Application Addition – Wrist Attachment

One point that was brought up during the feedback section of my presentation was the need for a wrist attachment.

The iPhone is designed to function in a similar way to the Nintendo Wii controller in my application , i.e. gestures are a key part of game-play. Many Wii controllers have been broken by users as a result of these gestures; the controller slipping from a users hand or smashing into a wall or other hard object when being used. Nintendo designed a wrist attachment for their consul controller to help avoid this problem.

As with the iPod, Apple designed an an arm attachment for the iPhone (shown bellow).

I have modified this arm attachment in the design of my wrist attachment:

This is to be attached to the wrist of the user, with the iPhone in his/her hand. The wrist strap can be adjusted as can the height of the iphone to suit the hand of the user.

Application Change – Game Modes

There has been some confusion about the different game modes of my application. Because of this, I have decided to design new game modes, including some which have been previously mentioned.

Once again here are the various weapons in the game:

Fists and melee weapons:

 

• brass knuckles
• knife
• night stick
• baseball bat
• shovel
• katana

Pistols:

• 9mm
• silenced 9mm
• desert eagle

SMG’s:

• tec-9
• micro MP5
• MP5

Shotguns:

• shotgun
• sawn-off shotgun
• combat shot gun

Long Rifles:

• rifle
• sniper rifle

Assault Rifles:

• Kalashnikov (AK-47)
• M4

Heavy Weapons:

• mini-gun
• rocket launcher
• heat seeking RPG

Projectiles: 

• tear gas 
• Molotov cocktails
• grenades
• satchels (with detonator)

Special:

• fire extinguisher
• chainsaw
• flame thrower

After researching some games, I found that some had all weapons available at one time. As I have mentioned before, to do this in my application would become too confusing. Other games with a larger variety of weapons classed them into different categories. This seems to be the most effective way of playing shooting games. I have classed my weapons into various categories, making up the different game modes of my application. These different game modes, I believe, suit a wide variety of styles of game-play, suiting the needs of various users.

Here is the list of the different game modes, and the weapons included in each of them:

Close Range Combat:

• brass knuckles
• knife
• night stick
• baseball bat
• shovel
• katana
• fire extinguisher
• chainsaw
• flame thrower

Pistols Only:

• 9mm
• silenced 9mm
• desert eagle

SMG’s Only:

• tec-9
• micro MP5
• MP5

Shotguns Only:

• shotgun
• sawn-off shotgun
• combat shot gun

Rifles Only:

• rifle
• sniper rifle
• Kalashnikov (AK-47)
• M4

Heavy Artillery:

• mini-gun
• heat seeking RPG
• rocket launcher

Throws Only: 

• tear gas
• Molotov cocktails
• grenades
• satchels (with detonator)

Grade One Weapons:

• tear gas
• Molotov cocktails
• brass knuckles
• baseball bat
• 9mm
• tec-9
• shotgun
• Kalashnikov (AK-47)
• mini-gun
• fire extinguisher

Grade Two Weapons:

• grenades
• knife
• shovel
• silenced 9mm
• micro MP5
• swan-off shotgun
• rifle
• Kalashnikov (AK-47)
• rocket launcher
• chainsaw

Grade Three Weapons:

• satchels (with detonator) 
• knight stick
• katana
• desert eagle
• MP5
• combat shotgun
• sniper rifle
• heat seeking RPG
• flame thrower

Application Change – Central Game Style

There were a lot of new ideas I received during the final presentation of my application. One regards the different styles of the game.

From the feedback of my focus group, I decided to include an additional game style where player icons can not be seen. However, I have decided to scrap this whole idea of spit gaming styles and stick to one new style. Both the visible and invisible game-play styles have been incorporated the improved style. 

The way this style works is that icons may be either visible and invisible depending on where they are on the may in relation to your playing screen. The closer a player is to another person in the game, the more invisible they become.

To illustrate this, here is the previous playing screen:

Now here is the playing screen with the new gaming style:

The black circles in this image show different distance ranges:

  

Any other player who is in the smallest circle will be completely invisible. Players in the second circle will be 20% visible. In the third circle player are 60% visible. Generally, visibility increases as players move further away from your location.  As it can be seen, the player in the bottom left hand corner of the screen is completely visible.

Shot fired and projectiles thrown by opponents are visible no matter what the range is. This is meant to give the game a greater sense of realism. Even though shots fired from most guns cannot be seen in real life, they can be heard, and because these loud sounds cannot be re-created on the iPhone’s small speaker, the firing of rounds can be seen by players, giving them chance to avoid being shot.

It is also important to point out the the speed of ammunition fire is not realistic as this is too fast.  Amunition will move much slower, but its speed is effected by the weapon used. For example a rifle bullet moves at a different speed to a pistol bullet.

Application Change – Name (again)

When discussing my application with Rob last week, he told me that the name I chose for my application was not right.

He said that the name “Live Active” did not suit the application, because it sounded too much like a slogan or name for a gym or health product. I totally agree with what he said and could not believe that it didn’t come to me earlier. What came to mind after he told me this was the GNC catalogue sitting on my coffee table at home, with the company slogan “Live Well’.

So once again, the name of my application will change, however, I decided to keep the idea that my application name should provide insight into what my application is designed to do. After much hard thinking (i.e. looking for synonyms of different words) I have come up with the new and much more imroved name for my application: “Active Onslaught”.

I have decided to keep the silhouette imagery as it still described what the application does. However, I will also include a lot of advertisement images of the application in use when creating my final website.

 

Categorisation of Weapons

Due to the large amount of weapons in the game I have decided to categorise them to make game play easier.

To have so much in a scroll menu, I think, will just be confusing. To avoid this problem, a player can only carry one weapon from each of the categories listed below.

Fists and melee weapons:

 

• brass knuckles
• knife
• night stick
• baseball bat
• shovel
• katana

Pistols:

• 9mm
• silenced 9mm
• desert eagle

SMG’s:

• tec-9
• micro MP5
• MP5

Shotguns:

• shotgun
• sawn-off shotgun
• combat shot gun

Long Rifles:

• rifle
• sniper rifle

Assault Rifles:

• Kalashnikov (AK-47)
• M4

Heavy Weapons:

• mini-gun
• rocket launcher
• heat seeking RPG

Projectiles: 

• tear gas
• Molotov cocktails
• grenades
• satchels (with detonator)

Special:

• fire extinguisher
• chainsaw
• flame thrower

Zooming In and Out of the Map

One aspect of my application which I have not mentioned is the interactive zoom.

This works just like the iPhone’s safari, pushing 2 fingers/thumbs away from the screen to zoom out,  as if your opening the screen. Likewise, the reverse action zooms into the screen.

The is no limit to the boundaries of a map, it can be made large and complex to suite the user’s desire.  So, in order to create larger map boundaries, zooming out is needed. Zooming in allows users make their map precise as they want.

This will also be used in game-play, to see the size of the map, where players can go, and where other player are located.

Addition – Game Style

I put forward the change of player icons to the users in my focus group (from a few weeks back).

All accepted the change, preferring the improved ‘dot’ icons to the previous ‘arrows’.  One of the users answered my email with a very good idea. He proposed that the game could be played without seeing any other player icons accept your own as shown below.

During the development of my application,  I had the problem that when playing, what happens if one player goes indoors, blocking out the signal of the GPS. I solved this dilemma with a time limit function; those whose signal is blocked would have 5 seconds to get within range of GPS or will begin to gradually loose life. From this I game to a different style of game play – indoors, where player movement cannot be detected, forcing users to rely on their line of sight for game play.

However, this same style of game play outdoors means that the game would be much harder. For this reason i have decided to include this game style to my application. It will become one of the game play options available in the application.

When setting up a game, you begin with the map, setting boundaries and optional obstacles. The next step is choosing the style i.e. whether or not you want to see other player on the map. Then you can choose the game mode e.g. teams, capture flags, etc. Finally the host who created the game allows users to join, as in LAN gaming.

I strongly believe that this additional game style would increase the activity of game play, as there is a much greater element of surprise.

Change – Player icons

In the final stage of the development of my application, I have been looking to perfect its design.

One change that I have wanted to make is the player icons. Each player is represented as an arrow, but i feel that this makes the game too easy. It would be hard to get anywhere in the game if you can see the exact direction of each player in the game. For example, If you are following a player to attack and this player sees you coming to him/her, they would just move further and further away.

The change from arrows to points (shown above) makes game play slightly harder, as even though you can see the direction the players are moving in, you do not know which direction they are facing. 

Shots fired from opponents can still be seen. The icon of each player on their own iPhone screen also still appears as an arrow to show in which direction they can attack.

Inclusion – More Close-Range Weapons

Other weapons which I have thought to include are close range weapons which function much differently to others.

These weapons would be quite risky to use in the game but would work quite effectively. These weapons include the chainsaw, fire extinguisher and flame thrower. All these weapons require a range of 2 metres to work.

A chain saw will require a raise and drop gesture at a close, 2 metre range to slice an opponent. The bottom button on the iPhone needs to be pressed in order to start the chainsaw. This weapon, I feel will be tempting for user to try, just so they can hear the sound of the chainsaw at work.

The fire extinguisher works to paralyse an opponent, and so they will not be able to attack for others for a period of 15 seconds. The paralysed user’s playing will begin to flash, they will still be able to move , however weapons would not work when fired. The fire extinguisher may also be swung at opponents like a bat to damage them. A button does not need to be pressed to swing the fire extinguisher, but it does need to be pressed to paralyse opponents.  

The flame thrower is probably the most damaging of these weapons. Pressing a button and moving the iPhone from left to right (or vice-a-versa) allows you to spray opponents with a damaging flame. This has an initial damage of 25 on opponents and also continues to damage opponents by 5 each three seconds for a time period of 15 seconds. In order for users to avoid this they need to run away to avoid the further damage. Its like if you are on fire, you drop and roll, I figured that most people would not want to do this so, user will need to run in order to extinguish the flame.

Inclusion – Melee Weapons

One of the users in my focus group sent me an email recently about the idea of the inclusion of melee weapons.

This was something I was considering during the original development of my application, however, the problem with melee weapons is the fact that contact between players is needed for them to work. Since including ranges of various weapons, I now believe that, with specific small ranges, melee weapons could work.

Melee weapons such as brass knuckles, nightsticks or knives would requires a close range of about 1.5 metres.

Other melee weapons like bats, shovels and katanas have a slightly further range of 2 metres.

Unlike all the other weapons, no button needs to be pressed to activate/use these melee weapons. As long as they are selected/equipped in the weapons/items menu, they can be used. Like all other weapons, a gesture is needed to use them. So if the brass knuckles are equipped, a punching gesture is needed to inflict damage on opponents. A weapon like a bat or katana will need a swinging gesture.