Urban Diplomacy Chair of Architectural Informatics Department of Architecture Technical University of Munich İlayda Memiş
2 Urban Diplomacy Chair of Architectural Informatics Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Petzold Multiple Realities | Mixed Perspectives Sarah Jenney Nick Förster Ivan 03725691İlaydaBratoevMemiş
3 29282726181410864 TableContactDigitalOutlookDiscussionFinalPrototypingConceptIdeationResearchIntroductionImplementationCourseofContents
At the end of the concept phase, I created a paper prototype to test my game idea. On later stages, I developed gameplay mechanics and scripted the game in Unity simultaneously. I created a final prototype including all the roles and their actions to explain my idea clearly.
UrbanIntroductionDiplomacyisarole-playinggame
aimed to promote people to learn about urban planning process. The intention is to empower citizens through a glance at the collaborations and negotiations during the course of planning and designing a city. Therefore, the citizens will know how and when they can have an impact on their city and how much power they have on their surroundings. Urban Diplomacy is designed to be played in city councils and participatory events, but it is suitable to play at home as well. In this brochure, I will explain my development process throughout the semester.
Starting from the research phase, I gathered ideas in the ideation workshop, and created two different storyboards with different game concepts. After selecting one idea, I continued researching on role-playing negotiation games and the city games.
4
5
AsResearchapersonwhodidnothaveprior
knowledge about the importance of gamification in public participation, it was a great opportunity for me get to know an unfamiliar world with new concepts and ideas. I was responsible for the theme “Potentials of Gamification in Public Participation.” I’m glad I started with this topic, because it allowed me to learn many different projects, which inspired me throughout the process. Since it was a group work to discuss and share our ideas about gamification in public participation, I’ve read all the given material to start working on the topic and read additional articles related to my topic as well. During later phases of my project, I needed information regarding “Public Participation” theme. It was a great opportunity to have access all those articles, so I could read related material whenever I needed.
One of the most influential books I’ve read during the course of the project was “Negotiation and Design for the Self-Organizing City” by Ekim Tan. Not only the theoretical background of the book was very helpful to think about the process, but also the examples in the book helped me to perceive the theories in practice. In my opinion, the games in İstanbul were groundbreaking in a way to initiate communication between different stakeholders. Even though the games in this book are essentially analogue, there are other articles with digital examples such as “The Gamification of Civic Participation: Two Experiments Improving the Skills of Citizens to Reflect Collectively on Spatial Issues” by Oswald Devisch, Alenka Poplin, and Simon Sofranie. The examples like “B3 – Design your Marketplace!” helped me to understand the potentials of using digital tools, and the surveys demonstrated which aspects worked and which ones did not.
Listening to other groups’ presentations was also very helpful to be introduced to the concepts and ideas behind the topics, such as “Public Participation,” “Data and Visualization,” and “Digital Media.”
6
Example project: Generative City Gaming by Ekim Tan.
7 Page 3 of my presentation, explaining stages of public participation and gamification. Example project: B3 - Design your Marketplace! Page 4 of my presentation explaining the potentials of gamification in public participation.
8
TheIdeationideationworkshopwas
very helpful to reconsider the concepts we discussed with the other groups and convert them into potential ideas. It was also very beneficial to get to know other participants of the project. I had some ideas before the workshop, but it helped me to discover new ones, and test the existing ones with an audience. While we were discussing in the group, I found out the weak points of my ideas, and started to think about how to improve them. The final round of the workshop was the commenting section, which I thought was very valuable, because people had time to think about other people’s ideas and properly write their comments. During the workshop, I created my own idea board on my notebook with the ideas I liked. Later, I grouped them to create more consistent concepts. I read the comments during this phase. Later, I used two of those ideas to create my storyboards.
9 My notes after the ideation workshop.
On the later stages, I continued to research about urban planning processes, the stakeholders, the influence of them on the project and on which stages the citizens can participate. This research created the basis of the roles and their interactions on my Aftergame.theresearch process, I started to develop ideas about the game mechanics. I made further research about designing board games, and some examples which included role playing, collaboration or city development. I analyzed the game mechanics and some rules, implying the players cannot win the game unless they collaborate. I developed ideas about how I can integrate those rules into my game. First, I drew the game on my notebook to figure out what kind of challenges I can bring to the table in terms of money and number of houses. Later I created the first prototype which was made out of colored paper. I played it with a group of people to see how intuitive the game is. I took notes while playing the game about how easy to understand the rules were and created alternating ideas about further steps.
FirstConceptstepwhilecreatingthe
concept was designing two different storyboards for two different games. I selected two ideas which I liked and drew the storyboards explaining the context it is going to be played and how it is going to be used. It was very helpful for me to think about the game from the players’ perspective. After the presentation, I’ve decided to continue with the role-playing game idea.
10
11 Dormant Oasis - First Storyboard Wishes & Negotiations - Second Storyboard
12
Rules of the
first paper prototype
First paper prototype -1 First paper prototype -3 First paper prototype -2 First paper prototype -4
AfterPrototypingtheresearch,ruledeterminationand
the test play process, I created the first digital prototype by using digital drawing tools. Since I wanted the game to be a role-playing game, I defined the roles and their actions. On this prototype, there were only three roles; mayor urban planner and investor. I added the citizen role after the presentation, because I realized that this role is very crucial while achieving the goal of this game. Each role has access to a different set of information, and they have different goals. In this version of the game, the action of the players was to drag and drop the buildings on the building plots. Throughout the game, they have to collaborate and share information in order to reach their goal. That’s why the game could be classified as competitive/collaborative game. In the middle of the screen each player sees the play site. It is an abstraction of a city which could be zoomed or rotated around. The game starts with the city hall in a random place, and the city grows from that point. On the right side of the screen, players see information about their role. Mayor starts the game with a promise to her citizens, and she tries to reach that goal throughout the game. Mayor has access to the aimed ratio of the buildings within the city. It is another point she has to focus on. Urban planner has a different screen. She can see the influence zone of the buildings on the left side and the rules regarding those zones on the right side. Her aim is to make other people design the city complying the rules. Investor is the one taking care of the budget. She can see how much budget she has and how much each building costs. When buildings are placed, the money drops automatically. None of them can see other people’s screen or has access to the information they have. But to reach their goals, they have to collaborate and share that information. They can lie, and it is also part of the game. The game ends either when all tiles are full or everyone agrees that they reached their goal and they want to submit their design.
14
15 Mayor‘s screen Urban planner‘s screen
16 Investor‘s screen Citizen‘s screen
17 Flowchart diagram of the game Mayo nvestor Urban p anner wa t unt 4 people log n S ar Interact ve menu Check fo 4 peop e no D s r bu e roles random y n orma ion abou he o e yes Open conve sat on w ndow S a interact ons s one round fin shed? are 20 bu d ngs p aced?) Round con nues no D scuss on & h nk ng about one s own a ms yes Determ na ion of bui ding type and p acement cu rent number o houses cur en budget C y g ows Prob em? no yes esiden a comme c a cu tu a ndus r a rec ea ona 9/2/1 a io no sa sfied? no enough hous ng nc ease n raffic no enough rec ea onal spaces po ut on not enough wo k p aces less than 9 more han 9 are esiden a bu d ngs no in the nfluence zone of he recrea iona spaces? min 3 ndus r a bu d ngs s de by s de m n 3 commerc al bu d ngs s de by s de TT on Tw t er Pet t on Demonst at on C t zen Cooperat ves A e a t es fu l? Game ends yes no 1 min a e Set up (imp emented n Unity with custom C# scripts + predefined l brary) Control (implemented in Unity as custom C# scripts) Visual sation (des gned in Rh no & mplemented in Un ty) Rules of the Game (implemented in Unity with custom C# scripts) Interact ons (implemented in Unity as custom C# scr pts) Interactions (imp emented n Unity as custom C# scripts) Implementation
Final Implementation
Since the citizens are the ones experiencing the problems, the citizen’s input is the problems of the city. This input is defined according to the actions of the others.
Therefore, the actions of the citizen will affect other’s and her own limitations. For example, the limitation of the citizen is time. When she takes action, the participation
18
On the final implementation phase, I developed gameplay mechanics and scripted the game in Unity simultaneously. The main goal of the game stayed the same throughout the semester, but the roles and their actions changed. I balanced between the roles representing the real-life version of themselves and making it interesting enough to play. For some roles, this task was challenging, but after creating the main structure of the role interactions the balance was created. Each role is educational enough to have an idea what the role does, and to create empathy or understanding of real-life situations. At the same time, each role has enough freedom to make their own decisions and explain their ideas about the city they contribute in planning. The final version of the game consists of four different roles; mayor, urban planner, investor and the citizen. The game is based on rounds, and on each round, twenty buildings are to be placed. The round starts and ends with the mayor. Each role has different input, different actions they can take and limitations to those actions.
Mayor’s input displays the building ratio and attraction rate of the city, and she is expected to create a ratio plan according to the input. The limitation is the approval rate of herself and attraction rate of the city. Thus, while creating the plan, the mayor should be aware of the limitations. After the ratio plan is published, the urban planner should place the buildings on the city. On the urban planner’s screen, the influence zone of the buildings and the rules regarding those zones can be seen.
So, the urban planner should place the building types given by mayor. The next role is the investor who can change the building types in order to reach the budgetary goals. The input of the investor is the cost of each building and the limitation is the initial budget. The investor should also consider the future profit of each building.
19 Diagram explaining all the roles, inputs, actions, limitations and the feed back mechanism.
20 time decreases. The limitations of each role don’t stay the same until the end of the game, they change according to certain parameters within the game.
While creating the main gameplay structure of the game, I started scripting simultaneously. I started by creating the main interaction of the game: building placement. That’s why urban planner was the first role I have implemented. I started by creating the UI and the building plots. [Scripts: Plots, Shop, BuildManager, BuildingBlueprint, PlayerStats] When urban planner clicks on a building type and on a city tile, the building is placed on that particular plot. Later, I have implemented the camera movement which is created for third-person perspective. [Script: CameraController] The next role I have implemented was the citizen, because the game is created inherently for the citizens. My goal is to empower them through knowledge about urban planning process. I used a different script for the citizen, because this time I wanted her actions to be visible in the UI, not in the scene. When the citizen clicks on certain actions, remaining participation time decreases accordingly. [Scripts: ActionBlueprint, CitizenTime, ShopTime, TimeManager, TimeUI] After implementing both roles, I have decided that I have enough time to implement all the roles and their basic actions. I continued with the investor role. Investor can change the building type by deleting the building and placing a new one. [Script: PlotUI] There is a limited amount of buildings to be placed, so that investor have certain amount of power over the process, but not entirely. I also added two different scripts related to the urban planner role. When urban planner places a building, remaining budget and the future profit in the UI of the investor changes. [Scripts: MoneyUI, ProfitUI] The final role I have implemented was the mayor, which decides on the ratio zoning plan. This role’s interaction is also between different UI’s. When the mayor writes numbers, they appear on other roles’ screen.
[Script: MayorPlan] On the last step, I created two different screens; start screen and the one between the rounds. [Script: ChangeCanvas] So, the prototype of the game would be more understandable. During the scripting phase, I created the building models on Rhinoceros at the same time. I researched different building typologies and how they are represented on different games. I used different colors to represent building types. I rendered them on Rhino to create reference images on UI’s and exported the models to use in Unity. I also spend some time to represent the game structure and the interrelations between roles and their inner dynamics.
21 The parameters regarding the updates of limitations on the next rounds.
22 Mayor‘s screen
23 Urban planner‘s screen
24 Investor‘s screen
25 Citizen‘s screen
26
ItDiscussionwasaveryproductivesemester
The scripting phase was very challenging at the beginning, because I did not have any experience in coding, and I did not know certain terms used in tutorials. I got used to it quicker than I thought, that’s why I could implement more than I imagined. At the beginning of the phase, my initial goal was only to create drag and drop effect, and I could achieve more than I imagined. That’s why I am very satisfied with the final outcome and I am happy that I could learn not only Unity and C#, but also gamification in public participation and its potential in the future.
for me in terms of improving my skills in many different aspects. I especially enjoyed the first phase of the project which includes research, creating the concept and the prototype. I think it was similar to what I have been doing at the beginning of each architectural project. While being introduced to many different concepts and ideas, the similarities helped me to relate my ideas to the project.
23 Urban planner‘s screen
24 Investor‘s screen
29 Contact İLAYDA SoSe03725691MEMİŞ2020 Scanned by CamScanner
