Roger's Gaming Cabin

A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude.

0%

This is a game map design implemented with Unreal Engine 5, the original idea of the scenario is to construct a cold glacier landscape, but during the actual design and implement process, it was kind of boring to only see ice, snow and rocks. So the theme changed to a switchback design, lead the player to discover a little oasis in the freezing ice land. The ideas of designing this map includes below:

  • The terrain of the map is a bottom-up, narrow-to-wide design. The start point of the map is a corner near a snow cliff, then the path go up along the valley, passing through a very narrow crack between 2 ice cliff, then arrives at the final oasis area. The base terrain is also built with real world height map data from Iceland.
  • To make the oasis more believable, a natural hot spring is created to give the heat that the plants need, though in the real world usually the sulfur in hot spring will kill the plants, but it’s nice to keep it fantasy anyway.
  • The foliage is deliberately designed as multiple colorful flowers and fresh green grass, along with a giant tree, this makes the oasis more vivifying and forms a sharper contrast with the white and gray of the glacier.
  • The sky atmosphere is set to a light blue and clear style, and the sunlight is set to forenoon to give the whole scenario a bright and pure feeling with a few colorful shadows.

See the walk through video below, if the widget doesn’t load, check it here:

Some more screenshots lol !

1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1

The Gloo gun is really a novel design that breaks the traditional image of weapons in FPS games.
Check my notes on its bravo mechanism ideas, zoom in to see the image clearly:
Prey

Again, it’s really interesting to build a map from 0, took me about 3 days to figure out all the stuffs, this demo map looks the best among all my maps I guess? Welcome to starfish Island !!!!
See the walk through video below, if the widget doesn’t load, check it here:

Some more screenshots lol !

1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1

Check the repo here

A forest environment design using real-world terrain height map data to build the landscape.
The mountains in the map came from a valley in Mexico, the height map is genereted using this great open source project: https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/.
It’s really useful to adapt real world height map to buld your own game map.
After all, the nature mother is the greatest artist haha!

If below video widget doesn’t load, please check original video here:

See the screenshots below:

1
1
1
1
1
1

The hovering giant stone islands I saw in the movie Avatar really impressed me.
Tried to build some virtual enviroment to restore the scene, but it’s difficult than I thought especially how to make a suitable atmosphere for photographing.
I will definitely try to improve this after I got more knowledge about the unreal engine.

See the screenshots below:

1
1
1
1
1
1

After reading through probably more than 100 papers regarding the game design and PX research, I finally determined the potential research direction under GUR ┭┮﹏┭┮ . Sharing the research proposal here, you can get the original PDF file with good cross-referencing from here.

Note: If your browser supports embedded PDFs natively like Chrome, the PDF file will be directly displayed in below widgets. If you cannot see below content, please check the original PDF file from links above.

Finally the summary of design process of the HOM project is finished, sharing it here with major design ideas. So glad to see that the system worked so good on capturing the game pupularity in China especially in capturing little butter game from Xiashuo . The feedback from Moscow team and marketing team are inspiring, hope Ian could report this well in the QBR Haha 😂

Note: If your browser supports embedded PDFs natively like Chrome, the PDF file will be directly displayed in below widgets. If you cannot see below content, please check the original PDF file from here.

Just summarized the visualization process of statistical charts for user feedback understanding, the implementation is basing on Kibana and nothing special in the coding part, but how to make it more clear to demonstrate the actual problem and trending of the feedback indeed took me some time to design .

Note: If your browser supports embedded PDFs natively like Chrome, the PDF file will be directly displayed in below widgets. If you cannot see below content, please check the original PDF file from here.

Keep some notes for understanding the conceptual models built by previous researchers towords game experience.

Experiential Cycle of PX

The experiential cycle describes the UX process between a gamer and a game, the congnitive cycle and aspects relate to the PX.
Experiential cycle

PIFF2 model

This model provides an integrated single framework. Although it is based on the wider concepts of presence, involvement, and flow, PIFF2 aims at understanding the subcomponents of “being there” and “optimal experience”, for example, when playing games.Theoretically PIFF2 is founded on previous studies conducted in the field of game research, while it takes into consideration the way the game content, that is, fundamental game components (i.e., the mechanics, the narrative, and the interface) orient the basic psychological base. Methodologically it is based on a large multivariate data set that is psychometrically analyzed in order to establish a reliable and valid set of subcomponents. These analyses have provided 15 subcomponents for analyzing the UX in games. These subcomponents disclose the content, quality, meaning, value, intensity, and extensity of the UX.
PIFF model

CEGE Model

The theory can be summarised in the following three points:

  1. A positive experience (enjoyment) while playing games is achieved by the player’s perception of the video-game and the interaction with it. These are the Core Elements of the Gaming Experience: Video-game and Puppetry.
  2. Puppetry, the player’s interaction with the game is formed by the player’s sense
    of control and ownership. Control produces ownership, which in turns produces
    enjoyment. Ownership is also produced by Facilitators to compensate the sense
    of control.
  3. The player’s perception of the video-game is formed by the environment and the
    game-play, which also produces enjoyment.

CEGE

SCI Model

  1. The first dimension of a gameplay experience that we distinguish is the sensory immersion
    related to the audiovisual execution of games. This is something that even those with less experience with games – like the parents of the children that were interviewed – can recognize:
    digital games have evolved into audiovisually impressive, three-dimensional and stereophonic worlds that surround their players in a very comprehensive manner. Large screens close to
    player’s face and powerful sounds easily overpower the sensory information coming from the
    real world, and the player becomes entirely focused on the game world and its stimuli.
  2. Another form of immersion that is particularly central for games, as they are fundamentally
    based on interaction, is challenge-based immersion. This is the feeling of immersion that is at its most powerful when one is able to achieve a satisfying balance of challenges and abilities.Challenges can be related to motor skills or mental skills such as strategic thinking or logical
    problem solving, but they usually involve both to some degree.
  3. In several contemporary games also the worlds, characters and story elements have become very
    central, even if the game would not be classifiable as an actual role-playing game. We call this
    dimension of game experience in which one becomes absorbed with the stories and the world, or
    begins to feel for or identify with a game character, imaginative immersion. This is the area in which the game offers the player a chance to use her imagination, empathise with the characters,
    or just enjoy the fantasy of the game.

SCI

MDA Model

Mechanics describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.

Dynamics describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each othersí outputs over time.

Aesthetics describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.

MDA