Welcome back!

I didn't want there to be three themes for this semester's jam, but fortunately I came up with a concept early on that easily fits all 3 topics. The winning topics were Malware, Cave Delving, and Speedrun.

- The Concept -

I have some mini-goals in mind long before the game jam for this semester was announced. For this game jam I wanted to either a) implement voice acting (probably not happening this semester), b) make actually good sound design (maybe?), c) multiplayer! ( ;] ). So my secret objective for this semester is to make a multiplayer game. And I don't want just a 2 or 3 player multiplayer, I really want to challenge my net-code abilities and make a massively multiplayer type game (not with a persistent world, more-so that the game scales easily to large amounts of players).

With this extra objective involved that limited the types of games I could make quite a bit, but malware actually provided a very convenient way of implementing a highly variable multiplayer system by way of the players being part of a bot-net. The other thing I realized was that in order not to go broke due to server fees, I'm going to have to make the implementation super light-weight. That especially handicaps me in rate of data syncing. So I can't do a game where you see all the players moving around, and important interactions have to be discrete. That narrows gameplay down to primarily point and click. Originally I only voted for cave delving  and malware, because I thought cave delving was an interesting topic (not with anything in mind yet), but thinking about the core experience of cave-delving (exploring narrow caverns with limited visibility, and not having a clear idea of the extent of the system) I immediately though of the cavernous file system on my own computer.

As a whole the game will feature players exploring the same file tree generated deterministically from a seed (to reduce the amount of information I have to transfer about the content of the system). In this system there will be objectives scatter around in the form of files which will determine the points the players earn. Even before speedrun was involved as a topic I was already planning to add a limited timer (since the goal would be to present this in a 15 minute live play-session during the final showcase), so to borrow a gameplay loop from Sands of Time, there will be a overall timer that is constantly counting down (represented by a corrupting System32), that one of the resources you can gather will be "data" which will "stabilize" the system (will add more time).

- Core Systems -

1. File System -> The foundation of the game. The player need to be able to open and close folders and move and interact with files

2. Audio -> I would like to start working on integrating an immersive sound system early on, but how complex I make it isn't finalized

3. Delving -> The actual fun of the game. Makes exploring the file system feel like cave delving, keeps track of where you came from and adds risk to how you explore.

4. Collection -> certain special files won't be collected just by clicking on them, some files when clicked will only be "hyperlinked" to the player. In order to collect these items the player needs to safely make it to the top level directory.

5. Netcode -> Yippee! everyone's favorite thing to code. This will take a lot of time to work on and make efficient, but its important to implement relatively early so that gameplay testing is relatively complete

~By this point in the core systems the games minimum viable product should be complete, but there are still more systems I want to implement if time allows~

6. Tutorial -> For a game that's supposed to be very accessible, but at the same time has some complex systems planned, a tutorial will be very necessary. The plan is to make a longer more in depth tutorial accessible from the main menu, but when joining a game there will be a very quick tutorial that explains the basics. Including good objectives and tool tips in game will also be very helpful.

7. Documents -> To make the file system more interesting I would like to add different top level directories with unique gameplay loops. The Documents folder would let you read text documents that have different key words that can be used to gain value ("blackmail") that the player has to identify and click on.

8. Pictures -> This would be another rather involved design process. I would like to generate random pieces of "art" or photos taken by the user that the player can view and then there could be a Captcha style minigame to identify objects in the pictures.

9. Puzzles -> To incentivize travelling all around the file system rather than staying in one place I would make a global puzzle system that adds clues into the generation of photos and documents. These clues would then need to be collected to unlock certain locked folders that hold lots of high value files.

10. Applications -> These would be in a folder without much depth (but could have app data sub directories), but would essentially just be little minigames people who don't want to explore but still want to contribute can play to harvest value.

11. Internet -> This would significantly alter a lot of the gameplay. The internet would not only provide another (albeit shallower but wider) file system like structure, it would also host a shop that would allow value to be used on various upgrades.

- Art -

The plan for the art for the game is to have anything related to the malware be pixelated, which I'm hoping to aid with the inclusion of a corrupted pixel shader of some sort. Meanwhile, everything that is system UI related will be clean, crisp vector art. If I get to the pictures directory all of that art will be hand drawn.

I try to do something interesting with art for every game I make, but I'm really running out of digital art techniques, so mixing multiple art styles together is the best I can come up with.

- Misc. Design Philosophy -

In general one of the hurdles that I have been thinking about is how to make a massive multiplayer game fun that people are only likely to only play once. This means that If I want to have complex systems, most players will never have enough time with them to learn their full depth. I'm planning to use a lot of visual language that most experienced gamers would intuitively understand, but I can't expect that to be the same for everyone. This is why I'm building systems will multiple layers, so that there is something for everyone no matter their experience level.

Inexperienced players will likely be able to understand the simple action of clicking through the file system and clicking on shiny looking files, I was originally planning to have the data files only actually give their time benefits if you were able to carry them to the top level directory, but considering the inexperienced players, the data files will now give a little time just for clicking them, but will only give their full value for taking them to the top directory. For moderate players I have systems designed like the collections and delving systems, where there are strategic ways to move around the file tree to maximize value, but their still isn't anything that will force you to think long term or about the overall game strategy. Finally for the true gamers, systems like the puzzle system and the documents and pictures directories would provide more advanced systems that force the players to look around, build a map of the file system, and optimize their routes and gameplay.

- Plans for Week 1 -

My goals for week 1 are to get a working version of the game up to the delving system, This means a lot of time will be going into the base art for the UI, and making the file system explorable, as well as a simple seed system.

I have a good feeling about the game jam

- Thad