The Game Plan: Outline

Heyo!

So here I'm going to give a very basic outline of what needs to be done over the coming months.  I will follow up this outline with more detailed posts about the game design and mechanics.

1 Start with the Basics
Read through and learn the Kinect SDK and how to navigate/use Unity 3.  The goal is to get Unity to display the hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and shoulder center as points on the screen based on skeletal data from the Kinect.  These are the only joints that I think will be needed in order to play the game. (Note, however, the joints will not be displayed on screen during game play.)

2 Moving Up
Come up with the game gestures needed for game play.  The goal is to create a simple 'copycat' game where the player is shown a gesture and then asked to repeat, if the gesture is correct (within a certain percentage), then the game accepts the input and lets the player know they were right.  If the gesture is not accepted, the game should ask the player to try again.  This should be a good way to test whether the chosen gestures are easy to do and how strict the game should be when accepting input.

3 The Herd
Get some basic group agents set up using behavior trees so that the player can start interacting with the them.  The goal is to have a very, very stripped down version of the final game up and running.  This will act as a starting point for determining gesture 'force'.  One of the overall concepts of this project is to allow a single type of gesture to also include a range of intensity, which then maps to a range of reaction intensity in the agents.   So for example, if the player wants the agents to walk right, they will will wave from left to right, but if they want them to walk faster or run, they will wave from left to right faster.

Which brings me to a side note:
     I know it's called Herd 'Em, but this game is more about the agents looking to the player for direction, instead of the agents wanting to avoid an object, such as the player's hands.  I think that using avoidance techniques would possibly be too challenging for the player in terms of this game.   To compare, sheep herding dogs are born with the characteristics needed to successfully control sheep.  These traits are then further refined through months to years of training so that they can be used reliably and effectively.  Also, there is much more going on between sheep and dog than simply the sheep wanting to avoid the dog.  The agents in the game cannot determine the intent of the player; there is no eye contact, stalking, or other essential body language communication which is used between dogs and sheep.
     I really want to focus more on the range of intensity (I used urgency before, but I like intensity better) that can be found in each gesture.  I believe this approach makes much more sense to implement than a strict sheep herding model.  Perhaps I should name this, Direct 'Em? xD

4 A Smarter Herd
Improve upon the group dynamics and work on gesture refinement (if necessary, which is likely).  The goal here is to make the agents more intelligent about how to react during certain situations and to hopefully had some simple obstacles to the scene to test these reactions.

5 Level Layout
Develop the levels, including types of obstacles, dangers, length and other design elements.  The goal is to create at least 2 levels--the first being more of an introduction level and the second being a little more challenging--with rough implementations of the obstacles in place, and to actually be able to play through them!

6 Making Things Look Pretty
Art! Work on the overall style for the game and the design for the agents, menus, decorations, obstacles and anything else necessary.  The goal here is to enhance the game experience with fun visuals and, hopefully, sound.

7 Last But Not Least
Improve upon anything that needs work and/or add additional details to the game mechanics or design.  The goal, make it better!

Final note, time permitting I'd like to include ways to give each agent or a subset of the agents certain characteristics.  This would be a way to make the game more challenging and the agents more engaging.  Also I'd like to point out that, while art and design are incredibly important to any game,  the core part of the game mechanics (gesture input and agent reactions) have top priority during this project.


Thanks for reading!
Marley