Course Reflection

My game studies class (CS 108 at SJSU) has taught me about understanding how games are made, how games work(Mechanic/Dynamics/Aesthetics), and how to better analyze games in depth and in a more academic or scientific way. It was very interesting to see how games are developed from start to end by various developers, and how to tackle making a game myself.

Throughout the course, I was able to create a prototype paper-based board game and two different video games using GameMaker: Studio(Bouncy Bullet and Robot Assassin: Puppy & Kitten OnSlaught). Working on these projects gave me insight into the difficulties of creating a game, as well as the creative freedom and expression that it allows. It was enjoyable to build these games from the bottom up and to get an idea of how other games may have come together.

The material we learned was about game studies and design, and all seem to connect very well. The material led up to us being able to create some really cool and interesting games.

Throughout the course, I was able to "read about games, write about games, play games, and design games" and got a better perspective for game design.

Final Project for Game Design Class, Run N' Gun Game

Final Game Idea and Formation:

For my final project in my game design class here at SJSU, I wanted to make a game that had similar mechanics and art to one of my favorite arcade games Metal Slug. After finding a partner for the project, who was also a programmer, we were left with no artist and had to rely on free online sources for sprites.

Visual Design of Game: 

I was able to find some royalty free sprites here (gameart2d.com). Since our team did not have an artist to make pixel art similar to Metal Slug,  I decided that these sprites would make due for the project with the time we had to complete. With these sprites I had to make certain modifications in photoshop, to make sure I had animations for all movements not included for the sprite. Based on the sprites, I decided on the title for the game Robot Assasin: Cat & Dog Onslaught.

Game Mechanics and Enemies:

This Run N' Gun style platformer allows the player to control a robot, who's objective is to kill/destroy all the kittens and puppies on the map. The mechanics for the main player include walking/running, jumping/double jumping, and shooting(aiming straight/up/down)/melee attacking. Throughout the levels, there will be power-ups and/or extra weapons for the player to pick up and use for a limited amount of time/ammo. Enemies walk back and forth on platforms, some will fall off platforms, and others will attack the player. There will be enemy creation buildings later, that continuously create units until they are destroyed. There will also be a boss at the end that will be more difficult to defeat than the creation buildings or attacking enemies.

Here is a First Draft of the Game Robot Assasin: Cat & Dog Onslaught.

GPS Gaming with Pokemon Go

In our game design class, we decided to jump on the bandwagon and all start playing Pokemon Go.

If you don't know about Pokemon GO it is an Augmented Reality game that takes advantage of everyone and their children having cell phones, by allowing anyone with a capable smartphone to go out and catch some Pokemon. Just like Ash right? Well maybe not...

About Pokemon Go

Personal Experience:

I Started playing Pokemon go when it first came out as a way to kill time, but the game really lost base with me. After a week or so of play, I was tired of the limited amount of activities you could do with the app besides catch Pokemon's and decided to uninstall it for other apps. 

When I got the app again to play for this class, little to my surprise the app had not changed at all. The company that made the game has yet to create any extra gameplay for users and the game is not much better in a crowd. Being with friends to play Pokemon Go is probably better than playing the game by yourself, yet the act of playing Pokemon Go in a group makes me want to stop playing and just be with the people around me.

Mechanics:

1) Exercise - This game gets people outside and moving, in order to play the game well. If you are stationary, there will be less Pokemon to catch or Pokestops to collect from.

2) Use of Location/GPS - Depending where you are on earth, there can be more/different Pokemon around or more concentrated areas of Pokestops.

3) Social - People can help one another out by putting lures that attract Pokemon to an area. This makes it so people can work together to play the game better. 

4) Challenge - People can battle one another at gyms, to earn in-game currency and experience. People want to collect them all before their friends.

5) Collecting - The main mechanic of the game is to capture and collect Pokemon, in hopes to collect every single one!

Bouncy Bullet Prototype

Link to Prototype of Bouncy Bullet

Game Authors:

Jake Davis - Producer, Programmer, and Music

Marc Brodeur - Designer and Artist

Description:

Bouncy bullet is a platform game where your objective is to defeat all the villains in each level. To fire your gun use the space bar, but beware your bullet will bounce around the room and you can only fire one bullet at a time. Use the left and right arrow keys to move the main character, the down arrow key to force yourself down in the air, the up arrow to jump, the up arrow after that to double jump, and hold control to run. When you come across any Villi-nator 2000's make sure to shoot them till they are gone, or else they will continue to produce enemy units! At the last level fight the evil boss Mr. Bubbles. After completing the game, you can decide whether to restart from the tutorial, enter the next difficulty, or enter Infinity Mode. (Some bugs here in infinity mode that will be fixed soon)

If you read my previous blog Bouncy Bullet Game Development and Alpha, you'll know that I started this game in a class at SJSU and this is my turn-in for the project. I was given about a months time to work on this with the help of my teammate, and I'm proud to say it has gone far since I posted the alpha just two weeks ago. You can try out the previous version and compare it to this one to see how far it has gone. The bullet, character, and enemy animations are improved, the game is much longer, and there are limitless difficulties to test your skills.

Add-Ons:

One addition to the prototype that really made a difference was the bouncing animation for the bullet. With this addition, the game was given a "Juicy" feel that brings life to a game. Before this was added, the bounce had the same mechanics, but was smaller and had didn't even change image angles when it hit a wall to match what direction it was going.

The Game was a great learning experience, and I hope to continue work on this game and make it even better. 

Go try Bouncy Bullet today and see how you can do! 

Bouncy Bullet Game Development and Alpha

This month in my Game Design class we have been tasked with creating a simple game in GameMaker.

We got paired up in the class with another student, one was to be an art student and the other a programming student. Each student in the group was also given the title of either producer or designer, where designers try to work on the overall game feel and play while producers are concentrated on the due dates being met and work being done on time.

My role was to be the programming designer and my partner the artistic producer.

The game mechanics for the most part were my idea. I thought it would be cool to make a 2-D platformer with bullets that randomly bounced off the walls of the map. Making the game was extremely fun, and I kept finding myself spending hours on the development.

My partner came up with the design for all of the characters, items, platforms, and ground of the game.

Here is a link to the .exe of our Game: Bouncy Bullet

For the alpha version of our game, our main question for users is: how do you feel about the use of only one bullet and the bullet physics?

Many of our peers in the class said that it was quite difficult to see the bullet, and making the bullet more visible would help gameplay. I agree with this completely and plan to make improvements on this by adding a outline to the bullet.
Some said they disliked the speed of the bullet, but I feel this adds to the difficulty of the game.

Screen Shot from Game Alpha

Video Game Lab

During our game lab in class, I got the chance to play the games This is the Only Level, Jurassic Heart, BoardGame Online, Canabalt, You Have to Burn the Rope, and Wizard Wizard.

These games were all unique in their own way, yet two stood out as being similar in many ways. The games Wizard Wizard and This is the Only Level, have mechanics and goals that made me realize the two have a connection in the way the game is played and progresses.

Wizard Wizard

Mechanics At the start of these games, the mechanics are almost identical. The played is able to move their character with the arrow keys. The difference between these two is that as a player goes through This is the Only Level the mechanics change forcing the player to figure them out as they progress, where as in Wizard Wizard they relatively stay the same besides new obstacles to avoid.

Goals In these games the player has one goal, that is to reach the end of the level. Both games have a different way that you must unlock the door before entering. As mentioned before, the games differ in the fact that in This is the Only Level how the door is unlocked and how a player get there character to the door changes, where as in Wizard Wizard players always must get the key then go through the door.

This is the Only Level

I was able to watch my partner in class play Wizard Wizard before playing, and it helped me to better understand the game and it's mechanics. After watching my partner, I was able to advance through the levels much faster than he did. Observing the game, can be more or less enjoyable than playing yourself. Sometimes when you haven't played a game before, it can be nice to see someone play for a little to better get an idea of how the game works. On the other hand some games are extremely boring to watch, like BoardGame Online, where players must take turns that involve a lot of reading.

Design of Wizard Wizard was rather simplistic, yet the gameplay was addictive and made me want to keep playing until I finished. To interact with this game, players use their keyboard(specifically the arrow keys). The source code was rather easy to understand, only two scripts were used in the entire game. The part of the game that looked like it too the most time to design was the various maps, other than that the rest is easily implemented. 

Fight or Flight Paper Prototyping and Game Development

For the start of this assignment(Building Paper Prototype of a Game), I had a very different idea than my partner. I had came up with a Hunter v.s. Hunted type game idea, that involved a grid style play and was much different than how our game turned out. My partner had an idea for a Mario kart type game, so we started on a game that combined both ideas.
Fight or Flight Prototype

Original Board Prototype

How to Play
(Instructions Made Before First Play Session)

Number of Players: 2

Suggested Ages: 8+

Game Time: 5-20 minutes

Game Inventory:

First you need a token for each player(best if different), game board or paper for a game board, about 20 cards for the game, and a six-sided die to roll.

Game play:

1)Game starts with random decision of who is hunter and who is hunted.

Rock Paper Scissors (RPS), unless both players choose roles willingly.

2)Hunted will always start the game, the hunted gets to move however many spaces they roll +3 on the first roll as a head start.

3)After this each player will take turns rolling after the one another and only move the amount of spaces on the die.

4)Goal of each character is different, Hunter wants to catch hunted and Hunted wants to escape hunter.

Hunter Catches hunted
by landing on them directly, but if they pass the hunted they then become the hunted. The hunted becomes the hunter. (Second part created as first session started.

Hunted Escapes Hunter
by stepping past them, this means going around 27+ spaces.

Card spaces will give players chance to change the odds of game. Only 1 card may be kept at a time. If landing on card space while having card, draw and decide which card to keep.

Example of play: Players do RPS to figure out the initial roles. Hunted will go first with a head start of +3 to their roll.

First Session...Creation and Testing the Waters

We went with the round board, like a race track/circuit and then created spaces(27 exactly). I had the idea to use cards in my original game, so we decided to put that into our game and made card spaces throughout the board(I decided to use a sequence to place card spaces). After that we decided on what to put on the cards and started to play our first round.

After setting up the game and deciding roles we took off with my partner as Hunted and I as the Hunter. At first the Hunter just had to land on or pass the hunted to win, but this brought up some new ideas for me quickly being that Hunter would swap roles with Hunted when they pass them(Giving a new dynamic to the game, making it much more even). From here the game went on with us trying to define how cards are properly used and continuously swapping roles provoking an ongoing hunt. The first game ended in my victory, it was very insightful to what the game could be and what it needed to be more fun.

My First Taste of Victory

Changes/Overview after 1st session

Added to game:

Game map changed 21 spaces now, same card space distribution(Sequence +3,+5,+2)

• Gave a more even playing field for hunted and made the mechanics more enjoyable.

New types of spaces, Terrain may be applied to have areas with:
Cover(Tall Grass/Tree): where hunter cannot catch the hunted when landed on here.
Stall(Water/Mud): takes 2 steps to get out if landed on. ( -1 from dice roll)
Skip(Open Plains): Hunter can avoid taking this step or take it.(skip space if wanted)

• Helped to enhance variety and chance in game.

New Rules:

Hunted is caught Hunter by stepping on them, this means going around 21 spaces back to where hunter is but instead of passing them to safety, one lands directly on the hunter.

• Gave a negative dynamic for the Hunted player when they almost win, in this case the Hunter has a chance to have a positive effect happen when the hunted is close to escaping and gets an unfortunate roll.
• Before the Hunter only had this negative dynamic when close to catching the hunted, but passing the hunted with an overshot roll and swapping roles.

Changed play dead to include stalk for hunter, meaning if hunter is passed while stalk is played, they are still the hunter.

• Made game feel more equal sided, so hunter could not get a useless card.

Took out of game:

Pick any card

• Seemed unfair to either player.

Cards for first Fight or Flight prototype

Second Session, with Friend(Roommate)

This second playing session(first after revisions), was a blast to play with my roommate. To start, I thoroughly went over the rules and concepts of the games in far too much detail to my roommate(He understood the game quickly but i blabbered on about the mechanics and development). The rules were not difficult for him to understand, and soon we chose characters and were playing rock-paper-scissors to decide who would be hunter or hunted.

Second prototype of game board(21 spaces and terrain added)

I won the RPS match, and promptly chose hunter(I(Gorilla) was going to devour my own roommate(Lion)). He started the game with a good head start and was able to keep away from me for a while, but it didn’t take me more than 5 turns to catch up to him. Cards were being played left and right, causing sprinting and halts of characters. Sometimes the terrain became a turning point of the game, and in fact Open Plains terrain was where the game was won.

When things started to get close, he was able to escape me for a few extra turns due to terrain complications on my part and the clever card playing of my roommate. When I finally caught up with him again, the odds turned on me as I passed the lion and he then became the hunter, but then quickly we again swapped roles as he passed me...This was getting to be a tense game of cat and mouse, but our roles were being randomly swapped.

Again I found myself being chased by the lion, and I hopefully used my sprint card after rolling to get a +2 boost on my roll. This landed me in the Open Plains with the lion not too far behind(3-4 spaces), and I knew he had the choice of whether or not he wanted to use a step walking over the Open Plains terrain. He silenced for the roll, then slowly rolled the die...side by side it rolled till losing all momentum and landing on a 4. The rest was Darkness………..

Overview of 2nd Session:

My roommate liked the game, gave it a good review and said he liked the swapping dynamic of the game. I Enjoyed the second round even though I didn’t win. It was awesome to see someone else enjoy the work I made and put effort into, and I was really happy with the changes I made. I might add more terrain spots or something else, but in the meantime I want others to try this secondary prototype.