Friday, September 26, 2014

HW 6

In this video I use cephei's gun model from blend swap to have a gun that can pivot left and right and shoot bullets at enemies.  The first enemy is a zombie which disappears when it collides with a bullet.  The other enemies are stand-ins that appear using a delay sensor and also disappear when they collide with a bullet.  We will be using a similar design for creating waves of enemies that attack the player and the village.
This week we decided what parts of the game we'd start working on.  I chose to begin working on the main character, the NPCs and the elements in the village.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

HW 5

In this blog I used uchiha007's bow and arrow models from blend swap.  I created an empty and parented it with the bow and had it add an object with a velocity when I press the space bar.  The arrows are able to collide with large rectangular prisms and knock them down.  I'm not exactly sure why I couldn't rotate the arrows to aim correctly so they sort of shoot oriented upward. 

This kind of thing relates to our game because we'll potentially have several enemies surrounding the main character and that character should be able to rotate, move and shoot arrows.  This is fun because it poses a small problem, that of knocking down pillars with arrows.  I think it could be more fun to extend this and have things that spawn more quickly and walk toward the middle as the player has to shoot them away.

HW 4

chapter 2
   I want the people who play our game to feel both a sense of responsibility for the villages he has to protect and satisfaction for being able to successfully fend of a horde of enemies.  The game should also be just difficult enough to illicit excitement and anxiety.
   I think the essential part of these experiences is the complexity and range of abilities and mechanics.  I want the game to be complex enough to be engaging and to have different abilities, like the main character gaining the abilities of an enemy, or different possible melee weapons and attacks.  I think adding elements of an rpg will help with this as we can add some complexity through stat building.  Another way to add these experiences is to make more interactions with the village and its people.  If we can have the main character arm and upgrade villagers to effectively take the role of a turret from more traditional tower defense games we can make the npcs more interesting.  Also having to speak to different villagers like a blacksmith for upgrades will add to the immersion in the experience.

chapter 3
    The nature of out game will be to send enemies at regular intervals to attack a village and equip the main character with various methods of defeating the enemies.  Surprise could take a role if we add elements of randomness in either what kind of enemies appear (werewolves alongside dragons for instance) or if we make the time interval between waves more random.  Players could then experience surprise if a wave comes earlier than they had planned.
   We can effectively create a fun experience by systematically and regularly giving the player new obstacles in each wave of new enemies that attack the town.  Maybe a certain set of upgrades would not be ideal for the next enemy, but the player has to make choices anyway not having perfect information of when the next wave will come or what exactly it will be.  Having lots of new and varied enemies will ensure that the experience will not become stale and will hopefully add enough surprise and variety to be fun. 
   The goal of our game is to create the experiences I talked about above.  If we're able to engage players and keep them excited throughout the game as they fight waves of enemies and interact with the NPCs in the village then we've met our goals.  I think players will be engaged and eventually attached to our game through the promise of regularly and expected new challenges.  With what will probably be regular intervals players can expect a new challenge that they can use new abilities on and also test what they've learned so far through the game.  The specific problem we want the player to solve is to use the limited resources we provide to the player at each interval of the game to solve the problem of each consecutive wave of enemies. 

This week I contributed to our game by beginning developing how to play a game with multiple enemies with one main character in blender.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

HW3

In this video I used DennisH2010's zombie model and OliverMH's wooden hut from blendswap.  I added motion to the zombie using the arrow keys to go forward and back and also to sidestep left and right.  I also used z and x to allow the zombie to rotate to its right and left.  Lastly I enabled the zombie to jump by pressing the spacebar. 
These objects are relevant to our game because we'll be using creatures like zombies and other fantasy horror characters as enemies.  We'll also be using wooden huts and other small houses to construct our village. 

HW2

1. We met in Dirac library Tuesday the 9th.
2. We discussed preliminary ideas for our game including the genre and the core concepts and mechanics we want to include.  We also began to talk about different roles we can take in the development process.
3. We took notes in our group Google doc because we wanted to remember the game ideas we were discussing and coming up with during out meeting.
4. We took notes in our Google doc online.
5. We discussed briefly what the game document would contain.
6. We didn't think it was necessary to pick a team leader.  We all think it's a lot easier especially with a small group to just discuss and debate as a group and let all of us have the same say in decision making.  We'll also set up times for meeting based on our schedules and not on when a leader decides.
7. We decided on having a first person perspective tower defense game set in a village.  The player will play from the perspective of the mayor or leader or just a protector who fights waves of enemies.  He also has the ability to fortify the village and recruit villagers to defend the village as well.  The enemies will be fantasy creatures like zombies, werewolves and dragons.
8. My contribution to our group was to suggest a first person tower defense game.  I also participated in the discussion throughout our meeting to decide on mechanics and other miscellaneous  preliminary aspects of the game. 

Monday, September 1, 2014

HW1.3

One game I really enjoy is one that's had a lot of hype on the internet lately called Shovel Knight.  It's a side scrolling platformer adventure game where you play as a knight wielding a shovel trying the save his country and his friend.
The game is a crowd-funded (through kickstarter) indie game developed by Yacht Club Games.  What I love about it is that the developers were able to perfect the older Megaman style side scrolling games that I grew up playing while adding very fresh and funny mechanics and dialogue.  It's a fun game with great art design and even better music.  More information about the game can be found here:

http://yachtclubgames.com/shovel-knight/



Another game I played recently that I really enjoyed is called Enemy Mind.  It's a really creative reimagining of Shoot em up, or bullet hell, games like Ikaruga.  This game has a novel concept in that you play as some alien being that can possess space ships.  The game works by having you start with one ship and shoot your way through a level on a rail.  When your ship runs out of ammo or health, or you just see a ship you'd rather have, you have the option of quickly firing your astral self to the other ship before getting gunned down.  A healthy number of "Terran" and alien ships make it a really interesting play mechanic that lets you explore different gun types and find your favorite types of ships.  My only complaint is that the story was pretty hard for me to follow.  I really couldn't tell if it was confusing just for confusion's sake.  It honestly also could have been an amazing, meaningful story that just went over my head.
Game site:

http://www.enemymindgame.com/

HW 1.2

This is a drawing a sketched of myself.

This is another drawing I sketched of my wife.

HW 1.1

A video in which I describe a thing that's on my coffee table.