HW 8 Animation

This is a basic demonstration of a window opening so that the character can crawl through it.  The character is shown moving towards the window as the window pane rotates open.  The window appears to be on a recessed area of the wall, due to the way I adjusted the scaling, giving the recessed area a shadowed appearance.

blender file

For my team project I redownloaded everything that is still usable for our game (everything but the ant and skull, which will likely not be used), since my drive got corrupted and lost everything in that folder.

HW 7 Game Mechanics

1. Is the space in your game discrete or continuous?
   The team game is continuous. Player movement is confined to an island that contains obstacles, but the player moves around freely within those confines in order to accomplish the ultimate goal of reaching the escape point.  However, there will be nested spaces, for entering buildings.
2. How many dimensions does your space have?
   This space is three dimensional, with the player being able to move his or her character in all non-obstructed directions.  The character will be walking around the island, but will also be climbing up or jumping over objects.
3. What are the boundaries of your space?
   The boundary of this space is set by the edges of the island.  All game play will take place within the confines of the island and its harbor.
4. How many verbs do your players (characters) have? What are they?
   Players have approximately 9 verbs.  These verbs include walk, run, jump, climb, pick-up, hit, light (on fire), shoot, and drive.
5. How many objects can each verb act on? What are these objects?
   Walk, run and jump are specific to the character, and the character may do this on the ground, on an object, or off of an object and onto another object below.  Players can climb onto tables, chairs, benches, stairs, windowsills, cars, and roofs; and pick up usable items, such as guns, torches, flash lights, sticks, and water bottles.  Players can hit other characters, doors, and windows; light sticks and torches on fire; shoot bullets at other characters, windows, and locks; and drive boats and cars.  
6. How many ways can players achieve their goals.
   The ultimate goal is to escape the island by finding the location with a usable boat.  Players can find multiple paths to get to the final destination, including backtracking to find usable items.
7. How many subjects do the players control? What are these subjects?
   My team has discussed three; having a pet or animal side-kick that can be used for self-defence and fetching, a boat that is used to escape the island's harbor, and possibly a car to drive.  
8. How do side effects change constraints.
   In this game, the player has to decide when to pick up found objects and when to befriend or fight off an animal.  The side effects of these actions build or remove constraints later in the game, mostly in terms of self-defence.  With a gun or animal companion, the player is more likely to avoid or survive an attack, and so will not need to find a way to get out of the attack occurring in the first place, possibly leading to a shorter route to the main objective of finding the escape boat.
9. What are the operative actions in your game?
   Players can walk, run, jump, climb, pick-up, light (on fire), hit, shoot, and steer a wheel. The player might also be given the ability to swim.
10. What are the resultant actions in your game?
    Players can move around in the scene, gather items for future use, break through doors and windows, fight off opponents, gain light in the darkness, and drive boats and cars to change location. If the player is given the ability to swim, it will be used to move locations and to collect items in the water or located across the water.
11. What actions would you like your players to do that they cannot presently do? (based on your current knowledge of Blender)
    I would like for players to be able to build their own map of the island with notations of where they left objects, where they came across opponents, and additional notes to themselves about those objects and opponents.
12. What is the ultimate goal of your game?
    Escape the island with the item that the character originally went there to retrieve.  That item has not been determined, yet.
13. Are there short and long term goals? What are they?
    The long term goal is to escape the island with the required item.  Short term goals include finding that required item and surviving each night. 
14. How do you plan to make the game goals known and understood by the player?
    The purpose of the game will be introduced as part of an intro-video, which can be skipped past, showing the arrival to the island, a discussion of item that needs to be retrieved, discussion of the risks involved in retrieving that item, and the loss of the arrival boat.
15. What are the foundational rules of your game?
    The game ends when either energy or life percentage reaches zero. There is no play area to explore outside the confines of the island and its harbor.
16. How are these rules enforced?
    Game play does not continue once energy or life gone.  The player cannot climb over the walls of the island, and cannot swim or drive a boat past the pre-defined edges of the harbor.  
17. Does your game develop real skills? What are they?
    The main skills developed or used are resource management, planning, problem solving and memorization.  The player will be provided with the opportunity to collect a limited number of resources to assist in navigating the island maze and fighting off opponents, requiring a combination of all four skills.
18. Does your game develop virtual skills? What are they?
    The game develops movement skills in making the character jump over or drive around obstacles without becoming entangled or blocked by them, fighting skills in fighting off opponents, and escape skills in figuring out ways into and out of buildings and outdoor obstacles.
    
    For my team work this week I downloaded several buildings that matched the appearance of Hashima Island.

HW6

In this update I have added a female body mesh for the main character, so that she may interact with the scene, and a drink container for her to notice and collect.   The team game requires the player to find and collect items to use for survival.  When the player moves the character near the container, the container disappears (to be added to personal inventory).  Because the scene keeps crashing Blender, only the basic movement is shown and not the ability to interact with the ant/ball that was designed in HW5 to be used to chase the cat.

Blender File: HW6.blend

Blender Demo:

HW5

For this assignment I have added a table and an ant to my previous scene of a cat jumping over a chair.  The player will direct the ant, which if it collides with the cat will make the cat jump to get away.

The ant will be an opponent in the game, that might attack the player's character, ruin the player's food source, or make the player drop a needed item.  The table serves more as scenery to make a more realistic landscape, while the jumping cat and toppling chair serve more for the element of surprise.

The cat and chair add to the fun by adding to the element of surprise, to prevent the player from narrowing his or her focus.  The ant adds to the fun through its use as an opponent.  It provides a challenge for the player to face and overcome.

An extended version of this game could include having the location of the ant's contact with the cat be what determines where or how far the cat jumps.  If the cat does not jump far enough, it will either not make it over the chair or will tumble on the chair and not be able to get away from the ant.

Blender File:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxkwWSQOFCfQcE03QjNPS1U0RjA/edit?usp=sharing

Blender Video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxkwWSQOFCfQYnpyLUV2TmZKMjg/edit?usp=sharing

HW4 The Game Experience

Chapter 2: The Designer Creates an Experience

• Forgetting about the game, think about your player. What are the experience(s) you want your player to have. 

• My team's game will hopefully help the player to experience the excitement of surprise, confusion, and a sense of accomplishment, but hopefully with some amount of responsibility and a small amount of disappointment.

• What are the essential element(s) of that experience. 

• A not too easy to solve maze, opponents that come on unexpectedly, items to collect for protection as weapons against opponents and as shelter for nighttime are the essential elements. 

• Suggest a few ways your game might capture those experiences. 

• Since players will be exploring a maze of an island city, it is an excellent opportunity to throw in surprises.  Players will be concentrating on finding their way through the maze, so that not knowing what will pop out at them will add the excitement of surprise and the expectation that they will need to not limit their focus.  The confusion will come out of the quality of the maze.  The maze should not be too easy, allowing the confusion to be solvable only with some effort on having foresight, which will add to the sense of accomplishment.  The feelings of responsibility and disappointment will add depth, by requiring players to invest thought and effort into finding their way through a maze without it being a given that they will get the outcome they desire.  Excluding the opportunity to feel responsibility and disappointment would lose the player's engagement by making the game too easy.

• The maze will not be a direct path from the player's starting location to the escape boat.  Players will zig-zag through a maze with multiple paths to the goal, obstacles, and dead-ends.

•  Players will be faced with opponents at a moment's notice, which depending on the opponent, they may or may not be required to collect defenses against in advance.  

• Discuss a few ways in which you might include surprise in your game

• Surprise will be incorporated by having opponents who show up without warning.  These will generally be other people and animals, but will also include falling debris and buildings.  It will also be incorporated through the collection of items that are needed for protection.  Items will be come across in unexpected places, which may be easily passed by if the player is not alert or thinking of the potential use of the item.  The first time the player plays the game, he or she will be likely to pass by an essential item.  Another surprise will come from falling buildings and debris, which can change the path through the maze and pose a risk to the character.

• How will your game be fun? 

• People who like to explore and collect will hopefully consider the game to be fun.  The player will be engaged by the dynamic nature of the maze and the need to think about and find the tools necessary to survive.  The player will also have the opportunity to learn the landscape of the city, which for some people is an enjoyable brain exercise.

• Discuss the goals of your game (as it stands now).

• The main goal of the player will be to escape the island.  The goal of the game itself is to provide an opportunity for the player to explore a new landscape that offers surprises and requires forethought to engage the player.

• State your thoughts on how you will make the player attached to your game, or motivated to play the game. 

• I believe that the player will be motivated by the puzzle aspect of a maze, but more importantly, by the dynamic nature of the maze and the obstacles faced within it.

• What problems do you expect the players to solve in your game? 

• A path through the maze.

• Collection of weapons, such as a pipe or gun, for fighting opponents.

• Collection of items for night-time shelter, such as a box or fuel source for fire.

Chapter 3: The Experience Rises out of Game

Contribution to group game: I collected additional objects to be used as the animal opponents for the player to fight, and made suggestions about the type of island environment we should use to copy.  I was thinking that doing a version of Hashima Island, off the coast of Japan, that incorporates some aspects of the actual island would add to the user experience, because it is a real place that they can explore through documentaries and Google Maps, in addition to through the game.

HW 3 Moving Objects

For this assignment, I downloaded a soil ground, a cat, and a chair.  Because we are working on a survival game, I thought it would be a good idea to add a few distractions that do not harm the player, but that do potentially startle the player.  This way, the player is forced to make the decision of whether or not the noises and visuals are indicating a danger that requires action.  A cat making a chair wobble can produce a noise and motion that may serve this purpose, without adding too much activity/computer usage to the game.  The soil was chosen because it may be useful for representing an abandoned area that nature is starting to take back over.

When I added the cat and chair to the blender file with the soil ground, the soil looked great, but I was not able to figure out how to reconfigure the menus to get to where I wanted to be to manage my objects.  When I restarted blender and added all three items, the soil appearance of the ground disappeared, and I decided to ignore this due to time constraints.



The movement is the cat jumping onto the chair, making the chair wobble.


Blender File:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxkwWSQOFCfQRElSVkJyMTF5aWs/edit?usp=sharing


My contribution is the same contribution as mentioned in HW2, looking for appropriate imagery to get an idea of what the best atmosphere will be for the game, given the constraints of what is available as pre-made objects and the inspiration that can be gained from real-life abandoned island cities/buildings.

HW2 Group Meeting

1) When and where did you meet?

My group met twice.  The first time was in immediately following class, in the hallway, on Friday, September 5th. The second time was 2pm-3pm in the Majors Lab of the Love Building, on Tuesday, September 9th.

2) What did you discuss?

We discussed game ideas and the genres we are most interested in. At the first meeting, Ashleigh mentioned a game she was interested in making that involved a maze based off of moving blocks that have to be navigated, and I mentioned my idea of having a theme park simulation ride based on the Great Fire of London.  We also discussed the possibility of combining the two ideas, by replacing the contents of a haunted-house maze with the moving blocks maze.

3) Did you take notes? Why? Why not?

The first meeting was informal and did not involve taking notes.  Every group member took notes at the second meeting.  We wanted to not only organize our ideas, but to also keep individual records to reference as needed throughout the game design process.

4) Did you transfer the contents of the discuss to the computer?

Yes. For now, we are using our blogs to document our group decisions.

5) Did you discuss the game document?

We discussed what the game document is, so that we know that each group member is aware of what it is and its purpose.

6) Did you pick a team leader. Why? Who is it?

We did not pick a team leader.  We decided it would be best to wait until we have both chosen a game idea and seen how the group works as a unit under equal power for each member.  This way, if we end up focusing on one person's ideas, that person can be the group leader, and the amount of power needed to adequately direct the group will be better understood.

7) Please describe briefly some initial ideas regarding the game you plan on developing.

We have decided to create a survival game, set in an abandoned, or mostly abandoned, city on an island.  We have not decided the island's location, type, time period, etc. The most likely background story is that the player landed on the island to collect or achieve something, became stranded, and has to find a boat on the other side of the island to escape. We discussed the possibility of having the player collect objects for defense, and to build shelters at night; the idea being that if they fail to have the needed tools they will be killed and have to start over.  We also discussed making the island a maze, and potentially having multiple boat docks to search, but only one having an adequate boat.

8) State on your blog the contributions you, the individual, made towards the team game in the last week.

I have looked through blendswap to find appropriate to give an idea of which island environment and city type would be ideal for us to work on, given the constraints of the objects available.  I have also looked at various real life abandoned buildings and cities on islands.  The three objects I have download for the game so far are a cat, a soil ground, and a chair.  I purposely chose items that could be used for a variety of island environments and time periods.