Virtual Office Life Desktop Game Application

Rikip Ginanjar Faculty of Computing President University

Bekasi, Indonesia rikipg@yahoo.com

Christie Surya Maranatha Zebua Faculty of Computing President University

Bekasi, Indonesia natha_hw3@yahoo.com

Abstract— Office Life Game is one kind of virtual game that has working activities like in the real office. Through this game, the player can get some experiences about how to work in office. It starts from the interview session until players become an employee and finished the story. As the time management games, in this game, players have to finish the job with the limitation time, so players need to manage their time to finish the job on time. The office life game helps the players to understand that the situation in the real office is not easy as they think. The objective of this paper is to create a virtual office life game for desktop application. This game starts from the interview session which is the player has to answer the questions like in the real interview, deliver the task to the other employee, go to the shop for buying the office tools, and copy the files. Beside players have to do some job, they have to watch the mood meter too. People can enjoy this game free, anytime, anywhere, without the internet connection, with the interesting character and scenario.

Keywords-component; Office life game, virtual game

I. INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, game is usually played not only for children but also played by teenagers and adults. Game is an activity providing entertainment or amusement [1]. Game creates another world for people. It can be use for entertainment and education tool. By games, people can refresh their mind from their routine activities and at the same time, they can learn many things too. For example, by playing an adventure game, people will be more creative to find a solution to win and accomplish the mission on the game. So with playing game, people can learn with the more interest way.

There are many kinds of games, such as action, adventure, strategic, puzzle, role-playing, and many others. One of popular game that people like to play is casual game. Casual game is a simple game that people can easy to understand the game play and quick to grasp rule sets. Casual games are generally sold through online retailers such as Popcap, Zylom and Game House or provided for free play through web portals as Yahoo! Games. Casual games are most commonly played on personal computers, cell phones or PDAs, they can also be found on many of the on-line console system download services (e.g., Xbox, Playstation)[2].

This paper intends to develop a virtual office life game that is a time management game, one of the casual games. Means that player has to finish the quest of this simple with the limitation time. This game can give a general description

about reality of work at the office. As a character in this game, the player will play like an employee who will face so many difficult situations at the office.

By playing this game, the player consoled by the cute character and with the different challenge at every level of the game. If the player successfully finished one level, the character will have more jobs. After completing a level, there will be a short story about the game until the game finish, so beside the player can play the game, they can enjoy the story and get more knowledge about working life. Moreover, they can learn how to organize the time efficiently to finish their job because this game has provided a time limit if the player got some task from their manager.musical notation with staves, clefs, tempo, and notes.

II. SYSTEM ANALYSIS

This office life game has same basic functions with other games that use a time management concept too. Those games have features like controlling the character in the game, delivering the task to the other employee, caring the healthiness meter, buying some office tools to increase the score, and safe load game. Nonetheless, this office life game has different types with the other time management games. The game is not monotonous like other games. This game has a different quest at every levels, every higher level the user has more jobs too. It likes the office situation in the reality.

At the first time game running, it will show the main menu, which contains change player, start and exit game. The player has to create the new player and create character names before the game starting. At the first time the player click start button, the story of the game will start and then the tutorial of the game will be provided. If the player ready to play the game, they can start it by click the start button.

On the first level, the player has to complete the interview quest before the character became an employee. In the interview session, the player has to answer some questions properly. After the character becomes the office employee, player has to finish some job appropriate with the character’s level. If the player wants to save or need some help, the player can click the menu icon and then the menu will be shown with the objective quest that the player has to complete it. After the game saved, the player can load it anytime in order to continue playing the last game saved.

1) Game Scenario This game application was created based on the real

office life. So, it begins from someone who wants to get a job and has to pass an interview test first. In the interview

2011 First International Conference on Informatics and Computational Intelligence

978-0-7695-4618-6/11 $26.00 © 2011 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/ICI.2011.24

83

2011 First International Conference on Informatics and Computational Intelligence

978-0-7695-4618-6/11 $26.00 © 2011 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/ICI.2011.24

83

session, player has to answer some questions correctly. Type of the questions is like the questions in the common real interview test. There are five questions ask about the background of the player, are they competent to be an employee or not. The player chooses one answer from three choices. If the total score more than 110, player success and passed the interview session, if the total score less than 110, player failed and cannot continue the game to the next level.

At the second level, after the player passed the interview test, character will be an employee at the office. The character get the request from two other employees, there are a secretary and a finance division. The employees request for copied task from the photocopy machine to the character. The request will load randomly. Player has to click and deliver it as fast as they can because this game has a limitation time with the target points to continue it to the next level. Player needs to collect 500 points in one hundred second in this level.

In the third level, character gets some additional job. There are four employees request kind in this level that will appear randomly. There are the green note, blue note, stationary, and photocopying the tasks. To get the green note, blue note, and the stationary, character has to go to the shop. Each office tools has a different price. The player has to collect at least 1000 points to pass this level in one hundred second.

At the fourth level, the character has a mood meter that will decrease in every twenty seconds. If the player do not charge it until the mood meter is empty, the game will stopped and start from the beginning of that level. Beside the mood meter, character has another addition job. There is PR division that will request the job to the character. To pass this level, player has to collect 1500 points in the two hundreds seconds of time limitation.

The fifth level is the last level of this game. The character’s job is as same as with the forth level. The character has to deliver four kinds of employees request, pay attention with the mood meter, time and the target points of this level. The target points and limitation time in this level is more than levels before. Player needs collect 3000 points in two hundreds second.

At every level, the game will back from the beginning of the levels if player cannot reach the target points during the specified time limit runs out. If player success to deliver one request, character’s point will get one hundred points and player has to collect the points more than the target points at every level.

2) Use Case Diagram Use case diagram of Office life game is used to identify

the actors and the process happened in the application. The primary actors are users who play the game application. Use case diagram for the application is shown in figures 2.1.

Figure 2. 1 Use Case Diagram of Office Life Game

3) Job2 Handling Activity Diagram

Figure 2.2 describes the system when the character of the game doing the job to complete the goals of each level game. If the user successes to complete the quest, the player score will increase and if the goals reached before the time was over, player can continue to the next level.

The job main job of the character is doing the request from the other employee. The other employee can request the player to copy and buy something in the shop. If player successes delivered the right request, so the score will increase. Each level has a different score target, the higher level has higher target level too.

Figure 2. 2 Activity Diagram of Job2 Handling

4) Mood Handling Activity Diagram

While the character doing the job, the player has to aware with the character mood too. The character can do the job well if the character has enough energy. The energy showed by the moods meters of the character. The player has bought some drinks or foods to charge the mood of character. If the

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mood meter is empty, so the game will game over and back to the beginning of that level. Figure 2.3 shows the mood handling activity diagram.

Figure 2. 3 Activity Diagram of Mood Meter

III. SYSTEM DESIGN

A. User Interface

The Office Life Game application was created using Adobe Flash CS3. For the programming language, the author use action script 2.0 to develop the game. Combination the sound and the entire graphics in this application also created using the Adobe Flash CS3.

1) Office Life Game Logo Design Figure 3.1 is shown this Office Life Game application

logo. As the game with an office theme, the creator designed the logo with a simple and semi formal font but the logo still looks interesting. The color of this application logo is black.

Figure 3. 1 Office Life Game Logo

2) Main Menu Design Main menu is the first part of this application. In the

main menu frame, player can control the account and start the game. The author used the Bauhaus 93 font for designing the menu.

The first step to start this application is player has to create player profile.The create profile menu is written on a note, with a simple design, only a box which is the place for player to input the profile name and the OK button, shown in the Figure 3.2.

Figure 3. 2 Create New Player Design

After creating the profile name, there is a profile name list movie clip is loaded. The design is shown on figure 3.3. Still used the same type font and design with create new profile design. This movie clip shows 5 boxes that placed the player’s profile names with the red delete button in the right.

Figure 3. 3 Player List Design

After creating the profile, the next movie clip is the main menu itself. The Figure 3.4 showing the main menu game with the background’s design. In the main menu frame, there are username button, username button, start button, credit and quit button. All background of this main menu frame is just a graphic. The buttons are the option that player can click it. When the mouse player is on the button, the text will be bigger and when the player clicks it, the text will be smaller again. The background is the office room with the logo. All part of this movie clips is in the mainmenu.swf file.

Figure 3. 4 Main Menu of Office Life Game

3) Character Design The main character in this Office Life Game is a cute girl

that carries a brown purse. The creator makes design for every movements of character. The character’s movement design is shown on the Figure 3.5

Figure 3. 5 Character’s movement design

4) Office Room Design

The main stage of the game is in the office room. Office room designed with the windows, door in the left side, photocopy machine in the right side, the employees’ tables and the menu bar on the bottom. The room’s color in the second and third level is different with the next level. In the second and third level, the wall is red and the floor is green. In the forth until last level, the room designed with the yellow wall and the orange floor. Creator makes the different color to make this application look more attractive, so player will not get bored to play this game. Figure 3.6 shown the office room design.

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Figure 3. 6 Second and Third Level Office Room Design

5) Menu Bar Design In the bottom of game stage, there is menu bar as shown

figure 3.7 that show information for the player, option button, pause button, and main menu button. Information for the player is consisting of the character’s storage with the dump button, points and the mood meter.

Figure 3. 7 Menu Bar Design

IV. SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

The author takes more than two months to develop code and visual design of the application. The application is totally created using Adobe Flash CS3 to create the swf file, design the game, and create the coding. This application built from ActionScript 2.0 which is the script from the Adobe.

1) User Interface Development In the first level, the character is not an employee yet.

Like in the real situation, before someone becomes an employee, there is an interview session. So, in this game is beginning with the interview session too. Player has to answer some questions from the HRD of that office. In this session, the character and HRD sit in the office room. HRD give some questions and the player has to choose the correct answer, because the answers of player determine the character becomes an employee or not. The score and other menu are shown on the bottom of this page.

At the end of this first level, there will be a note to inform the player can continue it or not to the next level. If the player successed, so player can click the start work button to play the game, and if failed, the player can click the try again button to return it from the beginning of the interview session, or player can click quit button to exit the game.

In the next level, the character has already become an employee. Character’s job is delivering some task to the photocopy machine or buying something at the shop. In this second level, there are just two other employee, which is finance and the secretary, the finance is at the left side of this frame, and the secretary is at the right side. The photocopy machine is at the right top of the frame. Player can click the other employee and the photocopy machine too. After they clicked it, there will be a movie clip shown that request processing. In the last level, there is a new employee in that frame, it was a PR division. The office room design is shown in Figure 4.1 and 4.2.

Figure 4. 1 Second Level of The Office Life Game

Figure 4. 2 Last Level of The Office Life Game

2) Application Details

a) Interview Session In this first level, player was given five questions with

multiple choice answer. Every answer has a different point and the value depends on the accuracy of player answer. At the end of this level, the system will calculate the total value, and if the total score is more than 110, so the system will load the success movie clip. The codes for interview session are shown in figure 4.3

Figure 4. 3 Interview Session Codes

b) Job Handling

The main character job in this game application is delivering the request from the other employees. Character need to go to the shop or photocopy machine to get the request. In the job handling, there are some functions to develop this level, such as movement function, go to shop function and the points function.

a=0;//in each answer on(release) { a+=40; nextFrame(); } //until last question //load the success or failed movie clip, depends on total score if (a >= 110) { //success movie clip is loaded

gotoAndStop(8); } Else { //fail movie clip is loaded gotoAndStop(7); }

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The character can moves only from certain specific points. There are four point’s movement, beside the photocopy machine, secretary employee, finance employee, and the door, to go to the shop. In the fourth and fifth, there is addition point, which is beside the PR employee.

One of the important things in the job handling is the point function. The point function is developing a codes that adding the point if character success to deliver the task to the right destination. The codes for calculating the point is shown in figure 4.4.

In the main stage of the game, there is a request from the other employee that will load randomly on each employee. At the second level, the system just loads the sign 3 randomly, because the request in this level is only copying the tasks and the keyboard movie clip is the blank movie clips.

In the third until last level, the request will loaded all. So, the system will load the green note, blue note, copy task, and stationary based on the icons that load randomly.

c) Mood Meter The character in the game has a mood meter that will

decrease every twenty seconds and the heart will recharge if the player buy some food or drink from the shop. The food can add three hearts and drink only add two hearts for the character. The mood meter codes are shown in figure 4.5

d) Level Handling In level handling development, the author explains the

codes about how the player can go to the next level. This section handling the target scores for each level. The codes will be shown in figure 4.6.

Figure 4. 6 Level Handling Codes

V. CONCLUSIONS

The author has created virtual office life game application that can be played in desktop computer and notebook/laptop without asking user to install any shockwave player or emulator first, so the user can play it wherever and whenever they want. The Office Life Game was developed with a cute character as an employee at an office that helps the other employee to deliver the request. There are five levels with different job in every level. This game application also has saved and loaded features so the user can save game and later load game to continue the last quest and activity. The save data will be saved using Local Shared Object.

REFERENCES [1] Houghton Mifflin Company. 2009. The American Heritage®

Dictionary of the English Language. From: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/game.

[2] Wikipedia. (2010). Casual game. Retrieved September 14, 2010, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casual_game

[3] Web 2.0 Designs and Development Service. 2007, from: http://www.etondigital.com/services/

[4] Rapid Application Development. From: http://www.hit.ac.il/staff/leonidm/information-systems/ch32.html

[5] Alexandrou, Marios. Rapid Application Development (RAD) Methodology. Retrieved February 2, 2010 from mariosalexan

[6] Wikipedia. Casual game. Retrieved September 14, 2010, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casual_game

//handle for buying food and recharging the mood meter if(_root.m>=5) { _root.attachMovie("mood5","mood5",1); } else if(_root.m==4) { _root.attachMovie("mood4","mood4",1); } //handle for buying drink and recharging the mood meter

function cekLevel() { switch(levelgame) { case 2: if (_root.score >= 500) { levelgame= 4; score = 500; _root.notif._visible=true; _root.notif.gotoAndStop(4); } break; . . //until levelgame=5 } }

_root.sbtn.enabled=true; _root.sbtn1.enabled=true; _root.sbtn2.enabled=true; _root.sbtn3.enabled=true; if(_root.points==1 && _root.ptstr==_root.icons && _root.str==1) { _root.score=_root.score+100; _root.holder.attachMovie("keyboard","keyboard",2); _root.storage.attachMovie("keyboard","keyboard",1); _root.ptstr=0; _root.str=0; _root.strg._visible=false; _root.points=0; }

Figure 4. 4 The Point Codes

Figure 4. 5 Recharging Mood Meter

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