Game Rules

 

Star of the Lost City

The Game

This game is based around the mode free for all, meaning no teams are involved when the game is happening. The only player you can rely on is yourself, while always being aware and cautious of what the other players are doing on the board at all times.

Starting

To decide who starts first each player must roll a dice, whoever has the highest number on their dice roll means they will start first. If two or more players roll the same number they must keep rolling the dice until someone rolls the highest. The player turn rotation will be clockwise from the first person who starts the board game.

Movement

For the first turn of every character they can only move the amount of blocks they are allowed, due to it being the first turn they cannot attack any other characters until the next turn. Once the first round of moves are over, players can then move their character and also on the same turn be able to attack other characters. You are only allowed to attack one character per turn, unless stated otherwise in someone’s special ability for example.

Ranged – Ranged characters are permitted to move 1 block per turn.

Melee – Melee characters are permitted to move 2 blocks per turn.

Attacks

When a player decides to attack a character they must first roll a dice to find out whether they hit or miss the enemy. Rolling a 1-3 means you will be able to hit the opponent, this means rolling a 4-6 will result in missing the opponent, and thus meaning your turn is over.

Ranged

- Ranged characters can only attack an opponent if they are within a 3 space distance, if they are out of the 3 space distance it means they will not be able to attack the opponent unless they move closer.

Melee

- Melee characters can only attack an opponent if they within a 1 space distance, if they are out of the 1 space distance it means they will not be able to attack the opponent unless they move closer.

Damage

If the player successfully rolls a 1-3 on the dice to hit the opponent, they must then roll the dice again to determine the damage on the opponent.

Rolling a 1 = 10 damage | Rolling a 2 = 20 damage | Rolling a 3 = 30 damage

Rolling a 4 = 40 damage | Rolling a 5 = 50 damage | Rolling a 6 = 60 damage

Special Abilities

Each character has a special ability they can use, to use a special ability they must first draw a card which allows them to use it.

When a person initiates a fight the standard procedure for hit or miss is applied, as well as the

damage. However, when rolling for damage you will also roll a special second dice which will

determine whether you pick up a battle card from the deck supplied with the board game.

Among the deck of cards there are various different types that can be obtained and used, some will be useful in battle (buffs) however some will not. When you roll the special dice if you land on the colour black you can pick up a battle card, landing on any other colour will mean

nothing is obtained.

If you succesfully land on the colour black you will pick up a battle card from the top of the deck, obtaining a good card means you can use it whenever you want however if in a next turn you

succesfully get a battle card again your previous one will be discarded and the new one will be yours. This means that if you obtain a special ability card and don’t use it in time, you have

wasted a chance to use it and you will need to use the next one.

If you are able to pick up a battle card and it isn’t useful to your character it will automatically be applied to your character. For example if you get a minus life card, then the life will be taken away from you immeditately. This also applies to the cards skip a turn, joker (half life) and minus life.

List Of Battle Cards x28

+10 Health x4

+10 Damage (To Basic Attack) x4

+20 Health x2

+20 Damage (To Basic Attack) x2

Skip Turn x2

Null Card (Does Nothing) x4

Joker (Lose Half Of Current Health) x2

Special Ability x8

HP (Hit points)

Depending on whose character you play as the health on the character will vary; if you decide to play as a melee character you will start off with 250hp (hit points). However, if you decide to play as a melee with healing capabilities it results in you starting with an extra 10hp. Lastly, if you start as a ranged character you will start with 200hp, due to being ranged and having the option to shoot players numerous spaces away from yourself you will have less health.

Characters/Roles

Rob – 250hp - (Melee)

Aaron – 250hp - (Melee)

Safina – 260hp - (Melee/Healer)

Jack – 200p - (Ranged)

Jamie – 200hp - (Ranged)

Josh – 200hp - (Ranged)

Chris – 250hp - (Melee)

Characters Special Abilities

Rob (Seduction) – This special ability can seduce anyone within a 1 space radius,

allowing this player to control them for 2 turns, however seducing that player means

you cannot attack them for 2 turns.

Aaron (Critical) – This special ability can be used to double the attack damage of a

move this character does, for example if this character rolls an attack damage of 6,

they can then use this ability to double the damage from 60 to 120.

Safina (Health Steal) – This special ability drains 50hp from a selected opponent

within a 2 space radius, the 50hp are then added onto the current character, the

total hp of this character cannot go over 260hp

.

Jack (Fire) – This special ability burns a selected player for 3 turns (-20hp per turn),

must be within a 1 space radius to cast.

Jamie (Copycat) – This special ability copies anyone’s special ability within a 3 space

radius, meaning this character can essentially use any special ability on the board.

Josh (Double hit) – This special ability hits two people within 1 space of this

character, causing 25 damage to each character. If there is only 1 person within the space radius then 40 damage is inflicted on the opponent.

Chris (Trap) – This special ability deals 40 damage to a selected player within a

1 space radius, along with this the opponent will also miss a turn.



board game presentation and feedback

 

Presentation and feedback

In this post i will be showing you feedback from our board game i will also show you through pictures how we made the board i will be showing you some of the feedback forms chosen at random (so we haven't cheated) to show you what feedback we had and mainly it was very pleasing feedback but we also had some criticism from our players about what could be made to make the game play experience better which is the main purpose so first i will show you the stages of our board and the inspirations for it.

 

The board 

 

We Chose a rather strange shape for our board design but we thought making it a star shape we will be able to give each player his own coloured zone to spawn in.

 

This was the very first design of our map that was a star shape the mmap was still that simple that at this point all it had was lines connecting to dots and we game tested to see if the map was a good experiance to play on and we felt that movement on the map could be statigic yet simple and everything seemed to flow there was never any points where in games testing or game presentation that a player did not know how to move (with a quick tutorial first of course) after this we then decided to raise the board by gluing card around the radius of the star.

 

This is the board raised up on the card we did this because we chose an area for our game a kind of sceniro and we chose that this game will be set in a ancient ruined city in the dessert so if we raised the board we could add things around the side of the board making it a lot nicer to look at after this

 

 

This is a picture of our board almost finished as you can see it is now capable of gameplay we could of left it like this but we went one better and decided to add a wooden tile underneath almost like a support but just placing it under would not make it look like it was standing in the ruins of an anciant city so we painted the wood white as a base layer and while it was wet and kind of sticky we tipped brown sugar onto it making it look like a layer of sand was on top of the board making the scene a little more beliavale for the player. To really finish it off we added some ruins we made by hand to make it look even better.

This is our final porduct a fully playable as you can see in this picture we have added the wooden board and brown suagar i think it gives the board a really nice effect to look at on pictures or in person becuase it does look like sand is really on the map and the ruins we all made really was a good idea as it made the map look complete and well fit into our chosen environment and as a finishing touch we printed out pictures of ruins we found and stuck them onto the cardboard holding the map up to make it look a little nicer and to hide the black card which would not of fit in the maps appearance at all.

 

 

 

The Feedback



 

While the students wer playing our game they were having a good time lots of laughing and smiling which is ultimately what we wanted because if the game isnt fun people wont play it here are some videos that i personally filmed while others were playing the game enjoy.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yknzeHQ6Vlo&feature=g-upl

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjo9wfZndO0&feature=context-gau

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t78kfd54zWQ

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryWOKh75pFM

 

 

We also supplied the students with feedback orms after they had finished there games feedback was very positive throughout i think the students had a very good time playing due to not having a lot of constructive critisim which shows they were happy playing the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the feedback froms we made to give to the students we chose these at random

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

In conclusion i beleive in 3 weeks we made a very good game the mechanics were solid so nothing could of gone wrong and nothing did through play testing and presentation day and also the board and game looked very plaeasing for the player. I could never of done this by myself so i would also like to thank the reast of the team game would not of been anywhere near as good as it is now without you so good work guys.

 

(our game will NOT be on sale in stores near you) 

 

 



Character Development

Character development

 

During this project one of the main aspects was the creation of our character in other posts i explained about my players world, his powers and how my player ultimately fits in the this post apocalyptic planet. So throughout this post i will show you my initial sketches for what my character will look like i will also say what i liked and didn't like about how he looked so enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

This was my first initial sketch i made him look more western looking with the bullet belts around his chest and old western type hat i liked that the character could easily fit into my world because he does look well equipped and with his tattered clothes that indicates that he has been in this environment for a while and will know how to survive. But i don't like the fact he looks too normal this man is the main character on a game yet he looks like an average Joe which is why i went with a different idea.

 

 

This is my second design i chose a more armoured stormtrooper type character is someone playing this game were to see this player without the outside world they would think the land would be pretty vicious. I like that this character looks heavily armoured but still looks like he can be agile in a fight the thing i don't like about this is it doesn't look realistic it looks too futuristic for my characters time so i tried another design.

 

This was my 3rd design i made him look slightly armoured with shoulder guards giving him some protection and also the device on his arm could protect him to some extent but this device is mainly used to channel his powers and to make them more powerful he also has a helmet to protect his face and to help him breathe in hazardous areas. What i like about this design is that he has something tailor made for him and this world he has the device on his arm that uses his powers for what ever test that faces him but i still don't like the fact he looks normal he doesn't look 'badass' enough yet so i tried another

This is my final design I decided that since my player had joined a spec ops/ guerrilla attack type force called the rangers he should look like a ranger so i went with the classic Lord Of The Rings/ Robin Hood type cloaks that have a hood and long cape attached. I then gave him an armoured stomach plate that will give a lot of his midsection protection but will still allow him to be very agile in battle allowing him to move faster he has a big bandage on his arm the is not because of an injury this is because the rangers weapon of choice is a bow they use it because it is almost silent and ammo is east to make and retrievable the bandage on his arm is to stop the bot string hitting him and cutting his arm. As you can see the patterns on his clothes are elvish inspired to give his clothes more meaning they could be elvish writing or symbols it could even been his rank in the rangers.

 

 

 

 

 

So there are all my designs with why i liked them and why i didn't and in the next post i will show you how i turned my paper artwork into sculpting artwork.

My characters story and his worlds doom

 

My World And Its Doom

 

In my last post I spoke about my world having a Gene-Remodelling Apocalypse so basically in this post i will tell you the story of my world and how it brought upon its doom and in a separate segment i will explain my characters story basically how he is different to everyone else his story and how he got there all those kind of things.

 

The planets story

In the year 2020 a group of leading biological scientists had discovered a way to alter the Genes of men, women and children though a very complex operation at the time this operation offered more years to your life you could ask to be smarter or to be stronger faster etc but these operations were extremely expensive out of reach of nearly all people on earth and only being available to most billionaires. In the year 2040 another scientist discovered another better way to alter peoples genes he discovered a way that drinking a serum full of different chemicals and nano bots they could alter your genes with no need of operation but between the 20 years of scientists changing genes they found ways to give people powers such as giving people the ability to shoot flames from there hands or to harness electricity almost anything you wanted could now be possible with a drink but there was a downside to this the boost you got would only last a couple of hours before it expired leaving you the same as you was before so you would have to keep drinking to keep it up. Since this procedure was now as simple as buying a drink it became a lot cheaper and spread across the world now the average Joe could drink the serum and have a handful of fire to do as he wanted. After a few years people that had almost constant exposure to the serum started to become ill almost like they became allergic to the serum but they would also become addicted to it at the same time but since it was so easy to acquire no one could stop them purchasing more serum after as more time passed they became to become extremely violent towards anyone that was not like them by this time it was to late for them to be helped they were too dangerous to be close to. Within a few days of them being in this state they would begin to deform and mutate but that's not it if the subject had very severe mutations they would almost become the living embodiment of the last serum they drank with permanent powers. After they had hit this stage there was no help for them after a few days it was an all out world war between these mutant humans and the non mutant humans but with the mutants becoming more many everyday and more powerful humans become out numbered by mutants and self preservation of a species became the only thing left to do so they scattered all across the world hiding and trying to start again from there now corrupt existence.

 

 

The Story Of My Character

My Character was born during the Great war between mutants but there is nothing special about this a lot of children were born that year the same as all the others but what makes my character different is that while he was no older than 1 his parents tried to escape a group a mutants the mutants found them because they here living in a serum plant which is a facility that makes all the serums when my characters family and others were spotted a huge battle erupted in the heat of the battle the heaters for the plant were destroyed causing a huge explosion causing everything there to be drenched in the serum but it was not made to be poured on the outside of the body in such a large quantity it began to burn and eat away at the flesh of everyone there killing everyone...but one it left my character alive to be discovered by a group of passing humans survivors but the explosion did not leave him completely un scarred he was left with bright red glowing eyes to this day no one knows how he survived some people say he absorbed the powers of the serums and others say the serums absorbed I'm corrupting his very soul but the group of survivors took him in and raised him as one of there own as he grew he became stronger, smarter and faster than children his own age and as he grew more this theme didn't stop but the full force of his powers were not realised until his camp was attacked at night by a group of mutants they killed everyone some tried to flee but they had nowhere to go they were surrounded my character was among one of the ones that tried to escape as the mutants charged at them everyone screamed as this happened my characters eyes began to glow intensely until a huge flam spread out of all both his hands the sheer shock of this scared the mutants back to where they came from. after that my character left that night never to return he joined a group known as the rangers this was an elite group of hunters that would silently with bows launch guerrilla style attacks on the mutants it is here where the player learnt to harness his gifts and begin his journey to try to retake the world. 

 

 

  

Apocalypse selection

Induction Project

Our first project back character/ game design project over our time of we were asked to design a character that would fit into our own self made post- apocalyptic world over this post i will show you my thoughts on what Apocalypse i chose and why along with my inspirations and why my character will fit into my world i will first begin by showing you all the ideas i had during this we was not aloud to pick a zombie apocalypse because a lot of people would end up with the same type of game. 

My Apocalypse Ideas

These are all the ideas i had for causing an apocalypse

1) Demons rise from out of the earth

2)Giant Tsunami

 

3) The Sun Becomes a Red Giant

 

4) World War 3

 

5) asteroid impact

 

6) Black Death returns immune to known medicine

 

7) Alien invasion

 

8) Gene Re-modelling

 

9) Huge solar flare

 

10) Super volcano eruption

 

Out of these 10 situations i then narrowed it down and chose 4 of these i will tell you why i have chose them in a short description.

 

3) The sun Becomes a red giant

 

I think this would be a good scenario because know one has ever really done it before through film or games so there will be really know stereotypes of what it should look like. also this Apocalypse will be a completely natural that will eventually happen to earth.

 

6) Black death returning and being immune to medicine

 

I think this would be good because everyone knows about what the bubonic plague is and how many it killed because there was know medical treatment to cure it in those times so if it returned and adapted to all of our known medicine it would be like what happened in medieval times but worse since the world is more accessible than it was in medieval times with flying so the disease would not be contained in one place.

 

8) Gene-remodelling

 

This would be a great chance to really experiment with what you could do to give players a multitude of ability's to use because there genes have been changed essentially they could be turned into anything if the technology was available or you could give them certain powers such as fire, ice, electricity and these are just initial thoughts they could have many more powers.

 

10) Super Volcano eruption

 

This is another apocalypse that could actually happen if a super volcano erupted it wouldn't just cut off most travel it would also plunge the earth into a volcanic winter which would basically be another ice age because of the pieces of sulphur reflecting the suns rays back towards the sun allowing none to hit the earth of course with the huge loss of light most the plants on earth would die making the food chain collapse.

 

 

Now out of these four i chose one final apocalypse

 

The big Decision

My doomsday of choice was the gene re-modelling option i thought that it would be fun to have a man made apocalypse through humans making themselves better but ultimately corrupting themselves and destroying there own homes because of there new installed
 powers. 

 

 

 

 

Happy Apocalypse!

  

blog 1 Game mechanics

ludology

Game mechanics

Today we studied part of the mechanics of a game which was the ratio of the hits and what variables will be involved, what types or randomisers and what uncertainties will challenge the player. We began by first leaning what games would be random and what would have uncertainties in them we started off with basic board games some examples of board games that are completely random are games such as snakes and ladders games like this are random because they all involve dice or a die this will mean the outcome from the dice will be completely random if it is a fair dice there are also other randomisers such as a simple deck of cards. Other games like chess, checkers and even connect 4 are not random they are uncertain because you may no where your opponent will move or you may not but you still have an idea. After we had covered this we began to apply these variables to fps games an example of this is when a player raises his gun and aims at an opponent to shoot what means you will hit him this all depends on many different things like hit zones, the spread of the bullets, damage against the opponent and there health and these things and more will be calculated by the time your bullets hit or miss the opponent and will decide whether you have killed him. After we understood some of the factors that go into the mechanics of the game we was asked to come up with our own ways of making in our own little games a decider that will tell you whether you have hit and missed and then to go onto things like damage and health points. After i did this i found made my own basic decider by compensating for hit points by giving monsters/ players armour variables and damage variables all from a dice throw which will be completely random so this is my basic idea of how in my basic board game combat will be decided i will try make it a simple and easy to understand as possible i will also include a key at the bottom of the page for help so prepare for the cliche dungeons and dragons dice rolling madness. 

 

My Battle Theory

   Basically in my game combat will be decided by dice throws the players level and equipment will also play a part in combat but lets just stick with the basic system for the moment.

 

All players on the game have a set amount of health for there level say a level 1 player has 50 health then he levels up and now he has 75 health this is also true for enemies a weak level one enemy will have only 25 health points so now you understand the health system you have to understand the armour system.

 

This is when dice begin to enter my game because although armour will have a base armour rating it can be added to by rolling a dice. if you roll a 1 on the dice you will get plus 10 armour, roll a 2 and you will get plus 20, a 3 plus 30 you see were this is going. so lets say your player has some nice leather armour which has a base armour rating of 10 so your player has his health and his armour you then roll the dice and say you get a 3 your armour will get a 30 point boost giving it a total armour value of 40 points simple right ? But this isn't it enemies will also have armour the same way you have so say you see a enemy that has leather armour you will roll the dice to decide his total armour rating. After this is done you can begin to attack each other.

 

But before you try kill each other you should know what armour actually does armour will half attack damage until you get rid of all your opponents armour points and then you can start attacking his health which will do full damage.

 

Time for the fun 'imma kick your ass part' the combat in my game will be decided in a similar way to finding out armour rating basically you roll to discover what amount of damage you will do to each other same as the armour your weapon will have a base damage value which will be added to so if your player has a basic iron short sword which does 10 damage you can roll a 6 and you will get plus 60 damage points for that attack so you could maybe depending on his armour hit him with 70 points of damage which could kill him giving you those tasty experience orbs to level up.

 

So here is a quick portion of what should be going on in your head and in the game I tested this myself so in this i could win or lose it depends what the dice roll. (writing in brackets should be what you are thinking like the maths in your head for armour and damage values ) writing outside will be game play like dice rolls.

 

Your player is level 5 with 75 health points, an iron longsword with a base damage of 15 and leather armour with a base rating of 20

 

and you encounter a level 3 enemy with 25 health points, an iron longsword with a base damage of 15 and light leather armour with a base value of 15

 

Battle Begins

 

Player rolls for armour points and rolls a 2 (so my armour had 20 points plus another 20 is 40 points in total so basically 20+20 easy)

 

now enemy rolls for armour and gets a 2 also (so now the enemy has a 35 armour rating 20+15= 35)

 

now player rolls for his attack and rolls a 4 (ok so my sword had 15 damage now it has 55 damage for this attack)

 

The player hits his attack and does 27 damage (ok so i hit him with 55 damage points but because he had armour the damage was halved leaving him with still full health but leaving him with only 8 armour left)

 

enemy rolls for attack and gets a 6 (enemy now has a total attack of 75 points)

 

the enemy hits doing a total of 38 damage ( i had a total of 40 armour now I'm left with 2)

 

player rolls for attack and gets a 3 (15+30=45)

 

the player hits with total damage of 23 (my damage is still halved even though i destroyed his armour on this roll)

 

enemy is now left with 10 health points

 

enemy rolls dice for damage and gets 3 (15+30= 45 45 halved = 23 do he has done 23 damage to me)

 

enemy hit with 23 damage leaving the player only 54 health points

 

player rolls dice for damage gets a 5 ( 15+50=65)

 

player hits with 65 damage (because enemy now has no armour rating)

 

the enemy is killed and the player wins the battle (dem experience orbs)

 

Conclusion

So basically that is my very simple randomising method to have a fun type of board game rpg with your friends this could easily become very complicated by adding more weapons with different traits say a spear could ignore armour or i could even add magic into the game so fire attacks would become available and many more elemental powers but with this you have to change the game so much just by adding magic you have to have a mana bar which will have to be decided by more dice trows or different types of dice completely but it would not end there you would then have to have magically imbued weapons that would do elemental damage to enemies but then you would have to have magic armour to counterbalance that. Basically with these types of games adding one thing can make everything more complicated but it will all be decided by the same thing we spoke about today in class it will all be decided by the roll of a dice or in other games the pick of a card so this has been my take on today's work on game mechanics i hope you enjoyed the read and understood the combat of my board game.