Archive for August, 2009
3D trails
The trail for the 3D version of the maze is in on a basic level, once the player finishes the maze, the camera switches to a third person orbital camera so that the player can pan around the maze. The maze itself goes transparent so that the player can see the path they took.
Unfortunately, since the trail the player leaves is a 2D sprite, it doesn’t accurately show the directions the player was facing during the maze run and is therefore largely useless. We might have to create a new trail, but it might be better to simply move onto another experiment.
Success!
I’ve managed to get the timekeeping function on the maze working now so we can start testing players over multiple iterations to see if they get faster.
I also got my girlfriend to try out the working version of the 2D maze which brought on some interesting discoveries that I had not anticipated at all.
Her method for navigating the maze was unlike anything I had seen before, she refused the use the mouse and keyboard simultaneously which resulted in an interesting straight line pattern. The arcs that can be seen at the intersections clearly show when she has switched to using the mouse to look around corners.
She also brought up some other valid points which we have implemented, or will look into implementing into the maze. The mouselook sensitivity was far too high for her, and she preferred not to have Y-axis mouselook enabled.
I wanted to have a picture of her up here for reference but she refused, so instead here’s a picture of Hannibal, my girlfriend’s Axolotl.
The new trail.
I’ve been working on the trail that the player leaves while navigating the maze to try and get something which looks a bit nicer and provides helpful and easy to read feedback.
This is it in it’s current iteration, the colours are a bit crazy but they show the functionality of it quite well – my tendency to strafe constantly is visible in the way that the red line (player position) is never in the centre of the green band (direction of rotation).
With a bit more tweaking I should have a version that is compatible with the 3D maze. The problem is that the nature of the 3D maze means that I need to hide he trail from the player and find a way of removing the maze geometry once the player finishes the maze… I might have to dig into the old White-Space code!
Oh and a timekeeping function is coming along too so we can get some races going!
Going crazy for mazes
As an extension of the T-Maze I made earlier, I decided to create a 3D version of it. This new maze operates on the same basis, at each intersection, the player is presented with a number of directions to go (2 in the last maze, 4 in this one) and can instantly see which of the directions is the correct one to choose because they can see the end of the corridor. Basically, this means that dead ends are not obscured by corners.
This maze has the same number of intersections as the previous one (14) but is much more challenging to navigate. I still need to add the trail so that the player can see the path they took.
We are investigating a different method of making trails so that we can get something that looks a bit nicer.
Progress report
I have been looking into literature about mazes and their applications in psychological testing (with rats and mice) to find information which would be useful in developing some tests that I can perform in a game design context.
I hoped that there would be a standardised maze that I could copy and recreate in Unity to base my experiments on, but I couldn’t really find any information on a standard maze. I have been speaking with an honours psychology student who says he will try to get some information for me regarding that.
I recreated a maze I found in some literature about lab rat tests. The layout is called a T-maze, for fairly obvious reasons.
I also set it up so that the player leaves a trail (although they cannot see it themselves until they have completed the maze) which shows the path they took and the direction they were facing.
This is helping to generate ideas about how people navigate mazes, the intention is to get a large sample of people to run the maze and compare their trails to find some common trends.
As can be seen from the second image above, running the maze generates some abstract, generative forms which provide information about how the maze was navigated (it also shows that I have become quite familiar with the maze, although I do make some errors near the end). Interestingly, observing my own trails has lead me to realise that I often move my character in a diagonal direction, and initiate my turns well before the corner itself – this reflects my background in playing FPS games.
Initial experiments
I have been brainstorming some initial experiments that we could quickly perform to get the ball rolling.
I would like to create a maze (probably in Unity) which a player can play from a 1st or 3rd person perspective and in 2 or 3- dimensions. We will then get users to navigate the identical maze from a number of perspectives.
1st person view, 2D maze.
1st person view, 3D maze.
3rd person view, 2D maze.
By repeating this experiment with the same maze and a number of subjects, we can hopefully uncover patterns which give an insight into how players navigate mazes.
Further tests will be performed involving timed runs to see how navigation from 1st and 3rd person views differs.
Psychological experiments comparing the abilities of humans and rats in identical mazes will be performed with the help of a psychological student.
I have already re-constructed the original maze from Pac-man in Unity. It is interesting how unfamiliar it appears from a 1st person perspective, even though I am very familiar with it from the traditional, top-down view.
Proposal complete
With Jason working on the video and myself working on the text, we managed to craft up a proposal without too much trouble.
Final version of the proposal text and vid below (text downloadable here). Our 3 images are here, here and here.
DMDN 412: Emergent Aesthetics
Mazes in Games
Concept
The idea of the maze or labyrinth has been a part of human culture for some 5000 years. As ideas, trends and fashions evolve, so too does the way mazes manifest themselves. From the unicursal, introspective labyrinths of mediaeval times to the vast, generative game-spaces in modern day games, the concept of the maze holds the power to capture our imaginations.
“Physically mazes are folded paths, highly organised, highly constructed, highly artificial configurations of form and substance – in a kind of reverse Creationism, no maze could arrive by accident, they announce that they are man-made and so threaded through with significance, even if their meaning escapes us. – Folded Space: How Computer Games Rework Our Ideas of the Maze.
The maze can be seen as the perfect symbol for what a game is. The maze, with its numerous intersections serves as a metaphor for the decisions a player must make whilst engaged in gameplay.
Examples of maze-oriented gameplay can be seen in numerous contemporary computer games, each with their own unique goals, characteristics and obstacles that serve to alter the maze experience.
We intend to objectively and methodically investigate elements of maze-oriented games in a controlled setting to examine how these elements affect the player’s gaming experience.
We intend to use the genre of the maze as a platform for methodically investigating gameplay concepts from a phenomenological viewpoint. By creating a base maze-game framework, we will apply controlled iterations of gameplay concepts and psychological experimentation to examine their effect.
Precedents
Game
- Doom
- Descent
- Labyrinth board game
- Pac-man
- Rodent’s Revenge
Conceptual
- Cretan labyrinth at Knossos
- Barnes maze
- Morris water navigation task
- Radial arm maze
Research Topics
Perspective. In a third person view, the player has an overview and can traditionally see the whole maze (including enemies or hazards, i.e. Pac-man, Rodent’s Revenge) at once. In a first person perspective, the player’s view is limited to what the character can see. How does this affect the player’s experience of the game?
Dimensions. Traditionally, mazes are constructed on and navigated through a two-dimensional plane. What happens when the maze is translated to a three-, four- or n- dimension?
Psychology. What psychological effects are evoked when we interact with mazes? How does the human brain interpret and navigate through a maze-like space and how does this compare to the way other animals navigate?
Literature
Casual Games SIG of the IGDA. 2008 – 2009 Casual Games White Paper. 2009.
Crawford, Cris. The Art of Computer Game Design. 1982.
Gazzard, Alison, and Alan Peacock. Folded Space: How Computer Games Rework Our Ideas of the Maze. 14th International Symposium on Electronic Art. 2008.
Hunicke, Robin, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek. MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. 2004.
Sources for images in video and image collages found here.
A change for the best
Our concept has undergone a bit of an overhaul and has now changed focus. Rather than trying to look at games as a whole to try and discern some sort of objective recipe for success, we have decided to focus on a specific idea of games: the maze.
The current iteration of concept write up is as follows:
The idea of the maze or labyrinth has been a part of human culture for some 5000 years. As ideas, trends and fashions evolve, so too does the way mazes manifest themselves. From the unicursal, introspective labyrinths of mediaeval times to the vast, generative game-spaces in modern day games, the concept of the maze holds the power to capture our imaginations.
“Physically mazes are folded paths, highly organised, highly constructed, highly artificial configurations of form and substance – in a kind of reverse Creationism, no maze could arrive by accident, they announce that they are man-made and so threaded through with significance, even if their meaning escapes us.”
- Folded Space: How Computer Games Rework Our Ideas of the Maze.
The maze can be seen as the perfect symbol for what a game is. The maze, with its numerous intersections serves as a metaphor for the decisions a player must make whilst engaged in gameplay.
Examples of maze-oriented gameplay can be seen in numerous contemporary computer games, each with their own unique goals, characteristics and obstacles that serve to alter the maze experience.
We intend to objectively and methodically investigate elements of maze-oriented games in a controlled setting to examine how these elements affect the player’s gaming experience.
We intend to use the genre of the maze as a platform for methodically investigating gameplay concepts from a phenomenological viewpoint. By creating a base maze-game framework, we will apply controlled gameplay concepts to examine their effect.
We intend to look at precedent games such as Pac-man, Doom, Rodent’s Revenge and the Labyrinth board game among others. We will explore mazes in 2, 3 and 4D as well as from first and third person perspectives. Experiments will be conducted by constructing maze and maze-like games in Flash and Unity which will afford some insights into how game mechanics affect the player’s experience within a maze context.
Documentation
And documentation available here!
Remix’d
Well it took me about 50 retries, but I’ve managed to get a nice looking remix going. I had problems getting the visuals to match up with the audio because it was such a chaotic track, but I eventually memorised the first minute and a half and managed to map out a score in my head.
I’ve uploaded the remix to videopong.
Documentation to come!
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