Aaaaaand its gone

Well here we are, at the end of a semester and half way through the creation of a racing game. Things went rather well in the last few weeks of classes; getting assignments handed in, working on the game, studying for tests. In the end we are left with a game that has a menu, character selection, options for track selection, possible ai, and a working racer. Ive just finished my game engine final exam and am feeling great about it, despite this semester's brutal downturn, things have turned out well due to hard work...and a little luck.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. (drum-roll please)
my top 10 list of reasons this semester went to hell!

          10. Procrastination
            9. Work
            8. Course layouts
            7. Time - management
            6. experience point setup? (homework worth exp. need to be level 4 to attempt final)
            5. Assassin's creed brotherhood
            4. Fable 3
            3. Team members not in game engine course
            2. Holidays
            1. Halo Reach

But all in all, the semester is generally done, the stress is now gone, and I am left to relax through the winter break.

so yeah.....we out.

Dev blog post #9 - Its been a while

Ok quick little update, since we havent had one for a couple of weeks. We have a vehicle working now, and heck most of our game for that part. just getting some of the features ready for tuesday and the homework assignments ready to hand in

as i said this was going to be short

we out.

Dev blog post #8 - One hell of a week

This post will be short, as we are busy and do not have much time on our hands to spare. As one of two programmers in our group I am left to deal with a large load of programming to do with the game engine, particularly has been giving me a very large headache (havoc + wildmagic = unhappiness)  Locomotion, which i mentioned last week is the key feature i am focusing on and is coming along, hopefully to be done by the next lab date.


Other than that our models for vehicles, levels, and characters are coming along swimmingly, with the final pieces coming into place soon.

and with that i bid the adieu.... hey i said it would be short

we out.

Dev Blog #7 - Locomotion

Welcome to November, the month of work work and more work. Generally my job has come down to getting the locomotion system for our choppers working, you know so we can drive our vehicles around the track. there are many current theory as to how to get this done. Personally I'm going to take the force approach, where as long as my vehicle is weighted and the wheels have the ability to roll (and are attached to the thing) the more force i apply to the vehicle, the faster it will go, dragging along the chopper in the direction of the wheels.

Modeling is coming along, our 3d modeler is working on the games levels and our characters are getting rigged and weighted. once those are done we move on to the vehicles.

Other than this we have a couple of business assignments, not directly involved with the gdw, and a big business of gaming presentation which is asking us to present something Before its actually done...

Out of context, fable 3 is played and finished...meh. Black Ops came out yesterday, woo, but the multi-player is laggy as hell...

Oh, the Scott pilgrim movie came out on DVD yesterday.. so yeah



we out.

Dev Blog #6 - NOVEMBER!

Yes, it is here, and it is going to be a long haul of hell to finish our game. I am of course talking about the last month and a bit of time we have left, it sucks i know, but were stuck with it.

Side notes:

• Finished Buisness of gaming assignment (woot)
• Got through midterm week (thank god)
• Got a new job

And on to the main topic: BUGS

In all the time I've had working as a programmer through my classes, wildmagic has had the most bugs. and some of them dont even have a reason to be there (vector bugs anyone?) Me and my game engine partner have run into the portion of our game where to move foreward, we have to  get rid of some things, and fix some issues with code.

Another note, modeling is going great, only a rigged character and a vehicle left to make for our assignments in the class.

Umm...for now thats about it, yeah the other posts will be more extensive...

we out.

Dev Blog #5 - Decisions Decisions

Well the past week was an interesting one, leaving a large percentage of my classmates with decisions to make. To mid term or not to midterm was the question...or more the trial. We were tasked with finishing 20 exp of homework assignments before the midterm date, if you didn't finish them, you don't get to do the mid term.

I made my attempts, many of them, coming to a close with one medium question completely finished but unfortunately was unable to submit it. and 3 other medium questions in development. The one i have finished was  to create a wall in Maya and use wild-magic and havoc to fire projectile spheres towards it to bring it down.

My in development pieces are as follows, a menu system, shader effects, and the ability to allow the user to see inside other objects. Hopefully (and this is kind of a has to be done or I'm screwed thing) I will be done these other parts by the final. (oh BTW, i can only submit 2 of the medium questions, i just need to get the menu/effect things done for the game Dev project)

Moving right along, by the end of the week (Friday at approx. 11:59 pm) we each individually need to finish and submit our pitch documents for our business of gaming class. Another modeling assignment shall be handed in (as its already done) by Wednesday and we shall begin rigging our model for our next assignment.

November shall be long and difficult, but in the end we shall triumph.

we out.

Dev Blog Post #4 - A new week

OK, the past week dragged on forever but its finally over, and so is September (wake me up when September ends) October has reared its ugly head and now we have one assignment worth 30% of our business of gaming mark due at the end of the month.

The business assignment is a group of small assignments grouped together to create a pitch for our GDW.
One side note though, its individual work, most of ours will be the same. Its about 30-40 pages of information going into detail about our game and it has to be done.

On our previous month, Our assignments are finished (hooray) Everyone has finished the low poly versions of their characters for modeling class, and both our project management and GDW project overviews are finished and handed in.

Ahh yes, sometime soon we have a break (little one) through the week of thanksgiving, it shall be interesting, as we are not used to having a break 1st semester, and it will happen directly before midterms. (this is not confirmed, we have the monday off and we have one of our tuesday classes off, but i dont know about the rest)

Anyways I'm going to go back to getting through project management.

We out.

Dev blog post #3

Well its been a while, thought id update you on the progress. I have a group (or team) calling ourselves Spo Productions, and we have the basic understanding of what our game will be as of last night. Generally its a kart racing game, mixing the ideas of rainbow road and f-zero, R-Zero will add a power bar that players will allocate power to either speed or weapons. this power bar being altered by parts of the road (speed up and slow down zones) All of this in a space themed Chopper race.

This revenat vehicle, will be one of the concept ideas i will use to create my chopper, of course mine will have wheels, i just like the way bungie designed this vehicle.

Anyways, our character models are moving along, and we are moving into learning how to use wildmagic.

we out.

Dev Blog Post #2 : Hooray for progress!

Well its been a few days now, since starting up our project. We now have a 4 person team, and have begun working on our character models and game design. As of yet I personally can only account for myself, from installing and getting wild-magic to work to finishing my low poly character design minus the head and hands.

As we develop our game and I am given more info i will update you further


we out.

Dev blog, post #1

Ok, welcome to my new set of blog posts for the year. This year we are working on a kart racing style game, just in the beginning of production and group creation. As my first task I have taken upon myself to create a character to exist in this kart racing world.

My character, named Nicodemus, is loosely based off of a covenant elite mixed with alien. this character will go along with a revanent style kart.

As we have yet to form a group, this is all I can post as of now, I will post later this week as our game develops.

we out.

Felt like it was time...

Well, its been an interesting half of a summer vacation this past 2 months. So many things happened I require to put them into list format.

• Didn't get the full time job I was looking for
• Moved my best friend and her boyfriend into their new apartment
• Didn't end up moving into said apartment
• Painted said apartment
• Got bored way too many times
• Finished and re-played most of my games
• Finished the reading of the Dresden files series
• Watched the LOST finale....just the best ending to a series ever
• Trying to remember things is hard...shhh
• Went to a couple parties, hung out with friends
• Closed off old relationships, completely...shall they rest in peace...forever this time
• Set up next semesters registration
• Started writing on my blog again...really early in the morning....check

But yeah, so many things happened...although not many for 2 months of freedom...yeah its been boring. You'd think though, after all those changes, something were to change, something really important that I probably have missed....












Nope... not a gorram thing happened

we out.

Game over man...game over

As you may have noticed there have been some changes around here, and they have been made for good reason. I have finished (for the most part) my second year of university at UOIT.

4 months of relaxation and full time work are ahead, i may be posting less as i will be busy over the summer, but I have found the light and have left the black...and yet i shall return soon enough

PART 2: ART GAME CRITIQUE

The path is a short horror game from Tale of Tales. Although I wouldn’t categorize it as “short” as the path never ends. The game gives the player one instruction; go to your grandmother’s house…and try and stay on the path.

The player can choose one of 6 girls to play, differing in age and style. Each girl has a different experience in the forest, and can interact with a set amount of items.

The player has complete freedom to go wherever they wish, but they quickly learn that if you go into the forest to explore, you will get lost. When out in the forest the player can find items/occurrences that trigger memories, they can also find flowers that are scattered all over the forest.

After finding a couple of items in the forest, the player is given a hint to where the wolf is. The wolf is some form of outside influence on the girl, which differs depending on which girl was chosen. A very nice cut scene is played once the player interacts with the wolf, and brings the player back to the path right in front of the grandmother’s house, left to walk home in the rain.

The main influence in making this game is the story of red riding hood. The story of a little girl making the decision whether or not to stay on the path on the way to her grandmother’s house, and the wolf she encounters.

This game has a lot of suspense, and it is meant to scare you. When playing through the game (in the dark, on my own, late at night) the sound effects will shock you, the strange images that come up on the screen confuse you. And overall you end up feeling like something is watching or following you throughout the entire game.

The game did its job well, they wanted to scare people, while also showing the players the stories they wanted to convey. They did this perfectly (if you play all the way through) with the progression of the girls in their age and the different “wolves” that they come in contact with. The best example of this is the first wolf. The player at a point in the game encounters a massive wolf that’s flying through the forest and the player must “catch a ride” so to speak. But the main thing was how sudden and unsuspected the wolf’s arrival is, it causes so much surprise in the player.

The controls are even worked into how the story is told. Specifically when you try to run, or move faster than just a slow walk, the screen will pull up and away from the character, sometimes even blocking your entire view of what’s below. This has two effects; first it forces the player to stop and smell the roses, and take their time when going through the forest, and second it causes the player to run in circles and get lost, as they can never see what’s in front of them.

Overall the path is an amazing game that makes you feel fear, makes you want to explore, and sometimes scares the crap out of you. From the very well done sound effects and music, to the cut scenes in the grandmother’s house and with the wolves, this game tells a very old story on a level that most would have never thought of.

PART 1: PROTOTYPING

Business Card Game: Busy-ness:

Design a collectible card game for business cards to facilitate social interaction

Most collectable card games involve some sort of monster battle and trading system. The game that I have come up with takes that into account.

Busy-ness would involve each player collecting a set of business cards; the business cards themselves would be based off of existing companies and ranked according to the position in the company and the type of company that the person belongs to.

The main goal for players in this game is to collect all of the highest level employees that they can, and therefore gaining power over other players. (Much like the Pokémon card game, this game has no ending)

There are two main strategies to playing the collecting game. Players can either fight for their jobs, or switch who they work for.

Fighting for their jobs would be a player vs. player experience each player can chose only 5 employees from their portfolio, each employee would go up against an employee from the other player. Who wins each battle will depend on the ranking of the employee, and the company that would have the advantage in the situation. The player who wins the most battles gets to keep whatever employees they defeated as well as the ones that they played with.

Changing who they work for is the simple idea of trading cards with another player. There are rules however; employees from different company types can only be traded at the same ranking, employees from the same type of company can be traded as much as wanted, but work on the simple fact that the trade must even out (the total value of each player’s trade must be the same)

Overall I think that the cards could, instead of being purchased or made up to be fake, be real business cards that people have collected over the years of their lives. This would lead to a game mostly played by the working ages after high school. Still being a fun game, but relating specifically to the situation of the city life/business work lifestyle.

Linear Algebra Game: Down Sizing

Design and prototype a simple mini-game to teach linear algebra concepts.

Linear algebra concepts are hard to teach via the everyday methods. There is no hands-on feeling with dealing with math like this, and hence causes a lot of students to fail at working with linear algebra problems in the future.

Dot product is one concept in particular that I thought could be made into a game, and perhaps teach students in a more hands on way, how to use this method.

My concept is Down Sizing, a puzzle game much like the stacking flash games you see all over games sites on the internet. The player would stack 6 towers, each comprising of skyscraper pieces that are shaped differently. After the player is finished stacking the towers, each towers number would be calculated, by how many blocks fell off and how many still stood on the tower. With these numbers the company that the player works for will inform them that some changes have to be made, and all of the buildings they have made, will be moving into one skyscraper. The player then receives a chart of the company’s calculations as a dot product equation.

Eg:

Tower downsizing results 1 2 -3 -2 5 3

These towers must converge, and some changes will take place as follows:

1 x -2 + 2 x 5 + -3 x 3 = -1

Your building does not have the resources to hold its current size, The top floor of your highest building must be removed

After receiving the message the player would then control a wrecking ball and have to remove only the number of levels calculated by the player in the note.

I believe this would be a good teaching tool as it would get the player to calculate the dot product in order to figure out how many levels must be removed; of course the numbers would get larger as the player progresses through the game.

UOIT game: Degreedom
Design and build a prototype board game around the UOIT theme

The game I decided to build is called Degreedom. It is be a turn based strategy game where up to four players battle it out to get to the ladder to their degree and/or career.

Players move across a board that is split up into 4 sections, and each section with 2 stages.These sections and stages represent the average number of years and semesters a student must go through to achieve their degree. The board is filled with roadblocks, tests, and decision points to change the way a player must strategize to get through the game.

The players move through the board by way of playing cards. Each player is initially given 2 cards between the value of 7 and Ace (chosen at random) and at the beginning of each turn the player can chose to either A: pick up another card or B: play a card to move through the board.Movement is simply the value of your card, divided by two (rounding down)
Roadblocks are things like group projects and presentations. The only way to pass through these roadblocks and possibly pass the other players is by working with another player and adding each other’s points to see if they can pass through. A score of 21 is required to pass a roadblock.
Decision points are placed at chokepoints on the map, which may be skipped by passing through a roadblock. These points will give the player a ethical choice that they have to make, such as using the extra time in the night to study, or using that time to relax. Each choice would result in a different extra card added to the player’s hand.
Tests are points in the game that come at every stage end. Only one player can pass through the test stage at a time. This is achieved by having the highest score out of all 4 of the players that arrive at the line. Score is determined by a single card in the player’s hand, chosen by the player.
The win condition is simple. Whichever player has the highest score on the final test wins.

Quiz 2

Game concept 1 (boot camp)
My first game concept is a boot camp program that runs a player through a series of obstacle courses and tests that would change depending on how well the player does in the game, effectively making a challenging game that changes depending on the user.

The player would create their character being a physical representation of themselves (or whatever they want to be) and would be brought through a series of tutorial videos showing them the types of things that they would be doing in the courses. At the end of these videos their character would stand up from where it was sitting and the player would then become the character.

After being greeted by a director, who welcomes the player to the simulation that the director is also participating in, the player is brought to his first obstacle course. When the first course is about to start the player is then shown a group of players who are in their area also playing in the simulation.

After playing through the various courses, the data will be collected and sent to a leader board, with the other people in the same group. The information displayed would be; speed, skill, difficulty of course, and overall how well the player did against the other players.

This game could go on forever, as the amount of courses would increase as people get better and better at the game and the system working against the character to make increasingly difficult levels.

There would be rewards, such as clothing and “secret” levels created by the people who do the best at the game. As well there would be the option later on to play by skill level rather than area, making the challenge to beat the other people, rather than just do better than yourself.

At the end of each game, or whenever the player exits the game, the character they play would act as if pulling off a pair of glasses, and then the signal on the screen fizzling out as the connection fails.

Game concept 2 (broken)

The second game concept I have is broken, a game where the player controls a character inside their own television, the overall objective being to fix their system. The difficulty would change depending on the players overall gamerscore .The more games and achievements the player has, the more files and errors they will have to push through to find the cause of the break in the system.

The player would start off by playing a platformer, with their avatar going through the game for a few minutes, to get the tutorial session and controls out of the way. After this is done the screen will appear to break. The players avatar will then cease to be controlled and talk to the player and instruct them as to what is happening, and how to fix the problem.

Not only will the levels in the game increase in difficulty or length depending on the amount of gamerscore, but each level will represent part of the game that gamerscore is from (taking images and theme from the games Xbox theme)

The screen quality and “broken-ness” would repair itself as the player progresses through the game. And would provide a sense of reward as the player would be fixing their own system.

The main game mechanic would make it so that no player will ever have the same experience as another, unless of course they played the exact same games, and had the exact same amount of achievements in each game.

we out

Best, analogy...ever

had to post this, its control alt delete's most recent comic

which is the best borderlands truth ever.

but yeah...AWESOMe

we out

Another day, Another dollar...

Spent so much money on food this week, and it wasn't even a large amount of it, just the regular meals you'd expect to eat in a day. Prices are through the roof...but at least we've got roll up the rim to get us through the day. Or not since I don't think anyone that i know has won it yet.

Anyways back to buisness

Sound assignment is done (woot), I'm sitting in another algorithms class that only lasts 1.5 hours, and doesn't really cover anything.And its Friday (mega woot) which means the weekend now begins. Speaking of the weekend, theres the time change going on on Sunday at 2am that is going to completely fuck up my schedule. Mainly because i work from 5pm to 1am on Saturday...yeah this will not go well.

Now, generally I've gotten through this week, barely. And I plan to enjoy my weekend of hell (parties on Fridays are always awesome) and most likely you wont be hearing from me till the end of the next week.

we out.

Well, you were right about this being a bad idea...

...yeah its been that bad.

Mid Terms: 3 of em, 2 passed, one failed...not to mention annoyingly placed in the middle of assignments, which of course means no study time

Assignments: 3 small, 2 big. Of course im currently in the middle of the big ones still, as they are not due until the end of the semester. With the small assignments though, first one was handed in, finished properly. Second one is using a program we've never used before and is giving us all headaches. And the third i havent even started yet...woo

Game dev checkpoint number 2

Damn right we got this one done...and on time for that matter.

The second checkpoint for our game dev project was a digital prototype, research into the game type, MOAr art, and of course another game critique to be posted. And somehow we finished this in a week. LESS than a week actually, thanks very much to matt #1. all of those details can be found here.

On the bright side

Which of course would have to exist or I wouldn't be alive to type this out. In my social/non-school life everything has been going great. Days off, doing very well in video games, heck even going out on a date (which btw i really need more of that sort of thing) and of course being me...im going to divulge on the gaming that has been done.

Call of Duty: modern warfare 2
Well this wont come as a surprise, but other than that date, my only social contact with people (out of school and msn of course) was in online gaming with my friends. We played for about a week...where Dan has somehow became a level 70 within it...I have no idea how. Mostly playing free for all or ground war, we had a lot of fun driving each-others skulls into walls with shiny metal objects. (what can I say...killing people is a very good form of stress relief)

Borderlands: 
Hooray for finally getting back to this game. I tried the soldier class for this play-through, thought id try it (battle rifles and shotguns are an awesome combo...they just work)

This class actually worked out very well, despite being mainly built for multiplayer use. The sentry gun is more of a distraction for enemies than anything, and yet its still useful for healing yourself. On the other hand, this play-through has been easy...quite literally because of dlc. Before playing my second character I downloaded all 3 dlc for borderlands...playing through 2 of them in the middle of the original campaign leveled me up so much O.o. Of course i haven't started the secret armory of general knoxx though...as you have to be level 35 to play...gorramit.

Captain Forever:
This has to be one of the best indie games Ive ever played, and don't take that lightly (no it doesn't trump world of goo...but its definitely close) It uses simple vector/line graphics and a core system loosely based off of asteroids. It involves a little command unit that you control and by gathering peices of other ships you've destroyed, your ship grows...gets destroyed, and grows again till you die...yeah its a bitch...lol

And thats about it...

It was a lot i know....







Really im done...


















Stop scrolling down for more text, go home already...










ok screw this

we out.

Report...A la bug

(thats french for bug report)

Critique

MarbleRun is a small puzzle game where the player controls a marble in a maze type area. The area is situated in an open area where if you fall off the marble respawns at the beginning. There doesn’t seem to be any point to the game, other than testing a physics engine. The small game mechanics in the game are the controls of the marble, and points in the area that change the rotation of the level (effectively changing which way is down) Other than that the multiplayer is the same map and same marbles, just more than one and the addition of moving obstacles as other players.

Possible Changes

• Make a tutorial for the game
• Include some form of goal to the level
• In multiplayer make it sort of a last man standing game play where players try to stay on the platform
• Have the ability to change the marble itself, and multiple levels
Bug Report

Multiplayer

• The first bug we ran into when playing multiplayer was disconnects in the game occurring randomly, but increasing when more players were connected
• A minor bug happened in game play where each player was still able to move about, and still connected to the game, but the other players were lying still

Single player

• First off was the camera angles, which would be cut off by a piece of the level, or turn the wrong way away from your marble
• Second was a crash I experienced when hitting one of the “polarity triggers” simply freezing the game
• There was a small issue with the polarity triggers, where it would end up sending the level into a position where you couldn’t leave a corner of the level due to gravity

we out.

Checkpoint numero uno

Well after a mass realization that we had to make a prototype & game design document for my game dev class, We spent our free time in the past few days making the document and figuring out the details of our game (battleroaches)

Then today after gathering the materials for our non-digital prototype we played a single round of it, making changes to the board and the rules along the way.
Prototype:

For the prototype, we constructed a game board out of 4 pieces of printer paper, drew a grid and a basic maze. It has 4 exits. The general design idea was to make turns quick, easy, and exciting, so that no one is stuck waiting for their turn.

The changes we made were basic, but important, setting up the real-time style of playing a bord game (that was hard to do)

Changes:

•             The addition of Doors to the maze. This was actually caused by an error drawing the board which blocked off whole regions of the maze, nonetheless, they presented a different obstacle than just the Random Squares

•             We were originally going to use cards for the  events of the Random Squares however, a d20 proved much quicker and easier to simply reference a list.

•             Player vs. Player battles are now forced when player’s move adjacent to each other, this was included to support more tactical play, especially if you happen to be low on Life Points. However, you will never be forced to battle opponents in the actual video game.

we out.

Peter Molyneux

With over 15 games produced, Peter molyneux is definitely a leader in game development. Over his years working as a game producer, he has worked for companies such as bullfrog and lion head studios. He is most known for “overhyping” his games to the point of the games themselves being less than what was promised.

His most resent release of the Fable & Fable 2 Franchise was very successful and he now leads not only fable 3, but as well the project natal and artificial intelligence with Microsoft.

Peter’s games have always strived to take control away from the character rather than giving it to him, making the games more realistic and surreal. The idea of taking control away is not to limit the player as to what he/she can or cannot do, but limits what control over what the world around him is doing. Of course the best example of this is in fable 2, and your dog.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the rpg)

Monty python and the holy grail is an rpg game for console based systems.

Many tales have been told about the holy grail, but none have been as great as Monty python’s version of the tale. The rpg version of the movie will have players play as one of the knights of the round table, or king Arthur himself. The players will travel the lands encountering riddles, hilarious situations, and even the black knight himself.

The key features of the game are:

Building wooden rabbits

Battling knights and laying siege to castles

Finding Camelot

Actor driven dialogue

Riddles

Amusing loading screens from the artist of Monty python

And the search for the holy grail

Core mechanics:

The game will be loosely based off of bioware’s dragon age. A free roam world with multiple destinations, party system, and interactive dialogue.

The Weekend of DOOM

Just kidding...although my weekends are pretty crappy. (a 5-1 shift on Saturday and a 1030-4 on Sunday makes for a tired Patrick)

I apologize that I haven't posted more than just homework from my game development class, but honestly things have been busy. But alas i am here tonight (or should i say this morning) To tell many tales of the future and the past...and to keep myself entertained before i switch over to playing video games.

Well recently as you've seen I've been doing game critiques for homework...and that wont stop anytime soon by the looks of it. But at least you get to see my opinion on games, and generally get to see what I'm playing.

Other than playing games and then writing about them, there was the mass amount of parties and screwed up class schedules that made my weeks a schedulers nightmare. Finished an assignment, started 3 others, watched a messed up season premier of LOST (to sum it up "the fuck?") And ended up getting invited to a Superbowl party this Sunday.

OK big news, one of my friends (no not one that's joining me in the adventures of leaving home), Kevin has started up his blog again, and not only that but finally gotten back on track with the machinima that we worked on a couple of years ago, god job bro. heres the link

And that's about it...till I do this weeks homework...comparing 2 rts games...and now off to play em

                                                                                                                                                           we out.

Mass Effect 2 – Game critique

Description of the game

Mass effect 2, published by EA Games and created by BioWare, is a futuristic RPG that continues the story that mass effect started a few years ago. Following Commander Sheppard, the human spectre that “saved the galaxies” from the reapers just over 2 years before this game takes place, as he takes on the task of recruiting a team to defeat the reapers once again.

Core mechanic

The main task for the player is to search the universe presented to him/her and find people to join his “crew” as denoted from dossiers from the illusive man. Once the crew is created to the players wishes they can then choose to go after the main goal.

A look into a level of the game

In one of many missions that you are tasked with you are required to find two characters to recruit to your team. I will go over the retrieval of one of these team members. In this level you are on a spaceport, a very dirty one at that is run by someone who is somewhat of a dictator. The player is first tasked with finding the location of the team member, and the easiest way to do this is ask the person who runs the place. After going to the location given to you by the dictator you are set up with a few communications (talking to npc’s to resolve a block in your path) problems, and of course because this is a shooter based game there are at least 4 different battle scenario’s and a sort of boss battle where you join forces with the team member you are recruiting.

Information & rules

Most of the information presented in the game, is either stored in hidden data storage in computers you have to hack, or just plain verbal communication with npc’s. Money, in the game is counted as credits and is generally only used to purchase upgrades to armor and weapons.
The rules of this game are pretty vague, as they have to be in an rpg, they give the character enough choices to go through the game at their own pace. But there are limits of course, like health and fuel for the ship that can be depleted. If you run out of health, you die, and if you run out of fuel, you have to buy some more. Other than that the general rules of physics (slightly bent of course) and game flow, the player is free to do as they wish…as long as they don’t want to go backwards through the story.

User interface

Mass effect 2’s user interface is set up like the original for controller set up, easy to use and generally the same as all shooters (2 triggers as the trigger and zoom of the weapon, the A button to activate things, the B button to disengage menus etc.) But the main thing they changed was the GUI. The visual interface in the game has been reduced to a small box in the left corner for your stats, and a bar in the bottom middle for your partner’s traits.

Special & Sound Effects

The visuals in this game are top notch, and a big jump from the original game. Of course this is expected by a game that was quite literally released today. And yet the sound effects in the game have not risen above the bar that has been placed by the original, just a small change in the style of the music.

AI

The enemies and npcs of the game are very well done. The npcs being played by actors and actresses from throughout Hollywood add a lot of realism to the characters, allowing the player to believe they are talking to a person, not just a model with some text. The enemies on the other hand have been upgraded to react perfectly to their surroundings and even react and strategize to your movement and actions towards them.

What would I change?

With mass effect 2 there is little to be changed, but of course no game is perfect and there are things that could use some tweaking.

First is the journal, the menu driven quest log to tell you where you are and where you need to go. What should be changed with this is it needs to be set up so that when it is opened it has the most recently followed “level” of the game as the first thing to be shown, and what the next step is, instead of leaving the player in a menu of alphabetically sorted quests that you may or may not have started/ finished.

Second is the character creation not the character themselves, but the player is restricted to use only specific weapons with certain classes. Whereas it should be changed to the player being able to choose what weapons they wish to use, and which powers they wish to use, with a limit to the number in total.

Well that’s just my opinion on the game, and what I found out from about 4 hours of playing it. I’m definitely going to continue to do so, and hopefully play through it many times.

We out.

Part 3

Prototype – A game I Dislike

This game, a lot of people won’t be remembering from 2009, mainly because its generally a copy of every Spiderman style game; open world, conflicts going on throughout the city, developing powers, the choice between a dark path and a light path, and the eventual destruction of a final boss.

Not saying that Spiderman style games are bad, but this game is a copy…and a bad one at that. Horrible graphics for when it was created, AI that are like chickens with their heads cut off, non reactive environment, and a very hard to follow storyline are just a few of its issues.

This game could be fun…for someone who finds trivial repetitive tasks fun. And that’s all the game is, until you get to boss battles, where the AI jumps to a much higher level and ends up taking out the player who actually decided to get that far.

The system itself is generally set up exactly the way the other copies are, and this is its main problem, it blends in, and where it doesn’t blend in it shows of its faults.

Part 2

Modern Warfare 2 – A game I like

Modern Warfare 2 has been recognized by many organizations as the best first person shooter/multiplayer game of 2009, and I completely agree with this comment. Not only have I played this game on the pc, but on the Xbox as well and both times I have had an amazing experience each time.

The game play works just as it should, the character responding to your commands through the controller, and others reacting to the effects of what your character does. For example in one of the first levels you are required to climb up an ice wall, infiltrate a base, and steal a piece of technology. The first section of climbing the wall has you using ice picks and those are controlled though alternating buttons on the controller, and the environment adjusting to the inputs (for example, if you wait too long, or let go of both buttons, you fall or the ice gives way) Other than that in the level you are faced with choices to hide or fight for survival, and challenged in this way.

The sound in modern warfare is mostly music, that plays to the mood of what is happening at the current moment in the game. For instance quiet and slow when you are sneaking about or loud and fast when you are in a moment of action. The music itself was great, and the sound effects (than can be heard perfectly with a set of headphones) are extremely helpful in adding realism.

The AI in the game (which is only presented in the campaign and spec ops options) is as it always has been in call of duty games and as you get to the higher difficulties, become extremely intelligent and is able to predict your movements, and even set up defenses to stop you from continuing on.

Overall these are the main things that can be presented, as most of what makes it an amazing game lies in the multiplayer experience and therefore is presented and controlled through other players. But overall this is a very good game with many key driving forces towards giving it that title.

Homework Lecture 1

Assasins Creed 2 - Opinion after playing for 10 minutes

Assasins creed after 10 minutes doesn't get you that far into the game. Aside from a couple of errands to run, and a fight or two, the story itself doesn't progress past the tutorial stages.

 The beginning starts off at the ending of the previous game, getting you to follow your "friend" in the laboratories and sending you through a couple unskippable cut scenes that give you a starting point for your story. The main decisions and triggers that happen through this scene are set up in a basic point A to point B system, with some avoiding to be done (much like Pacman...but without the dots)

After going through the present you are left inside a room, with almost no direction that you are pulled to, other than a large chair and the 3 people you have encountered in the cut scenes. If you chose any one of the characters, the game triggers a short cut scene to add a bit of a back story to the characters you speak to. In the end though, the only option to progress the story further is to sit in the chair.

Once in the chair you end up as another character, with a small cut scene again (this happens a lot) and you are presented with your first real situation where you have to fight a bunch of enemies. of course it gave you the instructions of how to fight and get through the situation, but you are left on your own until you finish the scene. After this was done there was one last thing to be done and that was a escape situation where you are running from your enemies. This situation presented many options and choices of where to go and how to get to your ultimate destination, by giving you the freedom to choose.

After this the 10 minutes was up, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

homework...O.o

Ok well my game design teacher has making a blog as homework for this week...hi Mr houge :) and since i already had one, ill be posting my assignment stuff on here as well as the regular posts, so yes more lost in the black for everyone...

                                                                                                                                                       we out.

IM BAAAAaaack O.o

Ok classes have begun again, and so has the mass amount of thoughts running through my head once again. The quotes will be long, the rants extensive and this post short. Im back and am going to be posting at least every day, with possible updates on kate's blog and vice versa...well not much to post though today as i am sitting in my first class of the semester, and have yet to be pissed off to rant....and yet i still had time to make a new banner (WIN!)

ok...thats it





seriously...





go home....

                                                                                                                                            we out.