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.