Surface Bound – A return to classic, story-driven gaming

Surface Bound – A return to classic, story-driven gaming

1. Possible Solutions

   • Scrapped ideas
     • Zombie Apocolypse
       • Was scrapped as it is very overdone
         • The Last of Us
         • DayZ
         • CoD Zombies
     • Nuclear Fallout
       • Again, very overdone
         • Fallout Series
         • Metro Trilogy
   • How to win
     • Enter the right chambers to obtain the 3 artefacts needed to beat the boss
       • Specific combinations of choices from the protagonist will lead to particular rooms, which will reward the player with one of the artefacts, or something needed to obtain an artefact
       • Sword of Arkrock
       • Shield of Cryostone
       • Tunic of Hearthsoul
   • Game features
     • Inventory
       • Button in top right to see written list of artefacts and tools collected
       • Powered by lists from Python
     • Choices
       • 2-3 buttons will appear in each scene, choosing one selects a particular outcome
       • After selecting, the written result of selecting the option will appear, and a new button to proceed further will appear.

2. Usability Principles

   • Utility
     • Is the overall solution easy to use
     • How usefull is it for the user
       • Does it match the
   • Accessibility
     • Are the font's and colours legible
     • Is the spacing and formatting comfortable to follow
     • Does the game work on various devices
   • Responsiveness
     • Does the Game and its components work
       • Do buttons perform their required actions
       • Do the visual CSS and HTML elements load
   • Learnability
     • Are the games functions easy to understand
     • Does it resemble functions found in other solutions
   • Safety
     • Does the webpage have 0 risk of any corruption or crashing
     • Is the user safe from accidently closing the game and losing progress
     • Can the user recover from the errors

3. Scope of the Problem

   • Inventory
     • List powered by Python code
     • Written list of all acquired artefacts and tools
     • Icons will be added using HTML for each item in inventory
   • Main Menu
     • Powered With HTML
       • Will be styled with CSS
       • Buttons to start game and learn lore will be present
   • Main Game UI
     • A main background relevant to the scene will be shown in the background, with the scene's context and events listed in text overlayed.
       • Below this, a prompt will ask the player to pick between the options
       • In the top right, the button for accessing the inventory will presented, crucial for checking whether certain rooms are accessible or not based on the tools you have
   • Prologue/Lore Page
     • Text on a page, with the lore and world-building elements
       • Will be accessible from Main Menu
       • Broken into chunks for ease of reading
         • Progress through the story with a 'continue next' button

4. Constraints and Limitations

   • Animations will not be present due to lack of coding capabilities for the Python and HTML components
     • To combat this, high-quality images will be used to add a visual guide. They will be relevant to the current scene the player is in (i.e, a dungeon for the boss fight)
       • Image to be preferable a PNG to keep sharper edges and features, with no lossy compression affecting the quality of the image
       • Image will preferably be a PNG to ensure sharper quality and prevent lossy compression reducing the visual quality of the image
   • Limited Inputs may result in boring or reptitive gameplay
   • HTML is a basic coding language for web-pages, hence the quality of the webpage may not feel as premium as another webpage made with JavaScript
   • Single Player Gameplay may feel lonely, especially with the norm for modern gaming revolving around multiplayer experiences