Table of Contents

Introduction

Software Specifications

Hardware Requirements

Intended Audience

Software Development Team Requirements

Game Testing Availability

Basic Game Description

Player Reward Systems (Replay Value)

Game Play Description

Storyline (or lack thereof)

Modes of (Tournament) Game Play

Other Mini Games

Implementation (Flow Chart of Software System)

Rough Draft of Screenshots

Introduction

The people of medieval society “required” a form of entertainment. In Greek, there were the theaters. In Rome, there were the gladiators to entertain the masses (thousands of people at a time). Now that we have breached through the Industrial Revolution, the quality of education has continued to increase to allow technological advancements. These advancements have lead to the development of complicated discrete digital systems, which, over time, have grown to be able to accommodate the intense requirements of what we now know as video games, or interactive software with specific rewards based on rules for (a) player(s) to experience.

One of the less exposed markets within this newly developed video game industry is in the Medieval Tournaments sector. There is a lack of accurate portrayal of medieval tournaments, which is generally known to be where knights would joust, and other events take place. An accurate portrayal of a medieval tournament would be boring in contrast to the other realms of entertainment - what with Star Wars with fancy graphics, or World of Warcraft plaguing the minds of MMORPG addicts. In order to insure that a medieval tournament video game would be marketable, it would be supped-up, or made to be a modern interpretation of the events. Of course, in order to maintain credibility, there will be “modes” within the game which simulate the original tournaments.

The rest of this document goes over the rest of the specifications involved in designing this video game. The marketers have deemed that all the information required for a medieval video game is present. One would be quick to point out that this document lacks specific artifacts to model 3D objects off of, and this is quite true. To counteract this, the game will be updatable, meaning the overworked programmers will be able to add on to the video game after the first version, and then the company may charge for additional upgrades to the game, hence increasing profits.

Software Specifications

The software must be written in a reusable manner such that the company may recreate games with questionably similar factors. This reusable factor of the software will allow the game to be ported to the popular gaming systems, which include, but are not particularly limited to: Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, BSD, Playstation consoles, Xbox consoles, GameCube consoles, GameBoy DS, and perhaps the Playstation Portable if the designers of the console care to actually make it usable.

Hardware Requirements

For the average customer, extensive testing will be needed to determine which system will meet the “minimum” requirements, “normal” requirements”, and “excellent” requirements. In order to fund the possibly excessive cost of this video game, we will be accepting offers from other companies to obscure these statistics. The high-end requirements, hence, will be based on hardware that has been released within a few weeks and is unavailable to the majority of the market. This may discourage the general market, hence, the minimum end will include statistics for computers which are so old that, technically, they should be nonexistent.

Intended Audience

The basic premise of the game was originally designed in the Middle Ages for people who would be about 15 years old. However, since that market has already been dominated by Halo 2, the marketing audience will be as wide as the Liberals will let it be. This will include people down to 9 years old. Older people will be accommodated by adding interesting cut scenes and complex storylines (with simplified versions for children).

Software Development Team Requirements

Like all other game design projects, there are certain requirements which must be met for this project to be completed on time. The suggested team complement is as follows:

(20) Interns

(10) Software Engineers

(5) Graphics Artists

(5) Lawyers

By utilizing interns, the costs for the development team will be cut in half - and if the company employing these interns is lucky, will not have to pay the interns at all.

Game Testing Availability

Game Testing will be done on schedule, no matter the state of the game. If the developers just dropped dead (from overworking), and a part of the game will not compile, somebody will be fired and the game will be tested anyway. The interns may be fired because more interns are always waiting for “cool positions” in the game development industry.

Test subjects should be a random selection of people. If a random selection is not available, the following expedients will suffice:

(5) High School Students

(5) College Students
(1) Old man

(1) “Historian” (the “Professional”)

Basic Game Description

The players will be allowed to select the mode of gameplay. There is a single player game, and then a multiplayer online game for a player to put him or herself (although, let's not kid ourselves, no female will place this) against others. The single player game will consist of the two story modes mentioned above:

In the single player mode, the player will work up through the contests, such as hand to hand, sword to sword, weapon of choice, and finally jousting. A player may return to previous contests. To make this more educational, the storylines and myths of the middle ages will be included, and for replay value alternate endings will be included.

Player Reward Systems (Replay Value)

Game Play Description

Game play will commence mainly in the various tournament modes of the game. This includes, however is not limited to, various activities such as hand to hand combat, jousting, sword to sword combat, archery contests, and weapon-of-choice battles.

Jousting will be the main event in the game. This will consist of a two-player “battle” where each player selects a horse, armor, a long pole, and then proceeds to run across the field and attempt to knock the other player off of his or her horse. This is supposed to be entertaining, so players will be able to do this as many times as they want, whereas in reality it would rather take much longer to remount onto a horse, and all the other preparations.

For future games, the makers of “The Sims” may modify this game easily to allow a simulator for the people who manage the knights and horses, improving on the fact that this is a spectator `sport` -- profit can be made from these mock battles, and somebody can exploit it in our day and age for the better (or, rather, profit).

Storyline (or lack thereof)

The story mode will not be needed in order to play the game. However, if a player was to select the story mode of game play, the story mode must exist, and hence there is a need for the basic outline of the storyline.

The story will consist of a lord who has established a great tournament (mainly jousting and archery) to win the hand of his daughter in marriage. Lords and knights from far away lands are notified and are prompted for their entry, which they present quite formally. Within a year, the tournament is a reality and a loud audience is cheering for the victory of a certain knight - a masked knight that is more myth than reality in the minds of the audience. Knowing that this was mostly a show rather than a mock battle, this particular knight always tries to set up the battles such that he would win. The local lords like this style because they end up profiting more than usual during these times of the tournaments. However, on this particular occasion, the player is a new knight who challenges the old champion, creating a stir in the audience. Throughout the chain of battles, the player may work his or her way up to battle this knight on at least three occasions.

Modes of (Tournament) Game Play

Other Mini Games

The other mini games include:

Implementation (Flow Chart of Software System)

The implementation of this video game needs to be through a suitable environment for generating games. Due to time restraints, the most simplistic graph of the game play flow (on the software end) looks like this:

Player -> Game (Data -> Game Engine) -> Output

For corporations, the following diagram is most suitable:

Money -> Programmers (Stolen Interns) -> Game -> Profits

Rough Draft of Screenshots

Characters

Bibliography

Screenshots are provided from http://users.tkk.fi/~jtpelto2/nhfeatures.html

Some information from http://www.teacheroz.com/Middle_Ages.htm

http://www.kyrene.k12.az.us/schools/brisas/sunda/ma/1kimberly.htm

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/middleages/pdailylife.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/10949/fief/higod.html

We have reasons to believe that women looked like this:

(a bishop saying grace)

(monk)

Bryan Bishop Medieval Tournament Video Game Design Document October 02005

Clint Crabill