The end of the road.

Here are some of the pictures of when they level one students were playtesting our game!

An effective hitpoint tracker.

This was discussed as a group several times, and several ideas came up with these discussions. How would we keep track of hitpoints without the need of a calculator or other tools? To make it simple for the player and not something they need to worry about.
The first step to solve that was simple - remove numbers! We instead would use something else, again this brought up another series of discussions. What would we use?
We thought of pins that you could stick in a foam/cork-like material, or sliders perhaps.
After all these discussions we ended up on hearts. And even further, to split these hearts in half so that things were easily to calculate, it wouldn't be 20-3.5 etc, instead just simply taking out half hearts, which would be clearly indicated by the ability cards.
Now the next problem, how would we present these? Would they be flimsy paper hearts that players could accidently rip, by just taking hearts out when they lose hitpoints, would we use a container for them?
Luckily one of our members Dan had an idea that we could use Velcro, and even luckier, he had some at home!
They were circular Velcro pieces, we stuck on a whole heart to each circle, then cut around the hearts and split them in two.
This worked great, it was so simple and effective the players never had to think twice about how many hitpoints they had left or how many they gained.

The Board

We wanted a simple grid for our board game, with a simple yet nice looking design underneath the grid.
I did this in photoshop as a 50x50cm document. Unfortunately we could only print in A3, so I had to crop four separate A3 sized documents, so that they could be printed out and then stuck onto the foam board by Daniel. I had to make sure it was seamingless and you couldn't tell that it was 4 separate pieces but only 1, so I had to make sure the dimensions were perfect.
This is how our board looked in the end, with our logo towards the bottom right.

The Cards

I was designated to make the ability cards for our board game, so I basically had to pick one template that we would use for a total of 24 cards.
Originally I was going to make the template, and my group member Conor was going to draw in a brief visual explanation of the ability using a tablet. We tried this and we found it harder and it didn't work as well. We wanted them to be simple as we had to do 24 of them and wouldn't have time to make masterpieces for each of them.
So we decided that we would print and mount all the cards, and then Conor would draw on them using pencil, and then finally in pen.
This is an example of how a few of our cards looked like.

The Sculpture.

Each member of the group had to produce a sculpture that is a replica of the designs that they had previously made for the summer-project.
We had to use something called Green Stuff, a form of epoxy putty.
The first step was building the 'skeleton' so to say, out of wire, so that the putty would stay in place and we could build forms easier. This was done by bending and twisting wires and sticking it into a cork.
Next we had to build the legs/torso.
I had no experience in sculpting before so I found this probably the hardest part of the project as a whole. Hopefully I'll improve if we have any future projects that involve sculpting.
Building the torso and legs was the easiest part, by just putting putty on piece by piece and molding the basic shape of a torso. Then things got a little complicated as we had to do the head and arms.
I started the head on a toothpick, started by pinching in the nose and then using tools to mold in the rest of the face.

The one-hit wonder!

So, we really wanted to incorporate some RNG into our game, and it would be best with the big ultimate cards that each character had.

I'll be explaining one of the cards specifically, which was from my character - Assassinate.
Originally it did x amount of damage, with a chance to inflict a cripple, this for an ultimately was extremely mundane and boring. We really wanted a risk element in our game, so we tried to achieve this, and Assassinate was our first test.

Firstly we changed it so it would do no fixed damage at all. Instead you nominate a number out of 6-sided dice, and the opponent you use this ability on has to nominate a number too. If you get that 1/6 chance and get your number - you instantly kill the opponent, and if they get the nominated number they chose, they again roll the dice to decide how many hearts you lose, which is up to 6 (which is 60% of your life - alot!).
Lastly if the dice rolled on the 4/6 numbers both of you didn't pick - nothing would happen. But without a penalty and the ability to use this constantly to gamble lives, especially with a chance you can survive if the opponent rolls a 1 for example, we had to balance this out so it wasn't rendered 'overpowered'. We made this ability a 'once-in-the-game' card, so it really was a risk card and you don't just charge out and try to use it as soon as possible, which is something we wanted to get rid of as explained in my last post.

We changed other ultimates too so that they too would have a similar RNG experience, although not as risky and noteworthy as Assassinate.

A change-up in mechanics

So originally we had planned to have two separate specialisations for each player/character, which would be, the attack class, either melee, or ranged, and then a utility specialisation, for skills that wouldn't be solely based on the damage done and how efficient it is to inflict that damage. It was more of a semi-support role.
After playing the game in its very early stages we decided that the utility specialisation was rendered completely useless, all four of us played the attack roles and that made the game rather boring too, as it was just, get to the opponent, and hit, hit and hit.
This led us to the decision of instead of having two separate specialisations, the 3 skills that each character had could be mix and matched, much like a form of talent trees. This meant that a player could have 2 utility spells, and one attack, or vice-versa, this gave the game a lot more strategy in itself because there would be more variety in the abilities used and it wouldn't just be a case of running forward and hitting the opponent for the remainder of the game.
We felt this was essential and I think this works perfectly with our game, giving a lot more stability and more of a fun-factor.

Progressing my character

Initially when I created my character, I had no idea that one, we had to make a board game using this character, so my character wasn't exactly built to fight, and two, that we had to sculpt this character, and again, my character would be too plain if it was to be sculpted the way it was originally.

This was my original character design.

So to better suit the conditions of the project I had to make essential changes to my character. One important factor was that he had no gear, so I decided to give him a sword strap that wraps around his torso diagonally.
Then even further I wanted to bulk him up so that he actually looked capable of putting up a fight rather than being a flimsy guy with a sword.

Establishing rules and mechanics.

So with four members in our group, we decided that our game would be a 2v2 strategy game. The aim would be to eliminate the opposing team.
My character is the slender-assassin type, so naturally it would be a melee dps. Same with Conor's character.
Jacks character had a shotgun, and Daniels character had a crossbow, this worked out perfectly because both teams would have a melee and a ranged dps.

We started to elaborate on the skills we would have for each character and decided as balanced as the game would be with the teams with one of each spec. we would further need a additional speciality to make the game have an actual element of skill and strategy rather than the all out battle it would be with all four characters being damage dealers.
So we added a utility speciality to each of the characters. This speciality would include abilities that had a 'utility' as the name suggests, with much less damage dealt. This included things like cripples and blinds.

 There would need to be a skill that could be used on every single turn, this would be the basic attack, or the basic utility/disable spell. We also needed more abilities that would be more powerful, and because they're more powerful they would need to be limited. We decided that they would have round-based cooldowns to act as that limit for the abilities. They're four turns in one round. The second ability would have a 3 round cooldown which amounts to 12 turns, and the third ability would have a 5 round cooldown which would amount to 20 turns in total.

The third ability would be the 'ultimate' skill and we want it to be used strategically rather than using it straight away so it comes off cooldown ready for the next 5 rounds. We thought of adding a RNG element to the third skills, so there would be a set amount of damage and then an additional effect thats based on a dice roll or some other randomiser.

We did want some kind of 'one-shot' ability that would have an extremely low chance, and have something bad happen to you if you do not get that chance, but we didn't use that in the end.

Randomisers

Randomisers are a essential part of certain games, the ability to have a input with a certain amount of outcomes, with that outcome being completely random.

Opposed to randomisers they're things that are uncertain - but not random, a prime example of this is Chess, nothing in Chess is random, it's all calculated, but your opponents moves are what makes this game uncertain.

We were asked to bring in a randomiser and conduct certain experiments to gain statistics for them.

I brought in a 6-Sided Dice and in a group we rolled it 100 times. 

The results were as follows:

1- 19%

2- 18%

3- 15%

4- 18%

5- 16%

6- 14%

As you can see the results were completely random, but since it is a 1/6 chance for each of the dice numbers it still remains somewhat even.
To add another element to this we incorporated the 'hit chance' mechanic and using our randomisers we had to figure out how to use them for this mechanic.

We decided that if you roll both dice , and it is a odd number you would miss, and even, hit. Furthmore we went even more advanced and thought about what would happen if you increase or decrease the hit chance, for example, if there was a 75% chance to hit you would have to hit anything over 3, or anything under 9.

As a group we started to think ahead and about the game we would be making, and how certain classes would respond to different hit chances, we wanted to incorporate a modern day combat triangle, meaning the warrior, mage and archer system. Certain classes would be stronger against other certain classes, and likewise, weaker against certain classes, this could be reflected in the percent of hit chance. Another mechanic we thought would be fun is if you hit double of a number on both dice, for example two 2's, you would crit, which would result in 100% more damage, therefore 8 damage. We also had to keep in mind a rough idea how our level would look and how it would interact with the classes, for example, archers can't exactly hit at melee range, just like melee wouldn't be able to hit at a range.
The list of mechanics that we could incorporate are endless, examples are:

• Weapons, to increase hit chance or increase armour
• 'Pick up a card' squares on the level that would include things like, natural events, that could aid or make things harder for the team, buffs that would last a certain amount of moves to increase hit, armour, critical chance, etc.
• Allowing classes to only move a specific way, and hit a specific way too, much like the chess mechanic.