Design Elements

Hello again,

This post will hopefully begin to address some of the key aspects of the game's design.

Let's start with the general layout of the levels and what's in them.

Each level is a simple path from start to finish. The camera will be at an angled overhead view allowing the player to see the entire course while maintaining visual and interactive depth.  

The flags will act as safe zones where the agents (called shuffles) are safe from harm. An activated flag will turn the safe zone into a spawn point, so if the player were to lose all their shuffles, they would re-spawn at the last safe zone that was activated.

In order to activate a flag, the player moves their hand over the flag until a green ring appears.  This means the player's hand is positioned correctly. After a certain amount of time the ring will indicate that the safe zone has been activated (either by flashing, blinking, or being filled in a clockwise fashion, the same as selecting in the Kinect Hub).

Next are 3 challenges that will put the gesture controls to the test.

Shuffles cannot climb this incline when merely walking.  However, with enough momentum, they can propel themselves up the incline and over the peak.  Make sure your shuffles get a good running start!

A winter wonderland! Shuffles like to skate around on ice (in fact, they can't help it) unless you direct them to walk slowly.  Ice can be friend or foe.  Often times, deadly objects, such as wall spikes or bramble thorn bushes are located right after an ice patch! (Now who would do that?)  But maybe its ability to accelerate shuffles will come in handy...

Let sleeping dogs lie.  Tip toe past the wuffles or your shuffles may become a tasty snack!

*Note: This may test the Kinect's sensitivity level when receiving data or my ability to handle very small or very slow gestures correctly.

And finally I'd like to introduce shuffles and wuffles!

Of course the designs might change in the future, but I hope that I can implement them in the final version of the game.

Here are some other important notes:

The first level will start out with somewhere around five to ten shuffles and the only challenges would be incline or ice with no chance at being damaged.  This should make it easier for the player to get a feel for the game and it's controls.  I think maybe twenty to thirty shuffles would be the max in the game, although I'm curious what controlling up to fifty or more shuffles might be like, hehe.

For damage, I was thinking of treating the entire herd as one entity that had a certain amount of hit points.  Then, if hit points are lost, a certain number of shuffles die ( :c ) based on the number of hit points lost.  That should be a lot easier to deal with than if each shuffle had its own hit points.  But I'm not really sure on that.

And finally I'd like to start talking about the gestures by first introducing one.  In a future post, I will document all of the gestures needed for the game with descriptions and video or animation of some form demonstrating each one.

The Wave is the gesture used to get your shuffles movin'! Wave right to left to tell them to move left, left to right to tell them to move right, toward yourself to make them move down, and away from you to make them move up.  Gesture intensity will determine how quickly or slowly the shuffles move.  To make them run, use a faster, more forceful wave, etc.  

Thanks for reading!

Questions and comments are much appreciated. :)

Marley