CAGD170 Post 2

Group 3

Blog Post 2

For this post I will be sharing information about how our whole Iteration process for our group went. Along with some key details we came across in our game design process and some damage control. I will begin with a little summary of our game and what we were tasked to do for this Unit's assignment. 

Summary

For our game we were tasked with modifying the classic game solitaire. So, in our case we decided to do something that would not make the game derivative of its natural form and made sure that its core fundamentals were still there. We landed on making a change revolving around the sequences in which the cards are stacked at the very end, with a twist that you could also potentially use Queens, and Jacks for starting a pile wherever you had a blank or empty spot on the table. These were our core modifications. 

Target Audience

Moving on from the point of creating our game modifications we had create an experience for our players by knowing who our game was going to be played by. Once we knew what kind of players we were more or less focusing on. We could potentially alter our game so that it could have the aspect of flow in it. For example, if we created our modifications that would completely take away from the core of classic Solitaire, we could have made the game quite confusing or frustrating for a person who either has never played solitaire before or who knows the game by heart. On the contrary if we took the game solitaire and only did some minor changes or modifications to it, it would cause for a player to easily get bored and loose interest. Having said that we knew that mainly our target audience for our game would be people who were already familiar with the classic game solitaire. So, we decided to create some changes that would cause players to have a similar but different objective in the game so that we could have a different take on solitaire. Subsequently while we thought everything was running smoothly, we did manage to reach some areas in our game design process where we might have gone wrong and perhaps needed some more looking at. These however were crucial moments in our game design process that would amount to making a huge difference at the end of the whole process. 

Problems Encountered

One the main issues we encountered was perhaps during our playtest in class itself. We found ourselves sitting there explaining to the other group that was playtesting our game how to playtest our game. Initially we let them try and figure it out but then we started noticing that the more and more they read our rule sheet the harder it was for them to understand. That isn't to say their playtest of our game went horribly wrong it just slowed things down at first and resulted in us having to verbally tell them our objective of the game. Seeing this happen in our playtest also allowed us to see where we went wrong in our Rule Sheet. We could have easily spotted that our rule sheet was missing crucial information that would have resulted in a much more influential way to our players. Something so small but it did manage to recall our attention to it. With this we had some damage control to take care of 

Overall

The whole process of game design for Unit 1 went fairly well. All my group partners including myself had fun exploring the game development process. We found ways to form ideas into a creative way to express them through our game. Established responsibilities on who would work on what and where. Gave creative feedback on differences we had and overall achieved success by working as a team.

CAGD 170

Group 3

Blog Post 1

For our first group assignment we were tasked with modifying the classic game solitaire. As classic as the game can be I'll be honest I had never played the game prior to this group project. One thing I can tell you for sure is that I came with good knowledge and understood the basic elements (Card values, Suits) of the game as I am a huge Blackjack and Poker player. Anyways our Iteration process began there with my other group member and I first getting a glance at the quick gameplay of the actual game at first so we could fully understand what we were dealing with. The expertise of our 3rd partner came naturally to him as he had already known what the game was and had played it before. So, we had help with that concept.

Getting Started 

Once everyone was brought up to speed we got to experiment with different types of ideas. We were getting curious on how we could integrate a new factor into the game that would not get rid of the games level of challenge but that however bring a new objective playable within the core value of the game. It was challenging for ourselves to come up with such an idea so we needed to brainstorm deeper. Having a deck of cards handy helped our minds visualize our ideas much better which led us to come up with our final modifications to the game. 

                                            

Brainstorming Furthermore

When we had jotted down some fun and crazy ideas, we had to go through of course the process of a playtest in order to fully see if our modifications could even be possible to integrate into the game. We got our deck of cards out and proceeded to play the game with our newly invented rules so that we could see what players could expect. During our playtest we were able to see where we went wrong and what could have been a problem if someone were to try and play our version of solitaire, but it was in this same session where we could also discover ways to refine our ideas and shape them into a better, clearer idea. 

Problem solving

When we decided that our main change to the game was going to be that towards the end of the game when you are putting the cards in the right order and suit that perhaps instead of the cards going from Ace low to King high, they go in the order they are intended as you were playing poker meaning that Ace is the original HIGH card and then proceeds to King and Queen and so on. The order in which the cards would have to be stacked were now (A, K, Q, J,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2). However, during our playtest, we ran into some issues that we found we needed to fix such as that when we would try to start stacking the cards, we noticed that we would have no more possible moves anymore due to the king being the only card that could be placed in an empty spot of the 7 columns available.

            

We then realized that if we applied this special power to the Queen and Jack, we could then potentially have a smoother gameplay. It resulted that by making this new change we could indeed have a game where we got an acceptable outcome.

Overall

We ended our notes and planning when we saw that our new contributions were peace sailing into the game. One thing that might have helped us with our iteration process was being familiar with the game we were working with.