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System Design for Competitive Games: Final Review

A game with systems from MOBAs and First Person Shooters

What goes into a turret?

Austo-Biography

  • Turrets differentiate between friends and enemies
  • Totally modular - change everything with public variables
  • Design decisions based on team fights and team spacing
  • Don't sweat the small stuff
  • Born in Los Angeles April 13, 1990
  • Grew up in and Around New Orleans
  • Played the Alto and Baritone Saxophone throughout high school
  • I always wanted to make games, but I wanted to understand games and they why of what we do what we do
  • Studied Fine Arts and Music Composition at Loyola University New Orleans
  • Moved to San Francisco to study game design.
  • Takes Light saber combat and stage fighting choreography classes
  • Really, really, really good-looking

Thesis Proposal

Included a team from outside the school

Thesis Actual

  • One Multiplayer level
  • Turret Systems
  • Game Mode
  • 5 characters with varying stats and abilities
  • Thesis Journal
  • 2 Game Design Documents
  • Flowcharts and process, including troubleshooting
  • Deliverable List
  • FPS-MOBA mashup Executable, including
  • Detailed Level Map
  • 8 Characters
  • Items system
  • Pre-production Art and High-Level Design
  • Concept art
  • Character Sketches
  • Level Design
  • System graphs
  • UI layout
  • Item ideas
  • Process work
  • Screenshots through progression
  • Blog, showing the process and updated with art, screenshots, and video
  • Postmortem paper, explaining the process and what was achieved and learned through the thesis.

Don't focus on the size of these lists. Focus on the design, implementation, and problem-solving

Designing a game mode

Problems that I worked through

Epic Characters in an Epic engine

  • Rules of a MOBA, speed of CS:GO
  • Football-like strategy
  • Limiting time away from the action to level up and buy items
  • One size fits all - lack of character models means they're actually all the same character, with different stats and abilities.
  • Modularity is key - how easy is it to make changes as the game emerges?
  • One character, ten players - making sure every one has different stats and they are replicated properly.
  • Feedback is king, not content.

Reasons for my system

  • Shorter rounds
  • Leveling between rounds keeps players on a more even playing field
  • Waiting for enough players is easier than matchmaking systems - allowed faster implementation

Problems and work-arounds

Digging deeper - How Multiplayer works

  • Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) vs Replication
  • Game Mode vs. Game State
  • Client - to - Server: Running up a waterfall of information
  • What is important to everyone / your team / just you
  • Networking, Replication, Client & Server Dialogue
  • Design transcends engine - Engine changes and starting from scratch
  • Design vs. Implementation
  • Anything can be fun, but it needs feedback to tell the player its fun / satisfying
  • Beyond my scope: Finding my pillars: Game Mode, Turrets, and Characters
  • Completely scrapped the store, items, and leveling.
  • Multiplayer level design between genres.
  • There's always a bug
  • Get character controller
  • Firing a gun
  • UI - one for all, all for one
  • Break the player's expectations

Engine troubles

(Don't) Break the MOBA - Level Design

Process in problem-solving

  • Unity 4 was lacks network infrastructure
  • Bogged down by programming back-end networking and package management
  • Became zoned in on cool programming tricks
  • Lost track of the true purpose of thesis: to make a game.
  • Get stuck
  • Research Problem
  • Do something else and think
  • Come up with 2-3 different solutions to solve the problem
  • Rank them based on fastest to implement and most likely to succeed
  • Repeat until solved

Game Design Document

Thank gawd

Unreal 4

  • Players of MOBAs expect certain things
  • Are FPS games much different?
  • Short, Medium Long game
  • COD - Short-to-Medium
  • De_Dust2 (CS:GO) - All 3
  • MOBAs - Terrain-ignoring long game & more condensed range variation
  • Blueprint for easy scripting and debugging
  • Native client-server infrastructure
  • Less Programming, more Designing

AND THEN....

Blueprint example

  • Two versions
  • 1st - ELI5
  • 2nd - Technical

MOBA Competitive Map

CS: GO Competitive Map

My Map

  • All maps held to the standard of De_Dust2
  • Greater overlap of ranges
  • 2 general tactics that require teamwork when they fall apart/come against the opposing team
  • http://steamed.kotaku.com/why-counter-strikes-best-map-is-also-a-big-problem-1695588704
  • Singular, because they're all the same
  • 3 lanes, 11 turrets per team
  • "Jungle" between lanes is a small maze
  • Hard rules on player class - lane relationship
  • Little deviation on strategy

What's in a (genre) name?

Level Analysis

Lessons from jumping in the deep end

  • Working alone is lonely. And it means you have way more work to do. You would be surprised all the little things that break your schedule.
  • Balancing - Money, EXP, abilities, damage, health, cooldown times, speed, jump height, firing speed. Spreadsheets and graphs have become my friend.
  • Blueprint and C# skills have been honed.
  • Level design skills for competition and multiplayer.
  • It's not pretty, but that is art's job. I made it fun.
  • And it makes my resume look pretty good, too!

FPS

  • Player input and camera location
  • Fast-paced gameplay
  • Immediate feedback to the player

MOBAs

  • Persistant characters
  • Characters with iconic and varying abilities
  • Characters with specific roles or gameplay style
  • Necessity of team structure, tactics, and player roles

Project by Austin C. Heck

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