay is

Little Big Planet

Whacky and zany characters and the fact that the entire game is made up of mismatched pieces into something that works and tells a good story regardless

Settlers of Catan

I enjoy the Competition of being the best civilisation against all other players

Zombicide

I like the cooperation and how the odds are very much stacked against you and even so you and your team use their wits and strengths to scavenge and come out on top of a board sometimes literally covered in zombies/enemies so much that you run out of minis to place on the board

D&D

Intricate storytelling and the freedom of the game are amongst the best features of the game and the ability to either make any work and story that you want to tell, or be in someone else’s story and play as literally anybody to your minds content