On the subject of Humane Design: Warframe and False Profit

Over the past 2 weeks, one of the YouTube channels I watch (Extra Credits) have done videos (#1 #2) on the subject of humane design and the subject of natural exits points when discussing games.  I was originally looking to continue my section building in Starbound (which is coming along nicely) but a couple events came up in games recently that got me thinking about this concept from my own personal viewpoint. 

So anyway, what is humane design in video games?  Humane design looks to take into consideration the player as a person and as such treat them in an appropriate manner without the use of tactics that inflate a play session beyond its intended purpose.  Much like ergonomics / anthropometrics building tools and environments for the benefit of the user, games should follow a similar concept where the user isn’t performing tasks that long have lost their appeal.  Methods such as the Skinner box have been an ongoing tool used in games to inflate game length in genres such as MMOs, multiplayer shooters and free to play games with progression, but I feel that this subject takes the concept in a different direction. 

I have play MMOs for the past 10 years or so and during that time I’ve experienced times where I’ve kept playing a game for the sake of an achievement, reputation or similar grind that would not constitute humane design as the ‘exit points’ (a place where we can naturally finish a play session) were few and far between.  I can remember grinding Timbermaw reputation in WoW for a couple weeks exclusively for a single trinket that I used which on reflection I didn’t really get that much use out of due to better gear being on the horizons.  My time to stop playing during these sessions were only stopped by either being too tired and needing sleep or having other commitments like education taking priority.  On the other side thou, there was a time during vanilla WoW where I was heavily into pvp when the rank system was in place.  To stay competitive, this required a similar level of dedication with marginal increases over a 6+month period so my personal goal of ranking up superseded the natural exit point of a battlegrounds map finishing.  This I feel is kind of a grey area that I consider with my playtime even to this day because it requires us to consider many different viewpoints and perspectives into why we play and what we’re looking to get out of it. 

This brings us onto Warframe and its recent event called “Operation False Profit” that tasks the player (known as Tenno) to do a series of raids on portable cash robots (Bursas, a augmented Moa) to achieve points and receive rewards at certain amounts.  As the player achieves a higher mission score, the next Bursa’s become more powerful adding to the difficulty of the event.  This event for me has been a mixture of frustration and consideration as I’ve had to deal with a number of different bugs and not being aware of the mechanics at hand.  Going into the event blind, I wasn’t sure how to spawn the Bursa (of which one of 3 different models can spawn) and when I did get it to spawn it was stuck in a ‘out of range’ mode that didn’t budge whatever I attempted to do.  When I did get it to work, achieving a mission score of 100 out of the required 1500 for the full set of prizes filled me with apathy towards the event as I didn’t want to waste my time over the next 5 days for a little reward akin to my earlier rep farming days in WoW.  However, once I had done some reading into the mechanics, I quickly understood the event and quickly proceeded towards a score of ~850 after an hours gameplay feeling happy with the increased enemy level to the point where I was facing a level 92 Bursa doing laps around a shipping crate to avoid its power attacks. 

The Denial Bursa feels the most challenging with its laser walls, blinds and missile barrages.  Screenshot taken from the Codex 26/4/2015

After finishing this event, I got to thinking about a couple different questions that I would like to answer:

• ·         Did this event present me with natural exit points?  Yes it did because of the scores corresponding to different levels of rewards present a spot to say “I’ve got a score of 1000 now I’ll finish that up later / tomorrow”. 

• ·         Did this event present me with a humane design skill progression?  This sounds a bit odd as I’ve adapted the discussion to fit this question, but a topic that comes up often in games is the subject of difficulty.  Often, games will increase the health, damage, resistances, etc of an enemy to present a difficult challenge but this presents a somewhat simple way of approaching the issue.  To allow the challenge to come in the place of augmented abilities, behaviour patterns or counter plays (something that games like Dota, LoL and Smite do well) gives the user the chance to think more about the decisions they make rather than brute forcing the challenge.  This event did look to start off well with different kinds of Bursa’s but it fell short not adding these concepts into the design. 

• ·         Did this event respect the time investment of the player participating?  This is a subject where we can look at either the journey (playing the event) or the destination (rewards) but for me I’d like to focus on the journey.  This is a difficult thing to discuss because there is a certain achievement to finishing a long event vs. a short one and if one looks to shorten an event it may be seen as a move to ‘cater to casual audiences’ or ‘make it easier’.  I don’t believe that these two things go hand in hand and as such I believe there are ways to condense this event down while keeping a level of challenge similar to this original event.  Here is what I feel would be an alternative means of presenting this event: 

1) give corpus planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto) an associated event mission so that the player feels a natural progression from the planet as well as the event score itself.  By doing this, you could cut the score from ~15 runs to ~ 5 runs.
2) add multiple stages to these missions that look to use the environment alongside the Bursa to increase difficulty beyond enemy level e.g. using line of sight via doors / objects against skills such as the blind attack so that the bursa can’t flee
3) once the player has achieved the final mission on Pluto, present a ‘ongoing’ mission so that players can continue to compete for a high-score

Warframe does remind the player to take breaks.  Screenshot taken and cropped 26/4/2015

Being someone who has been playing games for their entire life, it’s been interesting having this outlook over the past couple days.  I feel it’s something that I’ve always been aware of (the ongoing ‘hours played’ markers on steam and /played in some games are quick to remind me) but never looked to consider my thoughts behind it.  Having someone discuss it makes you think and this event got me thinking where I sit on the discussion.  If you were to take something from this post, I’d say that it’s not the subject of shortening game-time without consequence but more on crafting experiences that feel less about filling in-between the great stuff.  Whatever the case, I feel that there’s going to be some interesting shifts over the next couple years as this becomes a higher priority with a medium that more and more people are taking up as a hobby or passion.  

Building in Starbound Part 1: early design and thoughts

As I mentioned last week, I was looking to get into building in Starbound beyond the typical hole in the ground storage space that I often create.  That’s not to say there’s nothing to discuss in that matter, it’s just I was looking to make something a bit more established or realistic (as far as one can go in a 2D space world).

The process to start building first featured a process of finding a ‘creative mode’ where one can spawn infinite blocks to design whatever plan s/he may desire to build.  This came up with a couple debugging mods and community lead creative projects, but unfortunately I didn’t have much luck with getting them to work.  I could put this down to not having much time to properly research the fixes and solutions, but some of the blame can be put down to not being great at fixing mods without guidance.  So, for this initial stage of the project, I looked to use what my current avatar had gathered over the two week period I had been playing on and off. 

Anyway, onto the build...

After a quick Google search of precedence, I had decided that for my first build, I would look to not create some aesthetic wonder house but merely recreate a timber framed dwelling in section akin to my early days of studying Architecture.  The aim of this was to take the parts of a building we’re well aware of (walls, floor, roof, etc) and input detail such as insulation, joists and foundations.  Due to the 2D world that the game offers, I feel this is an interesting way to represent such details and give an insight into basic construction.  Whereas previously I was looking into these massive builds, I am more interested in doing details akin to 1:20 scale drawings that draughtsmen do in practice, of course in a simplified manner. 

Foundation

Foundations of build #1.  Screenshot taken 19/4/2015

After levelling out a space for my build, I placed a large section of stone to represent the foundation.  In game, I presented this with cobblestone being covered by mud outside the space of the dwelling, as foundations tend to extend beyond the building by a small amount.  I then cut out a section on either side to simulate the start of the wall formations through a darker stone which would connect to the timber frame.  As these are load bearing walls, having the resistance of this stone supports against forces like the wind pushing against the frame and toppling the walls. 

Walls

Wall formation featuring Timber exterior, interior and insulation.  Screenshot taken 20/4/2015

My original plan for this was to feature 5 piece wall formation featuring these pieces; exterior wooden cladding, timber frame exterior, insulation, timber frame interior and interior render.  This became a bit awkward to achieve because of two reasons.  Firstly, the smallest block is 1x1 in an ordered grid fashion, so having exterior cladding that went at a 30 degree angle while keeping everything else to scale would the make the wall much bigger than my original foundation would allow.  Secondly, as I was doing this with my available supplies, I would have needed to gather a lot more wood for the frame and pink moon rocks for insulation.  This wasn’t viable with my available time so I stuck to a simpler wall-insulation-wall setup.  I also allowed for a couple windows where I put in a sill and overhang, but as with the wall would like to do again with a lot more detail. 

Roof

Roof, Guttering and formation.  Screenshot taken 19/4/2015

This is the section I’m most happy with, as I was able to add a nice couple touches to it.  I did a cut-off point where the wall meets the roof and create a typical gabled roof with a combination of refined wood, unrefined wood and insulation.  I originally thought to do a 30 degree angle (2-3 along 1 up) but keeping with the scale of the rest of the building it would have made the insulation look odd.  I kept with a typical 1 up 1 along set-up with a small overhang for the left-side where an attic room could be placed with a large window.  As a nice finishing touch, I added gutters out of a black block called “heavy dark block” to sit under the overhang to catch the rain.  If I had more of this material (or a similar colour / finish) I would bring the guttering down to the side of the building. 

Interior

Interior structure with joists and ceiling covering.  Screenshot taken 19/4/2015

After deforesting the planet to get enough wood to fill in the interior back walls, I sectioned off the interior to make 3 floors connected by a spiral staircase (or at least an attempt to).  I did have some issues with the wooden platforms turning about on them in a 2D space, but it does the job of movement well enough.  The floors have had joists put in at a ratio of 2:6 blocks to simulate the ordered structure of joists in timber frame buildings.  I also put a covering over the joists to show a ceiling which due to its neutral colour ended up as snow blocks (which thankfully don’t melt even when supporting a chandelier).  Over time, I will add to the interior it’s just was filled in for the purpose of this initial presentation.

As I have presented above, I do have things I would like to improve on and I hope that over the next couple weeks I get to make this into a proper dwelling.  As well as this, I would like to take some of these details like the wall structure and blow them up to a proper 1:20 detail so that we can talk about what goes on inside a building.  I’m kind of looking forward to it and see how accurately it can be done when I have more time and more experience with the tools.  

Revisiting Starbound: Thoughts on 2D Architecture Amongst Other Things

This weekend has been a rather busy mixture of things to the point where I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about.  I’ve been helping out for the upcoming general elections, producing a documentary with my history society and watching the Dota 2 MLG Lan finals all while fitting in time to play some games.  With the start of season 5 (or series 5 the words have become interchangeable these days) of Game of Thrones I thought I would be all for putting stuff down to watch it, but I haven’t even found time to do so.  Because of this, you may imagine something like this hasn’t seen much of the light of day over the past couple days. 

So, as I sat back in my chair watching EG vs. NiP battle it out a random thought dropped into my head regarding my recent return to Starbound, a game that I enjoy that features those building elements purposely built for discussions on architecture.  That being said, I wanted to try and find a way to show what makes it great for me against its predecessors. 

Starbound is a 2-dimension procedurally generated sandbox game that features a strong focus on materials and crafting to produce a vast quantity of weapons, armour and building components amongst other things.  It has a great deal in common with Terraria (also being 2D) but where Starbound differs is through such factors as interacting with multiple worlds, object redistribution and character augmentation that look to present a more RPG-esc mechanic against Terraria and other sandbox crafting games like the highly popular Minecraft.  Having an interest in construction and design, you would imagine I would prefer Minecraft a great deal over Starbound due to the 3 dimensions and tools to create vast builds, but it’s just never got to that point for me.  My time in Minecraft was enjoyable and I liked discussing the concepts of using technology to create alternative means of architecture (see my post on player housing) but as a game I didn’t feel engaged.  So again, what makes Starbound great for me?

Player Ship designed to look like a train.  Screenshot Taken 13/4/2015

From a gameplay point of view, it’s very clear that Starbound (in correlation to base game models) offers a nice mix of character progression and combat beyond the ‘wave stick at skeleton’ that Minecraft survival mode offers.  From an architectural point of view however, I feel that it creates a ‘less is more’ vibe that allows the player to add detail in a different way thanks to the 2D presentation.  You can show interiors and exteriors working together against the backdrop of a verdant valley or night’s sky which can dwarf its surroundings or slip into the environment.  These are all factors of architecture and why in design in particular fashions; as we strive to keep one village as incognito as it first settle some 500 years ago vs. a contrasting villa of modernism shooting out against a forest unchanged for centuries. 

An earlier play-through of mine featuring a more slap-dash approach to the spaceship.  Screenshot taken 12/10/2014

With all this taken into consideration, I looked at my homebase in Starbound couple days ago and it very much sits in the ‘basic / utilitarian’ side of design as its rectangle wooden frame features my crafting stations, storage and bed to present some resemblance of a home.  Since then, I added another floor and some minor artistic flourishes in the shape of a painting, chandelier and suit of armour found on a remote planet, but it’s still rather basic and not being too interesting.  I took a moment to think about what I was doing and came up with an idea that seem only obvious after conceptualising it, Sections. 

The simple dwelling soon to be improved on.  Screenshot Taken 13/4/2014

When design a building, there are a number of drawings you’ll look to do to conceptualise the design for the client.  Plans, perspectives, elevations and axonometric are all used alongside the section which takes a vertical cut through the building to show a number of different things.  A section shows wall structure, windows, stairwells, voids and rooms all alike focusing on particular details like how the exterior wall interacts with a roof.  When I studied architecture, these drawings took a decent amount of time for me but I thoroughly enjoyed drawing timber frame buildings with the joists at a regular pattern or masonry walls with cavity wall insulation and render with the ever so often façade of timber slats or similar aesthetical choice (I can’t remember if those materials go well together but for the purpose of this you kinda get what I mean).  Taking all this into consideration, I built up my walls and started to add all these little features which is slowly taking my simple lived-in house into something special which I’m slowly working on when I have time available.  Much like groups of people who come together in Minecraft to recreate a city, this has got me thinking about rebuilding pieces in Starbound such as ‘A Walking City’ from Archigram but of course on a much smaller scale. 

So to summarise, building in 2D has been an interesting experience that is allowing me to rekindle some of that love for drawing sections in architecture I felt previously.  Thinking about it, this probably goes back into my interest of wanting to know how things work and all that engineering stuff.  These couple weeks have been fascinating for me looking back at where this has all come from.  Hopefully next week I’ll be able to show some screenshots of progress in design and talk a bit more about it.  

The Soundtrack of my Past: music from the video game world.

When I did my retrospective on video game architecture, I naturally started to think about other forms of media that I’ve experienced in the gaming world.  Topics like ‘story interpretation’ and ‘aesthetic choice’ came up, but I felt that when it comes to influences sound design and music has been the most prominent example outside of architecture.  If one was to think that architecture influenced my career choice and interests; music opened me to new genres and ways to use instruments while finding ways to find similarities when meeting new people. 

The selection of music I want to talk about today is a mixture of OST’s (original soundtrack) and licensed titles that I feel continue to be relevant in this day and age. 

Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Hill Top Zone

Hill Top Zone Via YouTube User "SonicKAI"

Hill Top Zone.  Image from http://sonic.wikia.com/

The music from such titles as Sonic, Zelda and Mario has drilled melodies into heads of children and adults alike, making them instantly memorable with a healthy dose of nostalgia.  From the title screen jingle to the ‘swing-like’ presentation of Casino Night, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 creates a great mix of tunes fitting into the backdrop of each zone.  At first, I didn’t really known which tune to mention here but as I thought about it more, the upbeat chimes of Hill Top zone won out against the undertones of Mystic Cave. 

Hill Top zone’s tone to me has a feeling of an ‘easy-going/upbeat’ nature that one feels previously in Casino Night with a natural backdrop of mountains being circulated by wispy clouds.  It’s the sort of tune I could imagine listening to while in transit that unknowingly gets your head bobbing with a smile casually breaking through.  I have heard those who compared it to a country / folk song (with particular note towards the intro sections) which I can agree with, but the steps in melody during the chorus section give it a dynamic true to the Hill Top environment as the player traverses the level through a series of see-saws and moving platforms.  This zone for me was the transition between the easier early zones (Green Hills => Casino Night) and later challenging levels (Mystic Cave => End) and I feel the music in question reflects this change.  Mystic Cave after Hill Top has a spooky undertone that presents an unknown enemy so that’s why I feel this transition is appropriate.  This is why Hill Top zone’s tune sits at the top of my thoughts of this era of my very early gaming life. 

Total Annihilation OST by Jeremy Soule

WarPath via YouTube user "Markel A."

Building up for war in TA.  Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/

With the advent of the family’s first home computer, my interest in games slowly moved into the PC space to where nowadays it’s my primary gaming platform.  At this time, I had a friend of mine whose dad played quite a few different PC games.  This list included MechWarrior, StarCraft, Unreal Tournament to name a few but the first that perked my interest was Cavedog’s RTS title Total Annihilation.  TA felt special because of the wide range of things that could be done that I wasn’t able to do playing command and conquer on my PSX.  Setting behaviours and independent build orders for factories felt amazing while the maps had a fantastic mix of small skirmishes and massive all-out warzones.  Regardless of the gameplay, one of the most memorable things from this game was the soundtrack and its ability to fit the situation perfectly with music that I had never attempted to listen to.  These days, an orchestral is of course quite often to the point where it can sometimes meld into the background, but being introduced to this fantastic score by Jeremy Soule at a young age just added to the grandness of the battle so that the volley of bombers was met with a similar explosion of sound from the orchestra.  If I was to pick a favourite, it would have to be track #4 (WarPath) as it a song for battle that has its own build up that other ‘battle’ music from the score don’t match up for me.  This choice may also be done to me choosing to have this song play when the ‘auto’ option for music stopped working one day for some reason, but there’s a reason why I wanted to hear this tune. 

Being open to the view that classical / orchestral music is for me and not some tired, old-fashioned genre only for the posh has allowed me to enjoy a great deal of its music as time has gone on.  I have followed Mr. Soule onto other games like Oblivion, Skyrim and Guild Wars 2 but others like Harry Gregson Williams with the Metal Gear Solid franchise have done a great deal to show the world how much material video games have to offer. 

Dave Mirra’s Freestyle BMX: Social Distortion - Don’t Drag Me Down

Don't Drag me Down via Spotify

A part of the wider extreme sports titles at the time.  Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/

These last three songs all fit under a similar banner, but I thought I’d start with the one that I experienced first.  When this game came out, I was about to 11 and nearing the quintessential time to be different and start taking note of my views against others (aka being a teenager).  Things like growing out my hair came later, but sometime around this period my music reflected that of a more typical ‘rock’ vibe listening to bands like Good Charlotte and Linkin Park where I could be stereotypical in a whole new way (haha).  Extreme sports games have a dual interest for me as one; it featured a nice mixture of skill based gameplay and alternative culture and two; the soundtracks featured a lot of rock to play along to that I could fumble an air guitar to in-between tricks and passing the controller for HORSE (score attack mode). 

Anyway, Dave Mirra’s Freestyle BMX isn’t one of the names that usually comes up in this genre (especially as it competed with Matt Hoffman being supported by neversoft) but it featured that much loved rock soundtrack for me to play along with.  I can’t really remember much from the soundtrack, although there is one that I will always put my finger on as a song that probably kept me playing past the point where the game was enjoyable.  Don’t Drag me Down by Social Distortion had all that I wanted; distorted guitars being played in an angry tone with a voice that sound like he had been down but never out.  It reflected the desire to try and get the harder challenges as I didn’t want to be beaten with this song becoming an anthem of sorts to keep me trying.  The other thing (and probably the more important reason why it stuck for me) is that it didn’t fit into the typical angst rock but felt more like a guy talking about his ongoing life experiences.  In essence, it was positive rock for me (if one can say such a thing) and remained strongly in my mind until I rediscovered them in my later teens some 5-6 years later with Guitar Hero.  The song was Story of My Life and now I own most of the albums.  I hope to see them live one day but being outside the US that is a bit difficult.  Regardless, here’s to a mediocre game giving me one of my favourite bands to listen to of all time. 

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3: CKY - 96 Quite Bitter Beings

96 Quite Bitter Beings via Spotify

Mid-trick for the player while the rift from CKY blares out.  Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/

Pro Skater 3 came out a year later on the PlayStation but I didn’t really get to play it until a year or so afterwards at a friend’s house.  During this time, I got to play many rounds of HORSE and heard its range of Motorhead and Ramones alongside the more typical Alien Ant Farm.  Although I would say that Blitzkrieg Bop is a fantastic tune that is instantly recognisable, my time playing single player was often met with the ‘out of the blocks’ punch that 96 Quite Bitter Beings brought to the table.  That intro rift that repeats multiple times during the song was all I wanted to hear while playing Pro Skater 3 because it felt like the song made me play better and score those brilliant combos needed for some challenges.  I didn’t care for the lyrics or the tone of the band’s concept; it was just those rifts that I wanted to hear again and again.  To give a similar example outside of the gaming world, I would say the ongoing rift to Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes has the same effect to a lot of people I grew up with. 

Unlike SocialD, CKY never became a band I wanted to hear more of.  That maybe down to not going out to look for them or that they didn’t come up again in a game, but they didn’t perk my interest beyond the rift of 96.  I did actually get to see them live a couple years ago at Sonisphere, Knebworth, but I did kind of feel lost until they finished up with 96 and I heard that rift again in real life. 

Aggressive Inline Skating: Reel Big Fish – Sell Out

Sell Out via Spotify

I only played a demo, but Reel Big Fish made it a great time to be had.  Image from Google search

I only ever got a demo for this game, but my god did I play the hell out of this demo for hours on end.  This was a skating game like any other, but it had mild progression with its mechanics; allowing the player to improve their ability to move, jump, twist and grind through performing relevant tricks.  Looking back on it, it was obviously grinding for grinding but it’s easy to see why progression has become such a significant part of games these days because of the amount of time I sunk just into a demo that I could save my progress on. 

Because I played this so much, I naturally got to listen to its music a lot which featured a mix of ‘rocky’ tunes that had a nice mix of instruments and tones about them.  There was however one tune that stood out beyond the rest in the form of a little Ska-Rock piece by Reel Big Fish. 

Sell Out was great for me because it added the dynamics of brass instruments into the equation without losing the regular feel of guitars and drums that I grew accustomed to.  It was happy, upbeat and had character that allowed the rest of the soundtrack to quickly fall into the background with my playtime.  It was a great song to listen to during my playtime but ironically didn’t stay for much longer.  Not long after playing this demo, I didn’t know the name of the band as the game only showed the song title and I didn’t have access to the internet to check.  Back then I was still using the radio and Top of the Pops to find new music so Sell Out drifted into the past. 

Fast-forward to my life as a 20-something at university and my friend asks me whether I want to see a band live called ‘Reel Big Fish’.  Being obvious to who they were I said yeah but wanted to get a taste of what their music was like.  A link was sent to me with the words ‘yeah this is their most well-known song’ and my eyes lit up instantly.  A couple weeks later I saw Reel Big Fish live and have seen them a couple more times thereafter.  The memory of a demo I played some 8 years earlier jolted my system and for that I was able to see a band I had always wanted to hear properly and like SocialD, have become one of the bands I listen to on a regular basis. 

Looking back at my time, I would have to say that the typical teenager rock vibe appears very strongly here.  However, through the medium of video games, I’ve been able to find those couple examples of songs that stuck out beyond the rest and became the foundation for my musical tastes nowadays.  I listen to more genres of music than I ever before and most times its through games that I have experienced them.  Whether it’s the remixed works of OCRemix bringing life to older titles or the beautiful tracks from modern titles like Transistor, they all have something special to them that I wish more people had the opportunity to listen to. 

Thanks for reading, now I’m going to continue replaying Transistor because The Spine is calling.