Entry4.2/28.10.2010
Girlfriends gone now and I miss her. It's been an amazing weekend with her, my mother is now coming up tomorrow which means a free meal; hopefully at Pizza Express.
I will now start compiling a bibliography of resources to help with the use of Flash and other more general information, we will start with Flash and move onto others:
- Foundation game design with Flash by Van der Spuy, Rex
- Nntendo Wii Flash game creators guide by Perkins, Todd
- Engaging Learning Designing e-Learning Simulation Games by Quinn, Clark N
- Computer Games between text and practice edited by Dario Compagno and Patrik Coppock
I will add more at a later date but for now I will work with these.
Our first assessment has now been set in motion. For it we have to write a review for a retro game, I have chosen to write about Space Invaders. In the review we are expected to design issues and identify the pros/cons aspects of the game, linking these issues to the concepts covered earlier in readings and in the course. We need provide specific examples of pros/cons of gameplay elements. There has to be suitable referencing using the Harvard method.
Must be 1500 words.
Hand in date: 17th December.
"Alla fine del gioco, il re e il pedone andare nella stessa scatola"
Entry4/26.10.2010
After a nice long weekend with my girlfriend, blogging has been put on hiatus but will resume tomorrow once she's left. It's been a great weekend despite her getting ill but she's better now, which is good. This course is having an interesting effect on the way I view games; I can no longer be contented with just playing them, I must now analyse it's core gameplay mechanics and then moan about it because it has balancing issues.
Good news though, Chelsea beat Wolves which was hardly surprising, I was gooing to place a bet but with odds of 1/8 it would had lost me money.
Reading this week wasn't massively exciting but had some interesting points buried behind it all.
"Alla fine del gioco, il re e il pedone andare nella stessa scatola"
Entry3.2/19.10.2010
We have reiterated our board games using a quick method which entales us making one change at a time to improve the games playability. The changes I made were to have more interaction between players through event square, this worked out quite well and was kept. The second change was more interaction with the route, event squares come into play once more, forcing the players to play a bit more tactically with a random element still at play.
We have also had to reiterate our group game to function without directly asking the player questions. This has been through use of puzzles and hidden facts which will teach the player without councious thought. The way the game is played has also changed from a point and click adventure to a more puzzle based adventure. What this really means is that there is no player movement outside of animations whilst the background pans by, this saves on resources which in turn will keep the file size down.
"Alla fine del gioco, il re e il pedone andare nella stessa scatola"
Entry2.6/14.10.2010
Have our group sorted out now. Roles have been more or less sorted out and the prototyping scheduled for next week from the research done over this weekend. Our coder is Joe Kingslake, we have two artists; Phil Rozier and Matthew Jarvis, our designer will be Scott Payne who unfortunately missed today. An email will be sent shortly to him to inform him of what's happening.
"Alla fine del gioco, il re e il pedone andare nella stessa scatola"
Entry2.3/13.10.2010
Interesting day today, and with the fall out of yesterdays' results for group projects. We have begun making pong in flash using some more complex coding; which is now rapidly becoming more elaborate. Although it's still not completed and the AI is debatable, it serves as a good stepping stone for improvement. Next week we will most likely finish it off then polish it or catch up on things we don't understand.
The groups have been announced as well, I will be working with:
- Phil Rozier
- Joe Kingslake
- Scott Payne
- Matthew Jarvis
We will be working on the 'Haunted History Mansion', our roles have yet to be discussed and neither have we actually meet yet. But I'm confident that this will take place this week or early next week.
"Alla fine del gioco, il re e il pedone andare nella stessa scatola"
Entry2/11.10.2010
Been awhile since my computer was updating. Got a fair bit done since the last entry despite computer mucking around; we have begun work on our group project concepts. I have finished writing up the concept design brief and my team mate Dan Baker who is working on the concept art. Without giving away to much we hope that it will be selected for further production. On Wednesday I also got two balls to bounce around in a box in flash with collision physics too all entities. For this weekend I also read the Gamasutra article which was trying to isolate key design tools and how they are used in games. This was an interesting read and did touch on some possibly useful information and vocab. I will at some point if this thing will allow me, upload the CS file for the bouncing balls around the room, which will include the code for it as well.
This week we are going to be working hopefully be making pong in CS, which will use the same code for the collisions as used last week but will evidently be adding player controls to move the paddles across the screen depending on player input. We will also be voting for the group projects.
"Alla fine del gioco, il re e il pedone andare nella stessa scatola"
Entry1.5/05.10.2010
It's not really been a week; but I'm off home after Thursdays' lecture and as such will not be posting again until that Monday evening, if I can be bothered.
This Tuesday was slightly more exciting than last; we got to play and analyse KS1 games. It turns out that a few of these games are short in certain areas which were highlighted in some very useful notes. These notes are more akin to simple headings derived from Costikyans article. The article itself was a very good reading material, although I enjoyed playing games I never truely understood why; this article gives the bare bones of what makes a game, but not what makes it nessessarily fun to play.
In the world of gaming it's not long until two big FPS's come out. Following in the wake behind Halo:Reach; Call of Duty:Black Ops and Medal of Honor. Both of these are set to be big hits, sadly CoD will always win. I always prefered more team based, realistic shooters. Now some may argue that CoD is realistic, it bloody well isn't but I will not have a rant about that.
"Alla fine del gioco, il re e il pedone andare nella stessa scatola"
