Spini has been a project created by myself and @joshc5. WE had to meet a client brief which asked us to create a state of flow in our player. Hope to give you a Download link soon.
I finished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and loved it so much that I went and bought his other book. This one is called Armada, I cannot wait until I get some time to read it.
I have reason to believe that this might also have some things that might interest the parts inside of the that love game design. I will also for sure learn some things about older arcade games that I have never played, just like in the last book.
PS. The cover is very pleasing to look at, I love it so much. If I ever write a book I want it to look like this.
I have added some nice colours to my game to keep myself interested as i’m working on it (I was staring at greys for a long time). I’m going to edit the scoring system at some point, at the moment you can multiply the score to a ridiculous number and the UI cant keep up. I also have sound implemented.
Started my prototype for Perchunk. You can clearly see what i’m going for now. I’m hoping I have enough knowledge of Unity and time to make this turn out ok.
Creating a card game is hard enough, but doing it in only 2 and a half games is insanity. It really puts your design skills to work. On Wednesday a fellow designer and I along with 3 artists got together to try and make a board game / card game. We all decided right away that a board game would be a lot harder than a card game so we went with the card game.
Our first idea seemed really good in our heads. But when we prototypes it and did a few tests we released that our game was just no fun at all. We scraped that idea, and so we had almost wasted half a day.
After a quick discussion we came up with a new idea, this one seemed heaps more fun and everyone in the team was exited. But we only had 1 and a half days to complete it. We prototyped and tested as hast as we could.
By the last day we had a card game, all the art was complete all we had to do was print the cards and cut them out.
Ill do a post tomorrow with all the art and how the game works.
I have just got my Nintendo Switch and copy of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. As this is a new game that lots of people are anticipating ill give a short warning now, below is a quick analysis of the first 2 minutes of game play showing how the game teaches the player. If you think this might spoil anything for you (I doubt it would) than feel free to move along. Everyone else... JUMP ON IN!
BASICS 101
When you first wake up, you are in a secluded room with nothing inside. Just you and the controls. This allows the player to be in a safe environment in which they can get somewhat familiar with the basics of movement.
MORE FREEDOM / INTERACTIONS
In the second room you come to, you are given some chests to open, showing the player how to interact with chests and how to equip clothing. You are also given some boxes to push around and throw. Again all in a safe environment.
SPRINT / CLIMB / JUMP
In this third area, the player gets instructions on the bottom of the screen on how to jump and sprint. This is crucial as no previous 3D Zelda game has had a dedicated jump button. You also hold sprint while running down the hallway, this not only shows the player that they can sprint, but also that your stamina is depleted by using it and what happens when you run out. The hallway is long enough so that you can not reach the end with a full stamina bar.
FRAMING / VISTA / WEENIE
OK so I will address the elephant in the room, what is a weenie? A weenie is from theme park terminology, its a large individual object that can be seen from most of a theme park and is used to give a theme park goer a sense of direction (look it up). Now that that’s out of the way. As you reach the end of the hallways you come to this opening. Which frames perfectly (what I can only assume is) the area to which you will complete the game. The final area in which the boss is slain. This gives the player a sense of direction as it looms over all the lands.
FUTURE ADVENTURE
When you walk out you a given a scene which shows the vast lands you will be exploring. Getting the player ready for an exiting game. Giving them drive to explore.
DIRECTION
The camera pans to the right and show a man standing down the hill. The camera then stops at this point below, showing a nice green pathway down the hill leading you to a campfire where the man is sitting. The red of the fire stands out from the green of the grass and trees, giving the player an objective/direction without using any words.
ITEMS
As soon as you start heading down the hill you see something sparkle catch your eye. you walk to it and are prompted to pick it up, showing the player how to pick up items and interact with the world.
That’s all I will show for now. I hope ill enjoy this game. I have never enjoyed the 3D Zelda games, but after seeing reviews I thought Id give it a go again.
Image is personal artwork by Florian de Gesincourt, original can be found at https://www.artstation.com/artist/degesart
Update on Ready Player One (no spoilers)
I am almost half way through reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. So far this book has really hooked me. I can see that for the most part this books target audience would be games who grew up in the 80′s, much of the references are all about games and movies that came out in that decade.
Even though I was born in the decade after, and was only 4 by the time we hit 2000′s. I still know enough of the games and movies to understand what they are talking about. Cline has also done a really good job of explaining what the games look like and how they are played, so even for those games I have never heard of I can still get a good understanding.
Creating a prototype of my economic system. Its not the most fun thing to do, but I know how valuable this will be later. I have created a spreadsheet of everything I need for the prototype. Now in the process of putting all that into code form in unity.
I’m currently creating a layout for a ship in illustrator. Keeping true to the FTL play style the ship needs to be segmented up into a grid. Making this ship so it fits into a grid is very difficult, you get all these areas that are half or one quarter the size of a square. This means bad news for players, as they could get confused trying to figure out which squares they can move onto.
For example, these spots here.
If I leave these sections how they are, the player might be in the heat of battle an try to move a crew member there. I don’t want them to do this as the model will not fit. To combat this I think ill have some creates or cannon balls laying around, specifically in those areas. Not only will this make it look a little better, but will deter the player from trying to send crew tho that location. 2 birds with one stone.
I purchased “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline. I have heard many good things about this book. I also really want to read it before the move adaptation comes out next year. The movie is being produced by Steven Spielberg, this makes me very exited as I love his work. As a game designer I think I could also get some ideas and maybe even learn something from this book. You never know until you try.
Challenge: Create 1 level which shows a player the mechanics of “jump, slam, run and jump, jump and shoot, wall jump” without the use of words or pictures, the game is 2D.
The idea of this is to allow the player to learn how the game is played, without being specifically told. So @cassandra-jade-gray and myself got to work trying to figure this one out. The above is what we came up with. The middle section is the completed level.
Write a one page recap and reflection about an experience that you had whilst playing a game that affected you personally.
This is one of the things I had to write on today. Here it is.
For a long time during my childhood, I would be playing games by myself. I had a Gameboy SP when I was growing up. This was good however I didn’t have any friends with one nor any games that were multiplayer. Then I got a N64, this was an exciting day and one of the major turning points in my life in terms of gaming.
The N64 came with 2 controllers. This meant my brother and I could play together! As a kid this blew my mind, I cannot imagine how many hours we played Super Smash Brothers.
When I was about 10 or 11 I met my best friend. We would go to each other's houses every weekend and play Crash Bandicoot and Ratchet and Clank on the PS2. These games offered experiences that I will remember for ever. Then my friend asked if I wanted to play Half Life Decay. This was the first time I had ever heard of the franchise. I said yes, not knowing what I was in for.
This game was multiplayer, which I understood, but it was co-op multiplayer. I had never encountered a game like this before, one where you work together in order to complete the game. This idea blew my mind, the fact that you could have the experience of a single player game, with the entertainment of sharing it with another person at the same time. All my previous games that were multiplayer would be fighting against each other. But this one you would work together the fend off enemies and solve puzzles. We spent so many hours trying to complete the game. For some strange reason we didn't know you could save or at least didn't see the option. So each weekend we would start all over again. This actually made the game better. We would remember where enemies were and what the fastest way to complete each level would be. We became masters of the game. We became Dr.Cross and Dr.Green.
P.S.
Blowing up this guy with a grenade, failing the mission and hearing in the background “I seem to be injured, but I can go on” was my favourite part.
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