Bullet Time concept and Design.docx · Web viewThe group I was playtesting with, Glen Aro and...

Josh Gutenberg3/4/14GAT210Project B

Bullet Time

Concept and Design

Design Goal: Create a mech combat board game without randomizers in which players can target specific areas of their enemy.

Bullet Time Version 0: Bullet Time began life as a mech combat game. I wanted to use a simple but effective damage system based on the battle system of Faster than Light, a space simulator which let the players target different rooms of enemy space ships. I attempted to bring this over to table top format by giving players the ability to target the different components of their enemy’s mech. (Player card pictured below.) The game was ultimately broken due to the ‘no randomizers’ restriction, whoever went first would win. The group I was playtesting with, Glen Aro and Aubrey Rushe, helped me try to fix what we had dubbed “Bad Battletech”. After several failed attempts, including one in which we threw Go stones onto the mech cards, Aubrey placed a stone on the board and declared “This is a bullet!” At this point Glen and I started bouncing ideas off each other and between the three of us we created a game where players move faster than their bullets.

We technically fixed the game; we used the same board and the same pieces to make a game in which two opponents squared off, just not in the same way. I’d like to revisit the old game sometime in the future, but Bullet Time is vastly superior right now and much more funny in concept. During its creation we only had large mech tokens; the thought of the Leviathans engaging in slow motion combat was amusing to all of us. Humor remained a theme albeit subtle; one of the main goals of the game was to capture the ridiculousness of slow motion combat.

Leviathan

2 players

Components

● 22 damage counters● 2 Leviathan tokens● 1 8x6 hex-grid

Goal

Destroy your opponent’s Leviathan

Play

1. Oldest player goes first, play is clockwise. 2. On each player’s turn they move their Leviathan up to their movement stat and attack if they

are in range.

©2014 DigiPen Institute of Technology

Josh G, 03/04/14,

I love this word and often look for excuses to use it. Calling the mechs Leviathans and then naming the game after the mechs seemed like a good move.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

No randomizers, arbitrary turn decision.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

The board was constructed out of two slightly triangle Heroscape terrain pieces. I was mainly looking for a reason to use the components, (Hex grids are awesome!) though the board’s shape wound up being perfect for bullet time, (More on that in version 1 notes) go figure.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

11 was the maximum number of damage counters that could occupy a Leviathan’s card. 11 for each player meant 22.


If a player attacks they put a damage counter on their enemy’s Leviathan card in a zone of their choice.

A zone is crippled if it has 2 damage counters on it

3. Play continues until a Leviathan is destroyed. Victory

The player who successfully eliminates their opponent is the winner.


Josh G, 03/04/14,

I tried to give players different strategies, you could damage weapons so they can’t hit as hard or you can break their legs so they can’t run! Glen informed me it was essentially a simplified version of Battletech, I’m fine with that. Honestly I really like this card.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

I believed this was a clever way of recreating the FTL style of combat,


Design Goal: Capture slow motion Matrix style combat in a board game format.

Bullet Time Version 1: The official rules for Bullet Time were written up for the lab following the one it was designed in. At the time of its creation Glen and Aubrey were convinced it was perfect, I had far less faith in our ability to create a flawless game in the span of one play test session. This rule set is the basic manifestation of our idea, as a result it is riddled with minor flaws that reveled themselves during testing.

BULLET TIME

2 players

Components

● Bullet markers● 2 Agent tokens● 1 8x6 hex-grid

Goal

Destroy your opponent’s Agent

Setup

Arrange board as shown in picture below

[Picture below coming soon!]

Play

1. Oldest player goes first, play is clockwise. 2. On each player’s turn they move their token up to 2 spaces, then fire a bullet in any direction.

The turn after a bullet is fired they advance forward in the direction they were fired one space

If a bullet would go off the board it instead continues along the same hex-line from the opposite side of the board.

If two bullets would collide they ricochet, the bullet that moved this turn moves one space in the opposite direction it was traveling, the other bullet moves the opposite direction of that.

3. Play continues until an agent is hit by a bullet.


Josh G, 03/04/14,

It is inevitable for bullets to hit each other during play, so we decided they would bounce. Again this makes no sense outside of this world where two special agents are fighting in slow motion, but that is irrelevant. This rule was implemented to add to the chaos of the growing number of bullets vs time. It became entirely possible for players to kill themselves and defend by firing bullets to purposefully intercept incoming projectiles.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

In reality there is no reason why bullets would do this. The game designer reason is that the player’s rate of survival goes down the more bullets are fired. As the game progresses the board gets more and more chaotic, players need to start really considering their actions.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

This remained from Leviathan as it didn’t seem like it was hurting anything at the time.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

The grid is rectangular in shape. This carried over from Leviathan because it lends itself perfectly to the gameplay. Because the bullets loop and players start at the short ends of the rectangle, players can fire and forget a bullet the long way or try to tangle their opponent up with several bullets fired the short way as there is only 6 spaces to cross as opposed to 8.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

My supply of Heroscape bits happened to include several agent tokens. It matched the flavor of fighting in slow motion perfectly.


4. If an agent is it with a bullet they are killed.

Victory


Design Goal: Refine rules of Bullet Time and increase engagement with improved components.

Bullet Time Version 2: Version 2 featured a rules overhaul in the form of layout and clarification. The fact that there are four more versions of rules after this suggest that pure clarity was obviously not achieved in this iteration, but it was a good start. It also had the beginning of a component overhaul, I bought a ton of planes from the DigiPen store on the basis of “I bet I can make these look like bullets”, though the planes were not actually modified until version 3.

Bullet Time (Version 2)

2 players

Components

• Bullet markers• Agent tokens• 8x6 hex-grid

Goal


Setup

Arrange play area as shown in picture below


Josh G, 03/04/14,

Given the incredibly simple nature of the board I couldn’t help but feel there was a better way to do this besides using a picture, I stuck with it to ensure the set up was idiot proof however.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

Removed specific numbers from list of materials as the exact numbers are not truly needed, also more than 2 agents have been included to give players more choices for an avatar that they like.


Play

1. Choose a player to go first.2. Each turn is broken up into three steps:

Move bulletsMove agentFire bullet

3. On each player’s turn they must carry out all actions listed in the above turn order.The player moves all bullets 1 space in the direction the bullet is pointing. The player moves their agent 2 spaces.The player places a bullet on any tile adjacent to their agent that is not occupied.

4. If a bullet would go off the board it instead continues along the same hex line from the opposite side of the board.

5. If bullets would occupy the same space during the ‘move bullets’ step, instead they rotate to face the opposite direction they were initially.

6. If an agent is it with a bullet they are killed.Victory



Josh G, 03/04/14,

The rule that preceded this one was extremely redundant and has been removed to conserve space.

Josh G, 03/05/14,

Instead of moving and turn now bullets just turn. In the previous version it was possible for the game to end in a tie if opponents mirrored firing bullets behind them. While hilarious a tie in the third turn was most certainly not needed or wanted.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

Players were unclear if they could simply walk to their opponent and place a bullet on them. Bold type indicates that doing this is not possible.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

Made it explicitly clear that players have to move and shoot to remove any possible doubt.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

Magic: The Gathering style turn order implemented in order to for players to make more sense of their turn structure.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

Who goes first was changed to be arbitrary as age being used to determine who goes first is pointless for this game. Also removed the ‘play is clockwise’ portion since play order in a two player game is rather straight forward.


Design Goal: Give players more options for strategy with the addition of new bullets.

Bullet Time Version 3: This version was created to test the idea and practicality of ‘special bullets’ suggested by one of my testers, Preston Lowery. He thought the game may benefit from crazy bullets that interacted with other projectiles or moved in different ways. I opted for the former option as it was less work and seemed more interesting. This version was essentially created to test the new bullets. It was also testing the arbitrary number of bullets I had properly painted for players to use instead of several multicolored planes.

Bullet Time (Changes made as Lab started, V3)

2 players

Components

• 15 silver bullets• 15 gold bullets• 5 orange bullets• 5 red bullets• Agent tokens• 8x6 hex-grid

Goal


Setup

Arrange play area as shown in picture below


Josh G, 03/04/14,

These were the special bullets that I had left unpainted, 5 was an arbitrary number but seemed fair.

Josh G, 03/04/14,

Twenty bullets seemed like too many, 10 seemed like too little. I opted for the in-between. It would have likely been safer to paint way more than players would ever need, though I wanted to leave some unpainted for the sake of fancy bullets.

Josh Gutenberg3/4/14GAT210Project BPlay

1. Choose a player to go first.2. Each turn is broken up into three steps:


3. On each player’s turn they must carry out all actions listed in the above turn order.The player moves all bullets 1 space in the direction the bullet is pointing. The player moves their agent 2 spaces.The player places a bullet on any tile adjacent to their agent that is not occupied.


5. If bullets would occupy the same space during the ‘move bullets’ step, instead they rotate to face the opposite direction they were initially.

6. Instead of firing a normal bullet, players may fire a special bullet from their stash of 5 alternate bullets.

7. Special bullets are destroyed and may not be reused when they reach the edge of the board.8. If a special bullet would occupy the same space as another bullet during the move bullets step,

instead the bullet in the way is destroyed and returned to its controlling player.9. If an agent is it with a bullet they are killed.

Victory


Design Goal: Perfect the rules of the now stable Bullet Time, further improve components, and improve set up instructions.

Bullet Time Version 4: Rule revisions from this point on were done not to drastically effect gameplay but instead to make absolutely sure players understood the rules. This version in particular was subject to many new pictures and bold type. It was also around this point I discovered the current board would not fit in the box and would need to be disassembled in order to be turned in. The added pictures pushed me over the single page I had been clinging to for such a long time, but it was worth it for the sake of clarity. I also added more agents (robot, cyber gorilla, human) and began keeping track of which were chosen as a side experiment. Another minor component swap was changing the board from the “swamp” to “grass” just because it’s much nicer to look at.


Josh G, 03/04/14,

Firstly, I could not come up with a better name besides ‘special bullet’. Maybe Tracers? The idea was to try different bullets to see how they effected the game. Starting with the first and what seemed to be the most logical: bullet destruction. Since one of the main interactions is bullets colliding with each other, a bullet that changed collision or outright ignored it may be interesting.

Josh Gutenberg3/4/14GAT210Project BBullet Time (Version 4)

2 players

Components

• 15 silver bullet tokens• 15 gold bullets tokens• 2 24-hex triangles• 3 agent tokens

Goal


Setup

Assemble board, choose agents, and place agents on starting spaces.


Josh G, 03/05/14,

This picture is not only superior to the last picture in terms of quality, but it also shows off the fancy new components.

Josh G, 03/05/14,

Set up changed to reflect the new components and assembly. The start spaces make the set up completely and totally idiot proof. Even more so than the last set up picture.

Josh G, 03/05/14,

The scanner wasn’t working, this cell phone picture shows how to slide the pieces together without breaking the board, this seemed very relevant.

Josh G, 03/05/14,

No longer do you just receive one large hex grid but two smaller ones that you needed to assemble yourself! The board did not fit in the box so the components list was changed accordingly.One human, one robot, one gorilla, all agents. Now players know exactly what they’re getting. They could even play with three people if they wanted to figure out what color bullets to use and where they should start. (Don’t play with three people.)

Josh G, 03/05/14,

The special bullets did not make the cut. Playtester Ian summarized perfectly why they weren’t fun: “They are for cutting a path out and for clean up.”The bullets were not used except when players were otherwise trapped. They only served as a distraction from the otherwise chaotic nature of bullet time.


Play

1. Choose a player to go first.2. Each turn is broken up into three main steps:


3. On each player’s turn they must carry out all actions listed in the above turn order.The player moves all bullets 1 space in the direction the bullet is pointing. The player moves their agent 2 spaces.The player places a bullet on any tile adjacent to their agent that is not occupied.Legal placement of bullets:

Illegal placement of bullets:


5. If bullets would occupy the same space during the ‘move bullets’ step, instead they rotate to face the opposite direction they were initially. Collisions are handled at the end of the move bullets step.

6. If an agent is it with a bullet they are killed.Victory



Josh G, 03/05/14,

Another important addition, players were confused as to when collisions took place. By establishing that they are the last priority it removes the possibility that they could escape death due to improper movement order.

Josh G, 03/05/14,

For most players it was intuitive exactly how to place a bullet, Preston even went as far as to turn his token to face the direction it was firing. However, Phoenix and Jake showed me that players still may be unclear. As a result I included these new pictures, I had a hard time describing how the bullets should be oriented (took until version 6) the pictures seemed to solve the problem.


Design Goal: Continue to refine rules.

Bullet Time Version 5: More rule changes in this iteration. The game seemed very stable by this point, absolute clarity remained difficult to achieve however. Revisions after this point are sparse in comparison to earlier phases of development. At this point in the testing I knew the game worked, it technically worked as of the second test in lab until I made it less interesting with the new bullets.

Bullet Time (Version 5)

2 players

Components

• 15 silver bullet tokens• 15 gold bullets tokens• 2 24-hex triangles• 3 agent tokens

Goal


Setup

Assemble board, choose agents, and place agents on starting spaces.



Play



3. On each player’s turn they must carry out all actions listed in the above turn order.The player moves all bullets they control 1 space in the direction the bullet is pointing. The player moves their agent 2 spaces.The player places a bullet on any tile adjacent to their agent that is not occupied.Legal placement of bullets:

Illegal placement of bullets:


Josh G, 03/05/14,

Players noted that they weren’t sure if they moved all bullets or just theirs. A “they control” removed the problem entirely.


4. If a bullet would go off the board it instead continues along the same hex line from the opposite side of the board. Agents cannot wrap around the board like bullets can.


6. If an agent is hit by any bullet they are killed.Victory



Josh G, 03/05/14,

I realized that the way this was previously worded left it ambiguous as to which bullets could kill players, the answer is both. While this was understood by most testers it was not by one playtest, the addition of a single word fixes this.

Josh G, 03/05/14,

Some players believed that players would be able to move the same way bullets did with regards to the board, this was incorrect but never noted. I was impressed I made it this far along without having this problem.


Design Goal: Achieve total clarity and conveyance by subjecting someone who knows nothing about the game to its rules.

Bullet Time Version 6: The final version was created after having someone who has never played or heard of Bullet Time read the rules and see if they can make sense of it. Minor formatting and clarity issues were pointed out as well as confusion regarding the turn structure. All small problems and all easily fixed. The final version is easy to understand and captures the ridiculousness of slow motion combat while remaining tactical.

Bullet Time

2 players

Components

• 15 silver bullet tokens (For player 1)• 15 gold bullets tokens (For player 2)• 2 24-hex triangles• 3 agent tokens

Goal


Setup

Assemble board, choose agents, and place agents on the red starting spaces.


Josh G, 03/05/14,

Callout to the color of the starting spaces makes it likely impossible for someone to set the board up wrong now.

Josh G, 03/05/14,

The scanner finally worked and gifted me with a crisp picture of the build instructions. This replaced the oddly lit one for obvious reasons.

Josh G, 03/05/14,

It is never stated that the colored bullets are for the players. I made the second player get the gold bullets to reward them for going second, though this has no effect on gameplay, I’m just assuming players will value gold bullets more.


Play


Move bullets Move agent Fire bullet

3. On each player’s turn they must carry out all actions listed in the above turn order. The player moves all bullets they control 1 space in the direction the bullet is

pointing. If there are no bullets on the board, skip this step. The player moves their agent 2 spaces. The player places a bullet on any tile adjacent to their agent that is not

occupied. Bullets are placed pointing away from the agent as shown below.Legal placement of bullets Illegal placement of bullets

4. If a bullet would go off the board it instead continues along the same hex line from the opposite side of the board. Agents cannot wrap around the board like bullets can.


Josh G, 03/05/14,

Revised the layout of the pictures to be nicer, also preceded the images with a statement that describes how the bullets are placed (finally).

Josh G, 03/05/14,

Kira was confused by the entire turn order because there was nothing telling her what to do if there were no bullets on the board (the first turn) In no game state besides the first turn is this relevant but it apparently helps to understand the entire turn order, so the added sentence is a welcome addition.

Josh G, 03/05/14,

Bulleting the turn order made it look nicer.



6. If an agent is hit by any bullet they are killed.Victory



Bullet Time concept and Design.docx · Web viewThe group I was playtesting with, Glen Aro and...

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