DodgeBallZ
The Request
Another Game-at-Request modification on behalf of our friend Bezman (the first was UnicornSlaughter²):
I’d like to see a version of DodgeBall but with multiple opponents. Using the controls of that game, enemies with one life would pop up on the other side from time to time. The AI would be different - just sorta bouncing mindlessly around and throwing a ball straight at you if they touch one that they can throw. When you hit an enemy, the ball disappears, but 2 balls are now thrown onto your side from the left. These 2 balls get thrown on really softly, so you should be able to dodge it. I think the game might get interesting when you have a lot of balls on your side and need to throw before you can move. Maybe start with like 10 balls on your side and 4 on theirs?
One Adjustment
The only change I’ve made in interpreting this request: 1 ball comes in from the left at a time, instead of 2, upon scoring an enemy hit. This change was made to keep the ball count manageable, as there’s already a tendency for most of the balls to pile up on the player’s side. The game is over when one side or the other is eliminated entirely - no easy task, since the enemy team respawns at a steady interval. To prevent a player from getting too swamped there’s a cap on the total number of players that can spawn onto the other team.
Play By Rush - Formal Emergence Analysis
This game actually works out quite well. Why?
It begins with one very important rule, directly from Bezman’s description:
- (Bezman) Enemies move about randomly.
Note how this rule plays against other mechanics from the original DodgeBall:
- (Code) Enemies throw balls to the player’s side when they pass over them.
- (#1, #2) Therefore: the more balls are on the enemy’s side, the more likely balls will be passed over, and thus the faster balls get thrown back at the player.
…and…
- (Code) Enemies vanish when hit by a ball.
- (#1, #4) Therefore: the more enemies are active, the more likely a thrown ball will hit an enemy; the ease of defeating enemies decreases as players on their team are knocked out.
…in context of a natural property of dodgeball…
- (Code) Enemies cannot cross the middle line, leaving those balls in reach of the player.
- (#2, #6) Therefore: waiting for balls to reach the player’s side leaves enemies harmless, and the player well situated.
…plus one more rule straight from Bezman…
- (Bezman) Enemies spawn in at a constant rate.
- (#8) Therefore: enemies will all respawn given enough time (roughly the time it takes balls to pile up on the player’s side).
…and another property of dodgeball:
- (Code) Attacking enemies posits balls on their side.
- (#2, #6, #10) Therefore: attacking enemies makes their team increasingly dangerous.
Pulling out the conclusions, so far we have these derived facts:
- The more balls are on the enemy’s side, the more likely balls will be passed over, and thus the faster balls get thrown back at the player.
- The more enemies are active, the more likely a thrown ball will hit an enemy; the ease of defeating enemies decreases as players on their team are knocked out.
- Waiting for balls to reach the player’s side leaves enemies harmless, and the player well situated.
- Enemies will all have respawned in the time it takes balls to pile up on the player’s side.
- Attacking enemies makes their team increasingly dangerous.
What!?
The previous five points lead to the following emergent mechanics balance:
- (#3, #5, #11) The more progress the player makes towards clearing all enemies, the harder that behavior is to sustain. The player winds up facing increasingly well-armed enemies, a decreasing total target area, and a decreasing number of potential attack positions.
- (#7, #9) If the player is dodging or passive - doing anything besides making constant progress - the game will return rapidly toward stable equilibrium with all balls on the player’s side and all enemies spawned.
- (#12, #13) Therefore: The play mechanics alternate between sprints of counter-productive progress toward victory, and sliding back into dead-ends of stable peace.
Conclusion: It’s like trying to run up a muddy hill.
Q.E.D. ;)
Special thanks to Bezman for submitting today’s Game-at-Request.
January 9th, 2008 at 3:57 am
I think this might be my new favourite game (’entertaining’ game if you prefer) of yours (beating the mirrors one, as I feel I pretty much ’solved’ that).
for some reason, this makes me laugh insanely - it’s the first time I’ve had a computer game have such an effect on me - whether I lose or win, I laugh whenever the game ends. And sometimes, it was a lot more - when I score hits, when I have a close escape…
I think you actually did a lot more ‘interpretation’ than you realise (or claim at any rate) -
‘bouncing mindlessly around’ - I imagined the enemies literally just bouncing, as if a ball with no friction. I far prefer your iteration - both the fact that it seems a lot less predictable, yet not letting random numbers determine our success - and also the fact that they stop bouncing when no balls are active or on their side. The fact that they stop moving certainly encourages us to go ahead and throw, rather than waiting for an optimal positioning, which would be tedious.
‘pop up on the other side from time to time’ - here I imagined like one enemy, followed by another at a steady pace, with a high-score emphasis. I far prefer your version - both because we feel a sense of a change in the game as we reduce the number of enemies (a status we’d never need to get to in my version) and also because the end of the game results in a satisfying conclusion. Really, this would be a far cheaper experience as a high-score alternative and I just now realised that the optimal play in my (now obviously flawed) imagined version would encourage people to just wait until the maximum number of enemies was available (or until the entire screen is covered in the absence of a gap) - resulting in boring waits for optimal play.
‘throwing a ball straight at you’ - I notice they sometimes miss, sometimes not throwing hard enough. Do different enemies throw with different degrees of ‘accuracy’ in positioning and strength?
‘2 balls are now thrown onto your side from the left’ - this one you acknowledge. Here I imagined you reaching a state where there were so many balls that moving to a new location could result in you being ‘locked’ in there for a while - there’d be so many balls that you wouldn’t be able to move for maybe ten seconds, making for a decision over whether to move to the pile or not and a game when dodging, trying to not land on balls. On reflection, you’d always just wait to move to a pile when all balls were on your side. Landing here, throwing balls to a fixed point would ensure you wouldn’t
‘thrown on really softly, so you should be able to dodge it.’ - I imagined the balled being blue when being thrown - that was the only reason to say ‘they should be thrown really softly’. In quickly typing up my idea, it didn’t occur to me that new balls could be harmless! Furthermore, had the game I imagined been made, you’d still be hit by balls as after running out of balls from the start, you’d need to start using the newly generated ones - where you might be hit with a new ball!
Even if the speed of new balls was somehow ultra-slow, your version definitely encourages successful hits a lot more, promoting the spirit of the game through mechanics.
Obviously, you did spend more time thinking about it than I and I’d expect you to improve the idea, but for me this just further illustrates a) what a difference details make (already shown in unicorn slaughter and b) how differently people can interpret the same idea after it’s been presented.
Thanks for the game.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:05 am
Thanks again for the request! :-D
My roommate also finds this one of the more enjoyable Game-a-Day projects that he has played (as you know, “enjoyable” isn’t always my goal, but sometimes it is, and it rarely hurts!). Just a couple of differences made a huge difference between this and the original DodgeBall.
I’m also having fun trying to build journal entries that are still complete, and contain enough information to be worth reading, for games that are only a minor variation on a previously existing game. Doing so is forcing me to think in a much more granular and deliberate manner than I do for brand new stuff - on new games, I can sort of “choose” whether to talk about message, mechanics, balance, etc. In these GaD Variation games, I pretty much have to write about the only differences that are there, and give them enough detail to fill the space.
Cheers!