Mini Game V

Mini Game V

For our last mini game we were given no restrictions or set mechanics that we had to incorporate into it. We had the freedom to crate our own game. We were also given then option to choose our groups for this game. The partners that I chose to work with were 

• Matt Murchinson
• Maddi McDougall
• Connor Gillihuy  

Process

We started off by meeting up and clarifying that we were in a group together. We then got right down to it and started mind mapping and writing out ideas for the game that we wanted to create. Our thoughts were really scattered since we had the freedom of creating our own min game with no restrictions. So after a good half hour we finally came to an agreement due to the absurdness and fun that we thought would come of the game. The game that we decided on was a chicken shoot'em up game. We also decided on that the chicken should be protecting something so that the player felt a sense of objective. We decided that the chicken would be defending it coup from rabid raccoons. We loved this idea the moment we started talking about it. Ideas started to flow and our game became more clear. 

Our second meeting consisted of dividing the roles up and what everyone was doing. So we divided the roles which consisted of myself and Maddi were the lead programmers of the group. Connor and Matt were given the role of artists.from there we then created a trello board so that we had some organization of what needed to be done for the game because I believe in organization and we had some very big scopes for our game that I thought needed to be organized. 

We had a quick third meeting that consisted of us making sure that we knew what we were doing and when we should have it done by so that we were not bogged down with implementing and the last minute.

The last meeting consisted of us working on the game and implementing everything. This was a much longer meeting since there were some issues implementing and making sure everything worked all together. But everything came together and we made a kick ass game.

Postmortem

Our game turned out really good due to our awesome group. They were amazing! They put everything they had into this last project even though they were dead ass tired. Yet this some of the best work I've seen all year. I would definitely work with this group again. 

The game that we created turned out great. I loved the animations that Maddi and Matt did. They really sewed together the whole project. I also like the concept and how much more we can exand of the game. For example we can add more players, different enemies, weapon choice, more levels, etc. 

A few changes that I would like for our game would be a animated title screen. We were not able to get to that due lack of time and energy. As well as rather than using the keyboard and mouse i would prefer to have the button layout for the game mapped to the xbox 360 controller for a better game feel.  

Mini Game IV

Mini Game IV

For this mini game we were tasked with  creating a game that was focused around resource management and game economy. The game also had to be multiplayer and could be either cooperative or competitive. The game also had to have an element of chance to give incorporated into it.  I was placed in a group of three. My group members consisted of:

• Maddi McDougall
• Chanel Marino    

Process:

On the day that we were assigned the mini game Maddi and I got together after class to brainstorm some ideas that we could use for our game. We mind mapped some ideas of what makes a good resource management/economy game. So we looked at some games that required the player to manage their resources accordingly. Some the games that we looked at were monopoly and risk  and few others. This gave us a base and ideas to work with to start fleshing out new ideas for our game. We came up with three ideas which included a resource management tower defense type game, an island survival game, and  spaceship game that reminded me of Lovers in a Dangerous Space. With all these ideas we concluded our first meeting. 

Our second meeting we had all group members. We got together and sat down to flesh out our whole game and what we were all going to do to contribute to our game. So Maddi had this idea that we stick with the space theme but switch it up a bit to being so much like Lovers in a Dangerous Space. She had the idea of having an arcade type space game. The objective of the game at this point was having a head-to-head space shooter where the players would have to manage their shields, weapons and special weapons. We all like this type of game and idea so we started to elaborate on it more. 

We started to discuss and we decided that it would be more fun to have 2-4 players rather than just having 2 players trying to kill each other. It brought an element of skill and focus but most of all managing the resources. So we then moved onto the resources. At first we had it so that you could only your abilities when your energy bar reach a certain amount. We discussed and decided that this would not get across resource management effectively nor would it be fun. We decided rather than having an energy bar that determined when you can use your resources (shield, guns) that we would make them each their own separate resource. This seemed and felt better to do it this way. So then we thought how can we make so that the players ave to manage their shields and guns? We decided to make it so that each of them had cool-down timer. So if a player was to shoot their weapon they would lose a counter. The player would have a total of three or four counters. If they fired one bullet it would regenerate after a certain period of time. However we wanted to make it so that when a player used up all their resources, whether it be their shield or weapons, they would have to wait an extended period of time to get back their resources as apposed to a relatively short cool-down to get back one. This would make conserve their resources so that they are not completely vulnerable to be attacked. After all this brainstorming and fleshing out a workable idea we decided to conclude the meeting and meet up again to work the actual game itself. 

The third meeting we got down to it. Maddi was the lead programmer, I was the transnational group member doing both programming and art, and Chanel was in charge of art assets and UI. For the project i set up the controllers and mapped the code to work with controls. Once I had completed that, I  then gave it to Maddi so that we could implement. From there i then worked on the shields for the players. I had to make it so that when the player presses the left bumper of the xbox controller a shield would instantiate and follow the player, since each player is moving. After we got everything implemented into the master copy we concluded the meeting. 

Our fourth meeting was the finalization of the game. and the implementation of Chanel's UI. We fixed up some of the code and made it feel and play better. When the code and UI was being implemented I was creating the start menu for our game so that our game wasn't just a playable but actually had layers. It was a long night but we got it all done.

Postmortem:  

I was very happy on how our game turned out. It was fun and it demonstrated resource management. Some things that I would change or add would be:

• Special weapon
• Free movement rather than fixed
• A game over menu 
• Meteor showers

It think that these elements would make the game more fun and interesting and give it more depth. I think our game was fun but it needed more. With that being said for the time that we had I think we did an amazing job both on programming and art. 

Some of the things that I thought went really well was:

• Game feel 
• art
• music 
• game play 

I thought our game was really fun to play and felt real good. I would love to take this game further because I feel like if we expanded on this game further and implemented our ideas that we left out the game would be so much fun and would be a great party game. 

I really enjoyed working with Maddi and Chanel. They are very talented and great team members and would really like to work with them in the future.     

Mini Game III

Mini Game III

For this mini game we were to create a game that focuses on either cooperative or competitive game play. The catch for this game is that the all the artists and programmers were split up and put into groups. So what i mean is groups only consisted of only artists or only programmers, no mix up. 

I was placed in artist group seeing as that I am stronger in art than I am programming. My group consisted of two others:

- Josh Garcia

- James Pratt

Who are also good artists.

Process:

Our first meeting consisted of us meeting up right after we were assigned the mini game. We decided that we wanted to create a game the focused on cooperative game play. We fleshed out some ideas of what makes a good cooperative game and what kind of mechanics we could use to make a successful cooperative game. We first fleshed out a game that required 2 players that have to make to the end of a level. However, each player a has a certain ability to help them overcome certain obstacles in their path. In which case one player cannot finish the level without the other because one challenge cannot be complete with the ability type the player is using. 

So then we came up with having a rock and a wind sprite and we started to base challenge we could throw at each character making it so that both players have to work together to overcome. However, seeing as that we didn't have a strong coder in the group we wanted to keep the coding difficulty down so we didn't run into major problems and time crunches.

Our second meeting brought us in a new direction. The problem that we had with our previous idea was that it would involve to adept coding for us and we wouldn't have made a playable game in the time frame that we had. So then, James, came up with an idea of a party game where you have to do specific actions almost kind of like a Heads Up game. So we elaborated more and came with an idea that we would change to competitive game where the whole class would be put into our game and then the game would randomly pick two names and they would have to go head to head.  Then on the screen prompts would show up telling the students what to do. For example, rap for 30 secs. The way we would the winner would be determined is by mob rules. So whoever gets the loudest cheer afterwards wins and gets a point. The students would sit down and then the next names would be chosen and the next prompt would posted.

We really liked this idea and we ran with it because it seemed like a lot of fun and we thought it was quite novel. 

Our third meeting I was not apart of due to pulling an all nighter. So Josh and James went ahead with trying to program and get the art done for the game while recuperated and got ready for the next to help.

The next morning I was informed that they had changed the idea completely from the party game that we had. The reason why it was changed was due to the fact it was just too hard to program. 

So they ran by the idea they had came up with during our fourth meeting. They had an idea where you were magnets and you had to use your polarities to move about to the level to reach the end. I thought this was a great and novel idea. So we ran with this because we literally had one more day to finish the game. So James took the role of being our main programmer. Josh did the background art and some minor programming. And my role was to create a level and do some minor programming as well (which was not implemented due bugs). 

So we finally made ends meet and had a playable prototype which we thought was good enough to play and get across our cooperative game play using polarity.  

                            

Postmortem:

Our game was not perfect by any sort of means due to lack of the programming knowledge and time that we had to create this game. Some things that we need to fix for this game are :

- player movement and physics

- polarity toggle

- platform distancing 

- catching and throwing mechanics 

- interaction with the environment

- 3D?

These are the key things that I think need to be fixed on this game. I believe us as a team could program this no problem given a little bit more time to create a fun, polished game. If we focus on these things and get them firing on all cylinders i think we could have a really great game.

Although there is a lot to be fixed and modified in this game. I like this game better then all the other game I have created in this class so far. The reason being is for these things:

- Game mechanic (polarity)

- Theme

- Level Design

I believe we had one of the more novel mechanics in our game than the other games that were presented. I thought that the polarity idea was very creative and could be taken to a whole new level. however we were not able to showcase the mechanic fully and to the caliber that I wanted. I also thought the theme of two magnets was a very novel idea as well. I have seen elements and and stuff interact with each other a bunch of times. But I cannot recall a game that uses two magnets while using the the physics of toggling polarity to reach the end of a level. And if we could make it 3D and be able to use polarity to manipulate objects and move around the map i think it would be such a fun a game. I feel like even though we didn't make an amazing prototype I think that this mechanic and idea could be brought so much further and feel like we could do do that as group. But we did our best and that is all I could hope for in a group. And a HUGE shout out to James Pratt for grabbing the bull by the horns and taking on the role of being the main programmer. He did a great job. I would love to work with this group again.

Mini Game II

For this mini game we were tasked with creating a game that followed the rules of emergent game play. To create this emergence we had to figure out in abstract way to use shape  and colour to emerge our players.

We were assigned groups. I was partnered up with:

- Nicolas Phan 

- Oliver Tretrop

- Connor Gilhuly

My role on the group was team management, art assets, and some coding so that it was not left on just one person.

Process:

Our group started off by setting up meetings for when we were going to work on our game. Our first meeting was the Friday that we got the assignment. We met up and fleshed out some ideas of what we wanted to do. Nic, came up with an idea of being able to bend the elements. This included Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. We all liked this idea and started mind mapping and problem solving to figure out we were going to make that a game. We then decided to use the the ring out mechanic that Super Smash Bros. uses. So then that sparked the idea to create a 2 player fighting game where the players would be able to manipulate the elements to try and knock the opposing player out of the ring. As a group we knew that time was a factor due the excessive amount of assignments that we had to do the following week so we decided that we only use two elements rather than all four. We chose to use Earth and Fire seeing as that we came up with more abilities for those elements than the others. 

Our second meeting consisted of us actually making the game and designing the level. We also had to figure out how we were going to program the abilities. Nic, was our main programmer so we ran all the ideas by him to make sure that the coding was due-able in the time frame that we had. 

Through more discussing we decided that we would have the player toggle between earth and fire. earth would be the more defensive side of things and fire would be the more offensive. 

For the abilities we wanted the earth toggle to have earth walls that spawned from the ground to protect the player. We figure out that we could raycast to spawn the wall in front of the player. And for the fire toggle we wanted to have projectiles to fire at the opponent.

From there we discussed that rather than dealing damage to the player that the projectile would just push the enemy player back using the weight of the projectile. This then sparked the idea of trying to make the wall more "offensive" rather than just having a wall spawn. So we decided that we were going to make the walls and the projectiles interact-able. So we came up with the idea that the projectile could push the wall around the map to act ass a large moving barrier that could possibly knock the player off the map and kill them.

We then discussed on what the map was going to look like. As a group we decided that we wanted to keep the map simple due to the fact that we were creating a prototype. So we had one main platform and then two smaller platforms floating above it to give the map more depth and to give the players areas to move around to dodge enemy attacks.

The programming started and Nic led this section of creating the game due to him being skilled at programming. And also due to the fact that having two programmers was a bit over kill he said. However we did write up bits of code for him to implement. I did some art for the game including sprites for the character and a background to make it look nice to make more emergent.

While  I did the art (that was never implemented) Nic added a few abilities including flamethrower and fire bomb. He then changed the projectile to be a rock toggle so that it could interact with the walls that the players would spawn.

With the flamethrower implemented into the game we thought it would be as cool to make it like a jet so that players would be able to move and "fly" in sense around the map to give our game some more depth and novelty. We wanted the abilities to have cool effects such as particle effects. So for the fire bomb we wanted it to explode. So Nic found a cool way to make the bomb explode into many squares. He also made a stream of squares to emphasise the flamethrower. We thought this made our game much more immersive than before and noting having any sort of effects on the abilities.  

By this time we were just about finished our prototype but the only thing that was missing was sound effects. So we went on free sound effects and found some cool effects that we put on the abilities to give it a bit more juice and add more emergence to our game.

Postmortem:  

It think with some more work this game could be very fun and playable as party type of game like Smash Bros. I think the things that went well were:

- player abilities
- theme of the game
- mechanics

I thought the player abilities were a lot of fun and novel. The flamethrower brought a new element to the game, which was flying. I also think that having the ability effects made the game more immersive and really grabbed the player who played our game.

Some things that  think we could have done better are:

- boundaries
- abilities
- flying

I think that we need to add boundaries to the game so that the players are not flying around aimlessly because i think it breaks the immersion of the game. The players that played our game lost the concept of our game quickly because once you fell off the map started to fly with no boundaries it became somewhat of new game. Which is interesting but not what I wanted. One way we could go with it is making a flying game where players use jets and abilities to destroy the enemy rather than having it in a Smash Bros. style.

I think the rock abilities should be polished a lot more. I found and saw that  the players enjoyed the fire abilities and used them a lot more than the rock ones. I think if we were to add some effects and made them more useful that each toggle would be more evenly used and would immerse the player more.

The flying should also be polished as well. I think the flamethrower should have a cooldown. Reason being is that if there is no limit to the flamethrower its going to be over used and no other abilities will be utilised. Adding a cooldown timer to the flamethrower, I think, would immerse player more. Due the fact that players would have to strategically use it and other abilities to knock off the players rather than just spamming one ability.

I really enjoyed my group. They were always on time for meetings and were always willing to work and put forth effort all the time. A big shout out to Nicolas Phan for being our main programmer. He did some crazy stuff andmade our game very immersive and fun with all the cool techniques he used.  
  

Mini Game I: Process and Postmortem

Mini Game I

Process:

So we began creating our mini games by meeting and up and fleshing out ideas. We decided that we wanted to use building for our core mechanic. We then started coming up with our idea for our first game, Gangs. AS we came up with more ideas we started to write them down and explore them. After some mind maps and brainstorming we came up with the idea of having a base that we could destroy. So then the questions came, What would we destroy it with and what mechanics could we use? We then came up with having attack and defence cards. Kind of like magic in a sense where you would have attack cards that you would aim at your opponents base and your opponent would have defence cards to block incoming attacks vice versa. But we wanted it to make it more original and fun by adding in matching. So we came up with the idea of competitive matching as well as teams. So each team consists of two players. One player chooses to be offence and the other defence. The offence players lay out the cards and the same would go for the defence. Once the cards are laid the players have thirty seconds to flip as many weapons and defences as possible. Once the thirty seconds are over then the attack and defence round commences. The first team will attack first. The second team is allowed to block using the defences they have collected. Whatever attacks were not blocked will be taken away from their base points. after the first teams attack phase ends then the second team attacks and the other team defends. This seemed like a very sound idea at the time. However we found a couple of problems such as balancing and length of play. It seemed too quick and not possible for a team to destroy the opposing team in one phase. So we came up with the idea of making four phases with new defences and weapons that are stronger. We also added police cards to have the element of risk and reward while flipping. There are a set of police cards in each defence and attack deck. If one of the police cards are flipped they always stay up. If the second police card is flipped up, regardless of which team flipped it, they are "caught" and cannot collect anymore giving free roam to the other team. With balancing it like we did we thought we had a sound game for our play test. 

Our second game started off with us thinking about our sprint week game that e had created previously in first year together. It required building a pathway to the other side of the board. So with this we started brainstorming and mind mapping out ideas for our next game. For some strange reason with this game going through my head, I thought of the aesthetic of the game and what it was going to be like. Then it hit me, Pipes and Rats. I mentioned this to Matt, my partner, and he liked the idea. So we started working off of that. So for our path they were going to be pipes and characters were rats. For the building portion of the game we wanted it to be fast paced. We decided the way that we can do that is by have a turn based game with a deck of cards that have different tiles. The objective that we wanted for our game was to reach the end point first by building your pipe. We also wanted to incorporate a way that players could screw each other over. So we decided we would make different types a pipes that allowed players to move all around the board. We also decided that we should bottle neck the ending so the players have to make their way to the middle of the board and cross paths with the other player. We then came to a small problem. what if the player get stuck ? We  then incorporated a universal "cross-roads piece that both players can play, build, and move on. We found that the board was really boring so we decided to add in obstacles that players had to dodge. We also added in power ups to give the players secondary objectives to get. After going over this game a few times we felt that it was sufficient and was a fun playable game that was ready for our play test. 

Postmortem:

The assignment overall went well. It was a task to create two different games within a week but it was a lot of fun and I thought that it tested our skills as game designers. My team member was nothing but helpful. He was on point with ideas and gave back really good feedback when we were fleshing out ideas.

I played the role of the brainstormer and the one who put things together. However with this said Matt kept me level headed and on point because sometimes I let my ideas flow and sometimes i get lost in them.

I believe that our process was very effective. We met up, fleshed out a lot of ideas using brainstorming techniques as well as mind maps. This I believe enabled to come up with really good ideas as well as being able to come up with two decent games within a short period of time.

The only real difficulties that we encountered were actually coming up with a somewhat novel game idea. Other than that there were no problems that I believe are worth noting.

Well our main success I think is actually coming up with two playable and fun games. Also i believe another success is that we didn't limit our games to what they were during play test. Meaning that i believe that if we were to sit down and actually fully make our games that they would be a lot of fun and could be used not only for physical game play but also could be used as video game of some sort. For example, I think that Gangs and Pipes and Rats would be fun IOS game for the I-Phone or any type of android.

Looking back on what we did the only thing that I would change is we should have play tested more but due to lack of time and other assignments we were unable to do so. Other than my partner, Matt, was great and very helpful and I think that we created two really sound games.    

     

First Post

This is my first post for my blog.