The Play’s the Thing

I personally felt that this event was SO much fun to attend!  To see all the games taken into an exhibition format, shown on big screens in front of classmates, instructors, and other faculty and guest panelists… Amazing!!!  Also the ModLab it self was really neat.

From being a gamer since childhood to making my own games and exhibiting one was kind of unreal.  I think I’m headed in this direction now in terms of what I want to study and do in the future.  This quarter was only my first glimpse at actually developing games and each new project was so exciting, and to see myself actually start projects before sunday night was also a surprise and makes me think I must be somewhat passionate about it to be doing that…  Really nice to see it all come together, and then to hear professors during the discussion talk about the books they’ve written on games.  It’s always interesting to hear people talk about things from their own background of study and see how they all approach the same concepts.

Congratulations to everyone on making AMAZING games, every single one is incredible to look at and I’m really happy we all got to exhibit together.  I can’t wait to download everyone’s games on itch.io >:)

From “bubbel wherld” to the published “Aerium”

*Ohmygosh* I never thought I’d be making a video game this quarter yet alone ~publishing it to the internet~ but here it is!   aerica.itch.io/aerium

With only half a month left of this year I’m really happy that I can say I’ve actually made a video game that’s been published online.  From being a gamer since childhood to now making games in University this feeling is pretty strange and unreal.

I want to say THANK YOU to Professor LeMieux for all the help and being a really awesome instructor!!  I’m pretty sure none of my games would be functional without his help debugging anything and everything.  Also thanks to all my classmates for making this class really special, it’s something that has really had an impact on me and will influence my future in many ways!

It would be really nice to keep in touch on instagram (erica.cherri) or facebook (Erica Cherrington) so don’t be a stranger!!

– Erica

Aerium – Level Design

In the fashioning of a final, working game I expanded the game with levels.  Each one requires the collection of a golden orb, which advances you to the next level, and collecting all three golden orbs lets you achieve the quest of “saving your world” :).  I also added pink orbs in levels 2 and 3 that are necessary for manipulating your environment and jumping up to collect the golden orb.  I lowered the gravity and increased the jump height/speed so that it’s a bit of a “floaty” jump, which works well with the atmospheric space that is Aerium.


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Aerium: Prototype Alpha/Beta

Hey guys!

I have so many ideas for the development of my game Aerium that I almost don’t know where to begin.  Right now I’m just working on what appear to be the most exciting aspects, and from there I usually end up coming up with the next step.  I have a Google Doc of notes I’m keeping (things I debugged, things I need to add, etc.) and it’s nearing 3 pages now.  This post mostly talks about two different staircases I’ve made.  In this GIF the placement is a little awkward since they’re both right near each other but I had just gotten it to work and here it is!

A constantly generating square staircase! And a cylindrical staircase that rises with your actions!

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Day of the Devs!

Day of the Devs was a really great experience, as I have never been to any kind of gaming convention before.  Next year I would block out my entire day to go to this event again, because there was so much to see and I didn’t even get to see a fraction of the games there, let alone test play them.  There was a lot of waiting in line or watching others play, as they had already been playing for a long time and weren’t sharing the controller :/.

In particular it was nice to see how people of many ages attended, although most were in their 30’s?, I also was not expecting there would be bars at the venue or food trucks!  There were like 60 games total, even from game developers in other countries.  Some of the games I got to see were Luna, Mineko’s Night Market, Gang Beasts, Anamorphine, and Pode.

I liked this room at the venue.  The ceiling lights were out except for a few lights on the walls as well as some colorful lights on a different wall.  There was a place for people to draw on the wall, and this room also had actual places to sit down, which was refreshing since the event attracted quite a crowd.

Luna was a game in this room, a VR one which attracted many onlookers.  I didn’t get to play this one because I didn’t want to wait in line for the 2+ hours it would have taken.  Many games shown at Day of the Devs were short demo reels while others had timers for each test-player.  However due to the crowds the game devs probably didn’t want to keep enforcing 10-minute limits and would rather talk to people about their games.

This video of the game Pode is short but shows a way the developers smoothly integrated split screen into a two-player game (that usually has a shared screen).  This can definitely eliminate a lot of arguments that occur with co-op games…. haha.  It was interesting the difference in engagement between single and multiplayer games here.

Finally, Gang Beasts, a 4-player wrestling game, captured a lot of people’s attention.  It was placed at the center of the largest room, and each game had one champion.  The champions during the late afternoon were able to challenge each other while standing in a small ring on the main stage.

Overall, I’m really glad I went to Day of the Devs.  It was fun to meet up with my classmates/friends outside of a classroom setting and I wish that I had stayed longer.  I’m definitely going again next year!

-Erica

Bubble World

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.

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Sea of Dreams

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.

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Stairway to Heaven

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.

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