Month: October 2017

White “stars” and a yellow “moon” set the tone for the game.

For Sea of Dreams, I wanted to try and turn a personal experience into a series of situations that felt relatable.  I didn’t want to add too many details about a specific location, or describe “them” that much, but more importantly I wanted to convey the feelings of different scenarios, which for me is “what could have been.”

While trying to think of an idea for a text based game, I considered doing something quick and lighthearted, but the whole “Choose Your Own” style of game with different pathways and options reminded me of how I processed my memories of my experience.  I would rethink things over and over and over again, wondering about possible scenarios (I am totally an overthinker for everything).  Anyway, I really wanted to create different outcomes in my game, and have different ways of getting there.  Since I am the type of person who likes going through all the scenarios when I play these types of games, I added a restart button where you can “Dream Again” after the game ends, and I added several loops in the storyline.

Continue reading “Sea of Dreams”

This was my first time coding something and having it work. I was so nervous because I was afraid that something would go wrong, and I wouldn’t know how to fix it.  I had the tutorials on loop the whole weekend, trying to catch everything as I started to form my story. Everything seemed alright at first, but when I went to save my scripts in Sublime Text 3, A LOT of errors started popping up.

I was panicking. I went back to every line to check that the semicolon “;” was there and made sure everything was spelled correctly. It was only when I checked and ran it in Unity did I find out that, surprisingly, the game was okay. No errors were in Unity, but they were all in Sublime. It was strange, but I just ignored it in Sublime because it didn’t really do anything to the game. Understanding that was the main struggle.

I think just getting everything plotted out and labeled right (which room to which path) was the most time consuming part of making the game. In the end, it was worth it to read the responses and find out that people thought the story was cute and funny. Many if/ else statements were used in the process of scripting.

I like playing story-based games (like Undertale or Beyond: Two Souls), so I was excited on the storytelling aspect of this project. Someone had pointed out that the “scheming flower” reminded them of the evil flower from Undertale, and I’m not going to lie, I thought of it too. I was inspired by it.

I wanted to put something that we all knew and related to, and my first thought at 2AM in the morning was “SQUIRRELS”. Because who hasn’t seen these fluffy critters around? And why not amp up their role in our walks on campus to being equivalent to that of Gandalf the Grey? Midterms are around to corner, so I thought that it would be great if this game could make someone laugh from its absurd silliness.

Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images or urges that trigger intensely distressing feelings. Compulsions are behaviors an individual engages in to attempt to get rid of the obsessions and/or decrease his or her distress.

The above is a quote from this page from the International OCD Foundation’s website.

I had a number of ideas of how this week’s project might go. Two of them were about OCD, and one was about being a woman in the workplace/classroom. I think many forms of digital media have great potential for conveying elements of mental illness that may be difficult to explain verbally. However, unfortunately, most media representations of the disorder treat it either as a personality quirk (neatness, tidiness, timeliness), or as a punchline (see: Monk). For an example of the first treatment, see pretty much any TV show, or movie, or book. I’m sure you’ll hear someone who likes highlighting their neat and tidy schedule say they’re “so OCD” at some point. Using “OCD” to describe someone who’s organized is a part of the cultural vocabulary at this point. It’s rarely used maliciously in that context, but the effect is still harmful in that it perpetuates the deep misunderstanding of a serious mental illness, within a culture that already so frequently dismisses mental health.

Below is another quote from the IOCDF.

Most people have obsessive thoughts and/or compulsive behaviors at some point in their lives, but that does not mean that we all have “some OCD.” In order for a diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder to be made, this cycle of obsessions and compulsions becomes so extreme that it consumes a lot of time and gets in the way of important activities that the person values.

My game is not a whole and complete representation of OCD. It is, however, a representation of one way in which it might manifest. I hoped to show how certain manifestations of the disorder can be overwhelming, can feel unending, and I used small type, starting in the top corner of the window (to allow for as many “what ifs” as possible to be shown at a time), and increasing speed (to create a sense of urgency, and to show more and more and more – never-ending – “what ifs”) to work towards this goal.

A few elements of the phrasing I chose were meant to reflect certain things about OCD. For example, some of the potential scenarios may seem ridiculous, even laughable. They are! To someone without OCD. However, to someone with OCD, they are very real possibilities, and they are possibilities that their disorder is essentially forcing them to think about without pause. Phrases like “and it’s all my fault” or “and I could have stopped it” were included at the end of the “what ifs” because one way the disorder can manifest is hyper-responsibility, making the person with the illness feel responsible for things they do not reasonably have any control over.

This game was, as might be clear, very personal to me. It is likely impossible to convey the experience of mental illness with perfect accuracy, because everyone experiences every situation differently, but it can be rewarding to approach an estimation of even a small part of an impactful/highly personal experience.

To begin this project, its best that one have an idea of what they want to create. Doing so will generate momentum to create the ideas, allowing a steady pace to completing the project. My idea was to have a Human wake up on an Island surrounded by animals, then having to work with the monkeys to get where the Human wants to go.  Thankfully I’ve taken a coding class before which helped me understand how to approach creating this interaction between a Leader Monkey and a Human. What intrigued me into wanting to do this project was the possibility of creating an opportunity to respond to a text. I did so with this project by having the Human say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the Leader Monkey. But the twist is that if you say no to the Leader Monkey 3 times you will get stuck on the island, so you must go through with the process to get where you desire.

A few task took a lot of work, beginning with: figuring out how I was going to use an array to hold the sentences, using the space bar to advance the text, how I was going to keep track of the sentences and change sentences with the space bar, and efficiently allowing user response to continue the game, specifically the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ interaction. Thankfully I had the professors code which allowed me to draw from the functions he used to use in my game. Without the help of his code my project would have been a mad house.

This was my first time using a code to activate and run my game and this was also the first time I created a text-based game. Therefore, it was difficult to wrap my head around both concepts. I watched all of Patrick’s tutorials, but I was still frazzled by the infinite things I could do through code. There were so many things I wanted to do in my game, but the extend to what I could actually do was ambiguous and uncertain. I ended up using the last code that Patrick wrote to start writing mine. At first, it seemed pretty simple because I was literally copying a code and just changing the words around. However, I faced this problem that frustrated me for a couple hours.

I would run my game and press A and it would automatically lead me to the end of my game. It did not visit any of the other rooms or let me play the rest of the game. I started to notice that it was letting me go through the rooms really fast. (I realize a lot of us had this problem and Patrick even mentioned how we would fix that aspect of our game.) However, in those frustrating hours, I decided to not just use A and B, but use the rest of the alphabet and that seemed to fix my problem. Later, Patrick told us how we could use getkeydown and getkeyup. The getkeyup concept is still very new to me, but I am excited to use that function in my games in the future.

I tend to not tell stories because they tend to deviate and become convoluted so when our first assignment was Environmental storytelling I was internally freaking out. I’ve always had a fascination with art installations especially those who implement sonic elements to them. I decided that I wanted to create audio zones in which each zone would provide a different memory or mood.

 

This completed scene demonstrates the audio zones that plays music on a loop. Each song belonging to it’s respective video game character was bit crushed and manipulated by me in Ableton Live.  The initial scene had a drone track that pushed the narrative of being in limbo, however this audio source ended up being too loud and detracted from the other zones. I reworked it to have a steady kick drum to creating a build up to an abrupt end.

 

 

The visual qualities of the game were inspired by what I felt when going through game model rips. They were lifeless, eerie looking characters that I would usually see zipping around on screen. Now they seemed like digital artifacts of a world that was forgotten. Though some game models in my game are from well established video games, they are previous versions, iterations of those characters that represent an era of gaming. This echoes an art gallery or a museum exhibition. I enjoyed this narrative and I decided to exaggerate it with creating a dark brooding environment. The end, with it’s floating face-less bodies is open to interpretation.

For my first video game creation I wish I gave myself more time. Being able to put more thought into the overall design and concept would have created a better out come and experience. Seeing the work of other students and the thought put into there projects inspired me to take my next project to the next level and to strive for a more thought out “Concept.”

I’ve also learned that the message and objective must be made clear as day for the players to be able to decipher what was intended. What I intended for my game was for the players to find their way to the bottom and find the “treasure chest.” During the process of finding the treasure chest, the player will get a feel of a dope environment to be in. For me, I felt a dope environment would be, brick wall warehouse with MAD studio equipment in it. On top of that there is a treasure chest? I thought that would be dope.

Thankfully there was a positive to come away with this first attempt. I was able to have the player intriguingly find the objective of this level. This will keep the player glued to a game. I will try to keep this strategy for the rest of my created games.

For my next game I hope to create a REAL environment and create the music as well!

A game about life’s expectations, un-expectations, and cute dogs.

My development process was not what I had anticipated. I spent most of my time in the pre-production phase. Getting Unity to launch correctly on my computer was a process met by many gray screens and browsing of forums.

I finally found my solution after several hours; I have to launch Unity offline as well as adding another step.  Overall, it slowed my progress considerably.  However, the start of my game development turned into a theme I used for my game Stairway to Heaven, although my original concept was much more… tranquil.  Choices, unexpected twists, and hidden paths are inevitable in life and in really engaging games.

Continue reading “Stairway to Heaven”

I have been a video game players for many years. It was a very interesting experience for me to build my first game in life using Unity. Since recently I have been a little bit frustrating in life, I want to make my games to make people feel annoyed. Therefore, the game’s color is a little bit dark and cold. Also, the player is trapped in a maze with very narrow walkway.

I have set up some puzzles for players to solve. However, because I have made the jumping mechanics a little bit too hard for this game, I was not able to show them all in a 5 minutes presentation. For example, when the player reaches this bridge, the players have to be brave to jump into the wall in order to get through since the wall actually has no collider and there is a bridge behind the wall.

We could see the design from the bottom of the maze. 

Also, it is a little bit satisfying for me to see the maze that we get out from.

However, there is not a real exist from this place.

After seeing other students’ work, I realize that I need to improve my skills in storytelling, and using light to set up the mood of my game. Also, I need to shorten my game in order to show all the content in 5 minutes next time. I am very excited to learn more and be able to do more with my games.

-Rui Long Zhao