Unity3 vs UDK

VS



For my entire experience in game design I've always centered around game engines. Even when I was just a wee-ol'-'Tot I was developing games in the RPGM engines. That's actually what sling-shot me into the position I'm in today.

I've had a few years experience with UDK during my college experience, even back when UDK was UT3. On the other side of this, currently where I work, we use the Unity engine. Having a good amount of experience with both engines, frequently I'm asked "Which Engine do you prefer?"

This is where this blog post will be focused, and why I decided to do another versus post.

Lets put this out first though so everyone can understand this clearly. UDK obviously has a lot more research, development, and money dumped into the engine than Unity does, so naturally, UDK is a superior engine by default. Unreal engine has been on the market for a very long time, however, Unity is fairly new in comparison. Now that we have that out of the way, let's proceed with the topic.

UDK and Unity are both very different engines, they can both achieve the same goal but go about development in very different ways for very different development teams, structures and pipelines. I could go on forever about the advantages and disadvantages of both engines, but if I did, this post would be incredibly long. So instead, I will simply state that both engines have their ups and downs. Both engines are equally powerful, but for different things.



Personally, I've found Unity to be a cleaner engine. The interface is very customizable and user friendly. UDK however seems heavier, clunkier, and a series of windows and dropdowns every way you turn. This can sometimes be unnecessarily frustrating. In UDK's defense, UDK has a LOT more options.

When asking yourself "Which engine should my team use?" you need to first ask yourself what your team mainly consists of, UDK is an engine for artists and designers. This means you can get away with not having a team of coders and still make a pretty decent game. Unity on the other hand is very flexible with code, but the key word there is code. Unity is a very code driven engine, so without a solid balance of coders on your team, you won't go very far in Unity. If your team is code heavy, you will probably find Unity to be better for your workflow.

Your next question you should ask yourself is "what kind of game is my team making?"
Unity is built for ANY kind of game type from 2D side-scrolling platformer to 3D full scale MMORPG. UDK however can make all these game types work, but mostly focuses on FPS/TPS game types. With the newer version updates to UDK, I can see they are moving away from that limitation and adding more functionality to build other types of games, this is a big bonus to the engine, but it's just not quite there yet.

So if your focus is intensely powerful graphics, and you have talented artists, you're probably better off developing in UDK. If your team consists mostly of coders, Unity is your best bet.

Reason for Absence

Hey blog followers, I just wanted to give a heads up on why I haven't been posting much recently.

I'll make this pretty short and simple, right now I'm working in the game industry. The hours are like what everyone says it is, long. On top of that, I'm also still attending college, however, I'm graduating with my Bachelors in Game Art & Design in a few weeks, hurray! So that's where my time has been, I'll have more blog entries up real soon here. My free time is steadily coming back now.

Thank you for your patience. =)

The Grind - How important is it?

It's been a little while since I posted an update, I've been busy with several projects. Slowly I'm regaining my free-time. It feels good ;)

A couple people asked me to keep my posts a little shorter so readers can keep up with the topics easier, so I'm going to try to do that for now on.

So, let's move onto the topic, The Grind.

The Grind - The duration of time over an extensively long task going from point A to point B. Usually resulting in a long, drawn out repetition of the same task. This usually spans a large majority of the time spent in an MMORPG. The most frequent grind is the EXP grind usually starting at level 1 and spans out to max level.

Imagine if the grind completely overwhelmed over 90% of a MMO's gameplay, you would continue doing the same repetition over and over for almost your entire extent of gameplay. This is a problem because if it's almost all of your gameplay, then you're not really doing much else. MMOs offer so much more to their playerbase, and the concept of an MMORPG should provide the player with much more than that if they want to stay in business.

Now imagine the complete opposite, where there is almost no grind at all, the game would feel very dull without monsters in the world to slay, or currency to collect. This would pull out an incredibly large chunk of gameplay resulting in an unfinished game. However, without this grind, if the game was successful, there would be much more that the game would provide. These are game mechanics that can reduce the repetition of tasks. The problem however is, in the standard MMORPG genre, leveling up is a staple, without much grinding, that staple would either be missing, or you would level up at an insane rate.

So if we do nothing but grind, the game will be boring, but without any grind, the game will likely lack content, or not be exciting enough to keep the attention of their playerbase. Likewise, without it the bulk of the game will also be missing and the playerbase will not stay.

The grind in an MMO is the threads that tie the game's core events together. It is what allows players to experience various exciting events, however by spacing it out, the player has more to do and will play longer.

However, the grind also provides players with much, much more. The grind gives players the ability to freely learn their character. The ability to test what works and what doesn't work for them. MMORPGs give a very large freedom of customization, the grind is the training grounds for it all. Without this time to learn their character, then they won't know what to do in group situations, where you are expected to know your class.

Also important to note, the grind is what spaces out all those abilities and nifty class mechanics that run behind the scenes. If a player was to get all their skills at once, then they would be overwhelmed with choices and likely give up too soon.

I believe what many games fail to realize is the investment of Time vs Reward concept. Some MMOs will take the grind too far, and make it take days, sometimes even weeks to level up just once, the problem with this is the rewards are far and few between, this leaves the player feeling unrewarded, theirfor making them feel as if they didn't accomplish something. For casual players this is an even larger problem, due to the fact that their time is likely to be more limited, it takes even longer than before to level up, theirfor even less sense of feeling rewarded.

This is a problem that seems to thrive in eastern games. Because of this, eastern games have earned the title of "Korean grinders", specifically, even if some of them aren't actually coming from Korea itself. Perhaps this isn't so much of a problem over there, but I do believe it should be changed simply because this isn't a nationality issue, it's simply how the human brain functions.

Game Design Statistics

A very useful census on game design statistics for anyone looking to create a new game project, know your stuff!

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf

Also I'll have a topic new post up soon, I'm currently finalizing my portfolio page which you can check out in the link below:

http://williamgamedesigner.weebly.com/

Defining Game Mechanics, what makes a game fun?

As a request, I decided to jump ahead and discuss Game Mechanics.

Game Mechanics are core features that define the game. These features are what separate the game from other games. Game mechanics highly differ depending on genre of game.

Some game mechanics often cross over from-game-to-game. These mechanics are what we call Staple Mechanics. Staple Mechanics are a good thing. They allow for players to immediately get into a game with an easier learning curve.

Game Mechanics can be anything, here are a few staple game mechanics they're seen in almost all genres:

HP Bar/Ammunition
Targeting System
Minimap
Standard movement controls (Directional, Click, or WSAD)
Story guided gameplay
Interaction/Attack function
Additional Attack/Interaction function (for more strategy)
Clutch function (Something to use on rare occasions that get you out of hard situations)

These are a couple core mechanics. They're fairly universal in almost any genre from fighting games to puzzle games.

Game Mechanics come in many different ways. Mostly game mechanics are the back-work in the game that makes it a playable experience. But also, its the strings that attach the player to the game in whatever means necessary. It could be from your interface, the fluidity of the controls, the combat design or even the interactivity found within the game itself.

Developing interesting mechanics are often difficult, the mechanics should be easy to understand, but also entertaining. Without them, the game is a lifeless, entertaining experience.

So what makes a game fun? It's the game mechanics. How do you make a game mechanic fun?

First off you need to know your audience and genre. A game mechanic designed for an older playerbase may be too complex for a younger audience. Likewise, a more simple mechanic may be uninteresting for an older audience.

While the target audience increases in age, the difficulty for the game should also equally increase. This does have a fall-off point around late 20's to mid 30's. This is due to the majority of that age ranges' reasoning to play games is typically casual short-term recreation. Where as the age range for 14 to 18 is more centered around immersible, long-term recreation. Genre doesn't particularly work hand-in-hand with age range. There are certain genres that go well with others, but for example, the Puzzle game genre is pretty much justifiable for any age range.

Once your audience and genre are established, now you can really start figuring out what game mechanics should be incorporated. All genres of games have staple mechanics. Without them the game would fall apart. For example Hack-And-Slash games, an HP bar is a staple mechanics. In a shooter game, Ammunition is a staple mechanic. In a platforming game, jump mechanics are a staple mechanic.

Once the initial staple mechanics are put in place, then you can start defining what makes the game unique to every other game in the genre.

In Super Mario 64, changing your hats to allow access to new areas was one of many mechanics set in place.
For Halo, to allow a more fast-paced, and freely short-term recklessness factor, the energy shield mechanic was implemented.
In Max Pane, bullet time was created to give the player a moment to assess the situation, and strategically find a way to get through it.
For Final Fantasy 7, the Materia system was created to give more in-depth character customization than just standard equipment upgrades.

What makes all these mechanics fun are the connection they have with the genre, none of them are necessary, but the make the game stand out and enhance the rewarding experience of the game, making it more meaningful to the player.

Because of the vast possibilities that game mechanics can have, going into each section of game mechanics would take an eternity. However it is important to know that the game mechanic should in some way, psychologically affect the player, allowing the player to have a more engaging experience, understand an objective more clearly, give the player additional options, change the difficulty of the game, or improve upon duration of gameplay. There are many other ways game mechanics can be added, but these are very important factors to this section of the game design process.

I've Been Busy

I know I havn't posted much recently, I'm still finishing up my degree and this quarter has had the three hardest classes in my degree at the same time. I will be updating more often now that this quarter is over. Some topics that have been on my mind...

-Integrating environment Design into Game Design
-Defining Game Mechanics, what makes a game fun to play?
-Overly complex controls vs simple controls.
-E3 2011
-Unity vs UDK What game engines and why?
-Linear Gameplay vs Open Ended gameplay.
-THE GRIND! How important is it?
-Trolls in the MMO community. How to solve the problem.

The Funnel System

"Hey William! Wanna try out this new MMO?"

"Nah, not really."

"Why not?"

"That's just another funnel system MMO"

"What's a Funnel System MMO?"


What is a Funnel System MMO you may ask? Funnel System MMOs are MMOs that follow a typical formula, most popular MMO titles use the Funnel System because it's the most basic style of MMOs development. The reason for this is because it's the traditional gaming system derived from the game systems before video games were even developed. Most of this stems off the traditional systems of Dungeons & Dragons, there's no denying that. After that this system was also used in most traditional RPGs and then was tweaked into what we refer to today as the funnel system, specifically defined to describe the gameplay experience in a traditional MMO.

So what the heck is it? The Funnel System is a way to describe your path of gameplay through an MMO. From the very beginning to the very end. The Funnel System also describes where a majority of the players are in perspective of the entire gaming community of one individual MMO. So here it is:
























What are some advantages we may see with this system? Well, to begin with, we see that from the beginning the player is continually engaging in new activities along the way, and the deeper into gameplay they go, the more exciting the experience is. (Hence why Raiding is at the very bottom.) This is because only the most diehard players of the community, after working hard get to be rewarded with the ultimate challenge of Raiding. Also, for those who tire of artificial intelligence, most people hold off on Player vs Player interaction until the very end. Many people feel that the most deadly enemy is another player, therefor, players at max level are on equal ground and all classes/archetypes should be balanced at this point.

The most successful MMOs have defined the genre with this system (A prime example, World of Warcraft), and if a player wants to play this style, then they'll play the MMO that did it best, logically speaking. So if so many MMOs use this system and it works great, hence why so many successful MMOs use it, then what's the problem?

There's a lot of problems with it. To begin with, lets use World of Warcraft, for example; The level cap (currently) is 85. The Funnel System is designed to push the player to max level to enjoy the new content. Well, when the content is complete, then what? Wait until next expansion pretty much. So this leaves players re-rolling and repeating the same motions on a new character. If the gameplay was immersive the first time, then that wouldn't be an issue. If the final stages of the gameplay were extensive enough to keep the player's attention until the next expansion, and continue the process again, that also wouldn't be an issue. When rerolling several times, the goal is to get back to the final level the fastest way possible (this often happens with twinking for a more enjoyable, and less tedious experience), but only to do the same rutine all over again on a new character. The same raids, but possibly with a different role.

Considering any time around after the first one is typically faster with a goal intended, most of the levels before the last one are, in fact, irrelevant. The reason why I call the levels irrelevant is because no matter what for you do, or how you do them, you still achieve max level all the same.
Hmm, 85 levels, and 84 of them are irrelevant... That's a lot of unnecessary filler gameplay if all that matters is the final level. For the most part, this is true! That's the main reason why the funnel system is bad.

The other problem you fall into is the lack of things to do. In a standard MMO at max level you typically have the following things to do:

Gear up
Get money
Raid
Craft
PVP
Help Friends
Quest (Ussually Daily quests)

Some MMOs have understood the funnel system and have implemented things to add some flavor to the mix.

World of Warcraft implimented phasing technology into their game. This is probably one of the best methods any MMO has ever done to both add diversity to questing, and divert the player away from grinding simply to gain EXP or loot. The phasing technology allowed access to a variety of things by overlapping new sections of the game, this included things such as gatherable nodes, vendors/quartermasters, flight paths and new most importantly, quests that opened up to move to the next section of the phase. Sometimes, completing phase quests was necessary for opening up endgame content.

The new game Rifts designed an interesting twist to the gameplay and it's one of the games most iconic features, the rifts! (Obviously.) Rifts designed periodic enemy invasions to happen all around the world and these invasions could wipe out cities which held a majority of the quest NPCs and vendors. So if you neglected to do the rifts, your towns would be destroyed and your quests won't be completed until the town is saved.

As much as people hated the game, Final Fantasy XI steered away from the funnel system as much as possible. People who played entirely through the funnel system were typically the people who enjoyed the title the least and is the major reason why there is so much negative feedback toward the game. Final Fantasy XI did not focus entirely on endgame being the center of the gameplay. Instead, they developed challenges you had to accomplish along the way.

These challenges were called Limit breaks, and without a max level player running the player through a majority of the quests, they were extremely difficult. Limit breaks disabled your player from leveling forward until the quest was completed, and these quests happened every 5 levels after the 50th level. other challenges that would greatly benefit your gameplay if the player chooses. A prime example of this was called Artifact gear. Artifact gear was the iconic gear sets for every class, the gear for the most part, provided critical stats that were almost necessary even at max level.

Lastly, the most unique part about Final Fantasy XI's anti-funnel system gameplay was your inability to progress into endgame without completing the storylines for each expansion pack. Example: If you did not complete Chains of Promathia, you could not raid Sea and/or Limbus endgame content. These quests were nothing like typical MMO quests (go kill x amount of x monster), but instead, were designed with a story in mind first, and then gameplay second. With that in mind, the storyline was your driving motivation to progress typically. The cutscenes demonstrated frequently through questing was the cornerstone of the gameplay style and almost forced the player to care about what's going on, instead of blindingly clicking through quest dialog and moving on. Secondly the quest objectives were intensely difficult, even at max level, up until recently, most expansion quests were incredibly difficult and required a full group (sometimes even an alliance!) of people to complete a single section of the quest.

With all this gameplay, most of it had no real relevance on your level, and had more to do with your usefulness to the group and your ability to cooperate with others. This brings me to my last reason why the Funnel System is terrible.

With the Funnel System, achieving max level is typically not difficult, and certain MMOs give you abilities to speed through the levels through certain advantages. Jade Dynasty, you can level simply by meditating in town. World of Warcraft rewards you with rested EXP your character resides in town. Aion and many other MMOs give players Double EXP weekends. All with the intent to progress the character to max level, as if this is really the problem.

The biggest problem with this module is by progressing through the game so easily, the player is more likely to do it all over quickly if desired on a brand new character. This becomes a serious problem with rude players. Rude players are able to abuse the system and do whatever the hell they want with no more than a slap on the wrist.

Steal loot at a raid, your account gets banned, re-roll and in two weeks you're back up to the top like it never happened. Most of the time players already have multiple players at max level and it's not even a problem, only a minor setback. Likewise, even if they don't get banned, if their character name becomes down as a bad player, they simply play a different character and hide from the problem until it passes. No consequence.

This level of negativity becomes a very serious issue and makes gaming for good, polite players, problematic and unenjoyable. Studies show that about 20-30% of an MMO playerbase evidently quits an MMO due to drama-related issues. Things such as a guilds or clans splitting, harassment issues, demotivational actions from other players and so fourth.

Looking back as Final Fantasy XI, the anti-funnel system MMO, the player community is significantly more social, and positive than other MMOs, this is because the morality system put in place by basic human judgment. If a player is bad and you know he's bad, typically you won't play with them. Considering the difficulty of leveling from the beginning in Final Fantasy XI, and the shear volume of required objectives to achieve before max level, very rarely does a player re-roll a new character. This is also solved with the ability to be any job in the game on the same character by job changing in your designated mog house.

There's no reason to re-roll, for most people, if they were banned for bad behavior they would simply quit instead of restart. This weeded out most of the negative players in the game and allowed a more enjoyable experience for polite players.


So now you know what the Funnel System is, it's positives and negatives in the MMO industry. If you notice, many new MMOs are developing new systems that make the game more dynamic outside of the funnel system. I can only hope that a lot of these systems happen pre-max level so the game is just as enjoyable before max level as it is at the end.