Mechanics 1.0 - 28/11/18
Now that I have some understanding of how stars work, I want to get started on creating the mechanics of the game. For this, I decided to put everything down on paper and see what depends on what, and what affects what. This is the simplest I could do:
From here, I went to talk to James about how I make all this in some game mechanics, and after some Physics and Maths theory, we narrowed it down to three mechanics: Mass, because it affects both luminosity and radius, Temperature, because the player will be able to play with the colour of the star, and Position, because the players will move around between the stars. So, this is what the player will have control over.
What I need to do now is to find some values for the Distance Table that would work with the stars, some also colours for the Colour Table and then make the first prototype.
After doing some research on colours and how they affect our behaviour, I chose 7 colours (there are 7 original spectral types), and then I searched for some themed relaxing spaces – bedrooms images and made a moodboard.
I then took the colours to a new page and chose the ones that I liked the most, and replaced the old colours with them.
For the Distance Table, I had a look at the Constellations research, to see about how far the stars are. After making an idea, I associated some values in an order that would make sense.
I quite like the final result. However, these are only provisional colours and values, as I need to test them in prototypes first and see how they work.
Mechanics 2.0 - 30/11/18
Before making the first prototype, I thought it would be better if the player would play with physics, but now that I saw how it works, I don’t want that anymore, because it’s not too complicated, but rather unnecessary to involve physics in a relaxing games – some people might even find it stressful.
As a result, here are the things I want the player to have access to: the Position, the Size, and the Colour of the star. You modify the star’s properties as easy as it sounds, and you have a bar telling you how close you are to making the perfect star.
To help with the smoothness of the game, I also came up with the idea of having a little character that would guide you through this experience.
Mechanics 3.0 - 03/12/18
As I started thinking about the game controls, I realised that the Position mechanic isn’t quite a mechanic, because you don’t need it to make the perfect star, you would only need it to travel around, which isn’t what I want.
Therefore, I decided to replace it with the Brightness mechanic, which would mean that the player will have to play around with this to make the desired star.
New mechanics: Size, Colour, Brightness.