Month: November 2017

Going into this week I was pretty sure that I wanted to expand on the hand-drawn mod that I did.

However I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to expand on it. Should I only create a few more sprites and make the setting a bit larger and complex? Should I keep the small space? If I keep the small space, what kinds of things should I add to it?

After the super helpful group discussion this week, I think I have a decent idea of how I want to go about my final project. I want to focus on my original intent of this mod — to get as far away from Doom as possible.

I want to create an intimate experience full of tiny interactions and surprises. Maybe this means watering a flower and it grows. Maybe I’ll create another hand sprite that allows you to pet the dog and the dog reacts to that. Or when you “shake” the tree the bird flies away or maybe some fruit falls to the ground.

I think all of this is pretty opposite from the very violent and expansive Doom. If only I could get rid of that pause menu.

I guess it is a Doom mod after all.

The work we all did last week was a complete flash back for me. I believe i was the only one to who have taken the Mario Modding class a couple years ago but the stuff we learned there was very similar to what we are doing now.

Its crazy tot think that hardware hasn’t changed that much since the 1980s, you can basically do the same hardware mod to the mouse that you could do the 1985 NES controller. With a soldering iron, a breadboard,and an ardiuno you could completely change the game play of your game. But personally i don’t think i will attach my modded controller to my final project. I want my game to be mind blowing all by itself.

I will love to see the ideas people come up with for their controller/ game mod. I might be just lacking in creativity but i feel modding a mouse doesn’t have that much potential compared to an actual video game controller but i could be wrong.

This is my my controller form the Mario mod class.

 

This one may be a little late but I never made a blog regarding my Space Wad…

It may seem a little repetitive but it seems like every time I begin to work on final project, i always end up back in space. Sorry for those who are tired of this but i often come back to this because of my fascination with my favorite movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Although i did not put in any reference to HALL in this WAD i do believe i will insert him into my final project. The Space wad i showed everyone a couple weeks ago was simply a sample to let everyone get familiar with the map before i throw them into my final project.

This is the narrative of the space wad:

You are Commander Morti of the RRMS. You have been in space for decades looking for resources to bring back to your home planet. One of the most important resources you collect are these space creatures known as Alplouds. These creatures which can only live in space produce an outstanding amount of energy which can be stolen from the creatures (ultimately killing them). Even though these creatures emit a ton of energy they are almost impossible to detect. The only way to find them is to find their life resource,  “Neutronic Dwarfs”, which are similar to Neutron stars  and black holes but more stable.

Lets not kid our selves, as the controller of Commander Morti you are the villain. You exploit every resource possible and only care for your species.

-hope you enjoy

 

 

(Apparently I never hit submit on this diary and thought I had, so my bad on that one)

This week’s DOOM experience involved not only map design, but sprite, enemy, and weapon design, along with the maintenance of a stylistic and aesthetic experience. Basically, this week was like taking everything we did from last week and and quadrupling the amount of thought and effort, but with the purpose of creating something equally as complex and rewarding. This week felt like a full design process, and in working on the final project and other comprehensive projects, I viewed this week as an opportunity to think about my approach to future work. If I eventually want to make my own games, even if I might be doing less of the art that this week involved, I still need to consider the factors that go into these methods of creation, namely sizing of objects, stationary versus movement aesthetics, and overall quality assurance.

Luckily for me, working within the medium of Radiohead art, I had a defined art style that made my usual qualms with drawing a bit more negligible. However, this week I tried to exude more confidence in my work despite its limitations and the time it took to do so little. Not to compare myself to others, but when also seeing how much effort people put into their presentations also gave me confidence. Critiquing my work alongside others’ work allows me to see what I need to improve in my own work that everyone did well, the culmination of which I will apply in my final project. Hopefully, what I have learned will come through, in addition to a few ideas I want to explore throughout the next few weeks on my own.

I just realized that I forgot to post the my post as I was to0 excited to enjoy my holiday. Last week we learned how to use hardware to mod Doom. I disassembled the mouse I brought from China. It was cheap yet firm. I really had a hard time when I tried to break it. The melting metal was also hard. I figured out how to get rid of the original metal with the help of Patrick. However, my addition of two wire failed apart once I back to home.

For the Arduino, I really had some problems. I was not able to catch up with the lecture and only able to make the blink work. Therefore, I could not make the left click mouse at a certain pace which was shown in class. 

For my final project, I have two approaches now. One is if I finally figure out how to use the Arduino to control, I will make one like Crypt of the NecroDancer, which the player can only move at beat. If I can not, I may make a game that is more about the environment and story rather than a level about killing monster. I probably will polish my Alice in wonderland and add more story into it.

This week we worked on learning the basics of hardware modding! I purchased a blue tooth mouse because it was the cheapest one I could find at Fry’s Electronics in Sacramento. However, while working on the hardware mod, I realized why it was recommended to purchase a wired mouse.

Dealing with batteries was a pain. Having to keep everything attached to where the batteries would be put in and the extra wires were kind of annoying.

I was still able to get the left switch de-soldered. 

If I were to do another mouse modification, I would definitely like to purchase a different mouse so that I do not have to worry about the extra stuff in the way.

For my final project, I’m not sure if I would want to do a hardware mod. I’m definitely interested in playing with the Arduino in the future, however I am thinking that maybe for my game I should focus more on making the art and environment really good.

However, if I were to do a hardware mod, I think it would be interesting to put the Arduino in an actual watering can, and use the accelerometer to detect when the player tilts the watering can past a certain point to trigger the left click action in the game.

As there is no project this week, I am not sure if there is a post for this week and what should I write about in this post. As there is no project to talk about, I will discuss briefly about my experience of day of the devs.

 

For the event, it really surprised me with both the quality of the games and the number of people attended. There are many different genres of games in the event. And most of the games are very developed and polished as if they are on Steam.

I came to the event with one of my non-gamer friend. And even with no experiences of game, she really enjoyed some of the games. Her favorite game was human regular basket. The game is quite hilarious as the game is not played between human but robots. And the game is definitely not regular. The fact that this game allows 8 players to play at the same time and the comedy created by the robot action made it a perfect party game.

(regular human basketball)

There are also some very dark and complicated games in the event. One of my favourite is everyting is going to be ok. The game is very dark as the player can chip hands of the animation rabbit. What attract me is that the game is based on the virtual computer and the player is both like a god who is able to control everything in the game while the characters seem to now that they are in the game world and talk directly to the player. The technique of breaking the fourth wall is used really well in this game.

(Everthing will be ok )

This week we got to put everything we’ve learned to make an even more personalized custom mod. Coming up with the idea for a game is always the hardest part for me. It took me a really long time to figure out what kind of theme/story I wanted to create. Eventually I just ended up going with flowers, I just like flowers I guess 🙂 I put most of my work into creating and gathering my “tools” (sprites, textures, sounds, monsters, weapon) for the game than actually making a big map for this wad. The sprites were my biggest obstacle because I thought I’d be able to find stuff online but it was difficult to find the angles of a character that I wanted. I ended up taking a few front viewed sprite and changing them a little in Photoshop to blink. For my monster flower, the sprite I found was really pixelated and I tried to fix it in Photoshop by tracing it and coloring it in but it might not have made a huge difference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like that we’ve learned so many skills for modding and since we have longer than a week to make the final, hopefully I can end up with a cool wad.

I fell a little behind on my BLOG and i realized in never posted a blog regarding my first map retexturing. When i was making my first re texture map its obvious I was inspired by Adventure Time.

The part that took me the longest in creating this map was photo shopping images. I didn’t actually insert any of my images because i wasn’t satisfied with my images. So basically I wasted a lot of time at the beginning, but i don’t mind because i found an alternative route that i found more satisfying: I put a mod within a mod. I downloaded a mine craft mod of adventure time and took out ever png that was 128 x 128.

The mod i found didn’t actually have a lot of pngs that had that size but I think i found enough for my first rextexturing project. To make it obvious what the theme of work i was I literally made a huge speed run map that spelled out “FIN & JAKE.” I know I’m no longer the biggest speed run fan but i felt this was the best way i could show case all the textures and different possible combinations.

For the project i didn’t get the chance to show last week.. i will not continue this project and i will wait to post anything on it until I get a show it.

This week I attempted to make an art piece in Doom.  Here it is:

The Wad is titled KandinskyHomage.wad.  I used This photo as inspiration:

The player starts off directly in front of a red rectangle.  When the player walks over it it becomes their gun.  This was done to make every angle within the game feel like an abstract art piece.  The player can stop at any moment and view what they are looking at as an abstract art piece.

The background music is from the film Under the Skin.  The track is titled “love”, though it is love through the context of a horror movie.  I believe the music feels makes the user feel anxious, while not being erratic like most anxious music is.

Front and center of the map is a raised area which houses several eye NPCs.  These are meant to make the player feel like they are being looked at.

In the right corner is a portion from the above Kandinsky artwork, which looks like another eye staring at the player.

In the left corner is a spinning clock.  This is meant to increase the anxiety found in the music.

 

On the left hand wall are three keys, meant to be an abstraction of the doom series and games as a whole.

I enjoyed this project and hope to focus more on fun gameplay in future projects.