24 Hour DevBlitz

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10389021/BowelsOut.zip
We had 24HRs to make a Game in a compition!
1.) Had to be about: Evacuate _________ On the Dance floor.
2.) Theme was: Orange and Retro.
So how can u Evacuate the dance floor? well how bout drinking something wrong and having gas?!

Chap 7 Work

Game Progression

                I’ve can talk best about game progression with MMOs.  One thing that makes or breaks a MMO from me is the progression. I’ve played a lot of MMOs in my time and like every other MMO player will say, WoW is the champion of progression. When it comes to leveling your character you tend to always be upgrading your gear and skills. And there is a visual update for the player to notice their work in play. Then once you’re in the end game. Your get to do dungeons with your friends or guild and Blizzard nailed progression on the head with endgame. I used to stay up till 3am some nights just to get through the next boss. Progression wasn’t just a self-rewarded situation. In WoW if you were server first or even World first it was the biggest thrill to scale that in your head. Saying “Wow I was one of the first people in the world to do this and everyone knows, out of MILLIONS!” it was an adrenaline rush. Progression is a huge deal; you need to keep giving the player a pat on the back and beaning able to show the player what they done and how it effects the world around them. Keep the players Mind and eyes in the game. Keep it fresh.

My Rant on a Day of Opportunities

 

                Yesterday was an interesting day. We had our Programming Project due.  Jon, Jeff and I been working on our project for few months. First month was before the project was assigned we started brainstorming on what to do.  We agreed on since it was a programming class we wanted to go on the heavy programming side. Since we were the only group we decided on we needed to pull out the heavy guns, networking our game. We didn’t know what we were getting into. We are all first year first semester students, we don’t have any experience beside the semester we’ve been messing with code and Unity. So after all the ideas and checklists on our game were completed we began the digital part of our game. We made everything we wanted, everything worked. Rockets, Assault Rifles, and Pistols with full movement, random level spawns and everything we wanted checked out.  We were happy with our game and decided to work on the NetCode. Boy did we learn our lesson. We started putting our code into the engine and well… let’s say if my computer had arms; it would punch me in the face. We get one thing working and then something else would not work, it was a huge circle. The day before the project was due; we got together at 10am and worked on the project till 4am, hoping to get everything working 100%. When we finally turned in or project our game came from a game with a lot of things in them, to a simple left right pistol game with NetCode. Luckily our teacher was very impressed with the Networking we did, so all in all even though we didn’t get to show all the work we did, we did get to show that we worked hard on the NetCode and had it working. 

                Jon, Jeff and I have been working together in all our classes for most of the semester. I see how great we work together, we are not really far in the SGD program we’ve taken a programming, design and Jeff has taken a modeling class, but other than that were still testing the waters of what we're each great at. The reason I bring up all this is because as we worked on our programming game we knew each other’s strength and weaknesses. Without even thinking we were helping each other with things and the other didn’t even need to ask. I see this group of our, to be together for a long time.  Once we all learn what were good and can specialize in whether it been sound, modeling, programming or whatever. I know we will be working together for a while.

After our programming class we headed off to the SGD awards, where they had Steve Reid from Red Storm came down to talk to the people who showed up. He gave a good look at when we need to know to get into the industry and such, really good talk. Our group of Jon Jeff and I always talked about starting a small company or something. During the SGD awards there was a girl can’t think of her name off the top of my head, that asked a question about how to start a company and such. Jeff and I noticed this and hope to start networking with her and other people we believe are qualified to keep the determination of going forward. Even though we are first semester student we are really dedicated to get our feet in all the different waters and find out what each of us are really good at and like to do. Hope to start talking to this girl and see were the business relationship goes.

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.