Dine N' Bash
Dine N' Bash is a fantasy Diner Dash style game which has players bring food orders to customers in an exact order. If players take too long, customers begin to throw projectiles at the player. The objective is to earn the highest letter grade on you can on each level.
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Team Size: 9
Scoring System
System Modeling
Custom Engine
Project Length: 4 Months
Role: System Designer
Type: Academic
Contributions:
- Collaborated with an interdisciplinary team of 4 designers and 5 engineers
- Modeled and balanced score system using Machinations
- Developed a level design tool using Excel
- Wrote design documentation to communicate necessary custom engine features
Detailed Info
Score System Goals
-The system should provide a satisfying baseline result for newer players
-The system should engage an elite player's sense of mastery and achievement
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Desired Outcomes:
- Create a system which primarily generates B and C ranks for low-skill players
- Create a system which generates A ranks for elite play and S ranks for near perfect play
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System Model
This model is used to quickly simulate a single level of gameplay. The primary variables I was modifying were the score streak multiplier and the grade thresholds. Grade thresholds existed outside this model.
Key Anchor Points:
- Our level will try to reduce the player's score streak multiplier 5 times over the course of the level
- The player has a 15% chance to avoid this reduction each time
- S-rank is reserved for players which avoid multiple reductions in score multiplier
Trial Example
Level Tool Goals
- Obtain a deeper understanding of how challenge is created in our game
- Create a tool which allows our team to design levels with more intention
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Tool Use Example
In this demonstration, The user is inputting (X , Y) coordinates for game entities in the custom engine. The spreadsheet then reorganizes the order types by the calculated difficulty in ascending order from easiest to hardest.
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The far right section is a proposed sequence of customer orders, which also has each row's difficulty adjusted formulaically. Finally, the level's Difficulty Rating is the mean of the AD column.