TCS110 – Experimental Games

I tend to not tell stories because they tend to deviate and become convoluted so when our first assignment was Environmental storytelling I was internally freaking out. I’ve always had a fascination with art installations especially those who implement sonic elements to them. I decided that I wanted to create audio zones in which each zone would provide a different memory or mood.

 

This completed scene demonstrates the audio zones that plays music on a loop. Each song belonging to it’s respective video game character was bit crushed and manipulated by me in Ableton Live.  The initial scene had a drone track that pushed the narrative of being in limbo, however this audio source ended up being too loud and detracted from the other zones. I reworked it to have a steady kick drum to creating a build up to an abrupt end.

 

 

The visual qualities of the game were inspired by what I felt when going through game model rips. They were lifeless, eerie looking characters that I would usually see zipping around on screen. Now they seemed like digital artifacts of a world that was forgotten. Though some game models in my game are from well established video games, they are previous versions, iterations of those characters that represent an era of gaming. This echoes an art gallery or a museum exhibition. I enjoyed this narrative and I decided to exaggerate it with creating a dark brooding environment. The end, with it’s floating face-less bodies is open to interpretation.

For my first video game creation I wish I gave myself more time. Being able to put more thought into the overall design and concept would have created a better out come and experience. Seeing the work of other students and the thought put into there projects inspired me to take my next project to the next level and to strive for a more thought out “Concept.”

I’ve also learned that the message and objective must be made clear as day for the players to be able to decipher what was intended. What I intended for my game was for the players to find their way to the bottom and find the “treasure chest.” During the process of finding the treasure chest, the player will get a feel of a dope environment to be in. For me, I felt a dope environment would be, brick wall warehouse with MAD studio equipment in it. On top of that there is a treasure chest? I thought that would be dope.

Thankfully there was a positive to come away with this first attempt. I was able to have the player intriguingly find the objective of this level. This will keep the player glued to a game. I will try to keep this strategy for the rest of my created games.

For my next game I hope to create a REAL environment and create the music as well!

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.

Continue reading “Stairway to Heaven”

I have been a video game players for many years. It was a very interesting experience for me to build my first game in life using Unity. Since recently I have been a little bit frustrating in life, I want to make my games to make people feel annoyed. Therefore, the game’s color is a little bit dark and cold. Also, the player is trapped in a maze with very narrow walkway.

I have set up some puzzles for players to solve. However, because I have made the jumping mechanics a little bit too hard for this game, I was not able to show them all in a 5 minutes presentation. For example, when the player reaches this bridge, the players have to be brave to jump into the wall in order to get through since the wall actually has no collider and there is a bridge behind the wall.

We could see the design from the bottom of the maze. 

Also, it is a little bit satisfying for me to see the maze that we get out from.

However, there is not a real exist from this place.

After seeing other students’ work, I realize that I need to improve my skills in storytelling, and using light to set up the mood of my game. Also, I need to shorten my game in order to show all the content in 5 minutes next time. I am very excited to learn more and be able to do more with my games.

-Rui Long Zhao

This was my first time ever to design a video game by using this such complex software, unity. I had not only experienced a hard time figuring out the functionalities of each component in the interface, but I also felt frustrated, especially when I saw my First Person Controller wasn’t working the exact way I wanted to.

<Figure 1>
The image above (Figure 1) is the 3D model of the environment of my game. I created many cubes and modified their shapes to create the stairs in my game environment. I had also dowloaded a few 3D models of castle online so that the visual aspect of the environment can relate to the title of my game. I was inspired by a video game, called Monument Valley, so I tried to recreate its visual scene and make my game’s environment look abstract and geometric, just like how the game, Monument Vally, looks.

<Figure 2>

Figure 2 is the final result of my game environment. I like how colorful it looks and the stairs I made in the game. However, I would definitely increase its complexity if I had more time to work on it!

I was surprised that I had learned so much just by looking at games made by other students. Because we all have our own interested genres of game, we build and explore the types of game that is based on our own interests. In this class, I can hear different opinions from other students and know more about the types of game from the diverse perspectives. I think it’s a good way of learning and can help me advance the complexity of my game that I will be creating in my future classes.

Elle

When I started making this project, I was debating between a lot of ideas that seemed like it could be cool, but would be pretty difficult for a beginner like me to do. I fiddled around and ended up going back to the roots of it all, which was good ol’ rocks and sand.

From there I started building, like a child would build sand castles in a sandbox. I layered rocks and rotated them to give it some different variations. At this point it looked like a barren wasteland, so I decided, “Why not desert it even more?” I added the planets and “stars” in to make it seem like a universe had fell apart, showing that this is the remains of empty, desolate worlds.

There was a real struggle when I rotated the textures on the spherical surface because there were patches of black from the png. file that I tried to cover up. Getting used to moving things around on the right axis was definitely the most time-consuming part of the whole process. Having everything placed in the right scale, and then wondering if it was enough, was a heavy thought that chewed at my mind. I wanted people to feel like they are alone and trapped, mindlessly wandering around to see if there are any inhabitants lurking about. There were so many mistakes I made (especially getting it into a zip file) but I know that just means that there is more room for improvement.

Also a sidenote, since I did not present yet, I had my roommate test run my game and her and thoughts about the environment were that “it would be cool if there was some sort of way that the character could walk to the underside of the plane, since there could possibly be another different kind of world set up there” (as seen when she fell off the world and looked up). It made me think more on having different planes, and whether it could curve or teleport the characters so that they ended up in a different setting (like in 30 Flights of Loving where scenes were jumped).

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.

Creating just one environment for a game proved to be a lot more difficult that I had anticipated. The process was a bit frustrating, but I think that was mostly due to my lack of unity skills. I was a bit unorganized with my materials and assets so that made this project take a lot longer to build. I’m a fan of RPG games so I wanted to emulate something where there were multiple paths and hidden treasures to find. Since this is a small project I just added a fork in the road with two paths. I’m not particularly pleased with the finished product however. When I look at it I wish I made the plane bigger so there could be more room for exploring. But for what it is I think it ended up ok as a first game. I haven’t had anyone critique my environment yet, but I hope that they notice the hints I left for the right path to take. I tried to leave subtle hints like a different colored tree trunk and an off colored patch of grass to signify the right path to take. Some challenges I faced were adding all the trees to emulate a dense forest. Because I kept adding so many, it was hard to place the new trees and edit their shapes and sizes. As I was building this environment, everything just felt so cluttered. But when I simulate the game I actually wish I added more. Again, my main gripe with this end product is that I wish I made the plane bigger, but aside from that I think it turned out ok for a first attempt.