Category: Thoughts - dannylv100.com

Divercast Ep. 25: Indie Game Value Menu

5/4/2016

Welcome to another edition of Divercast! We are now on Season 3! This is the twenty fifth episode of Divercast! Thanks for sticking with us or if you're new, thanks for joining us!

On today's episode of Divercast the guys are joined by returning guest indie film/game designer Tony Hernandez. We talk about "Walking Simulators" and the perceived value of Indie games. Should indie games leaving the $60 price tag to the AAA developers? What is the price of a game where the story and atmosphere are 90% of the game?

They guys also talk about the outcry behind the infamous Overwatch victory pose and the somewhat silent removal of the beloved hidden character Doughnut Drake from Uncharted 4.

So sit back, relax and get ready for another Divercast!

Don't forget to check out our affiliate IndieBox.com! Indiebox is a subscription service that delivers collector edition indie games straight to your door step every month. Referral code: Divercast.

Do you have questions, comments or concerns? Email us at deepdigitaldesign@gmail.com
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- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

DLC EP. #2: Gears of War 4 Beta Impression Feat. GreenJoker24

5/2/2016

Welcome to episode 2 of DLC. This is a special episode of DLC (and we're only on episode 2!) Dannylv100 and Greenjoker24 (Christian) talk bout their thoughts and impressions on the Gears of War 4 beta. They discuss what they love and what they hated about the beta. Gameplay, character designs and more!

So sit back and relax, Everybody loves DLC!

Note: A few things we forgot to mention

- The camera angle during executions needs to be fixed

- Gnasher (Shotgun) felt about right in terms of power

- We want new executions for older weapons

- Smoke Grenade stun time needs to be slightly reduced

Gameplay Highlights from the Gears of War 4 BETA

Do you have questions, comments or concerns? Email us at deepdigitaldesign@gmail.com
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- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

How To Make Warzone More Accessible

1/29/2016

More Accessibility

Warzone is one of my favorite modes in Halo 5. It is the kind of game mode I always wanted. Taking on a large team of enemies and Ai combatants. When it all comes together, it is just awesome!

Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck converting my friends to Warzone enthusiasts. Warzone can be a very frustrating and crushingly difficult mode for newcomers. The size of the map, the high player count, the Ai bosses that can kill you in an instant. The sheer chaos of the entire experience can be extremely overwhelming to a new player.

As a veteran of over two hundred Warzone matches and after analyzing common complaints from my friends, I have come up with a few game design solutions that in my opinion would improve this game mode.

Improved Killcam

Warzone is a huge game mode featuring a gigantic map and twenty four players and Ai enemies that attack either team. One issue I encountered with this set up is, well this mode can become chaotic very quickly. Players will oftentimes find themselves caught in the crossfire on a regular basis.

I know, some of you out there might be saying "But Danny, it is supposed to emulate the chaos of war!" True. The issue here is that this combination of giant maps and high player count can lead to a quick and confusing death. A death with little or no information to how or why you died.

Oftentimes, I find myself dying and having no clue where the shots came from. When I die, the camera might point in the general direction of where my attacker was but Often times it might just float around in no particular direction.

An example of the unhelpful Halo 5 kill cam. Notice how it points straight to the ground.

The Battlefield 4 kill cam gives the player useful information.

How do we mitigate this issue? We add a kill cam. And to be very specific, we add one that functions identical to the one from the Battlefield series (pictured above).

Pros of adding a Kill Cam similar to Battlefield 4

- Will show you where the shots came from and how much health/shield the enemy had remaining.
- What kind of weapon/vehicle, booster the enemy was using.
- Will highlight a players position. If any player is using an exploit, they will be exposed.
- Help lower a player's frustration level and allow them to avoid making the same mistake twice.

Add A Map

When playing with some of my friends, I had a hard time explaining the map layout to them, especially in the middle of the game. At the bottom left of the HUD is text that tells you where on the map you are located. This can help players identify their current location, but with no map to reference it is kind of pointless to a new player.

In Gears of War 3, before every multiplayer game the player are shown a top down view of the map. On the map, all of the landmarks are clearly labeled.

Whenever the player dies, they have the option to look at the map. During the match the player can easily access it and depending on the game mode it will even display objectives, weapon locations and etc.

The map from Gears of War 3.

Give the player the option to look at the map during this intro before the game begins.

Warzone begins with a short video that introduces us to the map. This intro video is unskippable, so why not allow the player to hit a button and view a map that will tell inform them of bases and key landmarks?

However this shouldn't be the only time the map is accessible. During gameplay and in between spawns, players should be able to press a button that will quickly display the map with everything clearly visible.

The ideal Warzone map would display all of the main bases, the location of enemy bosses once they have spawned into the map, the health and status of each team's respective core and who controls each base.

The map could also possibly display where your allies are on the map as well as enemies, well this would have to be tested out as displaying the position of enemies on the map might be a game breaker.Perhaps the map will temporarily display enemies that have been spotted by your allies or enemies that are currently engaging a boss.

Semi Related - Possible Announcer Bug

This is an issue I noticed while playing. Sometimes when I am killed and spawn back into the map I will miss the in game announcer declaring that an enemy boss has appeared on the map. With the map, the player would would simply check the map during gameplay and the player would know when and where an enemy boss has spawned on the map.

I would also like to say that this is a bug that I have personally encountered on a numerous occasions, and it is most likely a obscure glitch. As mentioned before, adding a map with the whereabouts of enemy bosses would mitigate this issue entirely.

Adjust Victory Point Distribution

One of the most crucial things in warzone is earning Victory Points (VP) by eliminating enemy bosses. Each boss is worth a hefty sum of points. Eliminating these bosses can help the player's team get a strong lead or close the gap.

One of the issues I have with the bosses in Warzone is how points are distributed. On several occasions my team and I have lost the game because the other team stole the kill.
   To clarify, the way the points are distributed is not dependent on how much damage was done by either team, but simply by whomever lands the final hit.

   Nothing is more frustrating then making a huge comeback only to have the other team pull ahead with a massive lead after they land the final hit on one of the final boss that you and your team were in the process of eliminating.

From Left to Right: Legendary Boss (150 VP), Normal Boss (50 VP) and Enemy Player (1 VP).

I have experienced on a few occasions the enemy team stealing the boss points just get a huge lead in points, which at this point means we lost and there is no more coming back.

This is especially frustrating when the final boss has already spawned and been taken out. The only way to win at this point is to capture all three bases and destroy the enemy core. The chances of this happening is extremely low. I have never been on a team that has at this point captured all three bases and destroyed the enemy core to win.

Damage Perentage System

My suggestion to fix this issue is to change how points are distributed. This is what I suggest, if the Blue team lands majority damage, they would earn majority points. If a boss is worth 150 VP, and Blue team deals 75% of damage they would receive 112 points, where as the Red Team dealt only 25% of damage would only receive 38 points.

If 100% of points is 150, then half of that is 75. If both teams did equal damage to the boss, they should receive equal points. As the system currently stands, it leaves a bit of room for chance. In my opinion we should reward teams and players that use team work to coordinate an assault on a boss, not reward players that sit back and take potshots.

Back to Battle

These are my suggestion on how to make Warzone more accessible to new players and to the players that stick solely to the arena section of Halo 5's multiplayer.

Warzone is one of my favorite game modes and I do feel that these suggestions would improve Warzone overall and make it more accessible to more players. If you are someone who is currently playing Halo 5 and has not tried Warzone, you should definitely give it a chance. I mean, what else are you going to do with all those Req cards?

Do you have questions, comments or concerns? Email us at deepdigitaldesign@gmail.com
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- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

Redesigning Requisition Cards - UI Design (Halo 5)

11/27/2015

NOTE: I do not work at 343. I do not claim to work for this game studio, this blog post is just me talking about my thoughts on design and UI.

After hours and hours of hard fought matches on the Warzone and in the Arena, I finally got my highly sought after DMR card. Now, if you are not a fan of Halo, the DMR or Designated Marksman Rifle is an excellent semi automatic rifle that hammers down covenant and online opponents like no other.

I hopped into Warzone mode ready to unleash the fury that is a virtual bullet, only to discover that the DMR is a level 8 Requisition. If you are not familiar with Halo 5's Warzone mode, that meant I would have to put in a lot of work per game to even get to use that card, or that it wouldn't become available until late in the game, you know like in the final 4-5 mins before warzone is over.

This isn't a post to complain or whine, it is to talk about something I didn't realize until I got this coveted unlock. I am here to talk about the UI and layout of the Requisition cards. I have a few suggestions that might spruce things up a bit, and make the cards more informative.

To the left, you will see what the DMR card looks like. Overall, there is no indication that it is intended for the Warzone mode, but even more blatant is the fact that you can't even tell what level the card is. You don't know until you are in the game.

I also want to mention the layout of the weapon requisition screen in warzone. I have a few suggestions that I think, in my opinion, might just make this system a bit more intuitive.

Weapon Select (Req Station) UI

When you start up a game of Warzone you will find yourself at the requisitions window. From here you can select which weapons, vehicles, armor mods etc you would like to spawn with. All weapon, vehicle and power up cards are one time use, and go away if you are eliminated in battle, or when the game ends.

The issue I have with this, is when you go to one of these tabs, all the weapons are lumped together. They do become highlighted once the required requisition level is achieved, but in my opinion, it would be better if we had the weapons catergorized in rows based off of their level.

In game layout.

To the left, you will see what the weapons tab currently looks like. All the weapons are on screen with the currently available weapons be highlighted.

The issues that I have here is that we do not know what level any of these weapons are. We can assume that all of these weapons are level 3 or less.

In the layout I came up with, we have weapons organized in a row. Level two and three are currently highlighted because as we can see in the top left, we have access to level 3 items.

You can also clearly see that the level 4 items are inaccessible as the Level 4 box is empty. With this setup you can see immediately what weapons are available to you and what their cost is.

Layout with my changes.

Requisition Card Layout

Weapon Cards

Majority of weapon cards you unlock in these booster packs are "power weapons", weapons that can not be equipped as your default loadout. Weapons such as the rocket launcher can be equipped once you achieve the appropriate level and if you are willing to spend a rocket launcher card. You can not spawn with the rocket launcher if you do not have any cards to spend.

Weapons such as the Assault Rifle, Magnum, Battle Rifle, SMG and DMR are loadout weapons. The player just need to unlock the card to make them available as part of their loadout, however some of these cards still need to be unlocked by reaching he appropriate level. The default SMG is a level 4, after that level is achieved the player can spawn into the game with the SMG equipped at no loss of cards or points.

So here we have a variant of the standard SMG. This variant has a suppressor attachment and unlike the default SMG is a level 5 weapon. The only issue is, you wouldn't know this until you hop into a game.

The changes I made add a clear level in the top left corner. I also added some text at the bottom, informing the player that it is a variant loadout weapon and at the bottom of the card I made sure to make it very clear that this card is intended for the warzone game mode.

Now, I know some might say that adding the "Warzone" text at the bottom of the card might be pointless, but while playing in the arena, I occasionally overheard people opening up booster packs and some of these people have said things such as "What do I do with this weapon/vehicle?" and "What are half of these cards for?".

It made me realize that some players that predominately play Arena have possibly never played Warzone as they had no idea what some of these cards were intended for. And I am honestly not surprised, as players that only player in the Arena, only a few cards would be used by them (Assassination animations, Armor/Helmets, Weapon Skins, Req Points, XP/RP boosters). I was still honestly surprised, Warzone was a mode that I had been anticipating for quite some time.

Vehicle Cards

Just like the weapon card, vehicle cards suffer from the same issues. To the left you see the card as it currently is in game. The only information give to you is that is is an uncommon card and it is called "Wraith". The card currently in the game doesn't do much in terms of conveying information to the player and that is where the current design falters in my opinion.

Current vehicle card.

Vehicle card with my suggested updates.

With my update we once again see that this card requires the player to reach level 5, it is a single use card and it is for the Warzone game mode.

Requisitions

To summarize my thoughts, I would just like these cards to convey more information (level, use, type, game mode). I also believe the benefit of letting players know what game mode these cards are intended for might get more players to try Warzone, which is one of my favorite game types in recent memory.

To hear more about my thoughts on Halo 5, check out Divercast Ep. 20 (coming soon) and be sure to follow me on twitter, as I plan on streaming the creation of a custom map once Forge mode is made available. Thanks so much for your support and I hope you enjoyed this article.

Do you have questions, comments or concerns? Email us at deepdigitaldesign@gmail.com
Follow us on Tumblr, IndieDB, Twitter, Mixcloud,Soundcloud,clowdy, instagram and Youtube

- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

Divercast Ep.10: How Game Mechanics Change Across Sequels etc

3/2/2015

Welcome to Ep.10 of Diver-cast! In this episode we tackle a couple of topics, we start off talking about whether five hours of gameplay is worth the sixty dollar price tag. We then discuss how certain games change and evolve with each iteration. We talk about Call of Duty, Civilization, GTA, The Last of Us and more!

So sit back, relax and get ready for another Divercast!

Do you have questions, comment or concerns? Email us at deepdigitaldesign@gmail.com
Follow us on Tumblr, IndieDB, Twitter, Mixcloud,Soundcloud

- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

Divercast Ep. 8: Video Game Gun Myths and Diversity in Games

12/15/2014

Welcome to the final episode of Diver-cast for 2014! Can you believe it? In this episode Juan, Andrew and I took a trip down to the Los Angeles Gun Club and got to fire a few guns. We discuss some of the big differences between the portrayal of guns in movies/games and reality.

With recent fan reaction over the new Force Awakens trailer, we discuss diversity in video games and the Star Wars universe.

So sit back, relax and get ready for another Divercast!

Divercast Ep.8: Video Game Gun Myths by Divercast on Mixcloud

Special thanks to the LA Gun Club for educating us on proper, safe gun use.

Do you have questions, comment or concerns? Email us at deepdigitaldesign@gmail.com
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- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

Freeze-E Frosty's : Developer Commentary - Level 3

12/10/2014

Welcome to the third installment of Freeze-E Frosty's - Developer Commentary. In this video series I will go behind the scenes of the third level of Freeze-E Frosty and share with you my design process.

Freeze-E Frosty's Developer Commentary - Level 3 from Danny Quesada on Vimeo.

Further Notes: Level 3

- This level was the most test played section in the entire game.
- This section features over 815 kismet sequences.
- Sections from the main menu area can be seen in the background of the first phase of the boss fight.
- The boss fight was all scripted inside of kismet through matinees.
- The hit points for the boss had to be tweaked constantly. Some play testers could not even freeze him once before dying.
- Originally, when you died during the boss fight you would have to start over from the start of the level. We decided to make it easier by allowing you to start off from when you died.
- Originally, when defeated the T-rex would explode.

- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

Freze-E Frosty's : Developer Commentary - Level 2

11/18/2014

Welcome to the second installment of Freeze-E Frosty's - Developer Commentary. In this video series I will go behind the scenes of the second level of Freeze-E Frosty and share with you my design process and about the original soundtrack.

Freeze-E Frosty's Developer Commentary - Level 2 from Danny Quesada on Vimeo.

Further Notes: Level 2

- You can listen to the games original soundtrack on our indieDb page.
- The idea for the health vent was pitched by one of our environment artist.
- The "Running Man" appears 3 times in this level in the background.
- Traveling through the vents was supposed to be much shorter, but was lengthened after positive feedback from playtests.
- There was supposed to be another section before you exit the vents, but it was cut due to time.
- The Ice Cream T-Rex appears in the background twice in this level.
- This level went through many iterations of environment art layout. The look of the level wasn't finalized till near launch of the game.
- My original intent of this level was to show the dark underbelly of the factory.
- Areas featured in this level are: a warehouse, Cookie Crumbler (where toppings are made) and the soda filtration system.
- In terms of design, this level was redesigned the least.

- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

Divercast Ep. 7 : Graphics, Story or Gameplay?

11/10/2014

In this month's episode of Divercast Shimmy, Andrew (Crayyon) and Dannylv100 talk about what is important to us in games. Graphics, Gameplay or Story? We talk about what games we feel were successful in merging gameplay and story as well as what games were more successful in storytelling than gameplay.
Time to sit back, relax and dive into Divercast!

Games Discussed in this episode: Call of Duty: Advanced warfare, Call of Duty : World At War, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1&2 , Bayonetta, Mass Effect 1&2, Monument Valley, Lost Odyssey, Hatred, Spec Ops: The Line, Borderlands, Destiny, Gears of War, Bioshock: Infinite

Shimi_Rank1's Iphone Game Corner: Shimi recommends, Monument Valley!

Do you have questions, comment or concerns? Email us at deepdigitaldesign@gmail.com
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- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

Divercast Ep.6 : Halloween!

10/20/2014

In this episode of Diver-cast Shimmy, Andrew and Danny talk about the horror movies and games they played as kids. They talk about nightmares, fears and everything in between. So kick back relax and light a jack-o-lantern, it is time for Divercast!

Spoilers!: Cabin in The Woods (2012), Shutter (2004/2008), Frankenweenie (2012)

Divercast Ep.6: Halloween by Divercast on Mixcloud

If you are a big fan of Horror movies I recommend checking out Monster Madness by James Rolfe aka The Angry Video Game Nerd.

Do you have questions, comment or concerns? Email us at deepdigitaldesign@gmail.com
Follow us on Tumblr, IndieDB, Twitter, Mixcloud,Soundcloud

- Danny Q
@Dannylv100