Tenebrous - Open For Testing

The time has come! As I mentioned previously, I need people to play the game I created for my dissertation, Tenebrous, in order to gather data for said dissertation. If you'd like to help out, please read the following instructions carefully, and you have my sincerest thanks!

NOTE: Unfortunately, the game is currently only available on Windows.

UPDATE: People have been asking about the deadline. I have a demo Thursday 19th of December, so I would like to receive some responses before then so I can show off some results, but anytime before 31st December would be grand.

How To Help

1. Download the game from https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7n0P-XMWZ_Yd1Y5Z0ZDdUdSM2c (~50 MB). Unzip the folder. Keep track of where you put this folder, you will launch the game from here and this is where you will find the logs you need to send me.
2. Read the How To Play section below before playing - there is no in-game tutorial or even a list of controls. Rough prototypes for the win!
3. Play through the game as much as you like.
4. Create a zip file of all your logs, located in the logs folder (in the folder you downloaded above). Send this zip file with your logs to sarah.ann.herzog@gmail.com.
5. Go to https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QEBzITmxkK-TjlmRfrK5cCYGDZ8D5v6EZdsrCQYYxAo/viewform to take a very short survey about your experience with the game. Remember to input your name when requested if you would like to be included in the Tenebrous credits when it is released.
6. Feel proud that you contributed to research for the good of games!

IMPORTANT: I need TWO THINGS from you:

1. Email me your logs from the logs folder inside the game folder after you play
2. Complete the online survey (results are sent automatically). 

Please don't forget either of those!

How To Play

Goal of the Game: You are lost and alone in a hostile, darkness-covered forest. You must reach the safety of a nearby holy house (follow the purple arrow!) before your magical light runs out. Be careful, as the creatures of the darkness are attracted to light and will drain yours if they touch you! Luckily, you are a holy warrior and have a few tricks up your sleeve, but don't be foolhardy: These monsters cannot be defeated by the likes of you, only delayed and avoided.

Controls:

• Movement - WASD / Arrow Keys.
• Sneak - H. Use this to dim your light, preventing enemies from noticing you.
• Boost - J. Use some of your light to continuously boost your speed. Great for escaping enemies.
• Distract - K. Drop a gem filled with some of your light behind you. Enemies will target it instead of you, allowing you to escape. You can also pick it back up if you need to, but it will lose light over time so you won't get 100% of your light back.
• Flare - L. Hold in this button to charge up and release a bright flare, stunning nearby enemies but using a large chunk of your light.

Terrain:

 There are four types of terrain:

• Clear land. This is denoted by a neutral gray colour and has no effect on movement or light.
• Forest. This is black, and cannot be moved through.
• Swamp. This is light blue, and slows the player.
• Miasma. This is purple, and drains your light.

Enemies:

Pulsar - A simple enemy which stays in once place and sends out a pulse of darkness, pulling in creatures of light and damaging them.

Bomb - This enemy is slow moving, but can be deadly if it should catch you. It will explode when in bright light, leaving a patch of miasma that will damage anything inside it.

Hopper - A dangerous foe who moves in quick hops, but must take time to change direction and can be outmanoeuvred.

Power-Ups:

Light Gem - A helpful gem filled with holy power, boosting your magical light. Will attract monsters.

Thank You For Participating!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at sarah.ann.herzog@gmail.com. I really appreciate your help, I wouldn't be able to complete my dissertation without you!

Update: What Am I Logging?

I realized I should let you all know what information I am logging:

• Game time
• Game inputs (movement and abilities)
• Picking up light gems
• Being injured by enemies
• Player's light value over time
• Player's position relative to the start and to the objective over time
• Active enemies and enemies targeting the player
• Active light gems

Tenebrous - Calling All Gamers!

As you may know, I'm currently working on a game for my dissertation. This post will tell you a bit about the game, what I hope to learn from it, and how you can help!

Game Overview

The game is called Tenebrous, and is a top-down action/horror game in which you must reach a safe haven before running out of magical light. The darkness itself is your enemy - your light drains naturally over time, and is drained much more quickly if you come into contact with monsters or miasma, a purple substance created by said monsters. To aid you in your quest, you have four light-based powers:

• Sneak - dim your light and move slowly to sneak past monsters (they only target you if they are within your light range). Be cautious - moving more slowly means your light is drained more to get the same distance!
• Boost - expel some of your light behind you to move forward at a brisk pace.
• Flare - charge up and then release a brilliant flare, stunning nearby enemies and revealing the surrounding terrain briefly. Uses a large amount of light to activate.
• Distract - drop a gem filled with your light. Enemies will prioritise this gem and ignore you while it is there. However, it will slowly lose the light that was given to it, eventually disappearing. The good news is, you can pick it back up to regain some of you light if you are quick!

Armed with these abilities, you must navigate a twisting, procedurally generated forest filled with swampy ground that slows you and malevolent miasma which drains your light as you pass through. You will be attacked by three different types of monster: The pulsar, a stationary creature which sends out a pulse and pulls you in towards it, dealing damage to you as you touch it; The bomb, moving slowly towards you and exploding as it gets close; and the hopper, a fast moving creature that must stop to re-orient itself before continuing pursuit.

Research Goal

What is the point of all this? Why is it worthy of a dissertation? The project and research subject was inspired by Left for Dead and Warframe - both games with procedurally generated gameplay experiences, in which enemies are spawned in based on the current intensity of gameplay. This is a very interesting idea because it means that player experiences can be crafted to match the quality of pacing achieved in hand-scripted levels, but in endless, procedural levels. 

Rather than attempting to recreate exactly what Valve and Digital Extremes had already done in Left for Dead and Warframe, I decided to view this concept through the lens of my previous career in engineering. The intensity the player experiences via the game's pacing can be thought of as an output from a controller, and the input is the threats the game creates for the player to interact with. The controller's job is to judge what quantity of threat to provide to achieve a target intensity.

To that end, I have created a PID (proportional integral differential) controller which keeps track of the intensity the player is experiencing (based on their actions, movements, damage taken, enemies targeting them, etc), the target intensity (this would be controlled and tuned by a designer, a very simple model has been chosen for this project), and from these generates a target threat output and spawns enemies to meet that threat output.

TLDR: The project spawns enemies based on the amount of action the player is experiencing, with the goal of making a well-paced game procedurally.

How You Can Help

In order to measure how well this project succeeded, I need people to play the game and send me their logs! There will also be a short survey once you complete the game. The gameplay is not designed for long play - I expect there to be roughly 5 minutes of gameplay followed by 5 minutes of survey. Combined with downloading the game and uploading your log, I expect it should only take around 15 minutes of your time total. I'd really appreciate the help, and when the game is released, you can have your name in the credits!

If you are interested in testing, please send me an email at sarah.ann.herzog@gmail.com. I'll be contacting everyone on my list on Monday 9th of October with details on how to download the game and how to send me your logs.

Thank you so much for your help!

Exploring Scotland - Along the East Coast

In my last few posts, I've been telling the tale of my travels through Scotland with my parents. In my first post, we toured my university's city and current home, Dundee. Next, we headed north to Aberdeen, Inverness, and Loch Ness. This time, we'll be exploring the area in between - the little town of Kirriemuir and the castles Glamis and Dunnottar.

Kirriemuir

When I was young, my favourite story was Peter Pan. For whatever reason, I was fascinated by this fun-loving boy who refused to grow up, and to this day have a soft spot in my heart for the story. It's no surprise then that I found Kirriemuir an intriguing little town, as it was the birthplace of the author of Peter Pan. Not surprisingly, the town has lots of Peter Pan themed sights, including a statue of Peter Pan and a run-down looking "Hook's Hotel".

Mom and Dad pose in front of the Peter Pan statue, near the run-down Hook's Hotel

While the Peter Pan themed landmarks were fun, the main reason for our visit to Kirriemuir (or Kirrie as it is often called by locals) was for family. Not only does Roy's mother work in the little town as a minister, Roy's brother and his new little family recently moved there. We had a great time visiting and playing some jams together - check out little Sebastian on the bongos!

Dinner at Alan and Zara's house was full of music and laughter.

Glamis Castle

View of Glamis from the front approach

Glamis was the first castle I saw in Scotland - Roy's mother Linda took me there shortly after we started dating. It was also the first castle we took my parents too (before we went up to Loch Ness). Compared to Urquhart and, as you will soon see, Dunnottar, Glamis is a much newer and more modern castle. It is, in fact, still used occasionally by the Queen Mother, who grew up there in her youth. Thankfully, it was a beautiful day and the castle looked absolutely stunning. We had a wonderful tour guide who showed us around and was very knowledgeable.

The family poses in front of the castle

We weren't allowed any pictures inside Glamis, but it was mostly extravagantly furnished rooms that, while interesting, weren't really what I have in mind when I think of castles - I guess it's just the D&D player in me that expects dank and ancient ruins. One neat feature of the tour was that several rooms were set up as they were centuries before the Queen Mother was in residence at the castle, so we got to see several different time periods as we moved through the castle. 

We also had an absolutely lovely time exploring the castle gardens, and found some truly beautiful areas there - as well as a few surprises from back home, including a douglas fir and other trees specially transplanted from the Pacific Northwest.

 

The castle gardens were actually my favourite part of my trip to Glamis.

Dunnottar Castle

Dunnottar is my favourite castle so far in Scotland. Dunnottar's claim to fame is that the Honours of Scotland were once smuggled out of this castle during a siege, and were safely hidden for many years thereafter. (We'll revisit the Honours in the next post, about Edinburgh and the castle where they now reside). Dunnottar is a cliffside castle, on the coast a short distance from the town of Stonehaven.

On the approach from the road, the castle cuts an imposing silhouette, fading in and out of the ocean mist like something out of a fantasy novel. Previously I had been too intimidated by the extremely steep climb down the cliff and back up to the castle, but this time around we were going to brave it to see inside.

First, we climbed down to the beach to explore. Turns out Scotland beaches are pretty similar to Oregon beaches - rocky, cold, and not much to see. But it was still fun!

I'm not the most fit of people, and many times on the way cursed myself for attempting the trek, thought of going back, and generally felt awful about the situation. However, that all faded away the moment I got inside and saw the mossy, water-worn, mist-dampened stones of this ancient ruin. I felt I had stepped into a story, or a particularly good session of D&D. A grin plastered to my face, I charged all around the grounds, taking pictures of everything I saw (and making Roy pose in as many silly ways as he could think of).

I took a ton of pictures on this visit, so I'll leave you with just my favourites.

When we first reached the castle grounds, it was shrouded in mist

 The light shining into the ruined underground halls was ethereal

Later, the sun came out, and we got to see the castle in the beautiful, clear air.

We found the remains of an ancient forge. Roy demonstrates it's use.

The family poses together with Dunnottar in the background.

Afterwards, we went to a small country farm cafe for smoothies and lunch

That's about it for Dunnottar Castle. Next time I'll talk about our last two big locations - Broughty Ferry and Edinburgh!

Exploring Scotland - Aberdeen and Loch Ness

In my last post, I talked about some of my adventures around Scotland with my parents - specifically, around Dundee, the town in which I attend university. Today I'm going to share our trip to Aberdeen, Inverness, and the iconic Scottish landmark Loch Ness.

We'll begin in Aberdeen. We travelled by train up the east coast of Scotland from Dundee to Aberdeen. The train trip took us through rolling countryside and along the sea cliffs, through the town of Stonehaven, and further north until we reached Scotland's third largest city. Aberdeen is well known for its granite buildings - there was a granite quarry nearby and so all of the buildings were made of the same type of stone. It gives the city a gorgeous uniform view, in addition to making it the most radioactive city in Scotland due to the large amount of natural radiation found in granite.

Some of the iconic grey buildings of Aberdeen.

Beautiful graveyard in downtown Aberdeen

In Aberdeen, we were met and shown around the city by a good friend of Roy and mine, Michael. He took us through the Union Terrace Garden, along the main streets, past iconic buildings such as Marischal College, and through an ancient and surprisingly peaceful (almost cheery) graveyard.

After wandering through the city, we stopped for lunch at Slain's Castle. This quirky and fun eatery was a huge hit - designed on the outside to look like an imposing castle from a horror film, inside it is full of lots of film tropes such as trick bookcases leading to the bathrooms and fun "evil castle" decor.

Slain's Castle, an awesome restaurant in downtown Aberdeen 

After lunch, we headed back to Michael's for a lovely evening with his family. We went to bed early, since the next day was our day trip to Inverness and Loch Ness.

In retrospect, we really should have spent more than a day up in Inverness. We barely got to see the city at all, and we could have spent even longer on the Loch than we did. But it was still an awesome experience and was definitely worth the trip.

As I mentioned, we only really passed through Inverness on our way to the Loch. However, the city was a lovely one - smaller than Dundee, with more quaint architectural style. It immediately struck me as the kind of place I would like to retire - and apparently that's a popular sentiment, as it's an extremely fast growing retirement destination. Before we headed up to the northern city, we were told "The best English is spoken in Inverness." I was skeptical based on my previous experience with the sometimes gruff Scottish accent, but was immediately proved wrong by the beautiful, lilting accent of the Inverness locals.

For our exploration of the Loch, we decided to go on a boat cruise with a bundled trip to Castle Urquhart. The trip was absolutely lovely and a ton of fun. Thankfully the weather cooperated - while not completely clear and sunny, it didn't rain on us except for a light dusting which resulted in a lovely rainbow over the Loch.

The boat trip on the Loch was truly lovely

The boat cruised from a small harbour out to a dock next to the ruins of an ancient castle - Castle Urquhart. Until this point, I'd only been inside one castle, that being Glamis, which was much newer. My gamer nerd self was delighted to explore ancient ruins - this was what I imagined when I thought of visiting Scotland years ago. Unfortunately, while Urquhart was interesting and steeped in history, I couldn't help but feel that the ruins seemed a bit... fake. Yes these were ancient ruins, but they were clearly restored and worked to allow the thousands of tourists visiting each year not to injure themselves or break things. Everything seemed to have bits of cement holding them together, and the tumbled rocks weren't tumbled at all, but were in fact carefully designed and cemented in place. Don't get me wrong though - the scene of the ruined castle from the top of the tower was still impressive, even if the climb to get up there was harrowing!

Urquhart Castle was a beautiful sight, despite seeming a bit fake.

The Aberdeen / Loch Ness trip was a ton of fun, and we got to see ancient parts of Scotland and learn the histories of some of the most iconic Scottish landmarks. My favorite part of the trip, however, was still to come - if I was disappointed by Urquhart's perceived "fakeness", I was blown away by the mysticism of Dunnotter Castle. Look forward to my next post, which will cover that and more!

Exploring Scotland - Around Dundee

Just over a year has passed since I moved to Scotland, and it's been a while since I've talked about my adventures in my new home. In fact, I planned to do a lot more of this kind of blogging when I first arrived, but got distracted with other things. Now that I've just finished three weeks of running around the country with my parents doing tourist things, I'll spend a few posts reflecting on what we did and saw here.

We'll start in Dundee, the city I live and attend university in. While it's the fourth largest city in Scotland, Dundee is pretty small for a city. It's architecture, compared to some of the other places here, is pretty but not amazing. But to someone from the US, it's still fantastic to look at. I've met a lot of Scots who are confused by our fascination with old buildings and castles - but you have to understand, Scottish readers: some of the buildings here are older than our ENTIRE COUNTRY. We don't get a feeling of that gravitas, that weight of history, in many places in the US.

Some of the Dundee buildings and scenery

The family poses with Desparate Dan!

Anyway, we had a lot of fun exploring Dundee. I tried to cover all the main attractions, as well as a few of my favourite local places. First, we visited the high street and the fun statues there, including Desperate Dan. Dundee is famous for Desperate Dan, a character in a comic called the Dandy, produced in Dundee. Comics are part of Dundee's journalism industry, one of the "three Js" that made up Dundee's industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Food and Drink

Strawberry Daiquiris at Rancho Pancho

We visited a TON of restaurants while we were here. I took everyone to my favourites - Tonic, Nandos, Rancho Pancho, and more. Scotland isn't known for it's food (aside from the mysterious Haggis) but I know I've found lots of places that make my taste buds dance. Tonic is my all-time favourite, with a truly ridiculous number of burger choices, all of them amazing. My go-to choice is the Texan Hat, a burger with beef patty, Scottish bacon (which is WAY better than American bacon), cheese, hash brown, and barbecue sauce. SO TASTY!

The outdoor seating at Duke's Corner
was a big hit!

We also made sure to check out a lot of pubs, as my parents like to try different beers and wanted to taste as many Scottish varieties as they could while they were here. Duke's Corner, Tickety Boos, and more were investigated. I'm not a beer drinker myself, but I did enjoy trying different types of ciders - for my American audience, UK cider is by default alcoholic, and served cold. My favourite brand is Rekorderlig, a Swedish cider with many tasty fruit flavours. More commonly available, and still tasty, is Kopparberg.

Music

My dad moves in to tip the Trombonist

 As I may have mentioned before, my father is a blues musician. consequently, I was delighted to show them the active street busking scene in Dundee. On a dry day you can see a busker every block or so on the high street. Most are guitarists, fiddlers, and harmonica players, but there are a few exceptions, including trombone players and accordion players. The mix of music on every corner makes the city feel alive.

Dad busks near the dragons statue

After seeing some of the buskers, my dad decided to try it out himself. He brought his steel body resonator guitar from the US, which, along with his slide playing style, attracted quite a lot of attention. The guitar is quit shiny, and also a lot louder than a normal guitar, since it was developed to amplify sound before electronic sound amplification was common. While Dad didn't make a fortune playing, he had a lot of fun, met a bunch of other street musicians, got info on local open mic nights, and made enough money to buy a few beers and to tip other street musicians we passed by,

Jam session at the end of a crazy and
wonderful night at Clarks

As I mentioned, one of the fruits of his street busking was knowledge of where the local open mic nights were. One such establishment was a little pub called Clarks. We went there on one of the last nights of my parents' stay, and I have to say it was probably the best time we had for the entire visit. Clarks has an amazing atmosphere - it really felt like a ton of musically minded people all getting together to appreciate each-other's craft. Dad was one of the first to play, and met with an extremely warm and welcoming reception. People loved the blues style (it was a folk music themed night so he fit right in), and the novelty of him being American and his very shiny guitar helped too. They invited him to stay until the end when many musicians got together and jammed on stage. During the jam, they did one of my Dad's songs, which is a call back style song that the audience participates in. Everyone in the bar was singing, clapping, stomping their feet, and my Dad had a whole band of musicians behind him. I could tell it really made the trip for him, and it was damn fun for me too! I got to see a lot of new talent that I want to hear more of, and I plan to head back to Clarks regularly from now on.

Seeing the Sites

The family poses in front of the Discovery

In addition to investigating the local music and food scenes, we did a lot of tourist stuff too. Dundee is known for the ship the Discovery, the first ship to do prolonged research in the Antarctic. It was great fun crawling around the old vessel, and my Dad is really into ships too so it was perfect for him. The ship is old, from the beginning of the 20th century, and was powered both by steam and sails. It was interesting to compare it to my experience on the OMSI submarine back in the states.

One of the biggest sites to see in Dundee is the Law. Law means "hill", so the people who say "Law Hill" are being redundant. Basically, it's the highest point in Dundee and looks out over the entire city. It's a beautiful site and was well worth the cab fare to get up there.

Panoramic of the Law - the view was breathtaking

We pose on top of the Law

We decided to walk down from the Law, and I'm really happy we did. We found this very long corridor of stairs squeezed between old fences, gardens, and buildings, and it was a truly lovely walk.

At the bottom of these stairs was Dudhope castle. Fairly small and pretty modern as far as Scottish castles go, Dudhope was still a lovely site from the outside. It's a private castle so it's not open for exploration, but we got a nice picture from the gate.

The trip down from the Law was as fun as the hill view

The last major tourist attraction we visited in Dundee was the McManus Museum at the centre of town. It's a lovely museum with a mix of art, industrial history, and natural history/wildlife. It was a lot of fun, and is a really nice looking building for photo ops!

Pose in front of the McManus Museum

To Be Continued...

That's it for my Dundee adventures, but I'll have several more blog posts detailing my exploration of Edinburgh, Inverness / Loch Ness, Aberdeen, and several small towns and castles along the east coast of Scotland. Look forward to it!