Homework 6 :the Tetrad

1.       Four each of the four elements of the Tetrad, explain how it is addressed by your game. If one of the four elements is not used, please state this. 

a.       Aesthetics

1.       Our game is handling aesthetics in an interesting way. We decided that the setting of our game is set an undetermined amount of years in the future. We used this idea to handle the aesthetics of our game. I am trying to create aliens that have tentacles and are mixtures of strange animals. Our game is mostly three dimensional, with the exception of the random encounter fights, which will switch to a two dimensional background.

2.       As the game progresses as more aliens appear to try and destroy the world, the world will have more destroyed things.

b.       Technology

1.       Our game is being created in Blender and is intended to be played on computer.

2.       We use Blender to create objects and scenes, animate them and use the logic editor to move them around.

3.       This is as much as our team has discussed the technology. I am sure we will discuss it more at length once our project is a little further off the ground.

c.       Mechanics

1.       The mechanics of our game are a bit unclear as of right now. We hope to achieve a balance between exploring the 3D world, solving puzzles to get ‘bonuses’ and fighting aliens.

2.       I think it would be good for the puzzles to be alien traps that the president must overcome and in this way the alien battle is more than just hand to hand combat.

3.       Because the fighting will be based on random encounters, there will be no way to avoid them.  

d.      Story

1.       Our game uses story to explain who the player is, what they have to do and why.

2.       Without story the player might not understand that they are the president, that the United States is in danger and that the constitution says it is the duty of the president to deal with it.

3.       I think our game will have scripted dialogue to explain the who what and why of our game. We also discussed the possibility of the player having a mentor in which case there might need to be more interactive dialogue. This is something we will have to work out as we progress.

2.      Do the four (or less) elements work towards a current theme? 

a.       All of the elements in our game work toward a theme. The theme is currently something in the ballpark of “It is the president’s job to defend against aliens.”

3.      In your own words, describe the meaning of a "theme", and how does it differ from an "experience" (see book for examples in Chapters 2 and 5. 

a.       The theme is a thought or phrase that ties everything in the game together. It is something to keep in mind so that you understand why you are putting things in your game and so that your game seems cohesive.

b.      An experience is what you what the player to go through when they play your game. How they should feel and think while they play the game. This differs from theme because theme because the player definitely gets the experience, but the theme can be more subtle. The player does not have to know the theme of a game to enjoy it, but the experience of playing the game is not something the player can skip over.

4.      What is your game's theme? 

a.       As of right now our game’s theme is “It is the president’s job to defend against aliens.”

5.      What are the elements in your game that are meant to reinforce this theme? 

a.       Random encounter fights in which aliens need to be defeated

b.      Puzzles and traps in the over world are the work of aliens

c.       The constitution was at some point rewritten to include something about the president’s duty in case of alien attack

d.      As the game progresses, more things are destroyed and it is the work of aliens

6.      What is it about your game that you feel makes it special and powerful?

a.       Our game is special because it is a combination of an RPG and a fighting game.

b.      It is special because the player does not know when the fights will happen.

c.       Our game is powerful because we are doing everything we can to apply the theme to everything.

d.      It is powerful there are people that are going to make the RPG half amazing and people that are going to make the fighting amazing. 

Homework 5: Blender Game Engine

the camera following the turtle

Check out my awesome Blender Game Engine skills
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ytxdyheunsz78m4/maze2.blend

let's talk about it

Using the game engine

A turtle was the object that I created in Blender. I decided to use the WASD keys to make the turtle move in different directions. I then created a maze using cylinders as walls for the turtle to navigate through with the direction keys.

The first thing I did was use the logic editor to assign keys to different directions,

W:forward

S:backwards

A:left

D:right

the game before the p-key

Spacebar:jump

I did this by using the keyboard sensor, AND and the motion actuator.

Then I created the maze so the player would have something to move the turtle around in and a floor (a flattened, resized cube) so that the objects would not fall immediately. Making the maze was not too difficult, but getting the turtle to interact with the maze walls was. To fix this problem I made a new puzzle that was less of a maze; instead it was a hallway that kept turning, with a few obstacles in the way. I made the maze walls with cylinders that I put in edit mode, then selected a few of the faces and extruded them to make them higher. When I did not have the walls at a certain height the turtle could just jump over them. I also had to use the physics engine to make the turtle dynamic, but leave all of the walls static. The walls had to have a mass of 20 so that the turtle would not be able to push through them instead of navigate around them.

turtle jumping up stairs

To make obstacles for the turtle to navigate through I created a staircase by extruding a cube for the turtle to jump over. I also used the empty object feature to create another obstacle. I put the empty object in the layer that had the maze and the turtle and put a cube in another layer. I edited the logic of the empty object with the sensor as ‘always’, AND and the ‘edit object’ actuator that made the cube from layer 2 appear in the first layer. I set the frequency of the empty object to create another cube every two seconds. 

turtle pushing the blocks to make a path

This obstacle was more difficult, the longer it took to reach it because there were more cubes to push out of the way.  

turtle navigating turns

While I was playing my game in a test run I realized that it looked weird that the turtle never turned around so sometimes he walked sideways and backwards. To fix this I changed the keys that moved the turtle left and right so that they rotated the turtle two degrees on the Z axis. So then the player could move the turtle to always be facing the way that it was walking.

Then I was having problems with the size of the turtle. He was too small to be seen behind some of the walls, but if I made him taller he either did not fit through the walls or stopped looking like a turtle. To fix this I connected the camera and the turtle using a parent-child relationship. So now the turtle can rotate to always be facing the direction he is moving and the camera follows behind the turtle.

This idea is the fourth of fifth in a series of failed ideas, some of which included a maze made out of one cube, a forest to navigate through and a staircase that got bigger and bigger as time went on.

How the Game Engine will relate to the game team 1 is developing

The game we are developing will involve a lot of movement. The game engine is how we will be able to connect keys of the keyboard to the movement of a character with the logic editor.  We will also need to use the game engine to set up the random encounter fights that happen throughout the game. 

Homework 4: Team work

Our game is one part RPG and one part fighting. We are working with the premise that the player is the president and thus it is the player's responsibility to defend the city against aliens, which includes hand to hand combat with aliens as well as puzzles and escaping alien traps. 

As proof of how much I love our game, please review the following interview I conducted with myself regarding the game and teamwork.

Do you love your project/game. If not, how can that be changed? 

As of right now our game is half RPG, half 2D fighting game. I love the RPG aspect, but the 2D fighting just baffles me and I find it difficult to take an interest in it. However we have decided that the fighting will be against a medley of strange aliens, which is something I am very excited about making. I love that I get to make strange creatures for our game, that our game includes puzzles, it takes place in the future and that it’s an RPG.

Does the team as a whole love the project? If not, what can be done? 

I am not certain if the whole team loves the whole project. We seem to be split between people that love the RPG but not the 2D fighting and people that love the fighting but do not like the RPG at all. I’m worried that this will devastate our games hopes of being cohesive. I think if we can try to put elements from the RPG into the fighting part and elements from the fighting interface into the RPG than that will be help. 

  Are the team members communicating with each other?

Our team makes a big effort to communicate with each other. When we meet it does not seem like anybody feels uncomfortable. We share ideas and take the best parts from each idea. We also divide up tasks so that people get to work on what they are most excited about, which would not be effective if we didn’t know what people wanted to be working on (hence good communication.) However, we do have this issue about the main character and target audience, but it’s a work in progress.

Does the team have a regular meeting schedule? What is that schedule? 

It took us a little while to figure this one out because we all have other commitments. As of now we meet Sundays in Dirac and also once during the week on Google+ and chat in a hangout. It is great to have the Google+ option because we run into less scheduling conflicts with this.

  Describe the modes of communication between the team members. 

We meet in person at least once a week and talk for a few minutes after class every Tuesday and Thursday.  We also email to schedule meetings and share ideas. We also use Google+ when we cannot meet in person.

  Regarding game documents, what must be remembered while designing your game? 

I think it is important for a few things to be remembered while designing the game. The first is what the setting is going to look like so that we can have that in mind when we make other objects. Second, we must remember to find elements to link the RPG and fighting parts together or else our game will look like two different games next to each other. We must also remember that the fighting characters will need to be able to move certain ways, so they should be made with that in mind. 

Homework 3: Objects in Blender

look at this link

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cezk3mk1mghq7ta/first%20objects.blend

want to know more?
read below!

Turtles, Trees and Things in Blender

What is it?
The first object I created in Blender was a twisted cylinder. I created it by subdividing a mesh cylinder while it was in edit mode, selecting only the top face and then rotating it. By rotating the top face I was able to twist the sides to create something that looked like two cones that were stuck together at the tip. I liked the look that this technique created so I made a new cylinder, subdivided it a couple of times and rotated the faces at either end. Thus, I created the futuristic vessel found in the Blender file.

 
why does it matter?
           Part of our game involves the player destroying things to obtain items that they can use to bribe their mentor for advice. Since our game is set in the future I think having the items in the twisted cylinder/futuristic vessel is more interesting than having them in crates. This will blend in more with the futuristic buildings (and trees) than regular boxes, so it won’t look bizarre for them to be scattered throughout the map.

   

What is this?
 The second object I created was a tree. My first thought was to create the trunk out of a cylinder. I know that I could have stretched one cylinder, but I wanted the tree to have elements that would help it blend into the futuristic setting. I figured futuristic buildings would be characterized by sharp angles for the light to play on so I made the tree trunk out of several smaller cylinders which created a different effect when the object is rendered. After the trunk, I added more cylinders that were scaled along the Z axis until they were long and thin. I linked these to the trunk of the tree to make branches.  Then I made the top of the tree by smoothing the shading on ico-spheres and placing them around the branches. Finally I joined all of the pieces together so they would move as one object.

 Why?            

                Since the future will not be a completely unnatural place, there will be trees and grass. This tree will serve as a nice background object while the player is running around and breaking things to obtain objects, perhaps the mentor will hide around this tree

What is this?
             The third object in my blender file was actually the fourth of fifth object, but those ones were not particularly interesting. This object is a turtle! I made this because I was excited about trying to mix different shapes together. The first thing I made was the shell. I did this by taking a sphere that was in edit mode and using the selecting tool to select the lower half of the sphere, which I then deleted. Then I took a cube, put it in edit mode, subdivided it and changed the shading from flat to smooth. These changes made it look rounded.  I cut the cube in half using the same method that I used for the sphere because the cube was too big. Afterwards I connected the hemisphere and half cube. Then I selected faces and extruded them to make the arms and legs. The last part I made was the head, which I created by selected four of the smaller faces on the top of the cube and extruding, rotating and scaling them several times to create the right shape.

Why? 

              Our team made the decision that the player should be able to choose between a couple of characters so that the game has more appeal. Instead of all of the characters being human I think it would be interesting if some of they were other creatures, for this reason I have created the turtle. He will fight excellently against the aliens. Also, he creates a broader appeal; now it includes people who want to fight as a turtle rather than just another fighting game.

Homework 2

notes from our first team meeting
First Team Meeting: September 5, 2012

Team Members

• Garret- Programming, knowledgeable of fighting games
• Juan- Programming, math, physics
• Debra- Art, story
• Jacob- Art, story
• Ryan- Music, audio

Setting

• future stuff
• fight scenes are 2D with a “flat background” (Washington DC)
• Pixel art or background 3d?
• background- destroyed DC flying cars and stuff
• Alien Invasion
• Multiple models (Octopi?)

Objective:  

• RPG with fighting game encounters instead of turn based fighting.
• Upgradable elements: kick attack can do more, punch can do more, hadouken, defense
• Upgraded through items, basic fight xp or possibly uniquely for fight style.
• Should appeal to fans of both fighting and rpg games

Rough Idea of Story:

• POTUS Must fight aliens because it’s in the Constitution
• FSM as wise mentor
• Appears in generic adventure fashion, he is wherever you need him. Simple floating model.

Desired Audience:

• Teenagers, kids, and young-age adults (20-28)

Desired experience:

• release stress
• have fun
• enhance the competitiveness

Characters:

• Barack Obama
• Flying Spaghetti Mentor floating in the beginning of the game, telling the story- find him     

           throughout the game to get items/upgrades

• grunt enemies
• a boss

• Character elements can be chosen at beginning (armor)

Presentation:

• Basic third person adventure or isometic rpg view till fighting
• Fights take place in static side view
• Makes sense to reuse 3d character models?

Other Ideas:

• Obama walks around in a suit, but has on armor when it is time to fight
• buildings you can destroy for items
• Inventory system- items that improve defense/attack/in fight speed (double speed, half the damage)

how often do you fight?

• Investigating the use of either time or probability based random encounters.

Tentative meeting in Dirac on Monday


My thoughts:     
     Here is what is going on with our team's game thoughts currently. I am a bit worried about using Obama and FSM in case of legal reasons. Also I would like it if we created original characters, so hopefully that is something our team can work on. 
         In other news, throughout this game designing process I want to master Blender and programming with Python as well as make an interesting/enjoyable game. 
As of right now it seems that my role in this process will be some combination of artist, hand-drawer, model-maker, story writer and hopefully I will be able to learn enough Python to help with coding. I think these will be my main roles but I am excited about all aspects of this process and would gladly be involved in all of it. 

Homework 1 part 2, Images with Captions

Somebody took this photo of me to showcase the crazy tutu I made.
Then  I edited the photo's colors in Gimp. 

From my sketchbook. Bowling pin Peacock. 

From my sketchbook. Mocking jay from the cover of the Hunger  Games. 

From my photo endeavors: man in shadow and light. 

From my sketchbook, apple/coconut. 

Homework 1: Video with Voice

After making a really crazy video with props and all, I decided to also do this. In this video I am editing a photo in Gimp; I explain how to remove yellow lighting, deal with contrast and manipulate curves.
Perhaps I will post the crazy (amazing) video in the future.

please enjoy this link to the video you just watched
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2XlFefjbG4