The setting of my game design will be based on RPG.
An example of the game which I will be using as my reference will be Harvest Moon : Save The Homeland. This game has most of the elements that I would like to include in my design.
Another example of application is an immersive 3d application about light pollution.
Sources
The reason why I'm doing RPG is because RPG has elements to make the game interesting and fun to play.
RPG mean role playing game, which mean player will be playing as a character in a story.
"So how do you talk to these kids? Increasingly, the answer does not seem to be television. Over the past decade we've seen toy and fizzy drink manufacturers increasingly moving their marketing online, with ever more effective interactive offerings. Public services, charities and other benevolent organisations are learning that if you really want to engage a young audience, forget the idiot box - make them a game."
" this is an impressively rich RPG in its own right. There are dozens of attacks to collect, each more effective on different types of enemy. Talking to NPCs opens up quests, just as in a standard role-playing game, and once you've completed them you earn cash which can be spent on on an array of clothing, armour and weaponry options. The inventory is impressively complex, providing a wealth of customisation possibilities, and progress is auto-saved so you can pick up the game whenever you're in front of a computer with a web browser. "
From this Source
Above link is generally talk about to purpose a game to educate kids for crossing roads.
It shows how they purpose a MMORPG to educate the children, not from television, books but from game.
Content
The content will be about water pollution. Children especially who are currently studying in primary school has best age range to be educated about pollution.
Activities regarding to monitoring the health of the water and its all about river pollution.
Link
This site has a collection of activities that regarding to water pollution and they have some program to teach kids about the water pollution.
Sources of water pollution can be found here
The image above shows one of the reason why water being polluted.
Water Quality Testing Color Card explanation
http://www.sensafe.com/PDF/487986_Color_Card.pdf
Somehow, some people claimed that mud balls can resolve river pollution problem.
Sources
Explanation regarding to effective microorganism (EM) mudballs
Sources
Look and Feel
Young ages children or children from elementary school are usually like something that are bend from reality. So I intend to make my environment not so realistic.
Found some sources
http://megamundo123.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/research-why-kids-like-cartoons/
"because they are fantastical(they are not realistic)
Kids want to see something unrealistic because they want to escape from the real world. It is a desire for kids to forget about boring things like homework and find something fun to do. They done want to watch something that continues as normal because it represents nothing out of the ordinary. the cartoons let the kids believe that their dreams can come true.
- Children are attracted to the colours and differences between the characters.
- They can see their imagination come to life.
- Characters must be really memorable.
- Magical visuals and sounds are very important.
- Kids are attracted to roundish shapes and bright colour’s.
"
It indicates that kids like something that bend from reality, such as no gravity, not real and so on.
Examples of not so realistic game environment.
Dragon Quest VIII - The style of the environment
FN Online
Harvest Moon - STH
Emotion
Emotion would be - Happy , Relaxing and Entertaining
For the game, I'm going for an environment where the target users (kids) can feel fun and happy (Colorful and Bright) when they are playing.
Base on some of my research, it indicates that young ages user are more approaches to brighter colors.
Example of colorful and bright environment - Virtual
Bright and colorful environment in real world.
"Young Children are attracted by warm, bright colors. As the child matures, preferences change from tints and pastels (elementary school) to bright medium cool colors such as green, blues, and green-blues (middle school) to darker colors (high school) such as burgundy, gray, navy, dark green, deep turquoise, and violet(Gale 1933)."
- Color in an Optimum Learning Environment by Dr. Willard R.Daggett.
http://www.leadered.com/pdf/Color%20white%20paper.pdf
Space and Form
Basically the environment design would be exterior space. The environment will cover quite a lot of places such as river, villages and so on. Somehow the environment will be combined into one for each levels. In the environment user will be portrayed as a human being who can walk around within the environment to do what ever tasks requested by NPC.
One of the examples, a small river near factory.
Overview of an environment with river beside village
Input/Output
The main input device will be gamepad which similar to Playstation. Keyboard and Mouse will be the additional options. The reason I choose Playstation controller gamepad is because most of the game RPG I played are from Sony Playstation. I find out instead of using keyboards and mouse, gamepad will be more easier to control the movement of the character when playing a game where we can move around in a huge environment with 3rd Person Camera. Left analog stick will be the joystick to control player's movement. The output of my application will be monitor.
Control
Directional / Left Analog stick button to control the movement of the character
L1 L2 / R1 R2 button to rotate the camera to left / right
Triangle, Square, Circle and Cross Button for interactions button.
Interactions
The main interaction will be proximity, where user touches or stand on a certain object or area, and press a button (example Button A), then an interaction will be triggered.
Most of the RPG has proximity interactions when user collide with certain objects.
To design my interaction, I'm going to use some example of game that I played before which has most of the similar interactions that I'm going to put in my game play design.
Example, When user touch an object...
A window will pop up.
One of important task in the game, touch and collect...
NPC Window (RPG Chat window style)
Above screenshots are from PS2 Game (Harvest Moon : Save The Homeland).
An example of task given by NPC.
NPC conversation
When task finished
Above pictures are from Dark Skies Awareness website, Source
Design Alternative (s)
Alternative 1
Space and Form
Outdoor environment that include a few of below elements:
- River (a few rivers linked to different places)
- Drainage (clean and dirty)
- Waterway near factories
- Pond
- Lake
Emotion
- Bright environment
- Colorful environment
Interaction list
- Collect Samples
- Pick up items
- Doing experiments
- Answer Questions
- Talk
- Puzzle Solving/Mini Game
- Cleaning rivers
Details
1) Player will be guided by NPC and will be doing several tasks such as ... (the interactions list above)
One of the tasks is collect a few different samples from different areas such as river beside factory and waterway, and compare the results of the experiment to determines its quality.
2) Player can interact with NPC in the environment to gather information.
Interact with a few NPC / objects in the environment to gather information. Player will be using these information to solve puzzles or quests.
3) Player will be finding the ways to resolve water pollution problem. (mud balls)
Player will be doing certain quests which requested by NPC and will find out in the end the reason of doing water pollution stuffs.
Alternative 2
Space and Form
- Village
- Deep forest/Waterfall
- Small Town
- Industrial Area
- Drain
- Bright
- Serious
- Collect Samples
- Pick up items
- Answer Questions
- Puzzle Solving/Mini Game
- Cleaning rivers
Player will start from industrial area and investigate the waterway at industrial area and get the results. After completed the tasks given, player can proceed to level 2, which is a town, player will be doing the same thing and to compare the results of investigation. After level 2, player will proceed to small village and then finally into a forest.
The reason of constructing these different environment is to let the user know about the pollution level in each different places.
Alternative 3
Space and Form
- River (beside factory)
- Drain
- Bright
- Colorful
- Talk
- Collect samples
- Puzzle Solving
- Experiments
- Answer Questions
Player will be investigate the reason of certain rivers being polluted. Player will be collecting information around and one of the player task is to solving the puzzles/quests in order to proceed to next stage. To solve puzzles, player will have to investigate and test the water quality. Hints can be found somewhere in the map.
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