Course Reflection

This is my last semester at SJSU, and this course was definitely in my top 3 classes I took here. I learned so much about games, and even more about what goes into the development of games. I feel really accomplished with what I’ve learned. I now know how to properly analyze a game, and have a deeper understanding of what game developers try to showcase in their games.

Coming into this class, I knew there was much more about game development than I understood—and I knew it was more of an art rather than a science—but I didn’t know how complex even the core aspects of games were. By reading/writing about games—and even by playing them—I was able to analyze their characteristics, design patterns & elements, story lines, etc.

I think the part I liked best in this class was the final project. I did it myself, and I believe everyone should have tried to make a game on their own (rather than in groups). I encountered many creative differences when working with my partner for the Cloud Climber game. Personally, I think we should have made mini games—rather than large, complete games—where we applied each topic we learned in class to a different mini game. Of course, this would probably produce lower quality games, but it might help some to understand the concepts better. Over all, the course was very organized, and the calendar was very well-planned out.

I had a lot of fun this semester. Though I knew game development was a hard job, I definitely respect game developers a lot more now than I ever did before!

Treasure Hunter Prototype

I decided to go a different route from Cloud Climber. It was a fun project, but it lacked a certain element that would set it apart from other similar games—like Doodle Jump. Wanting to make a new, “artsy” game, I started developing Treasure Hunter.

Some of the mechanics of this game are similar to Cloud Climber—I reused some code/settings—but over all, it’s completely different! I wanted to go with more of an adventure-type feel rather than a confined, iPhone game feel. So I decided to let users explore the map to collect treasures.

The “interesting factor” in this game is that as you progress, you don’t necessarily advance in the traditional sense in games. In Treasure Hunted, the character grows older as he progresses through the story/levels. In the beginning, he starts off young and strong. As he progresses, he gets a bit stronger—but only until he reaches a plateau. Once that plateau is reached, he starts losing skills—like jumping ability, speed, etc.—which makes it harder for him to complete levels. Eventually, he gets old enough to where he can’t be a treasure hunter anymore, and retires.

This has been a fun game to design. So far, I’ve been focusing on the mechanics. Next, I want to work on the aesthetics because I believe that’s the part that will “make” the game.

Technology Based Non-video Games: Ingress

Ingress is unlike any other video game I’ve ever played—it doesn’t fit the traditional definition of a video game. Unlike most video games where you sit down, and let your hands do all of the work, Ingress requires you move around and explore your surroundings—rather than exploring a made-up universe.

At first, it was very difficult to understand. I didn’t read any formal tutorials, or documentation, and I didn’t know what the point of the game was. I had a general idea of what I was supposed to do—I just didn’t know how to do it. Most video games follow a similar pattern—press a button to shoot, use the arrow keys to move, etc.—but in Ingress, you physically move from one location to the next to hack portals.

Like most video games, however, Ingress relies heavily on teamwork. It’s definitely not a game for people who want to play alone. After class today, I met up with 7 fellow Resistance (blue team) members, and set off around campus to attempt to figure out how to play the game. None of us knew what we were doing. There was a cool moment, however, when we all attacked an enemy portal together:

Personally, I don’t see myself getting into a game like this. I don’t play video games often, but when I do, I play because I want to just sit there, relax, and be wowed. I’m not exactly the most active person, so I can see how others might enjoy this game.

Video Game Prototype

The name of our game is Cloud Climber (changed from Platform Jumper).

We’ve made significant strides in the overall user experience. It’s a lot less choppy, and there are only a few known bugs.

Known issues:

• The stars have no functions
• When you fall off the side of the map, there is no way to die—even if you move into the “middle” of the map (where one would normally fall/die).
• When you reach the end (at the top), there is no way to “win”—the game just keeps going, but it doesn’t end unless you die.

We definitely have a lot of room for improvement, but right now, our focus is on making sure whatever we do have is bug-free, and that our overall game play is intuitive.

Things I want to add:

• Moving enemies that attack you horizontally as you move up the map.
• When you reach the end, I want to add some sort of a mini game—or a “battle the boss” at the top of the map to win the game.

Since my partner abandoned this project, I will be working on my own to complete these features. I will be re-designing all of the graphics, and since she was the artist in this project, I will be doing double the work. This is a game I want to keep with me for the rest of my life, and I want the satisfaction of doing a good job on it.

Platform Jumper

Our game is called Platform Jumper. My role in the development of this game is that of the programmer and designer.

Download link: click here.

The goal of this game is simple. We want to have the character jump vertically from platform to platform—until we reach the end. We hope to add dangerous enemies & various power-ups. On the way up, players can collect coins to increase their score.

Likewise, the controls are also very simple: the left arrow key moves the character left, the right arrow key moves the character right, and the up arrow key makes the player jump.

My main question for players is if the movement mechanics seem intuitive. I think it’s very important for a game to feel natural, and I hope to do just that with Platform Jumper.

Devon and I hope this game is similar enough to other games that players will easily be able to understand the game mechanics, and understand the goals of the game without them being explained to the players.

So far, I’ve been able to get the interaction with other objects and the physics down. My next goal is to work with the views to make larger, different maps.

Video Game Lab

This Is The Only Level

Now this game was very unique. I really loved the idea of how we kept playing the same level over and over—as boring as that sounds, it was actually pretty fun. Every time you moved on to the next stage, the mechanics changed. Personally, I only got up to stage 9.

http://armorgames.com/play/4309/this-is-the-only-level

Kindness Coins

In this game, you play as a demon chick named Florence. Aesthetically, it’s a general dating sim design—where it’s a series of still frames with the dialogue at the bottom. In the start, there aren’t many chat options, but as the story progresses, you are given more options. According to my partner, this is very “atypical from standard Japanese dating sims”. With a total play time of 8 minutes, it ends relatively quick.

http://fakegirlgamer.tumblr.com/post/47442539017/funny-comady-man-you-play-as-a-person-that-a

Canabalt

This is a very basic running game—where the only buttons you can press are X and C (to jump). The point of the game is to stay alive longer to earn more points. I’m not really sure if it’s a race to the finish type of game because I haven’t made it far enough to see if there is an end. It wasn’t that great, but it was entertaining enough for me to spend 8 minutes on it while my partner watched.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/AdamAtomic/canabalt

QWOP

This is by far the hardest game I have ever played in my life. It’s very unintuitive, and there isn’t really much more to say than that. The only controls you can use are Q, W, O, and P. The strategy I found was to use W & O together, and to use Q & P together—though it only got me to 3.9 meters.

http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html

Super Puzzle Platformer

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. In fact, this is the only game I have played outside of the game lab—though I am feeling the urge to play QWOP after I’m done writing this post. The basic idea is that you need to avoid spiked and falling blocks. You keep shooting blocks to get more points, and to collect more coins to increase the multiplier that powers up your weapon.

The mechanics of this game definitely suggested it was meant to be a casual game. It had an arcade-like design/aesthetic with a reward system—the more blocks you stack before destroying, the more points/coins you get.

http://andrewmorrish.net/?p=254

3D Chase

This game was basically a three-player cross between chess and checkers. The main goal of this game is to jump on or over other players’ pieces until they have no more pieces left. You must follow these rules:

• 3D (three-player) chess board
• 2-3 players (each picks a color: red, blue, green, and chooses a side)
• youngest player goes first
• take turns in clockwise order
• you can only place new pieces on your starting edge
• move left, left-diagonal-up, up, right-diagonal-up, right, right-diagonal-down, down, and left-diagonal-down
• spin a random number (1-3), and move that many spaces in one direction
• if you reach the edge of a board, you continue to move in that same way—but in a reflected direction
• the goal is to jump on or over other players’ pieces.
• once you jump over or on another player’s piece, they remove their piece from the board
• every two rounds, add a new piece after everyone has completed the round

I played this game three times, and in each of those three times, I modified my game to include new & improved rules. Here are my play sessions:

Play Session 1

In this play session, we had three players. It was actually pretty fun since it was the first full game we played after drafting the base rules of the game.In this version, we actually chose to use a die—numbered 1-6—to choose the number of of moves to make.

Play Session 2

There were only two players in this play session. The first one could hardly be called a full game. Because of where we chose to place our pieces, the game ended in one round. Because of this, we decided to only allow players to place their pieces on their board edges. We also chose to place new pieces on the board after every round. The second game was pretty fun, but it lasted a bit too long. We had too many pieces on the board.

Play Session 3

In this play session, we had three players. We decided to only allow 1-3 moves instead of 1-6. We actually came across a dilemma that we completely looked over—what happens when you reach the end of the board, but you still have moves left? We decided to make players continue their movement—but in a reflected direction—similar to how the ball bounces off the walls in pong.

Carcassonne Session Report

My first impression of Carcassonne was that it wouldn’t be that much fun. Many of the people in the classroom already started screaming & laughing out loud right from the start of their games. To my surprise, as we started drawing more pieces, and building more structures, the game got really interesting! However, I also realized that I apparently either really sucked at this game, or had really bad luck.

I started off very poorly (I was the yellow piece). The people around me were building roads, but since they were building them before me, all the pieces I drew ended up helping everyone else around me. I basically had no hope. The game changer was when I drew one a missionary piece—to which I could assign a priest to earn me an “easy” 9 points.

After a while, I started developing on my strategy—which was basically to close off my structures as fast as I could to earn the points, and place pieces near opponents’ structures in such a way that would block them from completing them (to earn the points for those structures). This seemed to be the best strategy—and on top of that, my luck started changing. I got developed another missionary—pushing me to victory!

This game was lots of fun! I really didn’t want to leave, but I had to. Carcassonne was so simple, yet so complex at the same time. The players have the choice to play the game any way they wanted—and can mix up their strategies for each of their structures. Over all, I would definitely play this game again. I can’t wait to play it with my family and friends!

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This was the final board (myself as yellow, Jonathan as green, Nelson as red, and Tyler as blue).

Street Fighter II

Street Fighter used to be one of my favorite games when I was growing up. I still remember running to Golfland in Milpitas to play against all my friends after school. Playing it again after 10 years or so brought back so many memories.

I did, however, have one major issue. The issue was how sometimes when I used the punch controls, my browser/window would do some funky things—totally unrelated to the gameplay (Mac shortcut keys). I attribute this to the fact that this game is run as a ROM inside a browser-based emulator. This definitely took away from the gameplay because I could barely punch—basically, all I could do was kick.

An emulator emulates a console, allowing you to play games meant for those consoles on the emulator. The main benefit of this is that you don’t need the original console, and if the original console id discontinued, you may still play the game on an emulator. Of course, the major drawback of an emulator is that you don’t get the original “experience” of playing the game on the original console. For example, the Street Fighter II game I played in my browser used my keyboard for controls. The original game console had more intuitive controls.

Over all, I’m glad I was able to play this game again. If it wasn’t for the emulator, I probably wouldn’t have ever played it again. I still love this game!