The Magic Circle

Videogames culture.
As such, that's my everything.

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Level Design Hub - The Best Night of My Life This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Level Design Hub - The Best Night of My Life

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Pitching iloworld.

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I, Sergio De Natale, regarding the realization of this blog, concede to myself the most extensive freedom of decision about the content presented and I hereby swear that I will not give complaints, arguments or sue against this work, no matter what the final product ends up to be.

I, Sergio De Natale, regarding the realization of this blog, concede to myself the most extensive freedom of decision about the content presented and I hereby swear that I will not give complaints, arguments or sue against this work, no matter what the final product ends up to be.

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iloworld handout This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

iloworld handout

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Stra3gy

Stra3gy Logo

Stra3gy Game Design Document (PDF, 18 pages)

Why

Stra3gy is the videogame that I created for my dissertation. The thesis consisted in writing a design document, making a prototype and a self-evaluation about the work done. For this project I decided to use Unity as game engine because of its flexibility and the fact that is widely appreciated by the industry.

What

Stra3gy is a fast-paced real time strategy game that involves three players contending the territorial control through conquest, diplomacy and cultural expansion. Players collect resources which are used to purchase units, buildings and technologies.

The main difference between most of real time strategy games out on the market is that players do not have a direct control on the units: what they do, as commanders, is giving orders from their fort, then the units follow predetermined paths to reach the destination. For example, military units, after being built, automatically begin to march towards one of the two enemy forts.

In Stra3gy the player gets control of one of three factions over a “board-game environment”. Stra3gy is set in an abstract context that excludes any reference in space or time. As in a board game, the only narrative is provided by the series of choices that each player makes. The game allows the player to make alliances with the other factions or to declare them war by using diplomatic and military units. Diplomacy is usually implemented inside slow-paced strategy games because diplomatic players tend to take decisions that can influence the game in the long-term. Stra3gy breaks the rules of the genre by simplifying the diplomatic process in a series of binary or triangular decisions that affects the game instantaneously.

Features

  • Strategy but fun!
  • A fast-paced strategy game that combines the simplicity of its rules to a rich system of choices and outcomes, as in a classic board game. 
  • Making and breaking alliances in real time donate intensity and uncertainty to the frenetic gameplay action.
  • The first game where streamline rts mechanics are amalgamated inside a full 3D environment.
  • Stra3gy is a game designed to offer social interactions and customizations, play it inside your browser or downtown using your smartphone or your tablet. Find other players and share your progress on your favourites social networks, trade and achieve experience points to increase your factions treats.
  • Intuitive controls for all the different platforms.

How

Stra3gy is a game playable anywhere at anytime, for gaming sessions that could last 10-15 minutes or more. It is the kind of game that players would like to play during the lunch break or during a travel by bus. For this reason the platforms chosen are the web browser and the most successful mobile devices as iPhone and iPad. The engine that allows a fast development process on these platforms is Unity. Unity allows the developer team to focus exclusively on the creation of the game without having to face logistic issues like the creation of a graphic engine, the portability of the code or testing the efficiency of the net-code.

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iloworld

title iloworld

Iloworld Design Document (PDF, 18 pages)

Why

Iloworld is the individual game design project for my Digital Games: Theory and Design Master degree at Brunel University. The assignment consisted in pitching a game idea in front of teachers and some industry experts and then creating a game design document and a prototype made in Multimedia Fusion 2. The industry experts valued the game with a score of 84/100.

What

  • Iloworld is a side scrolling puzzle-adventure game set in a sci-fantasy environment where the player gets control of two characters and uses their physical properties to solve puzzles and overcome challenges.
  • In iloworldyou assume the role of a robot called V3 and you also take control of a little blob creature called Ilo, you will find yourself in a planet where the technology is slowly taking place of the nature. These two characters have the skill to interact within each other and modify the environment to solve  the puzzles. V3 is a robot  who is able to throw Ilo in order to defeat enemies or to take advantage of the environment to complete the levels. In fact, the real protagonist of the game is Ilo and his powerful transformations.
  • Each one of his transformation grants a different power or ability, depending on the element they are made of. For example, the ilo’s standard form is nothing more than a resilient solid ball but there are also fire, ice, magnetic and many other transformation forms available. The transformations are not intended only to exist only for the purpose of destroying the enemies or the environment but also and especially to change the level morphology in a way that allows the two characters two accomplish the overcoming challenges.

How

The game is structured as a 2D adventure game, that implies the skills required are not only reactions-based like in most of the platform games but also they involves problem-solving and backtracking. As in other adventure games, several zones of the game are not reachable until a particular ability has been acquired.

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The Best Night Of My Life

The Best Night Of My Life Design Document (PDF, 30 pages)

Why

The Best Night Of My Life is a game concept created by me and other three coursemates for our Master degree group project. Basically, the assignment was to pitch a game idea to a determined company/publisher of our choice and to write the complete design document starting from that idea.

What

The Best Night of My Life is a persuasive, social impact game about the use of drugs. It’s set within the mind of a teenager in drug overdose. As his physical body lies unconscious, his mind is entrapped in a state of limbo. Players freely explore this limbo and interact with several NPC that inhabit the area, each one of them represents a side effect or a risk of a specific drug. As players journey through the minds of these characters, the difficulty scales with the potency and danger of the drug. In order to complete the game, players must collect all of the puzzle pieces that reside within each level to finally unlock the avatar’s mind.

How

In terms of gameplay, The Best Night Of My Life doesn’t fit into a well-defined genre. Although the interaction modes change between each of the levels, each level maintains fundamental side-scrolling features such as jumping, running, avoiding obstacles or solving reflexed based puzzles. The player controls a single avatar (the adventure’s protagonist) and he leads him through the levels to get collectible objects.

Who

My role in the team was technical designer / director. I was in charge of defining platform, target audience, and genre of the game. I created some of the mock-ups, flow charts and the pseudo code. Moreover, I worked on the camera behaviours, controls configuration, the game flow and so on… 

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Game Design Documents

Here, in chronological order, some of the design documents that I have written during the last year.

About Me

As stated in my twitter biography: A ludological entity that aspires to become GameDesigner and Master of the World.  

 I am currently working and improving the game prototype for my final design thesis. The Digital Games: Theory & Design master course allowed me to have a comprehensive understanding of the principles used in the design process of digital games. I learned how to write design documents and how to convert a game idea into a refined design. I learned how  to make game prototypes from zero (and with the help of some assets) and I had the occasion to learn more about design directly from renowned guest lectures such as Peter Molyneux from Lionhead Studios.

This master, together with my knowledge in the field of HCI, software 

usability, and programming skills gained during my undergraduate studies in Digital Communications gives to me a good set of knowledges to create solid and meaningful mechanics for the games that I am interested to design.

The goal that I am intentioned to achieve is to use my skills in order to innovate or improve the core mechanics of games, I am interested in an analytical and practical approach more than just working on the creative side of game design.

Specialties

# Working with game engines as Unity, Ogre3D, Multimedia Fusion 2
# Coding in Java, Javascript, C++, Objective C, C#
# Interaction Design, Flow Charts, Usability

Experiences

  •   Junior Developer - Trainee

Mixed Scarl - Privately Held; Entertainment Industry

April 2010 - September 2010

Design and coding of multimedia iPhone applications.

Certifications

  • International English Language Testing System
  • Driving Licence: A1, B

Education

Brunel University

MA Digital Games: Theory and Design, Game Design, Game Studies, Arts

2010 – 2011

It gave me the foundations how to right think during a design process, most of what I learned come from the teamwork, the project experiences that I made and from the guest lecturers (Peter Molyneux, Steve Gross, Ian Livingstone and so on)

Università degli Studi di Milano 

 Bsc Digital Communications, Computer Science, IT, New Media

2006 – 2009

The course combine two different areas as computer science and communication science and provides the knowledge of the information technologies applied to the new medias, teaching how to realise interaction-oriented systems. During this undergraduate course I worked on a couple of projects related to video games. The most important was the creation of a third person on-rail shooter using the open-source graphic engine Ogre and C++.

Inactions.

I do not often write when I am traveling, I could take this opportunity to accurately describe the inefficiency of the italian railway system or continue the mission of explaining, not very successfully, video games. Less trivially, I would opt doing a consideration: is there a particular reason why it rarely happens to get a train inside a videogame?

Ok, I am not specialized in adventure games and I have never dealt with Last Express, also I don’t consider the train shifts from the Final Fantasy saga and the from the lasts Grand Theft Auto as a real travel and everyday-life experience. I would like to understand if a medium like the videogame still offers space for everyday life moments or if the hero’s suit that the player is metaphorically wearing is too heavy for allowing him to feel human.

I am increasingly persuaded that if we decide to play, it is also for a pleasurable necessity to sever ties with the cumbersome reality; considering the hypothesis that the avatar may read a magazine, seat to observe a landscape or listening a conversation. However, are we sure that the video game medium cannot wisely convey moments of inaction?

Shenmue is an example where the everyday life accompany the player during all the adventure, in fact, it’s not uncommon for players to associate the idea of “life experience” more than the idea of videogame to the Yu Suzuki’s creation.

Shadow of the Colossus, as it may seem far from everyday life, very often uses moments of inaction: riding Argo within the vast game world it’s not so much different from traveling between distant locations in the real world.

The Half-Life saga had the merit to demolish cutscenes and to introduce full interactive sequences in the game medium. Exploring Black Mesa and City 17 in the very first moments of gameplay is one of the most astonishing game experience that can be found today.

Even the widely criticized Heavy Rain tries to focus its gameplay with moments of inactions. However, in this case we assist to a gameplay that is nothing else than a collection of micro-cutscenes and the final result is something more similar to a laser game than a proper interactive game.

In the end, what really counts is to make the experience compelling and interesting by tying an inspired design to the narrative context. In a way that the alchemy between the two components may be able to transmit something vivid to the player.

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