#018 GAD BA1 P2: iPhone Game - The Basics/Display

The Game

What its about

To put it simple, the game I have in mind is a flying ‘shoot em up’. The player will control a dragon and has to complete a task within a set time limit or, depending on the chosen game-play, just rack up as many points as possible in an arcade styled game-play.

I want the controls to be as natural for the player as possible, something that you can pick up with little no no instruction and know instinctively how to play the game within a few seconds. The player controls the flight of the dragon by tilting and rotating the handset, taping the screen to use the dragons fireball weapon.

Storyline

A war has raged between two races for longer than anyone can remember, it started so long ago that even the stories told about its beginning hold little truth. This war, is the war of the dragons of Agoth and the Víkingr of the Stony Shore. Blinded hatred between the two races is at its climax and you, the player, are about to join the fray.

Born in the realms of Agoth, the dragons are born with the wisdom of their elders, passed down through the ages. Every winter the great lake freezes and with it come the Víkingr’s raiding parties, intent on destroying any dragons nest they can find up in the high mountains. However, when the great lake begins to thaw and the sun rises higher into the sky with every day, it is the time of the dragons.

In the winter just passed, the Víkingr inflicted the most damage done for a very long time; all but a dozen nests remained intact. In the casualties, your mother ImumairI and your father WafedilI perished and now is the time for you to take revenge on the Víkingr. Fly to the Stony Shore and find the Víkingr settlements to seek revenge for the death of your kin. Destroy the settlements and kill as many Víkingr as you can.

Game Modes

Sandbox Mode:
Sandbox Mode is a game mode where players can practise. Whether it be practise in flying with their dragon or practising their aim, this is where they do it. Wooden targets/cutouts of the enemy will be placed on the ground in different locations allowing the player to attack as they wish. Once a target has been destroyed it will re-spawn again within say, 10 seconds.

Story Mode:
Story Mode will be the primary style of game play. The player is tasked to attack an enemy settlement and kill the set amount of enemies within a set time frame in every level. Once a player has completed a level they then have a choice to upgrade characteristics of their dragon by using an experience point system. Once they have upgraded their dragon, or not if they choose to, the player progresses on to the next level. The levels will get progressively harder, with more enemies who are more aggressive as you progress through the game.

Arcade Mode:
Arcade Mode will pretty much be a quick play option. At the beginning the player is given a set amount of points to upgrade their dragon, this will be their only chance. There will be no xp awarded, instead the experience points is replaced by score points. The goal of this game mode is to kill as many enemies as possible to achieve a high score. The game mode ends when the dragon has been killed either by the enemies or by the players negligence.

Game Layout

I feel that the layout of the game and what is displayed is very important, too little and players won’t know what to do, too much and the player will be bombarded with more information that they can register at one time.

Originally, this is what I was thinking:

• Health Bar
• Weapons Bar (cooldown)
• Crosshair
• Altimeter

• Speed Meter
• Attitude Indicator
• Compass
• Radar
• Directive Arrow
• Task Progression

However once I started thinking about it, I recognised that having 6 displays on the screen at the same time would definitely fall under the “too much” category as discussed above. I thought more about what is necessary and what could be considered a luxury, so I refined the list and have explained each of them in detail below.


Health Bar Display:
The Health Bar is something that is definitely needed. Without the health bar players will not know how much health they have remaining, which as a over-casual game I recognise to be vital. Knowing that you have little health normally makes people play a lot more carefully, without a player knowing how much health they have it might cause them to play more aggressively and cause their dragons demise much quicker.


Crosshair/Weapons Bar Display Combined:
Again, the Crosshair is something that is required in the majority of shooting games, how else would you know where you are aiming? In fact, it is even more vital in this game as not only does it tell the player the direction that their fireballs will aim towards but it also tells the player where their dragon is flying.

I will combine the Crosshair with the Weapons Bar by creating a circular Crosshair which is divided up into 5 segments. Each segment will represent the ammunition (fireball) of the dragon and will automatically re-fill at the rate of 1 ammunition per 2 seconds from the moment your previous shot is fired. The Crosshair will most likely be the most used interface display tool, so it makes sense to combine two simple interface tools into one simple interface tool.


Altimeter Display:
The Altimeter isn’t completely necessary, players can use the ground as a reference to the lowest point they can fly and as I will explain later, they will be prevented from flying too high. However, after playing the games that I research I can see how it will be a very useful tool. For example, the player will want to take the least amount of damage from their enemies, a way to do this would be to take a steep dive to build up speed, pulling up before you hit the ground and then fly over your enemy quickly while shooting at them.

The Altimeter will allow the player to judge when to pull up before it is too late, this is something that even aeroplane pilots have trouble doing without instruments to tell them their height and speed.


Directive Arrow/Compass/Radar Display Combined:
On any free-roaming game some kind of navigation system is required, this is the reason why I will include a compass in my game. With that said, there is no point in having a navigation system if you do not know where you are meant to be going! For this I will combine a blip radar system into the center of the compass that not only tells the player where they should be heading too, but also where their enemies are when they are close enough to appear on the radar. Having a short ranged blip radar will allow the player to line up their fly-overs with more accuracy, aiding them in killing their enemies.


Task Progression Display:
As I mentioned in the game modes section, in the story mode players are tasked with killing a set amount of enemies that increase with each level. The task progression display will tell the player how many more enemies they need to kill out of how many they were tasked to kill.

For example, if you are tasked with killing 20 enemies then the task progression display will begin at “20/20”. As you kill your enemies the number on the left will drop, lets say you have killed 9 already, the task progression display will show “11/20” which means that you have another 11 remaining enemies.