10:00 – 10:35 Adamantios Oikonomopoulos, Aventurine SA,
“Designing Monsters for Games”- pdf
A presentation about game design, and specifically about monster designing. Designing a monster for a game is not as
simple as it sounds. It is not just about making a monster look big and scary, or adding a terrifying roar to it. The presentation
intends to show how much work and though is put into designing one monster. From all those questions asked before
designing a monster such as ‘why it is needed in the game”, to how it will finally delivered to the players and experienced by
them. It will also try to show how many people and departments are involved into making a monster, and how it effects many
other aspects of a game, from various combat mechanics to aesthetic designing decisions.
The presentation of designing monsters will be made with two parallel examples. One of a difficult end-game monster
(Ragaizan), and one of a mid-game family group of monsters (the Arthain), both of which will soon be implemented in
a future expansion of the mmorpg game “Darkfall”.
The presentation will be divided in chapters that will cover all the stages of the creation of a monster for a game.
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10:35 – 11:10 Petros Ioannis
“Shadow Descent”- ppt
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11:10 – 11:25 Coffee Break
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11:25 – 12:00 Dimitrios Bendilas, Software Engineer/Game Designer , Total Eclipse,– ppt
“Designing good logic puzzles: From concept to play”
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This is a game design presentation of interest to game designers, programmers, and interface designers who want to create engaging logic puzzles. The presentation analyzes all aspects of designing good puzzles that provide a great experience for the player and a manageable asset for the game developer. Various examples of puzzles designed for The Clockwork Man 1 & 2 are shown and evaluated, explaining both good and bad attributes. The following topics will be discussed:
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Introduction to logic puzzles – What is considered a logic puzzle; examples of various implementations.
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Core aspects – What a puzzle consists of; key components.
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Conceptualizing an idea – Where to seek inspiration and how to create basic mock ups.
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Puzzle mechanics: Identifying game play parameters – The relationship between math, logic and puzzles. What the
player can affect, system complexity, player freedom and restrictions.
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Interface mechanics and usability – What the player sees, user interface controls, visual & other feedback.
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Innovation – Creating unique and fresh experiences.
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Contextual puzzle design – What makes a puzzle contextual and part of the overall game experience.
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Prototyping – Tools to help you create puzzle prototypes.
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Balancing – How to make a puzzle challenging and fun. Difficulty, game length, number of solutions.
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Localization issues – Language elements in puzzles and the issues of localization.
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12:00 – 12:35 Kostas Anagnostou, Game Developer/Adjunct Lecturer at the Ionian University,- ppt
Rotten Fish Games
“Data-driven game development:Empowering the Artist
In this presentation we discuss the need to decouple game code and game data in current games. Viewing games as
data-independent, data-processing systems can empower the designer and artist to easily add new content and to
experiment and fine-tune the game mechanics potentially leading to better and more expandable games. To put the
discussion into context we present the way we have structured the data-driven system in Space Debris and the flexibility it
provided during level design.
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12:35 – 12:50 Break
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12:50 – 13:25 Evaggelos Georgiou, Music and Game Audio Producer,
“Introduction to the music for video games”- pdf
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13:25 – 14:00 Anestis Kokkinidis & Marina Kokkinidou (Ph.D. in Philology), Anima-ppd Interactive- pdf
“Being Nick Delios or The creation of the FMV adventure games Conspiracies & Conspiracies II”
From Plato’s conception, that the world we live in is imperfect and no more than a reflection of another world of ‘perfect’
Forms to William Gibson’s prophetic Neuromancer, the idea of virtual worlds existed throughout human history. Today
numerous possibilities exist in cyberspace for a person to act, to search, to find, to learn, to work, to play, to express
him/herself, to disguise, to escape even to change identity, offering ways to explore each aspect of our selfhood. Moreover in
our postmodern times when fragmentation, sampling and recycling dominate while truth is often conceived as culture bound,
when openness and avoiding fixation are keywords it is quite unavoidable for us to have many identities…
It is well known that virtual spaces, especially games, offer the possibility to play with different identities through multiple
roles. These roles sometimes have the form of pre-constructed game characters destined to become the real player’s virtual
self into the story of a specific game world. This is the case of Nick Delios, main character of the 3D FMV adventure games
Conspiracies (2003) and Conspiracies II-Lethal Networks (released March 10, 2011) by Anima-ppd Interactive (Drama, Gr).
This presentation will discuss the creation of the game characters, worlds and locations, their cultural references along with
the challenges and problems related to the development of an FMV adventure game in Greece.
Bibliography (indicative)
Jameson F. 1999. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Athens, ed. Nefeli.
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14:00 – 15:00 Lunch Break
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15:00 – 15:35 Tasos Flambouras, Vice president of Aventurine,
“Social Gaming vs The Gaming Layer”
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15:35 – 16:10 Kostas Diamantis,3D Artist- pdf
“The illusion of detail in video-games”
How to create details in an object inside Zbrush, then extract it to 3D Studio Max as low polygon geometry, with a texture that keeps that high level detail for usage in computer games.
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16:10 – 16:30 Break
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16:30 – 18:30 HGDA panel
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