Course Reflection

CS/ART 108 Introduction to Game Studies

            As my time with CS 108 comes to a close, I reflect on what I've learned and which material stood out the most to me. I learned that designing a game takes time and that it all comes down to the mechanics instead of the visuals or aesthetics. I was introduced to a lot of indie games that I enjoyed and probably would not play if it was not being enrolled in this class such as "This is the only level", or "Don't S#!t your pants!". Understanding some of the mechanics of various board games helped me realize how much effort it took for some companies to create a fun board game and how to expand it without being boring or repetitive.

            I learned a couple of things while taking this course and the one thing that stood out for me was the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) Framework. Reading the article, it made me aware that mechanics is the most important thing for a game designer to make a game fun and replayable. You can have great visuals, but if the game mechanics are repetitive or clunky, then the game will get boring real quick. It's the reason why indie games with low-end visuals can be one of the most entertaining games you will ever play. I believe MDA is an important aspect when designing games.

           Being able to create an actual game using Game Maker was something I both enjoyed and frustrate over. Making Night Heist (click here for a description about my game and click here for the recent version of Night Heist 2.0) opened my eyes to how much time is needed to develop a game that isn't buggy or bland. I appreciate actual game developers who make full games and the work they put in to fix various bugs. Creating Night Heist, the one important thing that took me the most to focus on was the physics of all the characters and how they interact with other objects. When playing a platforming game like Mario, you assume that when a character jumps, it comes down automatically. Unfortunately adding gravity and the character's horizontal/vertical speed will be needed to make the character move fluently within the environment. The challenging part was to make the game feel smooth with the controls and to engage the user to explore more or want more.

          The class was fun and exciting. I enjoyed the gameplay and game design tutorial videos shown in class and got to play some cool games made by the other students. The biggest challenge in this class was trying to implement a game idea that could stick around the first or second time. As for my board game, it took almost three variations of changing the game rules to actually work and feel like a fun game rather than something that was complex and confusing. What would have made this better was to play multiple games to gain some kind of feedback or obtain ideas that you could implement onto your own game.

From creating my first board game

First Board Game Design

to creating an actual game (with the assistance of the Game Maker software)

Level 5 of Night Heist

Night Heist 2.0 Crew
Top Row starting from Left: Andy Phung, Anacleto Duplito (Me)
Bottom Row starting from Left: Cynthia Sayamoungkhoune, Julia Velasquez

If you are a San Jose State University student that is interested in video games, I highly recommend taking this class. Thank you for reading my blog and you are welcome to leave a comment or question about my experiences taking this class.

Final Project

Final Project: Night Heist 2.0

New Menu background for Night Heist

Night Heist was a game that I helped create using the Game Maker software. It was a platforming game, where you are a robber who needs to rob a mansion by collecting jewelry scattered all over the levels. There are obstacles that you need to avoid as a player such as penguin cops, dogs, and fireballs shot by the penguin cops. Night Heist 2.0 will be an updated version of Night Heist by improving on the visuals and mechanics for the game.

With Night Heist, it was a two person project, Anacleto Duplito (hey, that's me) and Julia Velasquez. For Night Heist 2.0, we have included two new members: Cynthia Sayamoungkhoune (Stage and Menu Graphic Artist) and Andy Phung (Quality Assurance Tester). As you can see from the picture at the top, Night Heist will have a new modernized look. For a taste of what is to come, here are some before and after pictures that will be used for the game background:

Night Heist background (Before)

Night Heist 2.0 Background (After)

For the updated game, our new direction will focus on fixing some of the bug mechanics with the jumping physics and level platforms that many people who have tried the game complained about. We will also attempt to redesign the characters as well to have them fit in with the new background along with more visuals added to the ending backgrounds instead of just having text to read. There will be new levels and some of the levels will be redesigned as well for a new experience for those that already tried the game. I also received suggestions about changing the image of the robber whenever the character receives damage to notify players that there is a health bar and it does decrease.

Things I might consider for the updated game will be to add specific features for each brother in the game (when you die, your brother takes your place) just like in the Mario (which is owned by Nintendo) games where Luigi had a higher jump than Mario. I might also consider adding new mega powerups that will grant the player invincibility for a short amount of time, the ability to shoot fireballs from the hand, use a cape to fly for long distances, or summon a greenish dinosaur that eats things and poops out eggs. I'm just kidding about the mega powerups idea since it is clearly copying Mario and will probably take a lot more time and coding to get it to work functionally with this game, but a person can dream right. All kidding aside, I might include some sound effects for instances where the player gets hurt, jumps, collects jewelry, or reaches a new goal to get that old fashioned platform gaming feel that you don't see too often nowadays outside of Nintendo or indie games.

The controls will remain the same as I have not heard of any complaints from other users who tried the game. For controls, here is a brief description as shown in the tutorial level (which will be updated visually):

Here in the tutorial level (which will be revamped to not look dull), you are given instructions about the controls of the player and what to avoid in the game. In Night Heist, you have the basic controls of moving left and right with the arrow keys. Pressing the up arrow key allows the player to jump and holding the up arrow key allows the player to jump to the maximum height (which is useful later on). You can press and hold the control (CTRL) key with the left/right arrow keys to have the player sprint. Pressing the Space bar will pause/unpause the game.

This pretty much sums up the idea of Night Heist 2.0 and I hope you will enjoy it once it is completed. Here is a list of the new Night Heist staff.

Credits

New Credits with the newly added members

A link for the new game will be posted as soon as crucial updates have been added onto the game.

As of right now here is a link for an early version of the game: link to previous version

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. You are welcome to leave any comments about this blog or about my game. Have a marvelous, fantastic, wonderful, enjoyable, happy, lucky, insert adjective here day!

Technology-based non-video games

Ingress 

(The Rookie aka Noob Experience)

What is Ingress? Is it a type of food? A brand? A hacker group? Well my fellow readers, Ingress is actually an augmented reality massively multiplayer online role playing GPS-dependent game (try saying that five times fast) created by Niantic Labs. Now if you aren't familiar with Ingress, here is a link to their website and the wikipedia article because to know what Ingress is, you have to play it. Of course if you don't want to download the game just yet, then you can read what it is all about. In my game studies class, we were to download and play the game in one class session. Here I will be discussing about my experiences playing Ingress by myself and with my peers.

The mechanics of the game is simultaneous action, massively multiplayer, GPS/real world movement, and build/destroy. You first create an agent name, then you choose a team: Enlightened (green) or the Resistance (blue). The Enlightened believe that their actions will uplift humanity, while the Resistance believe in preserving what freedom humanity has left. To play the game, you must turn on your GPS (Location) setting on your android phone or Iphone (Windows phone users will have to play another game), and then open the Ingress application. Once opened and logged in, you will see a map representing the surrounding area. On this map, you will be able to see nearby portals and other nearby players (on either team). Now comes the tricky part, you have to move your body (yes that is right, you have to physically move your body, so put on those pants and experience the outside world) to nearby portals (landmarks in real life) to capture them to help your team's cause.

The dynamics of the game include building and linking portals to strengthen your faction. Another dynamic is that users can link their portals and other spots to form images to amuse other players for creativity. The aesthetics of the game is joy when hacking other portals and frustration when your portals are under attack. To see your faction grow and develop on the map can be visually appealing to many as well as discovering new uncontrolled portals to hack.

Hacking into Blue Base

Blue Base Captured

                                                           
                      >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
                       










My experience playing Ingress was odd at first. First I created an agent name: ManBearPigSchit. Then I chose the Enlightened faction because I was forced to choose them based on my student ID for my game studies class. I liked the fact that the game tries to portray that you aren't playing a game, but that "the world around you is not what it seems." It was nice that it shows actual pictures of the landmarks/portals nearby and you can see other activity around you by both teams. Thankfully I don't have to worry about reaching my mobile data cap, but instead have to worry about my phone's battery life. 

My experience playing with my peers was mediocre. Some couldn't play because they reached their mobile data cap and others couldn't download it onto their phone. We walked around the school campus and found a lot of portals by both the Enlightened and Resistance side. I managed to capture one blue portal, which was actually owned by one of the students in the group I was walking with. You can say he was upset about it and didn't realize it was me that took his portal until I told him. The new mechanics I saw in this game was the ability to interact with real life objects and use them as resources in the game. Although I was not able to level up, the game does seem to progress or at least offer opportunities for those starting to at least get the feel of the game by building. It was nice to go to certain landmarks and see a checklist of places to hack that were customized by the community. This type of feature allows local players to appreciate that there are people suggesting specific things to do other than discovering new places on your own.

I can see why Ingress has become a phenomenon, but in my opinion, I would rather spend the time watching Netflix or exercising. Is augmented reality gaming the next big thing in video games? Time will only tell. As of right now, the Ingress community is growing and has found itself into merchandising as well.

Sennheiser On-Ear Momentum Ingress headphones

Thank you for reading my blog. You are welcome to leave any comments about what I've wrote or share your Ingress story. Have a fantastic day (or night)!

Night Heist Prototype

Night Heist

Main Menu for Night Heist

Night Heist is a game that I helped create using the Game Maker software. It is a platforming game, where you are a robber who needs to rob a mansion by collecting jewelry scattered all over the levels. There are obstacles that you need to avoid as a player such as penguin cops, dogs, and fireballs shot by the penguin cops. 

The game starts with the introduction to the story and then continues onto the tutorial level.

Tutorial Level

Here in the tutorial level, you are given instructions about the controls of the player and what to avoid in the game. In Night Heist, you have the basic controls of moving left and right with the arrow keys. Pressing the up arrow key allows the player to jump and holding the up arrow key allows the player to jump to the maximum height (which is useful later on). You can press and hold the control (CTRL) key with the left/right arrow keys to have the player sprint. The robber cannot hurt enemies as he is a pacifist, but there is an exception near the end of the game. You have to play the game to know what I mean.

Since my first prototype, I have added many improvements and features. 

Features I added:

• a functional high score table

High Score Table

• added four different endings based on the score of the player when they reach the end of the game

One of the four endings when beating the game

• Adding a pause button

Game Screen when paused

• Adding a Game Over Screen

Game Over Screen

Improvements I made were improving the animation of the player, the jumping of the character, transitioning to the next level more smoothly, and fixing the enemies' movements when moving on a platform.

Although the game has vastly improved since the first prototype I made about a few weeks ago, there are still a few issues with the game such as animation of the dog objects. The dogs, in particular, move in a sliding motion rather than a walking motion and only face the left direction despite moving right. I could fix some of the precise collision checks with the penguin cops since touching them loses a life. Everything else seems to be fine and may just need a little fine tuning to make it look like a real game that you could find in an app store.

Credits

Credits for the game

Click Here for a downloadable version of Night Heist.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. Please click on the link above to download and play my game. You are welcome to leave any comments about this blog or about my game.

Night Heist: First Playable

Night Heist

Main Menu Screen

What is Night Heist? Night Heist is a platform game that my partner, Julia Velasquez, and I have made using the Game Maker software. Night Heist is about a robber trying to collect jewelry items inside a mansion, which are guarded by dogs and penguin cops (Yes, I said penguin cops). My role was the programmer, where I implemented all the functions for each character and created the design for each level. My partner Julia was the artist and in charge of designing the character sprites, level backgrounds, and testing the game.

Game Over Screen

Moving the robber is pretty straightforward by using the left and right arrow keys to move the character left or right. Hitting the up arrow key makes the robber jump. I added the ability to have the robber sprint by pressing down the shift key and either the left or right arrow key at the same time. The goal for the game is to collect as many jewelry and reach the final door without losing all three lives that you start out with from the beginning of the game. Touching the dogs and fireballs shot by the penguin cops will reduce the character's health. Touching the penguin cops will make the robber lose a life and just like baseball, three strikes and you're out!

The process in creating the digital prototype for Night Heist started with the idea of making a platform game because I came to get down so get out your seats and jump around! (Bonus points if you got that reference d^_^b ). Jokes aside, I thought a platform game would be simple and fun to play. I didn't realize until finishing this first playable version that collision and the other functional parts with the other characters would become annoying to fix. I wanted to make multiple levels so that the character could go back and forth. I wanted the robber to not be able to kill the enemies as a way to just focus on collecting the jewelry items instead of taking out the enemies. The process took about a day worth of watching YouTube tutorials and looking at the game maker manuals to implement some of the functions such as drawing the score, lives, and health bar for the robber. Other things I took the time to make sure was working was the collision effect from the dogs, fireballs, jewelry, and the doors with the robber. Overall the process took a while, but was worth it with how the game looks and feels as a first playable version.

The main question for players during play testing would be if the game is challenging and if there should be more incentives to collect the jewelry items other than for scoring purposes?

First Level of the Game

Link to a downloadable .exe file for the Night Heist Demo: click here

Night Heist Development Crew

Left: Julia (Artist), Right: Me (Programmer)

Video Game Lab

Video Game Lab (aka Fun Day)

Links to the 5 games played:

• Don't Sh*t Your Pants!
• This Is The Only Level
• QWOP
• Jurassic Heart
• Canabalt

I will discuss three out of the five games I played and what I enjoyed about them.

Don't Sh*t Your Pants!

Oh, the struggles of everyday life

Don't Sh*t Your Pants! is a survival horror game, but it is not your typical survival horror game. The game is literally about you, the player, to not sh*t your pants. The game starts with 40 seconds where the player is holding onto the struggles of holding your sh*t. Once the timer is over or if you input the wrong answer(s), the player will take a sh*t. If you sh*t your pants, then it is game over. If you don't, then you win. What I like about the game is that it is simple and funny. It starts off as the picture above. From there it requires word(s) inputted from the user. The game interacts with the user by showing actions depending on what the user typed. If the user types a word that the program doesn't know, then it will respond back with the message "I don't know how to word you typed." From looking at the background, you are able to guess what specific actions you might need to do such as opening the door. 

A prime example of sharting.

The game does a great job of leaving hints for the players especially after failing. With these hints, it helps the players who are stuck, an idea on how to reach the main goal and achieve victory. I find the cartoony look to be interesting and fun. There is no music during the game, but it doesn't require it since it is short and gives off a great retro vibe I like for simplistic games. The failed sound and the victory sound are hilarious and are surprisingly fitting to the appropriate ending earned.

Oh the smell!

Even when you fail the objective, the player is treated with a nice picture and sometimes funny messages. This type of game makes you want to lose at times just to know what the ending may be. In my mind, this seems like a win-win situation since sh*tting your pants doesn't necessarily feel like a game over, but just an opportunity wasted.

Victory! Wait, no toilet paper. Ahhhh sh*t! 

Once you have typed the correct words or phrases, you are able to realize what needs to be done. In fact, sometimes reaching one goal such as opening the door, leads to the obvious words to type next such as typing "sit on toilet" once you see a toilet appear when opening the door.

Think outside the box

Of course once you achieve success in not sh*tting your pants, you start to experiment on how to beat the game in other ways such as the picture on the right. You start figuring out loopholes such as typing sh*t at the main menu only to see the message of losing before the game even started.

 The basic mechanic of the game is to find a way to sh*t without having your pants suffer from the intoxicating smell and aftermath by typing word(s). This mechanic forces the player to think which word would lead them to the next event or dilemma. There is also an award list that players can complete depending on their actions. This type of reward system forced me to try all sorts of ways to beat the game. The list isn't too long or short and gives enough motivation for the player to at least attempt all of them.

The Achievements Earned in the game

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QWOP 

Looks easy until you actually try the game

QWOP is basically a race to the finish game that is considered by some to be the hardest game to play. The controls seem straight forward by pressing the Q, W, O, and or P keys to move the character. What doesn't seem easy is to control the character without him landing on his face. Moving the character successfully relies on knowing exactly what each key moves which specific body part and balance. The background is simple and not too distracting, which I liked since the game itself requires focus to succeed.

 

As you can see on the picture on the left, I was able to find a rhythm by understanding a little bit of the game mechanics. All I can say is that unless you truly know how to run the character flawlessly, slow and steady will win the race. Something about the game just compels you to play again after defeat. The game does a good job in giving players the urge to break their own record, to finish the race, or the inevitable RAGE QUIT.

Soooo close, but no medal :(

I managed to take my time and continue using the controls to keep moving the character forward by a few meters. Unfortunately for me, I was met with challenging obstacles such as a hurdle once you reach 50 meters. It took me a while to get over it, but was an interesting feature to make a game that is considered hard for players even more difficult. Looking at the picture on the right, I was so close to probably beating the game, but stumbled on an obstacle that required me to jump over right before this mark.






Overall, QWOP is a stressful game to play, but that is the whole point. If the game was easy to move the character, then it wouldn't be special or memorable. The game's visuals will probably not persuade you to play it, but the whole game mechanic of moving the character to the finish line is what keeps people interested and a sense of accomplishment once the game is beaten.

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This Is The Only Level

"This is the Only Level" was perhaps my favorite game to play and was quite an enjoyable experience. The game centers on moving an elephant onto the orange pipe on the other end of the level. After successfully moving the elephant to the orange pipe, you are greeted with Stage Complete: But is the level over... From then on, you can tell that there are multiple stages based on one level needed to beat the game. The mechanic of the game is to use the arrow keys to move the elephant. Left arrow key moves left, up arrow key makes the elephant jump, etc., but what makes this game really special are the stages later in the game that require alternative ways to reach the pipe. The game leaves hints under the level name on how to beat the level. I find this feature quite helpful and interesting. The timer and death counter offers the player the motivation to play the game multiple times to beat their previous record. 

You can tell after beating the first stage that each stage has its own theme such as moving in the opposite direction to move the elephant forward in stage 2. What I found most enjoyable were the stages that required you to think outside the box such as stage 4, where the arrow keys are useless and that you have to realize that moving your mouse is the only way to move the elephant. Another level was stage 15, where you had to literally refresh the web page to unlock the green bar in order to advance onto the next stage. It is such a brilliant concept that I would enjoy playing all over again. Although the level design remains the same, the maker of the game keeps it interesting by making each stage feel different. There are dangers and challenges, but they are needed to make the game fun and not too easy. The visuals itself are pleasing to my eye with its basic colors. The changing of the color for each stage helps make each stage feel unique and different. The music doesn't annoy me too much, but gets you into the mood of being stuck in a maze that makes you wonder how long this game is and will it run forever.

"This is the Only Level" was a fantastic game and seems like a game that I would enjoy making and testing. Overall, the game mechanics leaves the players satisfied when they beat the stage and offers them the desire to beat the whole game from start to finish.

Thank you for reading my blog. Please leave a comment below about my blog or any of these games.

Session Report: Coin Grid (Paper Prototype)

Coin Grid

What is Coin Grid? Well I could tell you it is this magical technological environment where all you do is travel, jump on creatures, look for mushrooms, and collect coins, but then I would be lying to you (and possibly receive a lawsuit). No, Coin Grid is just this simple quick paced board game that I created that has some resemblance to checkers with a casino touch. In other words, when you look at the game, it looks like checkers with dice and money. If you are interested in playing this game, you can check out the rules by clicking on this link (game rules).

The first phase of Pirates Vs. Ninjas (Discontinued)

Although the game may be simple, it wasn't the first thing that came to my mind when trying to create a board game. My first idea was to create this card game with a Pirates Vs. Ninjas theme, but later on seemed more like Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon. I decided to scratch the game because it was difficult to implement what I wanted it to become and realized the whole Pirates Vs. Ninjas theme didn't fit in. So as you can see on the pictures below, the fake gold coins that I was going to use for the Pirates Vs. Ninjas game was later used for this game.

The first play session of Coin Grid

During the first play session, after scraping the whole card game idea and having only about half an hour left of class time to come up with a quick board game prototype, I decided to create a game like checkers. With the help of Bowen Chan, we created Coin Grid. We established the basic rules and mechanics of the game. We both decided that the game board should be a grid and the coins can move in many directions like a Queen Chess piece. The objective of the game is simple, capture as many coins from the opposing player and whoever has no more coins to move is declared the loser. To make the game interesting, we kept the idea of battling coins (when a coin from each player meet on the same square space) by rolling dices and whoever had the higher number won the other player's coin. The double stack feature was also implemented to make battling more interesting and to add some sort of strategy. The double stack coins allowed the player to roll two dice when attacking other players, giving it a huge advantage at times. There were times when I would roll a two and a one and lose to the opposing player's five. Talk about tough luck, but that is how the game goes and still allows players with the disadvantage a chance for the upset.

Second play session of Coin Grid

In the second play session, I was able to tune the game for improvement and balance. One of the main rules that I changed was the requirement to have the player roll a four or greater to be able to cross the middle of the game board as to be fair. This obstacle kept the game from being too easy for players to simply end up at the opposing player's territory, where they could stack a coin on top of their coin for double damage. I also added more rows to have more space in between the middle of the game board and the opposing player's territory. During this play session, I felt the game ended too fast and I needed to make the game last longer.

The third play session, which was played with my family members, helped me put in a few tweaks to the game rules to make it more balance and to extend the game-play. These minor tweaks included adding a dead coin reward, more columns, more coins, and adding more design to the game board (because let's face it, the game board I had shown isn't going to win any awards or compliments). I added the dead coin feature because I wanted to reward players for having their coin(s) reach the end of the other side of the game board just like checkers. Since I already had the double stack feature implemented, I figure I would have the player gain a new special coin that would be placed on their territory. I would also add the feature of having the dead coins receive half damage as to make them even more special. Also, instead of having double stack coins to receive half damage anywhere on the board, I decided that this specific feature will only be in effect if the double stack coin was in the player's own territory as to make it fair since it can deal double damage.

The third play session of Coin Grid

As you can see from the picture above, my final design of the game board makes it look less bland. Sure I could have added more colors and probably ask myself why did I put x's on row five or yellow stars on row six. Short answer, time was the reason why my game board will probably be thrown in the recycle bin by mistake. Of course, the game board is pretty big, but I have created a smaller and portable version that anyone can take and play shown below.

Coin Grid: Traveler's Edition

Size Comparison between Regular Edition and Traveler's Edition

Thank you for reading my blog. Please leave a comment about this blog or any suggestions for my board game (even the awesome looking game board).