Movie Madness

 Movie Madness

            I just recently saw the movie Inception. It had one of the most unique ideas I have ever seen or thought of. I can see the in a game format pretty easy. There are two areas of the game. One is real life. In these areas you are working for contractors and doing the missions they give you. The catch is that there is competing companies to buy you out. Now this affects the game dramatically who you choose to help each mission cause the other company will send agents into YOUR dreams to mess with your thoughts and such. Since you are in and out of dreams so much you can never tell whether you are dreaming or working. You will have a totem like in the movie but it will change each zone, and you will have to use the environment to figure out whether it’s real or not. Now when you are in the Dream state it’s like the movies in a way were there are speech choices to work your way through the sub-conscious. Also some client will have a guard conscious and you will meet resistance and then you are free to customized Paradox’s and manipulate the level to help you escape. Also there will be firefights if you please or you can use the environment.

Chapter Six Book Work

Chapter Six Book Work

3 games that I’m hooked on that keep me coming back to every time I try to get away are pretty easy to name. 

1.    World of Warcraft

2.    Starcraft

3.    Halo Series

Let’s start with World of Warcraft. WoW is notorious for drawing people in for long periods of time. I played WoW since release and just recently quit again. I’ve taken breaks from WoW months at a time, but none of them were permanent.  While playing WoW I hit every aspect of the game. I was a HARDCORE raider in Vanilla WoW and PvP Hardcore got my friend up to Field Marshal. In the first expansion I casual raided with some friends then got back into the hardcore scene. The Second expansion I touched base with all of them I started casual then went hardcore pvp. Onward toward hardcore again, top guild on server and top 100 in the US.  The thing I believe that kept me in the game was the fact that there was always something new coming out and the rush to become server or region first was a rush.

Second is Starcraft and third is Halo. I put these together because they have the same reason I stick to them. The aspect of competitiveness and leaderboards drove me to the top of my game. Early days of Halo 2 I and my friend were some of the best 2s players in our state. And once SC2 came out with the ranking system I and a friend raced up to Platinum rank and now in Diamond league versing some of the best players in the Eastern US.  The drive to become the best and to earn respect keeps me going.

Character Development Revisited

Character Development Revisited

“How does the environment in the games affect the character? Think about traits of the character, or abilities that the character demonstrates.” First thing that comes to mind Crysis. I love that game not just for the technology it uses but the fact they make the levels and give you all these amazing power, but never tell you to use them for curtain reasons. They just show you how they work then let you lose. I remember running around the level super-fast then turn on super strength to punch a hole in the building then go in guns blazing. The fact that the environment is not linear but has direction makes the player and the players’ tools make the game itself. There is never a wrong or right way to do anything which makes it an awesome game.

Now if you took the environment they built and turned it into something completely different the game would most likely still be great fun. Let take the polar opposite of the setting of Crysis. They were in the Jungle for most the game. Now let take it to the city. Oh wait Crysis 2 is doing that. So from what I seen of the alpha and beta build of Crysis 2 the game looks just as fun and innovative and the first. Being able to use the speed and jump powers to leap from roof to roof is epic.

Chapter Five Book Work

Chap 5 Work (Fable 3 Spoilers)

One game that comes to mind when I think of games with decisions that affect the whole game is Fable 3. I just recently finished Fable and I can say its one of the first games were I personally felt the weight of the decisions I was making. Throughout the game you are making promises to the people who will help you overthrow the king, Also the small evil or good decisions of helping people or making them worse off. Throughout the game I was doing things to help people, find missing children in the caves or helping someone’s marriage. That all compared to the kings decisions is nothing. Once you become king you find out the evil that is coming to your kingdom. The only way to survive is to have a mass amount of gold to support an army. The king you overthrew knew about this and such had the kingdom in poverty and hard labor to prepare them and make enough money to protect them from the evil to come. You have decisions to make throughout your reign. One that stand out in my head is I had a decisions of making the children going back to work making the necessary thing for war or spend half a million making the factory into a school. That was a lot of money to spend with only a year left till the Darkness comes.  It took me 15 minutes of thinking in real life about it. I decided to sleep on it. Going to class the next day I told Jeff about it. He laughed at me and said “It’s a game don’t worry.”  At that moment I realized that I was so attached to the choices I had to make and the characters in the game that I forgot it’s Just a game.

Design Chemistry

Design Chemistry

       I can relate to this idea, of small teams of people working as a group to make something big. In our class (Design 101) we have a final project of making a board game. Were all in our own little groups of around five. When we all are out of the class are cool with each other. We get along good and share funny story’s and jokes all the time.  When it comes to time that we all work together on a project in class, such as a werewolf game we played toward the beginning of class, we worked together and made an awesome balanced game. Then there are days were we are put into small groups to make separate in-class games. When it comes to these for some reason we get into survival mode. Once our games are made we pass them around for a critic - If u can call it that. I took a college writing class in high school and we did this EVERYDAY! It was done right we all passed our papers around and talked about them freely without the creators input. It was well oiled and all the comments were thought out and were reasonable. But for some reason in Design we get defensive and have an angry tone toward each other. It seems were trying to one up each other when we should be working together to help each other to improve our games in larger terms, help us learn. There are some people who give great feedback, but there are times were I believe people are actively seeking out ways to say that your game is terrible. I understand I want to know when my game is bad so I can fix it, but there come a point the info they are trying to relay back to me is nothing but hate with no back up. Were I’m getting at with this tangent is that even though we are a group of people with the same goal, to learn as much as we can from the class and succeed in the industry. I feel like once were put in our separate group we go hostile on each other. It seems because we become closer to our group mate more so than the entire group. Thus I believe if it’s a large team that they work as one team not many teams.

Prototyping

Prototyping

           

Prototyping is something most people don’t directly think about. Usually the thought process starts at the design process of how the game is going to work and such and people argue or debate on what should be what and such, when time is better spent on testing the ideas in a mock up or a prototype. Why not take all the ideas into a simple state and play them all out. The time spent on bigger project debate what should be in the game or not can be spent on testing the idea on the field or in this case the game. Getting people outside of the development side to test these prototypes is also very important. The developer made the game and has a sub conscious on how the game works. Where an outside mind is coming in with a fresh slate and will tell you out right what they think or saw. It can be scary to put out a prototype to test, but it’s needed. Yeah it’s not finished, so you will get feedback but failing is learning. What better time to fail while your building than when its officially out. I can’t wait for next week’s class, because we get to have our prototype tested by others than our group.

Chap 4 Work

Veelox – “V- Locks”

                Veelox is a bread warrior. As a child his family left him to die as their village was ransacked by savages. Instead of being killed by the savages Veelox was taken with them. The so called ring leader took Veelox under his wing, educating Veelox and teaching him how to fight.  Veelox was one of the few of the group that was well educated and soon grew apart from the rest of the group. He ran away around the age of 14 and soon went vigilante the rest of his life, meeting some friends and enemies on the way.

Jonliu – “Jon-Lue”

                Jonliu met Veelox in the village of Wenz. Veelox herd there was trouble in the town and went there to help out with what he could. Jonliu was also a young man looking to help the world with his skills. Jonliu was a cleaver guy; he was skilled and small talk and thievery. Jonliu jailed as a kid and when he got out he knew he had to give back to the world, since the world gave him a second chance.

Winger – “Wing-Err”

                Winger they called him, cause of his signature mark he’d leave on his victims. Winger would cut the tips of his victims’ finger as if they were bird, making them unable to take flight. Winger was the pigeon keeper of his old village. They used them to send massages to other villages and towns.  He loved his pigeons so much that he didn’t want them to leave and so clipped the one feather need by bird to take flight, which is located at the tip of the wing. His village with no birds able to fly kicked Winger out and now Winger has gone mad without his birds and is going town to town murdering and torturing others.  

Chap 3 Work

Chap 3 Work

Take a game like starcraft2 and make it into a first person strategy game. That’s insane to think of, but also awesome. I remember there was a game that was called StormRise. I was extremely excited about this game. In a sense it was as close to a first person RTS you can get.  After all the hype it turned about to be a terrible game the camera didn’t work well and the game itself wasn’t fun. The idea stuck in my head though. If a good developer had this idea and took the time to do it right, such as Blizzard, I’m sure that this could be much fun.  SC2 fans would hate me for saying this but SC2 as that, a FPRTS, would be awesome to see.

Character Creation

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Game Mechanics Examined

Game Mechanics Examined

Great games have just enough game mechanics to make if fun, but they master these few mechanics. There are games that are amazing games, and have a lot of mechanics and they work. But most games that over throw the ball on mechanics lose it for me. A game with little mechanics but works great is Counter-Strike. You shoot and buy. That’s the jist of CS. A game with a lot of mechanics that work great is Metal Gear Solid 4. You had to watch your moral, health, ammo, money, etc. There was a lot of mechanics that flowed well together and worked out.  Japanese games always seem to have tons of game mechanics. Which is great, but there are games that have so many that it’s too much to hand. In the end it comes down to if the game mechanics flow with each other.

Accessability

Accessibility

            So I decided to try out StarCraft 2 with this assignment, and boy did I piss off my teammates tonight. First I was told to play my game for 10 minutes with no arms. HA! Starcraft 2 with no arms? Well let’s just say, I got carried that match. Since I had no arms I put my mouse and keyboard on the ground so I could use my feet. Well the game went terrible. Half the time was spent trying to get the camera on my base, it was flying everywhere. Other than that I was barely able to make any units I was struggling to do the most basic actions.

            The next challenge was to play with no vision. I turned off my moniter and kept my headphones on. The thing was I memorized all the hotkey, so I was able to hotkey my way through the match with my teammates taking control of my army while I just built with hotkeys. It wasn’t as bad as no arms since the game is based off clicking and hotkeys more that visual play.

            The last challenge was to play with one arm. Just like the no vision the game is playable with just a mouse or keyboard. But best with both of course. SO I used only my mouse to play the game. It worked out just fine. I wasn’t as optimal as I orignaly was, but I was able to function the best out of the 3 challenge. Blizzard did a great job on ease of controls for SC2.

Chalk Free Play

Chalk Free Play

-Challenge

            At first when playing through the tutorial of chalk I was thinking the game would be easy. Well that came back to bite me. The game picked up in speed and challenge. The bosses were difficult enough to be a boss and yet unique on how to defect each one.

-Fun Factor

            This game is incredible addicting. The fun factor is that of I would play this in free time in a computer lab or something of that matter. As you play, you just get hooked. They made it so it gets hard, but the good hard. The hard were you WANT to beat it to yell YEAH I JUST DID THAT!

-Replay Value

            As like in Fun Factor I would play this in the off time. I wouldn’t go as far as playing this at home when I have my consoles and other AAA titles to play. But the Replay Value is there were I would choose this over a lot of other flash games.

-Story

            I didn’t know there was a story in this. If being some magical fairy that flys and paint chalk is a story then I’ve been wrong all along.

-Presentation

            For a Flash game I liked the way it looked. They did a good job making it feel like your floating. It’s smooth and feels real. For flash that is.

-Controls

            The controls were smooth and fit the rolls. I could of played the game without the tutorial, but the tutorial was awesome also for people who were completely lost. It explained everything that needed to be explained.

-Closing

            The game mechanic of the chalk being the weapon was awesome. The whole game was awesome. I would like to see this be made into a 3d game with an open world, because it has a great potential. Overall I give this game 9/10 Awesome-sauces

Journal One

Backstory

       This is the Semptuis cathedral; it has survived ountless wars, were the whole town has been leveled but the cathedral, and has been a beacon to all who still live near. It is the central point of the town and brings hope to all around it.  People walking in, out, and around it see it as a normal cathedral, when really in secret, the cathedral houses the training grounds for the most elite group of assassins unknown to man. These assassins are the army of the Illuminati. Used to kill the leaders of countries without anyone realizing it, killing anyone without a trace, all looking natural.  This building will probably survive more wars magically, but few will know why.

             The tablet of Kurock, it is a story in itself. This tablet was made years ago to tell a story of a brave soul. Many people believe it’s a fable, while others look to it as a story of courage and hope.  The story starts were Kurock is spending time with his family in the meadows. When there child gets sick. So Kurock and his wife ask the gods for help. They send angels down to be put to the task. They asked Kurock and his wife what they would do to save their child; they both responded “Anything”. The angel took the life of Kurocks wife then sent him on a quest. He needed to find the scroll of Infinity and to memorize and do as it says. Kurock finds the scroll and starts to study it. As he reads it he realizes it asks him to slay a fellow man. Kurock decides another man’s life is less of worth than his sons, so he kills the next person he met.  As he begins to head back to the angels he meets a women. Kurock is lost in her beauty and is dumbstruck. He spends the next day with her. As he awoke to head back to the angels he realizes he forgot everything on the scroll. As he approaches the angels he is asked to recite the scroll. He immediately fails and is slain right there.

The door, as the locals called it. It was a treacherous door. It looked non-threating at glance but if you knew what happened behind the doors, you might change your mind. It is rumored that “Big Brother” conduct human experiments inside. People who go in never come out the same, if at all. One man who came out was twitching and itching everywhere, soon after leaving the building he jumped of his roof.

 This is the building that secret treaty was signed by Sanid and Kilas, The two super-powers of this planet. They were planning this movement for years. They decided to join forces and become the dominate leaders of the world.  Dictatorship was the goal. The problem was who would leader the world? They oddly enough played rock-paper-scissor to choose the leader. Ironic thing is the guy with only 2 fingers won.

Genre Vs Type

Genre Vs Type

            When first seeing this I was confused on how this was a big deal. It made sense to me from the start. If someone would ask me before I read this article, what the difference between Genre and Type was, I would of said just what the article said. That a type is something you can do, it’s almost like an action. Shooter, Adventure, Strategy. Those in a way are do-able. Where the Genre is the feel of the game, almost emotion like.  Horror, Mystery, Fantasy. All this are how the game feels and affects the player, not how the player PLAYS.

Catch the Clown

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