Grant Agreement No. 687676 Innovation Action ICT-20-2015 D3.5 Game Design Document Due date Month 12 Actual date Month 12 Deliverable author(s) Laurent Auneau Partner(s) Succubus Interactive Version 1.0 Status Draft Dissemination level Public Project Coordinator Coventry University Sylvester Arnab Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB, UK E-mail: [email protected] Project website: http://www.beaconing.eu This project has received funding under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union – Grant Agreement No. 687676 D3.5 Game Design Document Version control Version Date Author Institution Change and where applicable reason for change 0.1 12/12/16 Laurent Auneau Succubus 0.4 13/12/16 Laurent Auneau Succubus Merged Geomotion’s review 0.5 22/12/16 Laurent Auneau Succubus Merged Imaginary’s review 1.0 30/12/16 Laurent Auneau Succubus Merged Sebit’s review 1.1 31/12/16 Jayne Beaufoy COVUNI Language check and Abrv. table Quality control QA Date QA Responsible Institution Change and where applicable Version reason for change 0.5_Sebit 23/12/2016 A.M. Turker SEBIT See track changes 1.1 31/12/2016 Ioana Stefan, Antoniu ATS See track changes Stefan Release approval Version Date Name Institution Role 1.1 31/12/2016 Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge BIBA QM Statement of originality This deliverable contains original unpublished work except where clearly indicated otherwise. Acknowledgement of previously published material and of the work of others has been made through appropriate citation, quotation or both. BEACONING Page 2 of 22 D3.5 Game Design Document TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................... 5 1 INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 6 1.1 BACKGROUND .................................................................................................................................. 6 1.2 ROLE OF THIS DELIVERABLE IN THE PROJECT ........................................................................................... 6 1.3 STRUCTURE OF THE DOCUMENT ........................................................................................................... 6 2 RUNTIME COMPONENTS ........................................................................................................... 7 2.1 GAME ENGINE .................................................................................................................................. 7 2.1.1 3D isometric view .................................................................................................................... 7 2.1.2 Close-up dialogs ....................................................................................................................... 8 2.1.3 Inventory .................................................................................................................................. 8 2.2 MINI-GAMES ................................................................................................................................... 9 2.3 CONTEXT AWARE CHALLENGES .......................................................................................................... 11 3 CREATION PIPELINE ................................................................................................................. 13 3.1 THE VAULT ..................................................................................................................................... 13 3.2 GAME PLOTS.................................................................................................................................. 14 3.2.1 Plot example – Liberate Ocean Springs ................................................................................. 14 3.2.2 Plot editor .............................................................................................................................. 15 3.3 MINI-GAMES.................................................................................................................................. 16 4 CUSTOMIZATION .................................................................................................................... 18 4.1 APPROACH..................................................................................................................................... 18 4.2 EXAMPLE ....................................................................................................................................... 19 5 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................... 21 APPENDIX: DEFINITIONS OF TERMS ................................................................................................. 22 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: In game mock-up ................................................................................................................ 7 Figure 2: Close-up dialog ................................................................................................................... 8 Figure 3: Word-o-copter mock-up ....................................................................................................... 9 Figure 4: Type of location-based challenges ...................................................................................... 11 Figure 5: Generic Scenario Editor ...................................................................................................... 15 Figure 6: High level logical diagram .................................................................................................. 17 Figure 7: Content creation pipeline .................................................................................................. 18 BEACONING Page 3 of 22 D3.5 Game Design Document LIST OF ABBRIVATIONS Abrv. Description API Application Programming Interface FTUE First Time User Experience NPC Non-Player Characters POI Point of Interest STEM Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics BEACONING Page 4 of 22 D3.5 Game Design Document EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The BEACONING platform is a learning environment supporting interaction among its different users, made of multiple layers, where multiple users can log in: teachers to customize scenarios, give access to them, and exploit the analytics reports about competencies developed; students to pervasively play these scenarios, with procedural adaptation support for disabilities; and authors, such as learning designers and game designers, to create new scenarios. The present document does not take into consideration the gamification, social and analytics layers of the platform, but rather focuses on the "game" part, more precisely how scenarios are created, and what players can expect. Therefore, this document describes what happens when a student launches a scenario, and how the authoring pipeline allows a sequence of multiple different authors to collaborate sequentially and create such a scenario. Players Students can log into the platform, access their list of available scenarios, and launch a selected one to try it for the first time or to continue it. These scenarios are made of a succession of “point and click” game scenes, dialogs with non-player characters, and activities such as quiz like mini-games and context-aware challenges. Learning can happen at any level and any moment in this experience, as, from the player’s point of view, the learning content is intertwined with the gaming content in all different phases of the scenario. Authors As a simple example, the creation process of a new lesson-path could be done this way: 1. A learning designer logs into (the authoring part of) the platform; 2. They create a new lesson-path entry; 3. Using the authoring tool, they define what kind of educational content will be delivered in their course by creating their own lesson-path; 4. They browse a gallery and choose a ready-made game plot backbone that they consider fit for purpose; 5. They pick from another gallery multiple mini-games that will help to make their lesson-path more engaging; 6. They customize the content of the plot and of these mini-games; 7. They save their work on the platform, and let all the teachers access and use their work for their students. To be able to provide such an authoring flow, the BEACONING platform relies on a few key concepts: "The vault" is a back-office repository containing all the narrative elements. A specific tool is able to access and combine these elements, so that game designer can use them to create an engaging gaming experience; Using this tool (the Plot Editor), along with a defined API for mini-games and a dedicated authoring tool for lesson-paths, all types of authors around the world will be able to contribute to the platform; Finally, a last customization step ensures that the experience given to the player answers to the expectations of the teacher, without losing the previous work done along the authoring chain (game scenario author, lesson-path author). BEACONING Page 5 of 22 D3.5 Game Design Document 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND The BEACONING platform will present a game experience to its end users, and for this the consortium bases its approach on existing capacities from its partners. On the gaming side, there are the already existing technologies that are going to be adapted: the 3D isometric adventure game engine from Succubus; the generic Scenario Editor from Succubus; the client and server-side