4. Authoring Games

Authoring Games

Game authoring process

The game authoring process in rollick can be broken down into the following tasks:

  • Create a game Create a new game, describe it, and set where your game will be played. In your city? In a park? In your country? other?
  • Define the game scenes. Identify the real-world places where the action of your game will mostly take place (e.g. squares, buildings, neighborhoods, cities, parks, etc.)
  • Define the game elements. Create all entities (characters, messages, questions, conversations, missions, items, objects, etc)
  • Define the game script For each game scene, create its script, defining what will happen when something (an event) happens
  • **Define the initial game world **Populate the initial game world, i.e. define what the game world will contain when a new game instance will be created. Except for creating a game, the rest of the aforementioned tasks are not meant to be done in the shown order. In practice, game authoring is an iterative process in which every iteration adds new scenes, creates new elements, defines new scripting rules, and so on.

Creating a new game

Every registered user in the rollick platform can create their own games. The form to create a new game contains all the game configuration aspects. However, only a few of them are required in order to create a new game:

  • The Game title, and description
  • The Game language. Every game must declare its language (currently supported languages: EN and EL). Rollick does not support multilingual games. The player app automatically adapts to the game’s language when the player enters the game.
  • Game’s type. That is single-player or multi-player (single-player by default) game.
  • Player’s age.
    • Suggested Min and Suggested Max age. You can define the age group that your game is targeting. However, this is only a suggestion. On the other hand, if you set that your game is for adults only then users must confirm that they are over 18 years old in order to be able to enter the game.
  • Playground Configuration.
    • Set the title, the center, and the radius of the (real world) playground area.
  • Start Date
    • Under the Access tab set the Starting date and time at least. Until you publish your game, this is not so important since only you have access to the game and you can play it regardless of its starting date-time
  • Game Logo. Set a logo image for your game to easily be recognized by your players.

That’s it. You have created your first Game!! Although empty, your game appears now on your home page of the rollick platform.

At the bottom of the game card, you can see four buttons each one launching a dedicated application environment to deal with different aspects of your game.

  • Design. Launches the game design environment that allows you to author your game (entities, scenes, scripts, etc.).
  • Configure. Launches the game configuration environment where you can configure several aspects (metadata, access restrictions, player app options, terms, etc. ) of your game except the game plot.
  • Instances. Launches the game instances management environment where you can monitor and manage played instances of your game and intervene in game worlds (send communication messages, add objects, offers, etc.)
  • Analytics. Launches the analytics dashboard where you can see overall statistics for all game instances played.

In the following sections we will show you how to design your game, how to structure it, and how to create your game's elements, define the plot, and set the initial world.

Common properties of game entities

Almost every entity you create during the design of your game has two important, designer-only, properties:

  • System Name. A unique name that is used internally (in the game design process) to reference an element. The system name is not seen by the players.
  • Notes. Designer-only notes about the element, e.g. something to remember, to check later, to change, etc. The main layout of the game design environment can be seen in the image below. The map shows the game’s playground and the defined scenes.