Blog Post 9: Course Reflection

Preface
Before I being mentioning anything else technically great related to the course, overall the course has led me to meet great people and friends that I can call for life. And I will miss them greatly. Shout out to the whole CS108 group!


I learned a lot about both art and software equally. Also, concepts about game.

Art
I learned there were ways to do art that does not require fancy software and tools such as photoshop and a wacom tablet. There are other ways of doing art. Earlier, I was assigned to do art and I dreaded doing art with a tablet pen but later found out that there are free app softwares that can create transparent art with my finger which is perfect for games.

Software
I learned to use Gamemaker 2 but really despise it with its limitations on users who cannot afford to pay for the full-version. Luckily, older versions are better such as Gamemaker 8 and has no limits to how many objects that we can put. However, working with limitations was fun and really opens a whole new creative outlet on how to get work done.

Concepts
Aside from all the hands-on activities, the most memorable concepts that I learned from readings were types of play such as iterative play and strategical. There are many types of play and how play is important. My favorite lecture was when Koster was live on skype with the family dog.

Final Comment
I love this class and I'm really happy that I chose to enroll in it.

Blog Post 8: Final Project

Inspiration

Our game is called Maple Tale which is a mix between older games back in our childhood such as Maplestory, Runescape, and Terraria. We mix everything together that we find in our childhood games that were most memorable. This was made in Gamemaker 8.

Maplestory had jump quests which takes 4+ hours to finish, so we had Dr. Wiggles (our player's character name) to jump on ledges without falling. 

Runescape had fishing and cooking aspects with fire, so we included fishing and cooking. There is also wood cutting.

Terraria had lots of fighting so we included magic bolts for Dr. Wiggles to shoot from and fight off green and purple slimes to drop currency and useable items.

We combined all these aspects into a playable game and included our originality such as art and collecting flies (currency) to pass through levels. 

Instructions

To make the game understandable to play, there are quests windows on the far right corner of the screen. It helps players know what to do next.

On the launch of the game, there are also list of controls. It can also save game and load where the player left off. When all quests are finished, players can see the credits of the artists from the frog. Not only does the quest window acts as a guide to the game, the frog is also a guide that tells what the player should do next.

To make it feel like the player is advancing in the game, when Dr. Wiggles levels up to 5, his magic bolts speed increases. That means casting is faster.

Link: https://odangily.itch.io/maple-tale

Final Project Draft

This is the link to the final project draft.

Blog Post 7: GPS Game

Ingress Experience

Ingress had GPS-features for users to see what was near them on the phone to take over portals. In Ingress, taking over portals is called "hacking". Colors of the portals were different for both team. I went outside with a group of "Resistances" that was my group's team. The resistance had blue portals and the locations we went were mainly on campus and San Jose downtown.

A Group of Fellow Resistances

Experience With Peers

As we played on campus and downtown area, we didn't read the tutorials or some skimmed the tutorials so not many of us knew what was going on. Since tutorials didn't appear again and we didn't Google search a playthrough, we figured out along the way that the graphics with blue sparkles mean that an item was nearby, so we followed the trail of blue sparkling dots.

my username is meh108

In addition to following sparking blue trail, we also walked around to landmarks to uncover photos posted by other users.

La Lune Sucree Cafe in SJ downtown

Aside from my teammates findings, I would sometimes stray away from the group to find interesting features of the game. I found out that if I were in a location that had a weak location signal, such as walking towards Panda Express, the screen turns into a cool static warning message. This ruined my gameplay as my item searching was lost.

Game Mechanics

The gaming mechanics of Ingress were mostly cooperative play and gps/real world movement. With our combined skillsets of inductive reasoning and critical observations, we were able to have an enjoyable play-through and earned some items. The aesthetics, such as the design of blue dots, helped a lot.

Blog Post 6: Video Game Prototype

Game started

Game Title: Escape Door

Credits: Xiao Li Wu (programmer) and Omar Guzman (artist)

Download

Issues: 

This game was made on Gamemaker 8. The executable file should run smoothly without needing to download anything else on windows. Make sure to make this file an exception on any antivirus.

How to Play:

Use arrow keys (up, down, left, right) to navigate the player. 

Use the key to open the door.

To get the key, interact with the objects around and figure out what needs to be moved to open the door to get the key.

Description: 

Currently, the game has a simple escape puzzle with a "?" button that helps user solve the puzzle. 

This appears when you click the help button.

When the player escapes, it transitions to a text that says they escape which is pretty anti-climactic. I would create a more satisfying end screen than it is now, and zero text in this game. 

anti-climatic ending

The journey that it took to create this game was pretty tedious. Although, it is a simple game, I used a mac to program on and used parallels free 14-day trial to create the original game. But later, I learned about a homebrew install called wine that didn't need a virtual machine.

The negative part of the journey would be not having the right machine and doing it the hard way for a simple game. 

The positive part is that I, now, know of a cool install called wine that can run almost any windows application. 🍷

Blog Post 5: First Playable

Name of Game:
Escape Door

Explanation of Role:
My role as a designer was to communicate with the producer, Omar Guzman, for the art, and program the game. I waited for the producer to send the art before I can start. During the programming of the game, I would ask for minor changes and more added sprites if needed. There are times we worked in the same room, and there are times we worked remotely. Since both of us are mac users and cannot run GameMaker 2, we worked on the same desktop in a computer lab when we met in-person. This was our way of sharing the project.

Some sample art concepts by Omar Guzman:

Video of a gameplay:

Link to our game:
We used GameMaker 8, so we were able to create an .exe file.
The link to the game is here.

Other comments:
Our game is an adventure, puzzle game, where the player must find the key to unlock the door to escape. The player must explore the room to find any clues to retrieve the key.

The main question that I would have for our players is "Do you like playing adventure, puzzle games?" I would ask this because our game doesn't guide the player how to solve the game. We do not want to spoon-feed the solution to our puzzle. Instead, we give small messages on screen that the player needs to escape and find the key.

Initially, we created our game on GameMaker 2, but GameMaker 8 is much better so we redid our game to look close to similar to the video.

Blog Post 4: Video Game Lab

Ly Dang playing Jurassic Heart 

Overview

The three games that we played were "Jurassic Heart", "Wizard Wizard", and "You Have to Burn the Rope". I will be describing my experience being an observer and player for "Jurassic Heart" and "You have to Burn the Rope." Then, compare and contrast those two games on their narrative. Finally, I'll discuss the design and interface based on the source code of "Wizard Wizard".

Jurassic Heart

Jurassic Heart Game Logo

"Jurassic Heart" is an anime-style visual novel game about a T-Rex being the main protagonist, trying to have her crush notice her.

Ly Dang, my lab partner, played "Jurassic Heart" while I watched, first. From the point of view of an observer, I thought it was quick since Ly reads pretty fast and decides right away without a second thought. While I watched Ly play, I had more of an urge wanting to play this than the other games because there are options to choose from that we are not sure what might happen. I felt that she went through the game too fast to enjoy the art and think about her decisions of what may or may not happen. She had a normal ending.

When it was my turn to play, I took my time to decide. I believe overthinking in love situations isn't a good move in the game (and real life). I had a terrible ending when I decided to take the liberty of paying my own gift when there was an option on who should pay which ended the game. My game ended quicker than Ly's turn. 

When Ly quickly picked the first decision in the game on which hair clip should T-Rex character wear. I, as an observer, thought she would have looked cuter if she didn't wear a hair clip and show her natural beauty instead. When I did that on my turn to play, it was considered a bad choice because T-Rex wanted to look cute and it was best to wear a hair clip.

You Have to Burn the Rope

A screenshot gameplay in "You Have to Burn the Rope" of the player (top) and the opponent (bottom)

"You Have to Burn the Rope" is a super quick, jumping game where the player reads instructions as the travel pass a tunnel into a room where they must jump high to cut the chandelier rope to kill their opponent. 

Ly had an easier time playing due to her past experience playing many hours of tricky jumping games, so she finished this in less than 1 minutes.

I thought this would be easy because I saw Ly played with ease in a matter of seconds, and there are instructions on how to play as you pass through certain points. However, I took way longer (about 5 minutes).

Player vs. Observer

It's easier to watch someone else play because they're experiencing it for you. When they pick a decision and I see what happens next, I felt that they could have done something different and I could have done better, but when I'm actually playing the game myself, it's not all that I planned it to be while I was watching. 

Overall, it's easier to be an observer than a player because I can learn from my player's mistakes and plan as I watch. But when it is actually my turn to play all plans go out the window and something else happens.

The Narratives of "Jurassic Heart" and "You Have to Cut the Rope"

Both games, "Jurassic Heart" and "You Have to Cut the Rope", has a common gameplay which is narration reaching a certain point of the game. In "You Have to Cut the Rope", the game would pop up messages each time the player reaches a certain point. This goes the same for "Jurassic Heart" since it is a visual novel game. 

The difference between the two games is 

Wizard Wizard: Design and Interface

Start Menu of Wizard Wizard

In the source code of Wizard Wizard, the design and interface made the game felt more alive. It was mostly colliders, key movements, and tons of beautiful animation and art that made the game felt alive. If it were not for the well-done pixelated art and animation, it would have been mainly jump, dodge, and to the next goal (without transition animation).