Game Design: The Epic Conclusion

To sum it all up!

Made a fun game with a BAD game engine. Massive success! http://dreamteamthedream.org/g-suits

Professional HW #14: Living On A Prayer

The first diagram is for the start-up menu states.

The second diagram is for the astronaut states.

Professional HW #12: Living On A Peanut

Before the end of the month, I am going to take all the models made for the game and put them all together into a working system, not necessarily a complete game yet though.

TODO:
- Put everything in one file.
- Character movement
- AI
- Respawn
- Camera movement
- Plus whatever else i can think of.

As the monks say, "Ben Stiller".

Professional HW #11: Having A BLAST!

Chapter 15

1. A goal with no obstacles is not worth pursuing. 
2. What is the relationship between the main character and the goal? Why does the character care about it? 
3. What are the obstacles between the character and the goal? 
4. Do the obstacles gradually increase in difficulty? If yes, how? 
5. Great stories often involve the protagonist transforming to overcome the obstacle. Does your protagonist transform? 
6. How is the game world simpler than the real world? 
7. What kind of transcendent power do you give to the player? 
8. What is the weirdest element in the game story? 
9. How do you ensure that the weirdest thing does not confuse or alienate the player? 
10. Will the players be interested in the game story? Why? 

Chapter 16

1. In what sense does the player have freedom of action? Does the player "feel" free at these times? 
2. What are the constraints imposed on the players? Do they feel constrained? 
3. Ideally, what would you like your players to do (lens #72)
4. Can you set constraints to "kind of" force the player to do it? 
5. Can you design your interface to "force" the player to do what you (the designer) wish him/her to do?

1. A goal with no obstacles is like fishing in the freezer. The goal was to catch fish, but you can just take a fish our of the freezer, so what is the point? Instead, you pursue a different goal because your previous one was too eazy(easy).

2. The goal is what the character is trying to achieve. Giving a character a goal gives direction to the game in the same way that a sign gives directions to a traveler. The character cares about the goal because there is either a reward or a punishment for accomplishing it or not.

3. The obstacles between the character in the goal are the things that the character has to overcome to reach the goal. The difficulty of obstacles is what makes the player feel like he has accomplished something or not.

4. In games obstacles increasing in difficulty is important because if the challenges get easier than the game does not feel like a challenge anymore. When the challenges are increasingly difficult the player feels like they have made progress because they have achieved a certain level of mastery of the game.

5. In the G-Suits the protagonist gets different weapons, changing the way he interacts with the world.

6. The players in G-Suits do not have to eat, sleep, or do most of the things people have to do in the real world. 

7. The player gets the ability to be in space, to revive, and kill.

8. The weirdest element is probably the time gap between what is possible now and what is possible in the game, since the game conceivably takes place in the future and the history between then and now is not explained.

9. The concepts of the game like space suits and fighting are similar enough to people now that the game is still completely understandable to the player.

10. The player will love the story because they are murderous people that will jump at the opportunity to liberate their nation by means of killing.

1. The map is not big enough for the player to have complete freedom, but it is big enough for the player to have the feeling as if he can go anywhere.

2. The constraints might be that the player must move right to advance in the story, but the will not feel constrained since their goal is to the right, so they will choose to go right instead of being constrained.

3.  Good question. Kill.

4. The player will get killed if he does not kill, so this forces him to kill.

5. Yes, the aggressive aliens are enough to get the player kill them though.

Professional HW #9: A New Car

When designing your game, you must be as the monks say, "Ben Stiller". Balance is key to making a good game because it keeps the game addicting for players and keeps it fun. In this installment of professional blog posts, I will be discussing the 12 types of balance from the textbook and how they relate with the space game.

Life isn't fair, but games are! When I was little I would get angry when someone tried to do something I thought was unfair. The same concept applies to all ages of game players. The space game creates fairness by giving the astroplaya (astronaut) and the aliens balancing strengths and weaknesses.

There is a difference between a challenging game and a mentally challenged game. In the space game, a successful astroplaya kills the aliens and does not die. The game gets more challenging as you have more success. This keeps the player interested because it doesn't get too easy.

Choices in a game are super important because it gives the player freedom and gives the player the choice about how they want to play the game. The space game allows you to use multiple weapons with different advantages. Long range weapons are safe, and short range weapons are dangerous.

Chance can be fun because you never know what's going to happen in a game with chance. However, who needs chance when you have leet skillz (good skills). The space game is all skill baby.

A balance between mental and physical abilities makes a well rounded person. A good game challenge different aspects of the player. The space game challenges the player to use his physical gaming skills to beat
the aliens. Mental aspects include training yourself on the best way to complete the stage without dying.

It is fun to have teammates because that adds fun dynamics the game that makes the game more interesting and social. Sometimes you get sick though, and you just want to shoot your best friend in the face. The space game allows you to fight aliens but has no cooperative aspect.

A game shouldn't be too short that people feel like that haven't accomplished anything, but it shouldn't be to long that people aren't willing to play the game because of the time commitment. This is sort of a subjective thing that is best calibrated through play testing.

"Wow, my new super cool item, I love this game." Rewards are a big part of what makes the game fun to play. It gives players a sense of progression and accomplishment. It makes them feel powerful and in control of the game. The space game gives weapon rewards as you progress through the level to keep the game play interesting.

In a game where the purpose is to survive, having no punishment for dying takes away the whole purpose of the game because there is no incentive to live anymore. People would be a lot less cautious in life if there were no punishment for it. So punishments are sometimes necessary to add value to something (if you can't give a reward). In the space game the punishment for dying is moving back to your checkpoint.

America, duck yea! Going to save the mother ducking day yea. America loves freedom and hates communism for a reason. The battle of freedom vs controlled experience is seen in games too. In some games freedom has to be programmed in, so a controlled experience is sometimes easier. However, a controlled experience takes away from the overall experience the player feels. The space game restricts the player too moving in a specific direction to complete the level, however the game gives different paths the player can take giving the illusion of freedom.

Games like chess and go are both very simple games that I really enjoy. The rules are very simple, which makes them easy to understand, yet the emergent game play is immense. People love simplicity, so in the space game we incorporated simple controls by making the game 2-D, as well as game play that changes but the controls stay the same.

Sometimes the thought of doing something is more fun than actually doing it. This can be seen in games that use get you really excited by describing something really exciting for you to achieve. Detail in a game makes it more visually pleasing, but you can still make a fun game that has crappy graphics if other aspects of the game are good. In the space game you really are not sure what to expect so imagination is not a prominent part of the game.

"All the concepts in the world cannot beat a squirrel that wants his nuts." (Ghandi)

Professional HW #8: No More Mr. Nice Guy

1. Is the space in your game discrete or continuous?
2. How many dimensions does your space have? 
3. What are the boundaries of your space? 
4. How many verbs do your players (characters) have? What are they? 
5. How many objects can each verb act on? What are these objects? 
6. How many ways can players achieve their goals
7. How many subjects do the players control? What are these subjects? 
8. How do side effects change constraints. 
9. What are the operative actions in your game? 
10. What are the resultant actions in your game? 
11. What actions would you like your players to do that they cannot presently do? (based on your current knowledge of Blender)
12. What is the ultimate goal of your game? 
13. Are there short and long term goals? What are they? 
14. How do you plan to make the game goals known and understood by the player? 
15. What are the foundational rules of your game? 
16. How are these rules enforced? 
17. Does your game develop real skills? What are they? 
18. Does your game develop virtual skills? What are they?

1. The space game has continuous space because you can be at any point in the level; it has discrete space in the sense that you can only be on this level or the other level.

2. The space game is best thought about in 2-D since the view a movements are restricted to up-down-left-right.

3. The boundaries are the level edges located at the beginning, end, top and ground floor of the level.

4. The space character has four verbs: swinging and throwing, moving and jumping.

5. The verbs can act on 2 types of objects: the aliens for swinging and throwing, and the ground for moving and jumping.

6. The player can take a number of n paths to reach or achieve his goal depending on the level design.

7. The player controls 1 subject, the astronaut character.

8. If a player kills an enemy in his way, he can now go through that path.

9. The space character has four operative actions: swinging and throwing, moving and jumping.

10. The resultant actions in the space game are killing, fighting, and capturing.

11. I would like the players to run the game with my game engine instead.

12. The ultimate goal is to defeat the aliens.

13. The short term goals are to kill aliens and beat the level. The long term goal is to conquer the aliens.

14. To make the goals/rules known to the player, a short text describing the goals/rules will be available to them.

15. The foundational rules of the game are: you can only move in 2-D, you cannot walk through objects, and you have to beat a level to move to the next one.

16. The rules are enforced through super legit code.

17. The game develops hand eye coordination.

18. The game doesn't develop any virtual skills.

Professional HW #7: The Haunting

I made a whole new type of game on this assignment. Get ready for this because I know you are not ready. It's new; it's cool; it's hip; it's a first person snowBALLER. Possibly the most brilliant idea of its time, the snowballer concept was brought to life fully by humanitarian and mastermind Evan Baad.

The First Person Snowballer (FPS) has all the necessary gadgets for this assignment.

PARENTING - An empty is the parent of the character and the camera, for super synchronous movement (SSM).

ANIMATION - When pressing spacebar, the sword will swing!

LINKING FROM ANOTHER FILE - I imported the sword from my last assignment, to be used for MASSIVE DAMAGES.

MATERIALS - I used materials to put our hero in a winter wonderland with blue n' stuff.

HOW 2 USE IN GAME - I will use my massive damages sword animation for the space gayme (game). Also, my super heroic snowBALLER character might be used in the space gayme as well.

Download blend file