Author: Mike_Shen

I had a wonderful time looking at various kind of games that was presented during this conference. It also made  me consider joining the Doom mod class which was very interesting. One of the developers for Doom machine mod actually brought his cassette tape player and made it so the player can use the tape player as a controller. Our games from the class were also presented to the public, which made me  pretty nervous because it feels like they are comparing our school project to the other famous indie games that they played. When this one individual was playing my game, I actually jokingly said “Oh wow, the graphic looks so nice in this game, and oh wow look at that the mountain, look so beautifully created.” (Trying to hype my game up you know)

This conference was very interesting. Our professor and author LeMieus Patrick and Stephanie Boluk both talked about their experience in video games, the philosophy behind them, the future of them and also  the book in which they both collaborated on. It is called “Metagaming: Playing, competing, spectating, cheating, trading,making, and breaking videogames (Electronic Mediations) which can find here : https://www.amazon.com/Metagaming-Spectating-Videogames-Electronic-Mediations/dp/0816687161

Treasure Hunt actually looks a lot better after much fine tuning, and adding different types of trees and bushes. ultimately the goal of the game is to collect the coins that is on this island, 10 coins would be the objective. The hardest part were the coins. Making them rotate with Vector3.left*Time.deltaTime*Rotatespeed was no problem, but having the coin sound like super mario and disappear after the player touches it? harder than I thought. I had to make sure it has OnTriggerEnter and having several game manager scripts such as passedObject.GetComponent<Renderer>().enabled passedObject.GetComponent<Collider>().enabled = false;
        Destroy(passedObject, 1.0f);
        score = score + passedValue;
        scoreText.text = “Score: “ + score.ToString();

But 1.0f was a little long therefore in the Final project, I made it 0.5f.

I also changed the sky box to a much more fitting environment, it is actually surrounded by ice mountains and the sea. Making the players feel like they are actually on the island. Although the game’s objective is to collect coins, but I want to players to actually enjoy the journey that they are having, each coin was carefully thought out and placed in areas that has the view of the game’s scenery.

In the beginning this game was called the “gift” but honestly it sounded to cheesy so I changed the name to treasure hunt which makes a lot more sense and it is straightforward. The player gets to collect the coins on this mysterious but beautiful island. With the help of the terrain tools I got to make beautiful mountains and hills. At first, it was just a small island but since I switched my workstation from my Mac lap top to my PC (A lot more processing power) I get to make this enormous map. Making the mountains was the most fun, with the pointy summit of the hills, it reminded me of the HuangShan mountain in China. Honestly, it was a happy accident as Bob Ross would always say.

In terms of the dirt road, it was actually fairly simple. I used the brush tool,added in the dirt color material, figure out a route like map, and drew it in while I change the sizes of the brush, so some dirt road are a lot more narrow than some of the other routes. Overall, the environmental foundation for this game is solid thus far, and definitely takes a lot of processing power on the PC.

There is a tool in Unity which I have fell in love with, and that is the Terrain Engine. Unity’s Terrain system allows the users to add various vast landscapes. If you want to add a Terrain to your scene, select GameObject > 3D Object > Terrain from the menu. In addition, Unity provides you with number of tools you modify with, such as the height tools, when you paint with this tool, the height is increased as you sweep the mouse over the terrain. The height will add up and accumulate if you just hold the mouse in one place, on the other hand if you hold down the shift key, the height will be lowered. Of course one of my favorite are the brushes, which you can create a variety of effects with it, such as if you want to create a different shapes of cliffs, one with the round edge would be the soft brush while the hard edge brush is responsible for cutting steep cliffs. Now we’re on the texture part, which is a lot more easier. You can simply add or drag the texture images to the terrain to create the details of the terrain. Terrains are large objects, so it is better to have a texture that repeats seamlessly.

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.

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.

This week as I was preparing for my Pecha Kucha presentation on Arnt Jensen, the CEO of the indie video game company Playdead. One of the few games that this company developed caught my interest, the game is Limbo. This puzzle filled game is a very straight forward minimalistic game. It is about an unnamed boy,which the player controls, travels through this dangerous and trap filled environment to look for his beloved sister. Now this game is filled with excessive death scenes and gruesome visuals of the little boy, which is the goal from the developers ,because Playdead claimed that through “trials and deaths” the players learn how to solve the puzzles/problems. Many critics describe this game as a work of art that is filled with black and white color tones (film noir), minimalism, ambient sounds and expressionism. The developer’s goal was to make this game a open book, open to the audience’s interpretations. So instead of a young boy who is in search of his beloved sister (of course this is only a subjective theory which most people believe) it can be both brother and sister who died together, entered Limbo and the boy is trying to find his sister in this creepy afterlife. Now with that being said, some critics are actually disappointed with the storyline or the lack of it, because the game does not tell the audience about anything, the boy just woke up in the middle of the forest and now he is trying to look for his sister. All in all, I played this game slightly, and I absolutely loved it, especially the soundtrack, it gave me this creepy yet relaxing ambient vibe. I definitely give it a 10/10 so far….

I have always been a big fan of zombie or horror games. Games such as Amnesia, Slender Man, Outlast series and The last of us are my favorite type of games thus far. With those games as my inspirations, I obviously created a horror game that had to deal with walking around the creepy forest and of course, zombies are involved.

First and foremost, I did not intend to create a horror setting in the first place until I realized what genre of games I loved the most. It all started with a tree, then another, until it looked like an actual forest. The red forest textures were edited on adobe photoshop then when I implemented on the planes, I used shader:sprites/ default to make the lighting more brighter and clearer. The red circle in the middle of the forest was suppose to be a defending point from zombies, the red light is suppose to be a safezone which the zombies cannot touch but the it is attracted to your flesh at the same time. (I got the zombie 3D model from the asset store which Unity provided) The characters can run away from the zombies but it will be more harder as the levels progresses because more zombies will be summoned.