Homework 8

Story: A lazy scientist doesn't want to do his laundry so he creates a device that gives inanimate objects sentience. He uses this device to bring his washing machine, Washy, to life in order for it to do the laundry for him. Someone then steals the device, and uses it to bring terror to the city. It's up to Washy to save the day.

Mechanics: The player plays in a third person view. The player can move about the map, and attack enemies. We were going to have turn based combat, but we have decided to get rid of that idea since it's too time consuming. Now, we will have a game like Super Mario 64, where the player fights the enemies in a large stage. The player has a double jump feature and a sud blast feature that "shotguns" enemies in front of thee player.

Tech: It's on PC, using the mouse and keyboard.

Art: Blender and Photoshop will be used to make the models and textures that will be used in our game. The enemies will be clothing.

Balance

The player is vulnerable to the enemies and hazards on the stage. Each monster has its own strengths and weaknesses. There will be a number of enemies, each different than the last.

Interest Curve

Keep the player engaged throughout the game by increasing difficulty level by level. We will introduce new enemies to keep things fresh.

Emergent Properties

By ensuring that the mechanics are solid enough, we want the player to be able to try and beat the levels as fast as possible. Dealing with different enemies will also have to be a dynamic thing.

Summary

By incorporating fast paced game play and fun stages, we want the player engaged in our game.

GIIT HUB

The link to my group's git is: https://github.com/mkimball-it/LaundryDay

I plan to add to the AI mechanics, as we have only the bare bones "guard" AI, following a set path. Boss AI and special types of AI need to be added in.

Homework 6

Two Games

So a game I really like is Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. One game I didn't like was Quest 64.

Paper Mario: TTYD

Story: In this game, the player plays as Mario and friends as they traverse the not so familiar land that surrounds the port city of Rougeport. Unlike the Mushroom kingdom, with it's colorful and friendly creatures, Rougeport harbors many a ship hands and has a dirtier look and feel to it, much like a port city back in the colonial era would look like. Our hero Mario was invited to come to the location by none other than Princess Peach herself, and once again she has gotten herself into trouble. It is up to Mario and friends that he meets along the way to explore this new world, and look for Peach while also uncovering the many secrets that the land has to offer. Not all is smooth sailing as Mario faces fierce enemies in all new landscapes and locations.

That is the basic jist of the game. Now, I'm no writer, but I feel like the story description alone would get people to play the game. I had played the previous title in this franchise, Paper Mario 64, and it instantly became my favorite game at that time. The sequel, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door went above and beyond what the first one did, and it then made it's way to my favorite game of all time, even to this very day.

Mechanics: In Paper Mario: TTYD, the player can explore an overworld, solving puzzles and advancing in locations, but when Mario meets an enemy, the scene is switched into a turn based battle, where Mario and company, and enemies take turns attacking. There are a plethera of moves, and items that can be used in combat, and even in the overworld that help Mario and the gang overcome obstacles on their journey.

Tech: This game was made for the Nintendo Game Cube, and although it didn't do anything crazy hardware wise due to the limitations of the GameCube, the graphics update was enough to make it seem different than it's predecessor.

Art: The art in the Paper Mario games is fascinating. It is a 3D game when you are in the overworld, but everyone in the game is 2D, which makes for a pretty cool effect, allowing Mario to take the shape of a paper airplane, boat, etc. Different areas of the world have different color pallets that help give the game life.

Balance

Paper Mario is balanced due to the fact that there are levels and that the enemies get exponentially stronger as the player advances further into the game. As Mario increases his level, one can choose to upgrade his HP, his resource bar, or his number of equipable abilities. Choosing one of the three will mean you have less of the other 2, so the player can choose their play style to a point. The higher level you are, the lower amount of experience points weaker enemies will give you, eventually not giving any at all, maybe as an incentive to not grind the same area over and over to get over leveled.

Levels alone wont cut it either, in combat, the player must know an enemies strengths and weaknesses in order to minimize damage taken, as HP is crucial in the later stages of the game. There is also a thing called "action commands" that a player can perform in combat to deal a bit of extra damage or mitigate some of it. This requires precise inputs at precise times.

The only unbalanced thing is that you can "build" Mario in such a way that he does an absurd amount of damage if you have 5hp or less, which is easy to get to. If you raise one of his stats and nothing else, you'll be almost unstoppable, the only thing that can stop you is if you don't input an action command correctly, which I guess sort of balances things out.

Interest Curve

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is regarded as one of the best Mario games made by Nintendo, and there is a reason why. It follows the same formula that was very successful by its predecessor and simply builds on top of what is already proven to work. The franchise broke away from the Super Mario 64 mold and added strategy like the Mario RPG series did. An interesting art style and a story that is very well crafted bite into the player and drag him/her into a wonderful story driven game that has very solid gameplay to boot. Paper Mario is a title that everyone should play.

Emergent Properties

This game offers little variation, as you are playing as Mario, there is already a molded cut as to what you should expect to be playing as. Players can deviate their "builds" a little, by choosing their preferred companions most of the times as well as their stats. The multitude of enemies that you will be fighting keep things fresh and the different locations keep things interesting.

Summary

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is my favorite game of all time. It built off of it's successful predecessor on the N64 and the gameplay and storyline that this game has to offer is among the best Nintendo has crafted. I highly recommend playing it at least once, as well as the first one.

Quest 64

Story: I have no idea. Literally it's that confusing. The player is thrown into the world and that's it. I've never been able to advance far enough into the game because of how confusing and how badly made the game is. I'm going to just write about the negatives, as they seem to heavily outnumber the positives, hopefully I hit most of the points that need to be covered.

Mechanics: You can move around in the game and travel through many areas. In each area are enemies that you need to battle. Once close enough you are thrown into a ring with the beast, and you have to defeat it. The ring constantly grows smaller until you are basically touching the beasts. The only problem is, they never tell you how to attack. You have a staff that I'm assuming you can use to attack, but I was never able to figure out how to do so. The N64 has 9 buttons on it, and I couldn't figure out how to attack...

Tech: This is probably it''s only saving grace. I recall this game having fairly decent graphics for the N64, it reminded me of Super Mario 64 or something similar, with its many polygons and limited colors, but it looked nice and fit the aesthetic.

Art: See above.

That's basically the game. You are thrown into the world, are not thought how to fight, and are expected to continue onward like that. I feel like maybe a fight where an AI teaches you to fight, or maybe even signs to read how to fight would help out. The game was so poorly made for the novice player that I feel many lost interest like I did.

Homework 5

Since our game will be dealing with a lot of AI moving about that the player can interact with, I've created an AI character with a hit-box that follows a set path on a level, and if the player encounters the enemy, the player is then transported to a battle screen.

As one can see in the picture above, the AI character is simply a sphere at this point, and it has attached to it a hit-box. On event collision, a new level opens and the player is transported there.


As for the pathing that the AI takes, that's a little more complicated. On begin play, reference the path algorithm pawn, and cast it to the AI described above. Now that we have our pawn and pathing, set the AI path to a node location and move the AI there. This moves the character to its first desired location. The blueprint for this can be seen in the top portion of the image below.

In order to move the AI to the next desired location, we need an event tick that is attached to an if statement that checks if the AI pawn has reached it's location, and has stopped. To check this we need to get the move status of our actor and compare it to a boolean we created that is set to true. We use a != boolean comparison to return true or false back into the if statement for the event tick. If the pawn has stopped, we set the current node that the AI is at, and then we reference the next node that is attached to the current node. The current node becomes the next node and so on and so forth. Last;y, we get the AI to move to the next node, and this repeats over and over, making the AI move about the map. All of the code for this section can be seen in the lower half of the image above.

HUDs

Class Participation 4

I've designed and Drawn two basic HUDs that may fit into our game. There are 5 aspects to my HUDs.

1) Hit Points (Red) : The amount of health a player has
2) Resource (Blue) : Mana or something that can be used for abilities
3) Stamina (Green) : Allows the player to perform sprints, long jumps, etc.
4) Light (Yellow) : Allows the player to perform special attacks/Spells with the use of this
5) Current Items : What the player is holding in his/her hands

This is a standard HUD that displays the player's HP bar and Resource bars along the top of the screen. I've added items held by the player in the center. This layout is meant to crowd all of the information available to the player in one area. This looks nice, but it's very bland, so there is a trade-off.

This is a custom HUD that displays the player's HP and Light resources on the bottom left along with their left hand item. It also displays their right hand item along with their Resource bar and Stamina on the bottom right. At the top center is a Compass bar that helps the player get his/her bearings.

Progress Video 1

Here is a link to my group's YouTube Video. In it, Joshua Alleman, Michael Cristopher Kimball, Alexander Mark Jackson and I discuss the progress of our game, LaundryDay. Josh worked on the assets and will continue doing so along with animations for out characters. Michael did the audio, and will make our sounds along with music. Alex coded the double jump feature and will work on character movement fluidity. I made the AI, and battle transition. I will make complex AI and implement the turn based gameplay for our game. We will all work to design levels when we have all of the other things ready.

Class Participation 2

I decided to find a lantern asset that is to be used by our hero/heroin throughout their journey. It will help him/her drive away the darkness that engulfs the island.

This asset was made by a user by the name of jafem on BLEND SWAP. The direct link to this asset can be found here. I've sent the asset via email to gerlebac@fsu.edu.

Do I do art?

War Banner

Crystal Bearer

These are two images created by me. You can find more of my art at my page.

What games do I like?

I like a lot of games, but if I had to name two I would choose FEZ and Hotline Miami.

FEZ

FEZ is a very interesting game. It is a 2D platformer puzzle adventure, but it also has a fantastic camera mechanic that adds a 3D element to the game. You are always in a 2D side scroller state, but with the press of a button the current area you are in rotates 90 degrees, allowing the player to see a whole new side to the area they are in. This game mechanic is used marvelously in FEZ, allowing the player to experience something that feels unlike most things they've played in the past. This is backed by not only a fascinating story that has a player diving further into the unknown, but is also backed by a beautiful soundtrack that brings the environments to life. This is all brought together by a very clean art style that used a wide color palette in order to make the world come alive visually.

Hotline Miami

Hotline Miami is a top down, fast paced, action packed arcade style shooter. By far one of my favorite games of all time, this game is both challenging and addicting at the same time. The player must clear a building and not die. Sounds simple right? Well, there are a lot of enemies in these buildings and they kill you in one hit. That sounds unfair, but it's so perfect for this game. Every level is a mad dash of blazing glory as you try to reach the next point of cover while dodging enemy fire. The best part of this game is the soundtrack, it's always on point. This upbeat electro style of music that plays in every level is simply fantastic, adding that extra umphh that is needed in this style of game, fueling the frenzy that is Hotline Miami.

Assignment 1

This post is to upload a test video that tests my audio and video capture. The link to the video can be found here