Month: November 2017

Be a happy cloud!

Cloud is a one player 2D game. Where the goal of the game is to match the shape of the passing clouds before they fully pass you.

At first, I was not too sure of what I wanted the game play to be. It was between a experience game without a goal in mind and unlocking skills as the player goes on or a matching game. After presenting I decided to create a matching game. The player will have multiple buttons to choose from and they have to remember what shape belonged to what key. It might be interesting to have the keys change has the time went on but that may be too much for a player. Instead, it can be a memory game. I am also thinking about including funny accompanying word text along with it to add some humor, a score, and time board. Lastly, another idea I have is once you have hit 1o matches there is a rainbow tail that starts to show you are on a roll and once you mess up it goes away. It might be fun to also include some sort of animation on the cloud. Have the cloud start off with a smile and as you continue matching it keeps getting bigger and if you mess the smile changes into a frown and you start to disappear.

Since my dodgeball game got a lot of positive reception during week 3’s critique, I decided to expand on it for my final project. During its original critique, many people gave tons of suggestions on what to add to the game and how to make it more fun and challenging. I decided to use those suggestions and implement them into the game as add-ons such as power ups and power downs, which will appear on the field of my game. After my pitch, Patrick suggested the idea of instead of just one ongoing level, there should be multiple levels with different challenges. I honestly never thought of that idea and I’m considering going in that direction. The first level could be a basic “get to know the controls” level, and then transition to the next level after a certain amount of time. There are multiple possibilities and ideas I can use to make each level unique and challenging in its own way. One level could have the enemy dodgeballs move at a faster rate, and maybe different level could have obstacles in your way to make dodging harder. The power ups/ power downs idea seemed to be a hit so I will definitely be adding those into the levels. My main priority however is to add a timer and scoreboard to this game, since I wasn’t able to add that in for the original game. Overall, I’m excited to get started on this game. I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to code all of this stuff I want in but I’m going to give it my best try.
And remember, you dodge or you DIE

For my final game I chose to expand on the second project’s text-based game, but with more visual elements to enhance the story. I really like the look of a story book, so I wanted to hand-draw everything so that it looked a little bit traditional. I was hoping to have rich characters that would either convince or compel the player’s decision towards their search for Oinkers. Every interaction will be unique, which would take you to a different scene for different outcomes ahead.  One thing I thought a lot about was that because this is a texted-based adventure game, it might be complicated with all the possible paths. At one point I was thinking this might be really hard to pull off, and was questioning if I should really go through with this. For now I want to try and see what outcomes I get before putting the idea down, just to see how far it can go or if something interesting might pop up. Patrick had mentioned layering the background, the art, the characters, the foreground, the text box, and finally the text above. Sounds complicated but hopefully not impossible. I am excited to start this project, hopefully this energy can carry through in the weeks to come.

Steven and I went to the event together on Saturday, and to be honest we had no idea what we were going to expect there. Once we arrived at the venue, there was a huge line coming out of the building. VIPs were those who bought the Humble Bundle, so they got to go in an extra hour early. We walked in and there were many monitors displayed around in the hallways and in the rooms. There was one large screen at the front where the champions of Gangbeasts fought for glory.

We walked around and were able to listen in on what the game developers had to say. Most of the time, we stood around to listen in on conversation while waiting in line for a chance to play a game. I was able to play Riverbond, Gangbeast, and Small Talk. I saw someone playing Bennett Foddy’s “Getting Over It”. There was on game that really caught my eye because of its art style; it was called Mineko’s Night Market. Erica and Steven were nice enough to wait with me as I tried to get in line for a turn to play. Basically you farm cats and it looked like you ran around a set world as the story unfolds.

There was also a lot of Red Bull going around. People were shuffling to get in line to play games, listen to live music outside, or just talk to other people. It was a festive atmosphere, and I would definitely go again with a more concise plan on which games I want to wait in line for and overall for more time to play the games.

Also I got to take a picture with someone who cosplayed as Cuphead. It was pretty cool! (Photo courtesy: Steven Fan)

For the final project, I decided (for the sake of time) to continue my 5th game, Food to Table. feed the world is a management, idle clicker game where you monopolize the food industry and conquer world hunger. Basically, players will click to gain money (either through clicking on the money itself or through multiple farms that produce food). The goal will be to feed the world (around 7.6 billion as of now) through the farms, but if the player goes bankrupt, they lose. My inspiration for the game comes from Cookie Clicker (idle/food/upgrades) and Plague, Inc. (goal/people objective). For the final game, my goal is to polish the gameplay (add things that I didn’t get a chance to in the other game) and make it look nicer. Some “surprises” to keep the player going is have the farms “in season” (so farms would produce more), disease may wipe out all of a certain farm, and hiring workers to harvest more (but they may go on strike). As of now, I’ve started on remaking the icon (seen above), banner, and title screen; I’ve spent a lot more time than on the other games, probably because I know this is going to be published to the public. Though it’s a long ways from now, I’m excited to create a completed game and have it published to the world.  School wise, all I have left is final projects, so hopefully I can time manage and make everything great :X.

The game I pitched is called What The Fuck, Why!?!? and I chose this for many reasons: it’s my response to messed up behaviors that people do, it’s my response to this world in general, and specifically it’s how I feel right about now since I’m having a difficult time processing my trauma.

*Content warning: discussion of multiple forms of abuse and assault.*

I chose to make a text-based game that isn’t really meant to be played because I need another way to report what I have survived. I mean that my game is meant for people who don’t seem to believe me, and/ or undersand my traumatic experiences and how they affect me. Too many times I’ve just wanted to hand someone a file with all of my trauma documented in it and just say, “here, read this, becaues I’m not reliving this again for you,” too many times these people have been friends and family–people I’m forced to be in contact with for various reasons like being stuck seeing them in common spaces. The gameplay is going to be the player flipping though the most traumatic experiences I’ve had. I plan to make a calming procedural rhetoric sub-game within the text-based game that can be played in between the reports of the trauma as a breather. It’ll be me completing Puddle.

After my presentation Prof. LeMieux asked if I’m sure I wanna do this and I’ve thought about this more and I’m less sure about if I want to continue working on this game right now because it has the potential to seriously negatively impact my life if I feel further invalidated by the people who will be playing and critiquing my game. I hadn’t really thought about how people critiquing my game until now, I just really really want to make it, so I think I might just do it on my own when the time feels right and make another game. I’m thinking about just working on completing the procedural rhetoric game I started, or the procedural generation game that I didn’t really get anywhere with 2 weeks ago.

Today I would like to discuss about why survival games are so endearing to the video game community, especially the ones monsters/zombies chase you and you have to run and hide. Now if you go on youtube and search for any successful lets play youtube channels, they would at least have some kind of survival horror games in their video playlist, such as Amnesia:The Dark Descent, Outlast,or Limbo etc. Of course, their reactions are hysterical, but the question is “Why do people like to play these scary/high blood pressure causing games?” Well, to answer that question we need to jump into a time machine and go back to our childhoods, the time when we play tags or hide and seek with our friends. What is so fun about tag or hide and seek? It is not the person that is chasing or seeking, he wants to tag and find his friends so he can actually PLAY the game which is the most enjoyable and fun part; the part where you are hiding or being chased by someone else. All these places where you can hide, and you go under this desk, the seeker is walking slowly in front of you while you’re holding your breath trying not to make any sound is the most thrilling experience when you are a kid or even an adult. Now we are back in modern time, and we see these game developers uses these thrilling experience to implement into their games, also the reason why these games are so welcomed by gamers. It is all about the thrill.

Revolution, a Metaphor? is an experiment to see how an idle clicker game can represent revolution in the current political climate. I wish I could remember who was discussing how it’s ironic that my game says, “For educational use only,” in the bottom right corner when played. (The screenshots below don’t have it because those were captured in Unity while playtesting the game.)

I started off thinking that the score would represent the total number of people who support anti-capitalist change, and the player would collect contacts and comrades who support an anti-capitalist revolution. Since coding and game development has been such a time consuming challenge for me I spoke to Prof. LeMieux and he suggested modifying his code and game instead of writing and making my own and that saved me time, which I spent on modding the game he made in the tutorial videos this week. I’m still spent 10 hours in the lab this week trying to figure this out, but I need a lot of breaks, so I think the time I actually spent working may have been more like 8-9 hours.

I’d say that as far as how long it takes to find support for revolutionary change, this game works well as a metaphor for how change is slow and tedious. Also, the more people you find who want change, the more people you’ll find who want anti-capitalist revolution, and the more that you’ll find who are willing to fight and give their lives for the change they believe in.

Although there were some successes in this idle clicker game as a metaphor for revolutionary anti-capitalist change in this country, I think that overall it is impossible for any “idle” game to really represent revolutionary change because change is the opposite of idle. A major inconsistency of the game is the score, which is supposed to represent the number of supporters of revolutionary anti-capitalist change, but it would better represent your energy level for recruitment. If I made this change it would show that it is important to rest and regain your strength before going out and making more connections with people and discovering more comrades for anti-capitalist revolutionary change. I would like to modify the game to that there are two scores: your energy level and the number of supporters of revolutionary anti-capitalist change, and I’d keep the messages the same, but add more goals, like getting millions of supporters for a global anti-capitalist revolution to finally win the game.

Hi everyone,

For the project this time, I created this game called Pet Collector. I’m really into pets, such as cute kitties and puppies so I build this game just for my own preference. 🙂

Here’s the open scene of my game. I created this box of banner just to make this game look cute in order to attract gamers to play my game. I think it’s a funny and cute banner. I really like it personally, especially the part where the space cat in the hat is sitting on the ball.

In terms of the overall look, I like the color theme of my game because it’s really cute and cartoony. I’d spent a lot of time looking for cute images and finally found out these extremely cute pet’s image.

I love the part that every time when you get a pet, there will be a neon cat generated and flying across your screen. I think it’s an interesting idea but I personally wasn’t expecting that it’ll generate so many neon cats each time, resulting in blocking the player from clicking onthe pet food button. I should definitely fix the code to reduce the number of neon cats that are generated each time.

Last but not least, I should definitively increase the complexity of my game if you had more time to work on it. I like the graphics overall but the complexity and gaming difficulties should definitely be increased. The game rules are too simple and also it takes FOREVER to win this game. Because it takes 5 kitties to exchange for a puppy and 5 puppies to exchange for a human baby. So, how long it takes for you to exchange a unicorn?  You can do the math calculation then. 🙂

ELLE