Month: November 2017

I thought making a clicker game would be a lot simpler than our previous projects. Man was I wrong. I’m not a big fan of idle games since I find them kind of boring (with the exception of button mashing games), so I wanted to try to make something really fun. The hardest part about this project was coming up with an idea. I realize from these past projects that I always want to try to make games with these complex ideas, but I don’t have the skill level to implement them, so I end up wasting so much time trying to figure out codes I don’t know how to attempt and end up with less time building the actual game. I ended up decided on a sort of combination lock game with colors, where you have to continuously click on the buttons (which change color with every click) and try to figure out the correct color sequence in the least amount of clicks possible. Not the most fun game, but a decent puzzle game in my opinion. By the time of the critique, however, the game was only half done, with only the color changing objects working with no end result, but in the end I was able to figure out a code to get the result I wanted. Thanks again Patrick for the help!

I realized that with seven buttons and seven colors on each button, the possibilities for a combination is incredibly high, so some people suggested I add some sort of hint to give to the player. Although someone did say to just keep it as is and make them guess haha. My initial idea was to make the color sequence the colors of the rainbow, since I assumed that would be most people’s first guess. A couple people actually did guess correctly without my assistance. But in the end I decided to add in a hint to make the game a little easier.

There were so many things I wanted to do through my game, but because of my lack of skills with c++, I had to stick with what was currently do-able. I feel like c++ is the most challenging part that I find myself struggling to overcome in every game I make. The code I wrote for this project was just a collection of bits and pieces of different codes I wrote for my previous games.

During critique, many people felt like my diet game would be more playable if some foods would make the main character less bigger. My game made Mr. Beans’ face grow bigger and more intimidating every time you clicked on a food item. This size++ and size– function was actually a part of what I was intending on doing – hence the name of my game, but I ended up writing a different code with Patrick’s help.

For my final project, I want to be able to fully express myself though a game with many the different commands and functions that enhance the player’s experience. I felt that all my weekly games were super short and unplayable for the most part. I appreciate all of the comments that my peers made regarding my game because it helps me visualize the player’s experience when playing my games.

After watching the demo games in class like Cookie Clicker and CandyBox, I was quite excited to learn how to make a clicker game. Building something like the world in CandyBox was awe-inspiring, but I know it would be extremely difficult for a starter like me. I just went with something simple as a topic for the game. I don’t exactly know what drew me to choosing a mouse and cheese, but it was funny when I was thinking about how to make this happen. I wish I had more time to spend on this, as a lot of the feedback I got was how I would further the game. I would definitely want to have multiple endings, and more options on the screen to click as time goes by. I got some funny suggestions to do a fart explosion ending, or like when you over worked the mouse, they would show up on the screen (not that dead animals is funny, but the irony in it). I got many comments on the icon I chose for the game, and in all honesty I was just lucky on Google Images. 

Coding this game was not an easy feat either, and I ran into some trouble, especially when I was trying to get the text to pop up when you hit 10 cheeses, for a mouse to work for you. There were also some issues when I exported the game and the text were not the right proportions on the screen so I had to fiddle around in replacing them.

Introduction 

Buttons, buttons, buttons!!!

In this game your goal is to make 10,000 buttons as fast as you can.

Start by making them manually one by one and increase production by purchasing shops and factories.

Background 

The  game takes place during the industrial revolution. I thought the best way to convey this was by using sketch drawings of old machinery and buildings. I also created the start and end screens using paint and repeating the button pattern and adding text boxes above the design and trying to keep the design simple to keep the theme consistent. Lastly, to help the player get a sense of that they were creating buttons as they clicked on the images I edited the mouse cursor to to change from an arrow to a button as they hovered over the images and then once they press on the images it turns into a hammer.

In a way it shows how a business can progress through time and investments. Overall, I think the game was a success. If I were to continue working on the game, I would add the final time on the end screen, edit the mouse cursor to only show the image, edit the font, font placement in the game to make sure it remains the game no matter the screen size, and edit the font on the start / end screen.

For this week’s project, I have created a game that let players try to mouse-clicking as fast as possible in ten seconds. At first, I was worried that my game was too simple, however, I saw some classmates have got tried pretty hard to get a good score and had fun with it. I realized that sometimes our games doesn’t have to be complicated to be fun. Sometimes, we could use simple mechanics and logic to build something fun and additive for players. 

In this week’s critic , I have got many good suggestions or review for my game. I am inspired by many good ideas. There are many things that I could do to make my game’s content more interesting. My game could be make for multi-players. Allowing one player to complete with another could be interesting. Also, I could make different game mode, such as in certain time, if the player achieve certain score, the player could be rewarded or given bonus time to keep playing. Also, it’s important to keep players’ highest score. Players could feel much more rewardable if I could set up this function. All in all, I think this could be a great game that I could extend on.

This week I struggled on the coding for quite a bit. Part of reason is that UI elements in Unity don’t work with certain commands, also infinite spawning with variables attached to it makes it quite tricky. I couldn’t get the score to reset upon reloading the scene most likely because I often directly referred to variables in other scripts. The variable that adds up to become the points in the middle is written within the same script that instantiates the Texts falling down on both sides, which I assume was the reason why I couldn’t get the score to reset without making the score set to zero each time a new Text is spawned.

The visual design is definitely too plain but i spent most of the time on the coding again, only if i wasn’t that bad at it. All the struggle for a simple little game was what made me realize coding a game from scratch is actually a hard task, especially when I’m not familiar with the programming language. As a model/character builder, I got to experience the difficulties of being a game programmer, though its probably easy for those who are actually decent at math and been doing it as a computer science major. The game definitely has potential to become a decent local versus game, if the problems were more challenging and the design was more engaging.

The game Everything is a combination of all the simulator games in one. The player can play as a “shapeshifter” and control any creature or object they see. With the rule of power of tenth, one can explore everything from the smallest objects such as micro biological sub atomic level to intergalactic galaxies, therefore having a limitless possibility of area to explore. This game uses unique movement animations such as having the creatures roll instead of walking. The creator David OReilly is also aware the power of music within games, it changes the whole perspective of the gaming experience, thus he implemented ambient and soothing soundtracks in this game. The creator David OReilly had developed the game Mountain, which using Unity game engine which he taught himself how to use (Now I feel worthless). As OReilly worked with Unity, he saw the potential of representing nature with real-time systems within Unity, which was the inspiration for the game Everything. OReilly describe his hope for players of the game “ I want Everything to make people feel better about being alive. Not as an escape or distraction, or arbitrary frustration, but something you would leave and see the world in a new light.” He also mentioned that this game also has the elements of Easternphilosophy and stoicism.

Hopefully I get points for honesty because I don’t have a lot of content to discuss. I wasn’t able to finish my project or even get it to a playable place–but at least I have a place to live and that was my top priority this past week. Honestly, I’m having a really difficult time managing my time and staying in school right now. I don’t know how everyone does this life thing when it is so difficult to get enough food, clean water, and sleep for so many of us. Now that I have a secure living situation all I want to do is rest because I feel so burnt out. Somehow I’m going to pull myself out of this shitty place I’ve been stuck in. I have a place to sleep that is safe, so now I can refocus on lining up the tasks I need to complete today, tomorrow, this week, and this quarter. Everything, the game we played in class this week really stood out to me because it is such a fun, silly and calming game. It made me so happy watching it that I was smiling and laughing at the playthrough we were doing in class. I want to make games like that: games that can make anyone’s shitty fucked up day better.

If only I could write a script for my life that could scale timeToWorkOnProjects up anytime I wanted!

For Project 4 I wanted to work with an idea I had for Project 1, which was to have the player walking around inside of a terrarium world.  You’d feel very small amidst all the large cacti and plants surrounding you.

However, I couldn’t find any cactus or succulent .fbx files I liked…… Also I was tired of looking at this grass, so I decided to simplify my world and make sure I focused on getting everything coded correctly.  I didn’t import any objects except for the largest sphere which surrounds you in this space.

Continue reading “Bubble World”