Author: Annalisa_Yoakum

feed the world: final

After about a month or so working on it, I have completed my final game for the class, feed the world! Due to all of the coding and extra polish, it definitely took me longer than I thought it was going to, but it came out pretty good. I could not do a play test of the game since it would take a pretty long time for me to do so (but that’s the point of the game anyway; it’s meant to take some time). If I ever continued with this game, I definitely could keep adding more things for the player to manage, which would keep the player more involved, as this game is really a super basic idle game. I definitely learned a lot about game design from creating this final game and this class, so I feel better about if I ever got a internship/job relating to game (which I kinda do wish that’ll happen!) After taking the computer science classes at UC Davis, I was really worried about coding in this class because I was afraid the coding would be the same (many hours of debugging, late nights, etc.) and be at that of high level. Luckily it wasn’t, because everything in Unity is visual and compiling is basically instant. Now I’m super happy that I did know coding before; I didn’t mean to take on a extensive coding game like I did, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I wasn’t able to stay at the exhibition for the actual presentations unfortunately due to work, but I hope everyone who did had a good time! For itch.io, I’ll put it up as free because again it’s super basic, but at least it’s a start for me in game design.

Check it out: https://russet-alpha.itch.io/feed-the-world

feed the world: prototype b

Because of the Thanksgiving break Week 8, I definitely didn’t get as much work done as I usually would’ve :/. I only added audio clips and a bit of text for the main game banner and tried to rework the title screen (as I really don’t like it right now). I might add a “tutorial” screen which would include the little blurb that I have on my title screen; it would also be helpful with trying to the implement the DontDestroyOnLoad() function. If I can get this done, then I would have a good chunk of the game mechanic down. I’m also still trying to figure out the “surprises” to my game; the code is being really stingy with me 🙁 . If I can get these 2-3 things done, then I would have my game basically finished, and I can focus on actually doing a full play through (however long that is going to take) and really, really polishing my game and adding extra fun details. I just really need to be on top of doing my work, as I have another final project I haven’t started yet ._. .

feed the world: prototype a

This week I got a good amount of work done for Prototype A. I settled on my icon, banner, and title screen (though the title screen needs a bit more work) and got the basic of how I want my actual game to look. A good amount of time was just put into the arrangement of all the icons and texts and all their sizes. I got the basic idea for exponential costs for my farms down (but probably still need a bit of tweaking) (https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/numbers-getting-bigger-the-design-and-math-of-incremental-games–cms-24023), but also still need to work out how my workers are going to work, since I really couldn’t find a nice way to put them under all of the farms. I added cursor images as well and  was able to get my buttons to work. I also want to click on text in the title screen vs using key presses, but again didn’t know how (but will learn for the next prototype). The hardest part right now is to find a way to “timestamp” the time so it doesn’t continually increase the time (specifically on the banner board). Unfortunately, I did choose a game with a lot more coding than I wanted (right now total I’m up to about 1000 lines O_o) , but most of it is copy/paste anyway and pretty easy if statements; it just takes a good amount of time to get everything perfect. The next things I need to do for Prototype B is to add sound to everything, add in the “surprises”, actually play test a whole game to make sure everything is working (which is going to take forever), and just continue to clean up everything here and there.

feed the world

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.

Food To Table

The idle/clicker game for this week was definitely easier than the previous games, which was nice as I had a pretty busy week last week. Most idle/clicker game are pretty much the same, except with a different theme; some could make something, some could build something, etc. They all have the “make more to get the better thing to make more..” mentality. Even with the extra day to think about our game, this time I only came up with a simple idle/clicker game with the theme of food. Not just one food, but kind of like a farm (or really multiple farms) that make a variety of different agricultural food.

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Infinite Fitness

This quarter’s workload is definitely getting to me; every week I feel like I could do much more in my games, and this week I wanted to do a lot more but time definitely got to me this week. I was hesitant about this project because when I think of procedurally generated I think recursion, and though it may seem like it would be easier just randomly generating objects/code (more broadly not having to place everything), recursion definitely was the death of me in my computer science classes. The code got to me more in this project as well (which delayed my progress in completing my game) because I couldn’t see what was happening at all times. I had many, many ideas for this game, but many of them were, again, the easy go-to’s. But this time, instead of creating my idea then shaping how it looked, I decided on my aesthetics that finalized my idea for my game.

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Just Keep Going

Again, you would think simple 2D games wouldn’t take as much time as 3D games, but alas I was fooled this week again. My rhythm for making games for this class has been this: figure out the theme/topic (less than a day and maybe an hour or so brainstorming) and then create it (taking how many hours/days later). This time, it took me 2 days thinking about how to go about this 2D abstract game, because of the abstract aspect. As a visual person, I like to create things as realistic as possible, and trying to convey some deeper, “universe” meaning with some squares and circles made me veerryy frustrated. And as always, I try not to steer to the most popular idea/way to go about the topic, so being a bit more original + meaning = exhausted, vvvveerrryyy frustated me .__. .

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Everything Is Normal, As Always

You would think a text-based game would be much, much easier than a 2D/3D game, but this week I spend about as much time as I did making this “simple” looking game as I did creating Footprints. My text-based game, Everything Is Normal, As Always, is a “choose your own adventure” story about a day in a life of a college student. You can “finish” my game in either 3 key presses (about maybe 7 seconds if you read the prompts) or about 5-10 minutes if you get all the way to the end. At the end, you see an ending title screen about why the prompts were what they were. This game (spoilers) is about a college student with anxiety. Continue reading “Everything Is Normal, As Always”

Footprints, My Dive into Game Design

Building my first game in 2017 made me feel like a game maker in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s: minimal models, simple setting,and very, very low quality, repetitive graphics and textures. Remembering the 2D foliage that followed your perspective and were about to be walked through, a plane with the same house twenty times, invisible walls that didn’t let you go on that patch of dirt for no reason whatsoever.. Ah the memories; I didn’t care and played those games over and over. With my first game ever, I’m happy with what came about even though today’s standards it would look only like a quick sketch of what something could be and not the final product. I say this, though Davey Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide and Garry Newman’s Garry’s Mod, though made in the Source engine, look like they could be made in Unity. Today, graphics don’t necessarily mean a “good” game; many indie games don’t have fleshed out AAA graphics, yet convey some of the most interesting stories and gameplay. Though I would’ve like to flesh out my game Footprints quite a bit more, time and resources did set me back, but I’m not unhappy about the finished product.

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