Scenarios Software Methodology

Project XScorch Team Core Dump January 14, 2003

Scenario 1: Bill’s Economic Lessons Instead of writing his economics paper, Bill decides to play his favorite video games. Xscorch was in his expert opinion the best game ever made – particularly the latest version made by the coredumpers. Bill starts up his Lynx machine and begins by opening xscorch. The Xscorch logo displays across the screen and an opening options list appears. Since Bill is suppose to be writing his economic paper, in order not to feel completely negligent he decides to play under the “free market” economy. He picks the economy option and selects free market as game play, then gives himself a large sum of money so he can buy anything he wants. He then pushes the start button and Xscorch moves on to the accessories/weapons menu. From here on – since he’s using a free market – the prices of accessories and weapons vary in each round. The more any player buys of a certain weapon, the higher the price becomes for that weapon in each successive round. If he wishes to do so in later rounds, Bill may be able to make money by selling the weapons with inflated prices (This is a simple implementation of a supply and demand economy). Scenario 2: Carly’s Greedy Nature After shopping all day, Carly decides that the person who has the most is the person that’s always on top. Luckily for her, when she got home and decided to play xscorch (the newest and latest and greatest version made by team coredumpers), she was able to play xscorch with the “Greedy Scoring” option. After starting Xscorch she clicks on the economics menu, where under scoring options she chooses the greedy option. She quickly sets the rest of her preferences and begins playing by clicking the start button. She quickly realizes a blind man has better aim then her, and ends up loosing her tank. But as the scoreboard comes up, Carly is pleasantly surprised to find her score to be higher then she thought it would be. That’s because using greedy scoring, the person who wins isn’t always the one who killed the most tanks. Instead, the final score after each round also takes into account the value of the items in the player’s inventory at round’s end. Scenario 3: Dino’s Musical Craving On the ride home Fred and Dino were frantically flipping through radio stations but found nothing good, making Dino very upset. As soon as Dino got home he decided to play xscorch to eliminate his malcontent. As soon as xscorch starts up Dino’s disposition improves dramatically because great melodies begin to emanate from his computer’s speakers. After Dino clicks on the start menu and begins to play the game he figures out that the music isn’t only in the options screen but it is also throughout every stage of the game, including sound effects when shots are fired and tanks blow up. Fred than comes over and throws Dino out the door, but our friend is too smart -- he jumps through the window and proceeds to throw Fred out through that very same door! That Dino! NOTE: There will be songs for each of the following sections: -Options screen -Inventory purchasing -Regular gameplay

-End of Round -End of Game Scenario 4: Joe’s Badluck During an in intense game between the computer and himself, suddenly and without warning, Joe’s tank blows up. Perplexed, he plays on. Shortly after, while playing another stage, Joe notices little meteors shooting across the screen, creating small explosions – much as a normal weapon would! It was a similar case with lightning bolts a few minutes earlier, he recalled. Thinking it was all very strange, he plays more and this time notices that the wind velocity is very strong and blowing against him. Thinking it’s a random extra to the game he ignores it and fires a shot, but the missile angles back and kills him. Joe than realizes that the wind velocity curves the missiles making them hazardous. Scenario 5: Lana’s World Destruction Accessories Thinking she is the best Xscorch player in all of El Dorado County, Lana decides to play against multiple computers all set at a difficulty level of “insanity”. As the game starts, she finds herself in the middle of all 9 computers (10 max players), each aiming directly at her. Thinking this isn’t a strategic spot to be in, she uses her teleport accessory allowing her to change position to a new random location. In the next game, it seemed like the computer was trying to kill her by making her fall the farthest distance possible. The computer began blowing up the land beneath her. Soon it became too brittle to support Lana’s tank, and it fell. Luckily, she had bought a parachute in the inventory purchasing phase, and it opened up as her tank fell. This kept her tank from sustaining damage. NOTE: The scenarios included in this document do not necessarily include some of the features we plan on adding. Our wish list includes improving the networking code and other various secondary enhancements.