Movie madness

Movie Madness

               My goal is to take a movie I loved and make a video game with a plot, game mechanics and game type and flesh it out. Also I am the LAW!

Judge Dredd

     Judge Dredd was a movie I watched and loved many times, they have made video games about the movie, but I want to make a game surrounding the mythos of the Dredd universe. This game would be set during the time when the world first started creating Judges; The people that served to be the police, judge, jury, and executioner. You would be placed as one of the first deputized to that position; male or female with a character creation system. The world has fallen due to interplanetary disputes and much of the Earth has now learned the true meaning of blight. The natural wonders of the world have been destroyed by nuclear war and only parts of the world still remain though not in their natural state. You would play in third person with first person elements, your character traversing the Megacity that you chose at the beginning of the game. Each choice gives you a different story and background, as there are only a few cities left in the world, some are closer than others and so each play through of the game will contain different scenarios. You will go through cadet training, learning how to use the characters movement system, learn about hand to hand combat, gun training, using the Lawgiver experience system to gain experience and use that to upgrade your weapons, armor, and to learn new techniques to bring law to the lawless. After that your character will be sent to his or her first assignment to keep the city in line with the law. Using what you have learned during training and the experiences your character will go through to determine if you will be an instrument of the law, or become your own law.

Card game/ Scramble

Scramble(Card game)

Rules

Objective:  To have the most points at the end of the game.

1.      Players start by rolling to see who goes first, that person starts by randomly picking seven letters from the cup, and then the other players follow via the left of the first play. The last player rolls the die to see what category they play with:

·        Arts/Entertainment – 1

·        Places – 2

·        Sports – 3

·        People/Animals – 4

·        Video Games -  5

·        Wild category – 6

2.      The player starts by creating a word that corresponds to the current category in the center of the board, being given only one minute and thirty seconds to choose one of three actions.

3.      A player can form a word, pass their turn, or exchange their letters for new ones (one to all of the letters can be exchanged). Exchanging your letters counts as your turn for that round.

4.      Players will tally their points for the word they create and then randomly chose the amount of letters that they played after their turn is up so that they have seven letters total. Points are added for each letter used in the players word:

·        1pt          E, A, I , O, N , R, T, L, S, U

·        2pts        D, G

·        3pts        B, C, M, P

·        4pts       F, H, V, W, Y

·        5pts       K

·        8pts       J, X

·        10pts     Q, Z

·        Bonus roll for that many points will be given if word lands on bonus roll tile.

5.      Once all the letters have been played, the players will tally all of their scores and combine their total score, the player with the highest score wins.

Basic AI

Us vs. It

A look at Basic Artificial Intelligence

               Our game was only tweaked a little bit from the original robot’s design, but just a little bit of change is all you need to create a whole new experience. Lady Patagonia vs. Judy Dench was a robot that new how to use her weaknesses to her advantage. She was a robot with a special ability, her lazy eye always malfunctioned and she had been made fun of her whole manufactured life because the scientists could never seem to fix it, so they just left it and assumed she would never be able to destroy the tanks like the other robots did. But using her laser eye programming with her lazy eye instead of her good eye, she was able to wipe out more tanks than with her normal eye programming.

               I did learn that AI is about using the programming given to complete certain tasks. Programming that you can’t control directly, but indirectly by using other mechanics or players. Using AI correctly gives a feeling of personality to the game; like it knows what you are doing, or about to do, and when the AI gives you a run for your money in a game it challenges you to do better creating a more exciting and fun experience that you can’t do without AI.

Design Chemistry

Design Chemistry

               I believe that when working on projects like video games there does need to be some separation of teams when the number of people working on the game increase to a certain amount. With some games made by 4 or 5 people, that doesn’t ring true because with that small of a team it is easier to communicate ideas and bounce them back and forth with people to know if you want to move ahead with the aforementioned idea. When you have a group of 15 to 30 or more people, you can’t fit the topic of one idea into just one meeting, it would have to be several meetings where that one idea would spawn thirty or more and the time it would take to cancel out the ideas that won’t work or the ideas that are the same, etc. would take too long to be beneficial. In those instances having group or team leaders meet and exchange ideas and report on progress. With those leaders keeping a close information loop that would help the game as a whole because the more formed ideas would trickle down to the appropriate people who could relay back their ideas to their team leader who can take those ideas back to the team leader meetings. This system would keep ideas from creating traffic jams or from getting lost in the shuffle. Design chemistry always needs to be adaptive to the context.

Prototype

Prototyping

               Prototyping is the process of taking all your ideas about a game and deconstructing them until you are left with simple game mechanic pieces and simple ideas. Testing those pieces and focusing directly on that one gameplay mechanic to see if it works or if it is fun is what prototyping is about. This helps you to save time and money on ideas or mechanics that don’t work, and lets you showcase each aspect of the game you are trying to make. Prototyping is always necessary no matter how big or small your game is, it helps you concentrate on one area of your game until it is ready to be implemented into the game or other mechanics. Without prototyping, you might have a game that doesn’t work or isn’t fun to play because you didn’t prototype that part of the game.

Chapter four bookwork

Chapter 4 Book Work

Game Development Essentials

Gameplay Mechanics

The Whistler: Reborn in the ashes of the great cartoon war of long ago, he knows not why he lives now. Only his faith in the old ways of cartoonery let him know that he was brought back for a reason. He finds he had been dead for at least 500 hundred years and goes looking for his descendants, the only part of his family he can find is Eeen.  Eeen was a historian on the lost Cathode Ray cartoon era. He studies his descendant for several days to see how his own blood has fared through the years, and partly because he hasn’t figured out how to introduce himself. Eeen had managed to find many cartoons from the Whistlers era, some the Whistler recognizes, and some he could not remember. The Whistler was still adjusting to his life in the future, and some memories were hazy or not there at all. The Whistler was about to enter the building that Eeen was working from to introduced himself, but then a figure next to Eeen awoke dark memories from his past and breathing was all the Whistler could do to keep from passing out as the memories flooded back into him. One word slipped from his lips with a whistle that had not been heard for decades, “Telarana.”

Eeen: Eeen was born to a loving family that taught him many things when he was young; Right from wrong, love of all things, how to make macaroni self-portraits, all the basics that a 7 year old would need to know. His parents nurtured his natural ability to sketch anything he saw with astonishing ability and his parents once referred to him as a “natural whistler,” which is how he ended up with his nickname, Nugget. Though things took a turn on the eve of his 10^th birthday when he was staying over at a friend’s house, his parents had been attacked while dancing to old 1950’s records in the privacy of their own home. By the time the police got there, Nugget had seen everything. Blood everywhere and all their old records scratched and smashed violently around the house, the police had concluded it was a robbery gone wrong, but Nugget couldn’t believe that. All Nugget can think about when his parents are mentioned was the way their blood formed a spider web in the shag carpet of their house, it still gives him nightmares to this day. As Nugget gets his things ready for his foster home the very day of his parent’s funeral, he finds a present in his secret hiding spot under the floorboards of his room. He opens it to reveal an old 8mm film reel; Nugget assumes it was another old cartoon his parents had always shown him from the old days. He opens the case and reads the name of the film, “Whistle While you Work.”

Telarana: A man of many talents, who was once one of the CEOs of a corporation that threatened to take down the old art form of hand drawn cartoons in favor of their robot cartoon creations. Telarana had always competed with the Whistler back when they were just starting out in college, trying to one up him with everything and anything they did. The Whistler took it with a grain of salt, but the rage Telarana felt turned him, and he vowed to do anything to be the best so he could get his revenge. Later on in life when Telarana revealed the new cartoons they took over the media like a New York trend, they were the talk of the town, if only for a while. Soon after reports came in that kids who watched the new cartoons had been acting funny, playgrounds at school were becoming empty, kids were standing in the streets screaming out streams of binary code, losing memory, and fluxuations in the natural order of nature were being observed in correlation with the cartoons. People started revolting, and an underground group was waiting to gain clout with the masses to fight back the evil robot cartoon creations. The group was known as the Illuminati, their leader was a man in the old cartoon business who ruled the land with his art and films. Some say he could soothe the masses with just a whistle. A war began between the two mediums and it was known as the Great Cartoon War. Telarana did not just make cartoons, but images that could control wavelengths only found in children. Telarana knew it wasn’t time to release his secret weapon, but with the Illuminati rising up against them so quickly with so much support, it was the only thing he could do to smooth things over with the company president. As soon as Telarana used the TV transmitters to broadcast the final film, a haze crept through all the houses that were playing the film, slowly corrupting the children. Many couldn’t handle the film and died trying to channel Telarana’s power, but the ones that survived screamed binary till their ears bled. And at that moment when the Illuminati’s leaders had broken through the corporate funded building and clashed with the CEOs, the binary code that ripped through the skies summoned something, a beast, which was not from this world. Telarana woke up in rubble. The building and everyone around him were dust and dead bodies, and he was in the middle of it without a scratch. Before he could figure out what exactly had happened, an intense pain on his right hand had caused him to scream out in pain. He looked at the back of his hand and it revealed a glowing green spider, as he looked into the hypnotizing glow, he felt like he wasn’t alone. Someone else was there with him, and was taking over. 500 years later…

Accessability in Games

     I wanted to see how accessible a game that has been made for the newer consoles and is fairly new, so I picked Call of Duty Black Ops since I just bought it. The controls for these types of first person shooters can be complicated if you have never played one, especially one from a AAA title like the Call of Duty series. Almost every button has two different functions with buttons, analog sticks, and two types of triggers. They are definitely hard to master and learn, but the game yields a high reward when done. Though they are difficult to learn and master, the controls are very precise and smooth. With a company like Treyarch you can count on the controls being top notch.

     So I logged onto multiplayer with two friends and played team deathmatch. I played with my feet since it was the next most capable part of my body to use a controller besides my hands/arms, this proved impossible to use all of the mechanics available, so I just stuck with trying to control the two analog sticks. Doing this at first proved difficult, but with practice in minutes I was moving and looking fine…if you consider only moving forward and trying to only look left or right. By clicking the analog stick I could knife someone, so I was able to fight at least. My friends Ian and Chad didn’t have much faith in my doing anything that round, but to their surprise I murdered two players in that round. That wasn’t much to anyone, but to my friends they knew I had taken on two people using both their hands and won using only my feet (just two big toes at that). The only thing I would add to the game would be being able to choose exactly what functions you want attached to the analog sticks. They have some you can switch around, but you cannot choose just any function you want for the analog sticks.

     This part of the trials I knew would be the hardest to complete, but I turned the monitor off as soon as the match started and was very put off. Playing the game without a monitor is very disorienting, because you are losing sight and sound all at once. I had my friend lead me to a corner where I could attempt to crouch and randomly fire into enemies. All I could do was try to think about what my controls did and input each move carefully to control my player, though I knew that wasn’t helping much as Ian called Chad over to where I was to laugh hysterically while I tried to quote “run into walls and shoot all the birds.” The only thing I can think of that would make this game more accessible to anyone without a monitor would be to have a control scheme that would move the character in direct rotations and snap movements when they pressed the appropriate buttons as well as a narrator on headphones or external speakers.

     Now I had imagined that playing with one arm would have been the easiest trial to complete, but I could have used a helping hand. Trying to move and look with one hand simultaneously was hard, there was no way I could use any other buttons besides the analog sticks and that was only possible because I have huge hands. I was having a hard time moving and looking at the same time until I learned to just run forward and look only when I saw an enemy. Somehow I managed to knife two opponents in the round that I played, though I died about 12 times and was the player with the lowest score. This game was not built for the handicapable, but again a control scheme with snap movements and rotations would help someone only using one arm play this game more accurately.

Chapter Three Bookwork

Chapter 3 Book Work

Game Development Essentials

Gameplay Mechanics

               Recently I have been playing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, The perspective used in this game is a third person with a fixed camera. I like how this perspective was done, but many times during the game there would be parts of the scene I couldn’t view clearly, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. If I could change the perspective and try to remedy that situation, it would definitely change how the game would be played. I would set the camera behind the player, almost an over the shoulder third person view so the camera wouldn’t be fixed and you could move to fit where you needed to look. This would bring the camera in closer and bring the enemies in closer to view, giving you a better look when you tore through them. The gameplay would also be more focused on the player/enemies instead of the vista, none of the players moves would have to be changed, but being able to look around would help the game out immensely.

Chalk - Free Play

The game Chalk was a very interesting find, though finding it wasn’t the challenging part. This game is definitely a challenge if you don’t play through the tutorial, getting past the first level even after playing the tutorial proved difficult but fun. The game is challenging and fun and still manages to be played using only the mouse; though the four keyboard input keys do help.

With only having so many game mechanics, this game does have a moderate replay value. I love that you are able to play through the levels taking things head on one at a time or trying to use as much chalk as possible in a line to do combos and essentially knock out almost everything on the screen, if you are skilled enough. The levels stay the same which keeps it from giving replay a different challenge each time.

Chalk is undoubtedly game play driven; the mechanics of the game drive the player to enjoy their experience. There isn’t any story at all besides what the player makes of it, a Parisian girl fighting off monsters and ships with chalk. That doesn’t sound like the kind of game I would want to play. But when you describe Chalk as a game that uses chalk as an “Omni tool”  to manipulate enemies and objects in the game to protect your character, it presents the game as a gameplay driven game which will target more people to play this game.

The game’s graphics and sound is bare bones compared to today’s console titles. Though only 2d, the graphics are very artistic and theme-like. You control a Parisian girl that has a magical piece of chalk that destroys and deflects and moves objects around. A very indie like feel to the game, everything looks like it was drawn in chalk and keeps the game looking child-like, even though the gameplay is nowhere near a child’s game. The games sound was great; I love the feel of old school 8 and 16-bit music. It keeps a fast pace which correlates with the pace of the game, and each power up sound brings me back to Mario and Mega Man.

The controls are great, It was extremely easy to learn and very accessible for anyone to play. The controls of drawing the chalk are so simple to learn but trying to master using the chalk is very challenging which makes for a lot of fun. You only have the mouse and four or five keys, if you want a challenge you can just use the mouse and two mouse buttons to move and draw. Using minimalist controls and a high challenge keeps players interested and focused in the game, trying to get better and up their game.

I loved the boss fights, they were innovative and fun. There are even mini boss type enemies during levels that you have to kill while avoiding blue box line breakers and ships. I could barely talk to my fiancé and play through the levels without dying.

I don’t know if I would change it necessarily, but the amount of time you can draw the chalk would be interesting if you could level up and draw longer or get an upgrade which lets you draw longer for a limited time. This would give you a chance to do bonus damage and clear the screen, helping you during difficult times. A simple addition with many possibilities.

I give the game Chalk 7 out of 10 Taylor Lautners being eaten by a pack of wolves. I love the way the game brings you into it with a training level to teach you everything and then starts you off with a challenging level instead of a level with a ridiculously low challenge. Solving puzzles while defeating enemies with chalk definitely takes the violence out of video games, I have never had so much fun playing with chalk in my life.

Genre Vs Type

     Genre and type have been confused in the gaming community not unlike any other trends that get popular and evolve over time.  Video games when they first came out were so simple that a genre could infer both narrative and type, but as they have grown and evolved the definition of games needs to change with it. As with most changes there are those who are afraid of changes or for some other reason don’t want to change the way things have been. Some call it tradition and some say the afformentioned are just stagnant. I believe that like the law, some definitions should be changed over time, when the original definition is “unconstitutional” or when it causes confusion. To make it clear to anyone wondering, Genre is the narrative and setting of the game, while type is the gameplay and how the game is played. Though, if you start networking with anyone(James Cameron) who says differently just smile and nod.

GameMaker 8

Hey, spent a saturday class working on modding a clown game. Wanna play it? BAM