Emrgenct Gameplay 2 - Creating a game within a game

Carrying on from my last post, I have explored the various ‘mechanics’ available in ‘habbo hotel’, and had a stab at creating a game within the game.

First, some background information!

The primary ‘mechanics’ (I promise to stop putting these in inverted commas soon) of the game are to move a character around 4 directions on an isometric grid, chat to other players, and stand in the way of other players, and also dress your player.

As well as this, there are items that can be sat on, laid on, or dispense ‘food’ items for your character to hold. All items can be moved (or rotated) by a user granted ‘rights’ in a room (these users can also eject people from the room) and there are also various items that do specific thing such as:

• A Roller which, when something is placed on it, will move the item to the next tile
  
• A Dice, which show a random number between 1 and 6
  
• Various divider and gate items used to separate rooms.
  

Now, what promoted this was a series of items within the game that would cause various effects within these mechanics without a user doing it manually, and it could be triggered in different ways.
As I mentioned previously, users had created games in which people race to appearing furniture, which a user would have to move. This sort of thing can now be done by a simple triggered effect.
Now, for the exciting bit. What I did!

What I’ve done

Using several “Roller” items and the ability to trigger rotation, I set up a small track network that, at points, would split off in different directions.

The idea of the game was for 2 people to compete in getting items that where placed on the start of the track to end up in their area when it came off the track.

Players could rotate 3 of the rollers to change to 4 directions, 1 direction facing their goal, one and the other 3 leading back to the start.

The challenge arises when the players can each rotate the same spots, so would compete to get these items to go their way, and if it didn’t, could try again at a later point.

But that’s not enough of a challenge!

To make it so players couldn’t play tug-of-switch, I set up a system in which several items would be on the track at once, so players couldn’t maintain focus on one rotator.

Why it couldn’t be done before

Obviously my excitement about emergent gameplay comes from the release of the mechanic creating items “Wired Furniture”

To better explain why this couldn’t have been made before, and why such tools are useful, I will explain why I was unable to do this before.

1. Rotating items could only be done by people with ‘rights’ to move things.
   With this, the users could move and rotate any item, so the limit to 3 items this game requires would not have been possible, and players could have moved anything anywhere.
   
2. A system with which players could operate items with a trigger was unavalible. would have been done by clicking the item and clicking “Rotate.” This would have been too time consuming.


3. The process of putting objects onto the conveyer belt would have had to be done by hand, so the game would require a ‘host’
   It would also not be particularly precise, and could be done as and when the host felt like it, perhaps even forgotten about.
   

Not bad for a few moving objects and 3 rotators on an online chat board, hu? I realise the design above looks a little shabby, but it is to give you an idea of how it works. A formalised document will likely be delivered with my submission.