Final Blog Post! Course Reflection

Going into my last semester at SJSU I wanted to take a class that I was passionate about. I've always been a fan of video games and being able to create my own has been a small dream of mine. This class was the best class for me take, as it was a really relaxing atmosphere and really let me "play" with the class. As much as I learned to develop and program games, I never delved into game design. This class helped me improve my designer skills and really honed my ability to make a fun game.

For the final presentations I was really pleased with everyone's enthusiasm and passion for video games. I thought many just took the class to get an easy grade but it turned out everyone really enjoyed the subject material and had a passion for video games. Seeing everyone's hard work on their game pay off was also really cool as well. I was also pleased with the reception my team got when we introduced our game. Of all the projects that I worked on at SJSU, this was by far my favorite and most accomplished work.

In the end, I definitely read, wrote, play and design games. This class was a real blast and I hope more students have the opportunity to take this class and discover the important of play and making your own games.

Final Project Draft

The end has finally come. Only a few weeks left of school then I'll graduate into the real world. Pretty happy I chose this class as it was pretty easy-going with a very fun topic. For this final project, I opted to team up with a couple of friends. We decided to make the game in Unity as it gives us enough power to create the game we want to within this limited time-frame. It's been a couple of weeks and we still haven't though of a game name yet, but the core mechanics are pretty much finished.

The game is a side-scrolling shooter. The mechanics include changing and shooting different weapons and manipulating the direction of gravity. Our game would've been pretty boring without some sort of gimmick, so I added the gravity manipulations to make it more dynamic. The shooting mechanics are pretty solid as well. The player can shoot in a full 360 degree rotation and the character will point towards the mouse as well. This took quite a bit to program, mainly because the sprite looked weird if pointing directly up or down but I conceded that it would look better than way than limiting the range of motion.

The game also features two modes at the moment. One is an arena mode where you fight endless waves of enemies for a high score. We also plan implementing a single player mode that showcases the different mechanics in the game. Our prototype was just primer of all the mechanics and a fight with a very tough enemy to show that you have to master the skill of gravity manipulation in order to do well against tough boss. 

Overall, the experience was really fun creating this game. I ran into a lot of challenges programming the game but it was very satisfying seeing the work pay off some pretty fun gameplay. The hard part however is to polish the game and make it "juicy". 

Also programming shaq as the final boss was fun as well. 

Blog Post 7: Technology Based Video Games

For this assignment our object was to play and study games that relied upon new technologies. The case example we were assigned to study is Ingress, a mobile game that maps the geography of the planet into a virtual world. Using the GPS on our phone's, the game is able to map our location into the world and forces us to move in the physical world to make interactions in the virtual world. Before starting the game, I was assigned as the Rebels, fighting against the Enlightenment. It was cool how many of the portals in the world were based on public land marks, and they even included a photo of the said land mark. However the novelty wore off after awhile as I was just walking around building defenses and pylons. One of the main things is that not much is going on in the app, making it very un-engaging. I roamed around with my classmates a bit and they too found the whole experience a little hokey after awhile. I forgot about my card assignment so hopefully I remember to carry out that mission once I'm back on campus. In the end, it's definitely an avenue that shows promise, but the applications that take advantage of this need to have more engaging content within the app itself. 

This game reminded me of the upcoming pokemon game which I thought was kind of disappointing in the trailer. Mainly due to the fact that the on screen content was just static images of pokemon where I wished we could be able to see into the virtual world through the phone itself, seeing 3D replications of pokemon using the phone as a magic mirror. However, that's just wishful thinking and rambling on my part. It'll be interesting to see how this type of genre grows once the Pokemon game is released and playable throughout the world. 

Blog 6: Video Game Prototype

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3xvgq9c0631hkrz/Jumper.exe?dl=0

First Playable!!!!!

Hello ya'll, been awhile since my last blog post...Frankly I'm a little tired so today will be another lack luster blog.

Name of the Game is BOSS BATTLEEEEEE. Because both me and the programmer were unfamiliar with GameMaker's capabilities, it's been difficult to implement the type of game we were aiming to make. What both me and Travis were aiming for was an arena style game where the player would fight a boss and a player counterpart before being able to advance a level. Each level would have a large monster and a humanoid character that the player would have to strategically fight against. It's like a cross between Titan Souls (Demon/Dark Souls clone) and Shadow of the Colossus.

Despite being relegated as the artist when I'm a programmer, I look forward to the challenge of making decent enough artwork for our game. I'm not a stranger towards making art for video games, as I have done so many times before for my own personal projects.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8jh79jpa91qgs09/BossBattle.exe?dl=0

My main question for our players is if the game mechanics are good enough to be engaging and difficult. Having played the majority of the prototypes in class, I learned the games that caught my attention for the longest were the games that were the most difficult. I am hoping to implement that same level of challenge into our game, because I feel that is when you can achieve the most fun.

Blog Post 4: Video Game Lab

1. This Is The Only Level
2. Prismic Shift
3. Wizard Wizard

Time for another blog! This time around we had to talk about our experiences playing and watching people play some games. Assignment was for us to play 3 assigned games and 3 games of our liking. Since I didn't have time to play games of my liking, I will be talking about the 3 games we were assigned.

First, my partner (forgot his name) and I played "This is the Only Level". It was a game where the layout and goal of each level was the same, but the controls changed ever so slightly as you progress through the stages.

Second, we both played Prismic Shift, and asteroid-like game where you could explode your ship to get more points. I played an earlier version of it before, so I definitely noticed the upgrade with the current version.

Lastly, I spent the rest of the class period playing Wizard Wizard, a very difficult platformer with the basic goal of getting a key to unlock a door.

Tree Prototyping!

So I completely forgot about this assignment and it's 3am the day that it's due. Hope you enjoy some nonsensical, delirium.

Assignment was pretty straightforward. Partner up with someone, think of a game in 15 minutes, then PROTOTYPE.

My partner was Josh something. All I remember is that he liked Halo and had a beard. I didn't have any interesting ideas so Josh came up with the idea of some sort of territorial acquisition game. However, after throwing random mechanics at the wall and looking at what stuck, we came up with a trench warfare type of game, where the core mechanics were similar to chess and risks. The following is a brief summary of our mechanics of each version.

Version 1:
Materials: 6x8 game board, units (small blocks), machine guns (gold coins), mines/bunker (cards), dice.
Rules:
Two players.
Each player gets 7 units and 3 machine guns. Victory condition is when opponent loses all machine guns.
Before game begins, players take turns placing their machine gun placements and units. Roll dice to determine who goes first.
Units can be grouped into 2 units. A unit can move 2 spaces, grouped units move If a unit encounters another unit, both players roll and player with higher roll defeats other unit. A grouped unit means extra chances to roll attacks.
If a unit occupies a machine gun nests, they must occupy it for 2 turns in order for it to be destroyed permanently.
Cards are placed in the middle of the field and if a unit enters it, they the number underneath determines a certain effect.
You can use a turn to replenish lost units to the amount of machine gun posts you possess.

Version 2:
Materials: 8x8 game board, units (small blocks), machine guns (gold coins), dice.
Rules:
Two players.
Each player gets 7 units and 3 machine guns. Victory condition is when opponent loses all machine guns.
Before game begins, players take turns placing their machine gun placements and units. Roll dice to determine who goes first.
Units can be grouped into 2 units. Number you roll is number unit can move. For groups, its the dice roll divided by 2. If a unit encounters another unit, both players roll and player with higher roll defeats other unit. A grouped unit means extra chances to roll attacks.
If a unit occupies a machine gun nests, they must occupy it for 2 turns in order for it to be destroyed permanently.
Numbers are placed in middle 4 rows. Before each turn, a roll is made. If a unit is on a number that is rolled, they are immediately destroyed. This simulates land mines.
If a unit is within 4 spaces away from a machine gun nests, a roll is made to determine if they are destroyed by the machine gun. 4-6 is a direct hit and any unit in line of site of a machine gun is destroyed.
You can place up to two bunkers which blocks machine gun fire. You may also replenish units on top of your own bunker.
You can replenish 1 unit per turn.

Version 3:

Materials: 8x8 game board, units (small blocks), machine guns (gold coins), dice.
Rules:
Two players.
Each player gets 7 units and 3 machine guns. Victory condition is when opponent loses all machine guns.
Before game begins, players take turns placing their machine gun placements and units. Roll dice to determine who goes first.
Units can be grouped into 2 units. Number you roll is number unit can move. For groups, its the dice roll divided by 2. If a unit encounters another unit, both players roll and player with higher roll defeats other unit. A grouped unit means extra chances to roll attacks.
If a unit occupies a machine gun nests, they must occupy it for 2 turns in order for it to be destroyed permanently.
Numbers are placed in middle 4 rows. Before each turn, a roll is made. If a unit is on a number that is rolled, they are immediately destroyed. This simulates land mines.
If a unit is within 4 spaces away from a machine gun nests, a roll is made to determine if they are destroyed by the machine gun. 4-6 is a direct hit and any unit in line of site of a machine gun is destroyed.
You can place up to two bunkers which blocks machine gun fire. You may also replenish units on top of your own bunker.
You can replenish 1 unit per turn.



Play Sessions:

Version 1:
Person I played with was Josh and we were just testing our ideas. Since we didn't know any meta strategies, both of us played conservatively. The game was moving pretty slowly, with us grouping all our units together and slowly moving towards the other person's trenches. 20 minutes would pass and neither of us made any progress getting rid of their machine gun nests. We changed the rules a bit, allowing the units to move a little farther, and Josh blitz my machine gun encampments, destroying all three because I had little defenses.

Version 2:
This time I played with Magic Mike Phe. Learning from the last time we played, I wanted this to go a little quicker so I allowed the units to move by the dice number you roll. This increased the playing time significantly and we were able to destroy each other's encampments pretty quickly. Since this was the second time I've played it, I adopted Josh's blitz strategy and destroyed Mike's encampments quickly.

Version 3:
The third time I played was against my brother. I didn't change much to the rules except for the fact that I made the map a little bigger. With more refined rules, and a bigger map, we had more interesting exchanges. The blitz strategy doesn't work quite as well since the map was a lot larger, but once a unit broke through the front lines, it was quite easy to destroy their machine gun nests.

All in all, the sessions were pretty entertaining and coming up with unique, dynamic strategies was a very cool experience. This blog is a little more dry compared to my last one because this is goes into more technical detail about the prototypes and experiences.

"Play" and Board Games

My blog post from last time was pretty cut and dry, lacking the self deprecation and silliness that was evident in my CS100W blogs. Therefore, it's time to NOTCH IT UP A LITTLE BIT EH HEH HEH!?!?!



I may or may not be inebriated during the writing of this post.


Anyway, our task as of last week was to play a couple of board games and write a future session report.

My four person party consisted of Mike Phe, a goblin from the land of Foon, Andrew Soto, another goblin of Foon, and Aidan Nguyen, a fellow countryman...of the land of Foon. You can get to Foon by entering the drive thru of the Burger King located on the "corner of Irving Park and Clark Street in Chicago, Illinois, USA."

Right off the bat, Dark Lord Morgan here forced ME against my WILL to introduce to a bunch of goblins the game of Carcassone. Luckily I wasn't yet dead or reincarnated, so nothing was violated within the contents of my will.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/822/carcassonne

Before we got to playing Carcassone, we decided it was more appropriate to play a simpler and quicker game. Andrew brought ZOMBIE DICE, a game pretty much about testing your luck.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/62871/zombie-dice



The goblin Andrew started the game off, and was immediately met with a couple of shotgun blasts, accruing ZERO BRAAAAIIIINNNSSS. Bigger question is, who's shooting the shotgun? Michonne? Bill? Shawn? World may never know. Aidan in turn was also murdered after having an unlucky two shot gun blast roll. Magic Mike, however, through some dark sorcery was able to roll a couple of brains before cowardly refusing to continue rolling for more brains. What a bad zombie.

I on the other hand, with precision and skill, rolled the most brains that round and had a very comfortably lead. Or so I thought.

Since I rolled so high the first round, I had a skewed perception of the odds of rolling brains instead of shotgun blasts. This in turn led me to aggressively continue to roll, which all ended with me getting any brains because the odds of getting a shotgun blasts were pretty high.

Andrew on the other hand learned his lesson and played way more conservatively, stacking his brains one by one until he initiated the end game by obtaining 13 brains, forcing the rest of us to roll in one last ditch effort.

Safe to say we left with a multitude of holes and Andrew stood atop our corpses as the winner.

In the end, I had a pretty good time playing zombie dice. Egging people to roll further and gamble is the core human experience...to failure. Which is why we do it so we can be the ones to stand atop the rest. HAHAHAHAHAHA. But yea, Zombie Dice is a game where being conservative is the way to win. HOT TIP. BROKE THE META.

Then we played Carcassone. But since we only need one session report for the completion of this assignment, YOU AIN'T GETTING ONE BUDDY.

Blog Post 1: Adopt a classic arcade game

The game I decided to play was Space Harrier. My only familiarity with the franchise was through Bayonetta, where one of the levels was an homage to the original Space Harrier. I played through about 8 levels before I got bored, which took me around 30 or so minutes. It’s a game that gives you an illusion of depth and space where you’re flying into the screen, shooting and dodging enemies. Space Harrier definitely had a spectacle that many other arcade games didn’t have. Some of the enemies were large stone faces or gundam-looking robots. The bosses were mostly all dragons, even a two-headed dragon where you had to damage its head. One of the most frustrating aspects of this game is how difficult it was to aim your shots, especially during boss fights. Only way to change the trajectory of your shot is to move in the direction of where you want to shoot and the momentum will carry your show. There is a little aim assist but it doesn’t help with the boss fights.

It was interesting to see how easily it was for a game to be emulated in a web browser. If I would have played this on an arcade, I probably wouldn’t have played more than a couple of levels since I would need to insert more coins if I were to die early on. I am grateful for the option to insert as many coins as I wanted to, but it removed any sort of challenge or sense of accomplishment as opposed to playing the game on an arcade cabinet where it was mandatory to insert coins to proceed (unless you’re really good.)

Overall it was interesting to see how old arcade games played back in the day and I felt I would have enjoyed my time more if I played it on the original hardware.