Author: cynthiajc3

The Play’s the Thing was a fun event. I had never been to a student game exposition.  It was great being able to see all the different types of games each student came up with using the principles we all learned. It is crazy to think about how the principles can be used in such a vast variety. It was awesome to see. I knew creating games was difficult but now I definitely understand why it is so difficult. There’s only so much you can do in a limited amount of time and today there’s just so many games that you never know what will be work and won’t work. You can have a one idea about how the game will be but the player will also have their own idea about the game. It was great being able to see people play my game and seeing their reaction. It was also nerve racking because knowing that the players did not know you their feedback was going to be honest and unfiltered. Something the truth can hurt. haha However, over all I think my game received good comments. The most commented being that it is a difficult game.

Progress has been made!

This week I was able to add the happy Cloud image to the icon, banner end screen and start screen. Additionally, I changed the different color squares in the different cloud shapes and got the user cloud to change shape when pressing down certain keys.

I am currently still working on troubleshooting the collision script. Only one of the clouds is working and I am not sure why the others aren’t. The script looks the same but I guess I am not seeing something. Apart from that I am also working on tracking the score when the clouds did not match. The player is supposed to lose lives and the end screen is supposed to show. Another, challenge I will face is trying to create continuous clouds that are outside of the screen that show up on the screen. Additionally, I will be adding faces on each type of cloud. The original idea was to have the face change for the users cloud so as they lose lives it goes from super happy to sad. However, depending on if I have time I may just add different faces on all the clouds and go from there. The last challenge will be trying to add juiciness!  I have a few ideas. For example, all the clouds will expand and shrink a small amount to add life to them. Additionally, possibly add wind particles to give more movement to the play screen. Lastly, adding help text to the game to help the user throughout the game. As a way to remind them of the instructions.

This week I focused on trying to get the game play working correctly. So far I was able to get the player to change the color of the square and the colliding action of the game. I did come across a few errors. First, when I tried to compare the colors the collider code stops working and the main square is able to run through the rest of the squares. Another error I keep coming across is that the camera does not capture the complete background so it looks like the square goes off screen.

As for next steps, I will be troubleshooting the comparison code, adding the score board, editing the squares to be the hold cloud materials, editing the text, and continuously randomly generating more squares.

Something I am excited to learn about is adding facial expression to the square by using two textures and once the game is working adding juiciness. However, this idea is a bit more difficult than I thought it would be but let’s see how it goes!

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.

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.

Lollipop Madness

Lollipop Madness is a timed game where your goal is to collect has many lollipops before time runs out.

Background

The main goal of the game is to have a nice pop candy land game with marshmallow and chocolate bars there to help. Unlike the other projects this had to be a random self generated game. That came with a lot of kinks and slips. I found having a game where it randomly changes every time interesting. It is like throwing the dice every time you play to make sure to works appropriately. However, it is very cool because you can feel like an actual player who has never seen that level before it is different every time. (I would not want to be the QA person for this sort of game.) Another effect of this game is that in order to get to the next level you must have a certain amount of lollipops before time runs out or the game ends and you have to start over. Lastly, the last component of this game is that the user needs to jump with little gravity to hold you down. Not only does this add to the change I believe it helps the game feel a more dream like.

Description

You are Pink square driven to rule the sea of Purple and Blue.

Will you prevail or give in to gluttony?

Background

Surprisingly, this game turned out better than expected. The original idea behind this game was to have the player be a square that changed colors. The objective was to have the player collect squares the same color as themselves and avoid hitting all other colored squares. The challenge would be the movement of the other squares and the fact that as they changed colors. So the color they needed to collect would also change. However, as I started to code I found it difficult to have an object move in a direction while changing shapes, figure out how to detect the color of other objects and how to change main color square as time went on. Given these constraints I decided to work with what I as able to successfully code and adding difficulty with aesthetics and converting the game to a puzzle with unexpected plot twist here and there. The challenge then turned into a balancing act due to having a limit amount of collectibles one can collect and adding different reactions to different objects. I found that though the layout and goal was simple it made it more frustrating when a player was not able to successfully complete the game.

Game Description  

You’re at a party! Gone out of your mind. A person approaches you super excited to see you and calls out your name. They obviously remember you but you have no idea who they are. Before you get a chance to ask who they are the person starts talking. Hey remember that one time???

Can you play it cool? Try getting through this conversation without upsetting the person.

Background 

All in all I am pretty satisfied with the outcome of the game. I received a few comments stating it was pretty funny which was nice because I wanted it to be a funny spin on what can be an awkward situation. When it came to creating the game I found that a brainstorm bubble chart was helpful to map out the responses for each question and a nice way to keep track of what I was doing when I was coding. Especially, because once I started coding it the code was very long and repetitive. Another helpful tactic I used was commenting out groups of code when I could not find the errors within the code. I later found most of them where syntax errors where I left out a ) or ;. Those aren’t very easy to see. I also found that the most challenging part in creating the game was making sure the text did not go off the screen and button controls. Ideally, I just wanted to have the user to pick between answer a or b. I soon found that I did not know how to do that. As a work around I decided to use different letters. If I were to edit this game I would make it visually appealing by editing the text formatting and font.