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--- research_report_groworld_dave [2010-02-03 12:51] – 82.181.215.205
+++ research_report_groworld_dave [2010-02-03 15:23] – 82.181.215.205
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 Foam were working on this project with two other groups, [[http://www.tale-of-tales.com|Tale of Tales]] and [[http://www.sixtostart.com/|SixToStart]]. Both of whom have experience working on projects which use games technology to explore specific experiences and situations.
-And as a game project, we were sometimes explicitly, at other times implicitly tackling these issues:
+And as a game project, we were sometimes explicitly, at other times implicitly tackling issues such as these:
   * What is the depiction of plants and growth within existing games?
   * Should this be a scientific simulation, if not how do we avoid this?
-  * What is an art game? Are we making one?
+  * What is an art game? Are we making one, or a 'normal' game?
 ==== Problem/Aim ====
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 The first plant eyes prototype:
-<html><embed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYGLrQOP_ks" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="720" height="606" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></html>
+<html><embed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYGLrQOP_ks" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="360" height="303" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></html>
 The general idea is that you start of inside the seed of your plant. You can then grow outwards and down into the earth, in order to locate and absorb nutrients with your roots, or upward and out into the air and attract insects with flowers that grow on your branches.
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 {{http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/dsc00004-300x225.jpg}}{{http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/dsc00010-300x225.jpg}}
-The plant eyes prototype grew and started taking on more elements from the groworld sketches of Theun and Lina:
+The plant eyes prototype grew and started taking on more elements from the sketches by Theun and Lina:
 {{http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/3774062127_525e4d5f50_o-207x300.jpg}}{{http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/leaves-300x240.png}}
-In age old game development tradition, I developed a lot of attempts at adding complexity while keeping the cpu usage down - such as these branches built out of camera facing sprite geometry:
+In age old game development tradition, I tried to add complexity while keeping the cpu usage down - such as these branches built out of camera facing sprite geometry:
 <html><embed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYGjmB0C" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="390" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></html>
-I tried as much as possible to take things from the earlier design decisions, such as Auriea's idea of the path of growth being created by the player with a dotted line, these turned into trails of 'breadcrumbs' which the roots grew along as the player's camera returned to the seed. Towards the end I also added different types of plants, and corresponding nutrients which would give the player different abilities - for growing different leaves, flowers, potatoes, forks and trumpets. Taking much appreciated advice from a game tester in her 80's I added plenty of supporting life for the plants, worms in the soil, spiders on the ground and butterflies in the air.
+I tried as much as possible to take things from the earlier design decisions, such as Auriea's idea of the path of growth being created by the player with a dotted line, these turned into trails of 'breadcrumbs' which the roots grew along as the player's camera returned to the seed. In an attempt to incorporate the plant guilds, I added different types of plants, and corresponding nutrients which would give the player different abilities. Once these nutrients were absorbed, you would grow different leaves, flowers, potatoes, forks and trumpets. Taking much appreciated advice from a game tester in her 80's I added plenty of supporting life for the plants, worms in the soil, spiders on the ground and butterflies in the air.
 {{http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/pe-20091022-2-300x225.png}}{{http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/pe-20091022-0-300x225.png}}{{http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/pe-20091022-1-300x225.png}}{{http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/wellfed-300x240.png}}
-As we approached the final date of the grig event work increased, I became more focused on the event and creating an installation. I stopped working on the multiplayer and game distribution elememnts and focused on the overall look and playability I added gamepad input for an easier way for people to play the game. ToT were also speedily developing more 3D prototypes based on models inspired by the plants in the groworld almanac, in which they inhabited a garden which you could navigate around.
+As we approached the final date of the grig event, work increased, I became more focused on the event and creating an installation. I stopped working on the multiplayer and game distribution elememnts and focused on the overall look and playability. I added gamepad input for an easier way for people to play the game. Tale of Tales were also in full development mode again, and were speedily working on more 3D prototypes based on models inspired by the drawings in the groworld almanac, in which you inhabited a garden you could navigate around and look at the plants as they grew.
+<html><embed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYG7z0oC" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="414" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></html>
+==== Solution/Results ====
+We were able to display an impressive amount of work at the grig event, 5 game prototypes in all. I explained the progression and decisions at each point by discussing each prototype in turn with the participants. We lacked a single product with which to release to the public and despite having succesfully proven the technology behind the plant sensing, we didn't have anything to demo at the final event.
+These are the aims that I feel we addressed in some form:
+== The player taking on the role of a plant ==
+This problem seemed to occupy most of our thinking during this project. The Tetris game demo failed because the game took over from the plant element, the hex game maybe took this too literally turning the role of a plant into too much of a collecting task.
+The primary intention of the plant eyes game was to play with this idea. Your view is restricted to the close space around the plant, you grow into space, and can see the rest of the garden from the plant's point of view. The difference between above and below ground is distinct but consistent. I like the way the whole thing is disorientating, and the way it's sometimes difficult to differentiate between bits of your plant and bits of others.
+== Using plants as inspiration as an organisation model ==
+We now have software released for integrating PLT Scheme (and by extension, fluxus) with the jabber messaging system as a result of this project. This allows the game clients to run as a peer to peer network without a central server. The plant eyes game also has code in it to integrate with this, and it has influenced the design of the game. I would have liked to explore this idea more with some deeper entanglement in a game engine architecture.
+== Descibing the complexities of permaculture through a game ==
+This was difficult without the game becoming too much of a simulation, which was always a tension and seen as undesirable by most people. The plant eyes game incorporates sharing of abilities and mutual benefit through plants growing close together. As the plants grow and decay, they leave nutrients in the soil which other plants can pick up, taking on their abilities. It's a simple and flawed interpretation of permaculture, but something to build on in the future.
+== Using multiplayer cooperation ==
+We can't show much of this, despite having got a long way in solving the technical issues.
+== Using plant guilds as a framework for a game worlds structure ==
+The final Tale of Tales garden prototypes took the guild member plants and put them game world you could navigate. They were modelled in 3D and included growth anination. The plant eyes prototype was just starting to differentiate between different plants.
+== Developing and using human-plant interfaces ==
+We build them, and got them working with the game, but never had the chance to design a way in which this information could be used effectively.
+== Use the groworld drawings as inspiration and incoporate them into the game ==
+All the later prototypes incorporated the designs from the groworld almanac drawings. This gave them all a thread of consistency which themed the games in a pleasing way. Earlier attempts at making drawings directly into plant structures by treating them as components had to be abandoned as we moved into 3D.
+==== Discussion ====
+This was a really ambitious project. Even with a very clear design agreed from the start we would have been seriously pushed to complete a game project with the resources and time we had. Looking back I am pleased that we covered so many of the aims, even if we failed to bring them together into a single product.
+These are the things I would like to look at changing if we were to undertake a similar project:
+  * More use of computer-less prototyping, board games, lego, drawings
+  * Less 'open debate' and more focused with post-its, drawings, etc - even taking notes, it was difficult to record all the decisions and remember them between meetings, leading to a certain amount of retreading old ground
+  * More restrictions, earlier on - I felt there was a constant re-widening of the possibilities, when we needed to be making decisions
+  * Doing the user stories at the start of the project - we didn't talk about our audience much at all until this point
+The plant eyes prototype I worked on formed an end result I was pleased with, but it never really felt like it could stand alone as a game. The main reason for this is that it remained a test of a game mechanic, a way of growing into space and a achieving a disorientating feeling of becoming another life form with different restrictions and abilities. To make into a game it would take surrounding this growth mechanic with a richer world, problems to solve and ideally, other human players to interact with.
+Most game projects only attempt one or two new things on top of existing well used and understood game mechanics. We could not get away with such a strategy here, as it became clear that we needed to invent a whole new set of mechanics and problems relating to plants in order to achieve the feeling of being the plant, not just managing one. This seemed central to the idea of the groworld project.
+I certainly feel like we approached the project in the right way. I fell into a process of prototyping each next biggest problem that I faced. Sometimes these were technical, e.g. networking, at other times gameplay problems e.g. trying to grow a plant a cell at a time. The alternative is to have a rigid grand plan at the start and only find out what the problems when it's too late to fix them in the best way. This also means when discussing the project with others often the answer to their questions is: "we tried that, and found this..." rather than, "we didn't have time to try that...".
+On balance I am very pleased at what we have achieved, when discussing and showing groworld at talks at Futuresonic, Kitchen Budapest, Dorkbot London and OpenLab London there is a huge amount of interest in this area and a lot of excitement over what we have made. In conjunction with the wider groworld project the game prototypes represent very original ideas.