Journal article: Designing Game Feel

 

Designing Game Feel

    This journal article aims to describe how to achieve the subjective effect of players' satisfaction during gameplay. This effect is called immersion. 

According to this text, M. Pichlmair and M. Johansen (2022) "While games are multisensory experiences, we are focusing on the haptic and visual aspects of game feel in this article, aware that narrative content, music, art, and many other aspects of a game influence how it feels." 

The task of game developers is to create a consistent product - a video game. That means gameplay, graphic style, story, music, and everything else together must form a coherent game world. That makes the game addictive and the player is rather staying with the game longer. Otherwise, that can destroy that feeling of immersion.

According to the article, M. Pichlmair and M. Johansen (2022) "The logical starting point for defining what “game feel” means is the book of the same name by Steve Swink, who defines it as “real-time control of virtual objects in a simulated space, with interactions emphasized by polish” [1]. He further expands on that definition by stating that great-feeling games convey five kinds of experiences, which are as follows:

• the aesthetic sensation of control;
• the pleasure of learning, practicing, and mastering a skill;
• extension of the senses;
• extension of identity;
• interaction with a unique physical reality within the game."

Some games are cheating players. For example, many platform games add invisible extensions to the platforms. that prevents players to fall into the abyss. Normally the personification should fall, however, it is a good game design practice to give the player a second chance. Another example, is in shooter games enemies, especially the hidden ones or the outside of the player's field of view. will miss the shot to make the player pay attention and give another chance. Those developers' small cheats make games more satisfying and more playable.

References:

M. Pichlmair and M. Johansen, (June 2022) "Designing Game Feel: A Survey," in IEEE Transactions on Games, https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.proxy.library.dmu.ac.uk/document/9399794 ( Accessed 7 December 2022 )

Software example - Unreal Engine

 Unreal Engine

    UE is on the top of high-end engines, available on the market. It is the best solution to create a game using the newest technologies such as real-time ray tracing using RTX cores. It is ideal to create a first or third-person game. The first time it was used in the game named Unreal was in 1998.

    Unreal Engine allows you to render photorealistic graphics in real time.

    It is implemented in the most popular programming language C++. You can create a game using the blueprints mode that makes complicated projects easier to manage. 

    Unreal Engine created hundreds of games on many platforms. Great for big projects with big budgets, however for a small team or single game developers is way too complicated. A huge amount of functionalities may be overwhelming for beginners. The engine is expandable, so programmers can add their own libraries to extend functionalities.

My Review

Unreal Engine receives 9/10.

Pros:

• great for AAA games
• the most powerful IDE for game developers
• expandable engine
• C++

Cons:

• too complicated for beginners

References:

• Adams, E. (2014). Fundamentals of game design (Third Edition). Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

Game Developing Diagram 2

 

Created in draw.io

The diagram shows how complicated is game developing. The process of creating a game needs to combine technology and art.

Software overview: Evaluation - Game Maker Studio 2

Game Maker Studio 2

    GMS is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) platform for video game developers. It is perfect for small independent studios or single developers. This game engine is ideal for beginners.

    We can use GMS in two modes: Drag and Drop or regular programming. DND is a good choice for somebody who whats to learn how it works and create simple games.

    Programming mode is recommended for most programmers. Game Maker Studio has its own programming language, which is simple to learn, GML (Game Maker Language) is made for programming games and it is based on Java and C++. There are no useless functions, no technical things, and everything is meant to develop games. Easy to learn, there is great manual, just hit F1. In the manual there is every function or command in GML well explained.

    Game Maker has its limitations. It is created to develop 2D games, especially those low-resolution pixel art games. high-resolution sprites are very memory-consuming. RAM requirements rise exponentially to the resolution of bitmaps. So that may good engine for retro games. GMS allows developer to compile games on many platforms such as Windows, Linux, MacOS, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, and OperaGX.

    It is possible to write a 3D game, however, the rendering engine is simple, lighting system is basic. If you want to create a 90s stylized game, that is possible however the project aims for photorealistic graphics think about Unreal Engine ( new post soon! ).

Example:

Code for object obj_player allows move in 4 directions:

if keyboard_check_pressed(arrow_up)==true

{

    //player moves up

    y--

}

else if keyboard_check_pressed(arrow_down)==true

{

    //player moves up

    y+

}

if keyboard_check_pressed(arrow_left)==true

{

    //player moves left

    x--

}

else if keyboard_check_pressed(arrow_right)==true

{

    //player moves right

    x++

}

Review

As my review this program receive 9/10:

Pros:

• simple to learn
• great for pixelart or simple games
• free

Cons:

• engine limitations
• poor 3d support

References:

• Adams, E. (2014). Fundamentals of game design (Third Edition). Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

• YoYo Games LTD, (2022), GameMaker Manual. . Available at: https://manual.yoyogames.com/ (Accessed: November 1, 2022).

Analysis of results

I asked DMU students to take part in this questionnaire. 

Demographic analysis

Most of the people are males (86%) aged 10-17 (28.6%) and 17-26 (28.6%). 

The majority (66.7%) live in the UK for less than 5 years.

Technology and Entertainment 

A big part of the testing group is mostly active gamers (71.6%). According to the age group, the majority are less than 30 years old, and the results are not surprising.

IT questions

Most people describe themself as IT people and they are students.

Software

The majority know at least one programming language. The most popular is C++ (60%).
In second place C#, Python, GML (40%).

In third place are PHP, and JavaScript (20%).

Most people know well Adobe Photoshop (60%).

Second place: Corel Draw and Microsoft Paint (40%).

The last one: Blender (20%)