Step 1: Planning

I will be blogging my progression through a design project for this class. As with any project there is a planning step, a step at which one decides what they are going to do and how they will do it.

For my project I will be designing a simulation of a small adventure. The goals of this project will be to demonstrate my abilities as a programer and to develop skills that will be useful later on. Since day one of class was cancelled due to the professor being sick, I'm not 100% sure of what he is looking for here, so we will do this by the seat-of-our-pants and see where this adventure takes us. Well, that was a fun short rant, back to goals. Since I do not know what kinds of material will be covered in the class I am unaware, thus, as to what the program will look like to the end-user. If it ends up being textually based, I plan to create descriptions that will be clear and concise. And if the product ends up being graphical it can guarantee that it will be a basic design because I have no artistic abilities, what-so-ever. Should this program be interactive, there will be a selection of options for the user to select from that will guide the experience.

There will be at least 2 entities in this adventure ( I plan to have a few more of course). The first will be the player themselves, and the other will be some sort of ending boss. The player will explore a few rooms and have to fight their way to the final boss. ( Wow, I guess this is turning out to be more along the lines of a game as described in the assignment on the course website ... oh well, this is not set in stone yet ... even though it is online ... interesting.) There will be a few monsters and they will drop a few items that the user will need in the last fight.

The characteristics of this adventure are pretty simple given the descriptions above. The player may encounter an indoor and an outdoor setting, or possible only one of them. This has not been completely decided yet. As mentioned there will be at least 2 or 3 fights that will be required for progression.


There will be 2 animate objects, the first is the player. The player will be interactive. They will have the ability to eat and attack and move (this may include the need to turn). The player will be the user control object. I plan on having a stipulation of no eating during combat. The player will navigate through a set of rooms and after defeating a select number of monsters they will arrive in the final room where they will fight the last boss and either save a beautiful female or some holy grail.

The other animate object will be a selection of monsters. I would like each one to be more challenging then the last, but depending on time required and the available skills, this may or may not be implemented. This class will have subclasses for different types of monsteres including the final boss. These monsters will serve as challenges to the user and to gain experience and a sense of accomplishment when the game is over. They will have the ability to attack (maybe multiple types of attacks) and pursue a running adventuring (beware you may take an arrow to the knee).

There is a requirement of at least 2 inanimate objects. For this type of project these are pretty self explanatory. By implication, because the player can 'eat' there is a need for a food object. Because there are different rooms, there must be 'door's that need to be open with 'key's that will be picked up off of monsters that are killed with 'weapon's. Depending on the level of difficulty to implement, there may be potions that can be used during combat to give the player an advantage.

As mentioned earlier there will be a few rooms. For the final ending place I want it to be in a dungeon like setting with fire and all that jazz. The player will start on the outside of a castle like building and have to progress through the courtyard (that is not as friendly as it looks), the main entrance (which will give clues as to what the final boss will entail), pre-dungeon room where the boss is protected and then ending in the dungeon with the final boss inside.

For the action hierarchy it is pretty obvious what needs to be done. There will be things the 'die'. For this project they will stay dead. There will be attacks that take place, maybe including unexpected attacks from ghosts. If in the case that the user wants to run from a fight, there will be chasing involved (clearly, why wouldn't there be?). Eating is another action all in its own. The user will be able to preform actions during eating but these will instantly cancel the eating action.