The Completion of the Our Game!!!!!!!

YES! We (by we I mean Team Lightning (the group I am a part of)) have completed a game we are working on. As discussed in previous posts the game is a 2.5D fast paced vehicular racing game. We will be presenting our game and all our ideas that we put forth into it on a upcoming day.

We are very proud of it as it is our first game we have created. It is not the game we intended to create when we first thought about making a racing game. Our ideas were to large at this point in time and we took on to much at one time. Our team believes that now that we have the basic structure and a working game. We can now add more on top of it and after a period of time we will have made the game we first thought of.

Team Lightning's OverDrive is a high paced racing game. A player must dodge obstacles to reach the end of the level, once completing the level a cut scene will occur and then its on to the next level. The cut scenes are a comic book style where as there are images on the screen and they are laid out by panels. The dialogue is heard of what is going on and then the player must continue in order to complete the story and win the game! I really enjoy the story for the game, when we first thought of our game we sat down and brainstormed all ideas of how we should make it and what our main idea of the game should be. After we went right into the story breaking down our main idea into parts (what was needed in the story and game-play) that would make the idea a success. We thought this was the best way to go so that we would not miss any crucial or even minor parts we would like to implement in the story and therefore the game. After chaining all that together to we realized, "wow, this is some crazy stuff we're looking at here." Then began the making of the game, at first we were very courageous (best suited word) in trying to do everything. Even though we wanted to implement so many things we did not stop and say we should cut some stuff back and try approaching it another way. (Remember, first time doing this) So we started on an insane journey and after reoccurring roadblocks our courageous and valiant efforts came to an abrupt stop, the hope for making OverDrive started to fade away and Team Lightning was slowing giving up. A major issue we could not overcome was implementing models into the game, they would either work in the code but crash the program or the error in the code was insane to fix.
Side note* This game was created for a school project and needed certain aspects in the game to be evaluated.
After a bumpy first huge milestone (the ending of first semester) we barely dragged our beat up bodies from the barely existing OverDrive and even more, the faith and hope we had for the glamorous OverDrive  cease to exist. After taking a break from the game we headed into second semester. A new criteria and a new set of motivations, we started right away and this time we had more of a grasp on the situation. We created what was possible this time and our concept designs were broken down into plausible and impossible instead of what we wanted to do and what we did not like. This time since implementing models was not a part of the criteria we could avoid that for now (work on it after we get all other requirements met) and work on what we needed to be done. It was not a walk in the park but we stuck through it got help when we needed it. Implementing sound and textures were exhausting but we overcame the struggle, documenting everything was not to hard but very tedious, especially when we changed something in the game, that meant we had to go back and change something.We (team Lightning) tried our best and gained a lot of experience and knowledge from the events that have taken place within the year and now we can move on with this knowledge in our pocket. 

Visual StoryBoard!

This week my teammate and I went to the gaming lab to try and create a visual storyboard. After spending couple hours in trying to figure out how to hook up all the equipment we began our process in creating the storyboard.

The game we decided to describe was God of War 3 for PS3. We played about an hour of gameplay before stopping the recording device. It captured all the things we went through during our gameplay... even our loses. The game was extremely slow and hard to play because the devices hooked up to our laptop, because the game was so slow to pick up our controls it was hard to play the game, but we got through it! After playing the game we had realized that God of War had a lot of aspects we did not look at before. This assignment let us look at the actual mechanics of the game and what they used in order for it to be smooth. The orbs obtained (red, green and blue) and the save point was a good example of particles and the close ups on Kratos showed good examples of light effects.

God of War 3 for PS3

The storyboard we create will describe all movements and main scenes in the game-play we went through. We will try to be as descriptive as possible as each part of the board will have a different aspect of the game.

Game-play of Kratos about to go into a save point

Another interesting part we looked at was the menu systems in the game. Simply but very descriptive and easy to use. The menu system also had scrolling system which took the player into different menus, some that upgraded the weapons and some with status updates. All menus were interesting and crucial to the game's mechanics and dynamics.

Menu before starting the game

Homeworking!!

For one of the assignments we need to complete, we need to play and analyze an art game. The art game is used to to create beautiful images and to make the player have a mesmerizing experience. It is not very strong in the story aspect.

The game I decided to critique was FlOw for the Playstation 3. It is an art game that can be purchased on the Playstation Network.

FlOw for PS3

The game starts off with mellow music and a simple set of instructions on how to play the game. after realizing that there are only two different types of movement the player can do he or she can move onto the next screen. The game title appears and the player immediately starts the game swimming around as a single cell organism trying to eat other things in order to grow larger and into more beautiful looking species. After eating certain objects the once single cell organism will have grown into a large organism and then the game will move deeper into the world starting off as a new single cell creature and growing into a different type of artistic being by devouring things around it. This process of eating and evolving continues for six levels. (meaning there are six main single organisms that transform into amazing creatures.) The game is very interesting but I find that art games are not for me. I need a story and other key parts that are in regular games. Even though I do admire the art and graphics in a game I cannot get into a game with just art and amazing music. Overall it was an interesting play and I would recommend it to people that love to draw and have a lot of appreciation towards art and how a game can make use of all its elements.

Game-play for FlOw 

The Gaming Continues!!

Today is our milestone for our game that we are working on. Today our prototyping code should be done and our finished art. We have our preliminary code and basic menus completed. The art is completed and it is in our design documentation. The game is being completed slowly and we believe we can accomplish it within the time.

The coding aspect of our game is being dealt with by other people within our group so most of the milestone that is due is being dealt with by my teammates. In our game we will be using four main levels, this will have four main texture maps. One is for Egypt, Antarctica, New York City and one is used for the Grand Canyon, this will allow players to feel that he or she is actually in the driver seat in the location where the character is at the time.

The game will also include roadblocks and other obstacles that will restrict the player from driving through the level with ease. The roadblocks will push the the vehicle back slowing it down. The obstacles in the game will create a challenge making the user keeping wanting to play until he or she completes the level.

The trailer for our game is below, we believe that if we show the game-play and a cinematic we can drag the attention of gamers to come and try our intense racing action game.

MarioKart BoardGame!!

During this week my partner and I worked on creating a board game from a video game that is already in the market. We chose to do MarioKart for the Wii, it is a lot of fun for the Wii and my friends and I spend a lot of time laughing and playing this game.

MarioKart Wii

The board game is very straight forward and is based off monopoly and snakes and ladders. The board game layout is based on the popular track called Rainbow Road.

The items in the game include:

Blue shell - player in first place goes back six spaces

Red shell - knock person in front of you two spaces back

Bullet Bill - advance six spaces

Star - quick-play card that enables invulnerability for one hit

Banana - drop on current space, if anyone lands on this space they lose item held

Mushroom - advance three spaces

POW - all players go back two spaces except user

Lightning - all players lose items

The board game in its prototype stage

We have created the board game and asked our friends to play the game in order for us to understand how people would react to the game, doing this will allow us to see if our game is ready for the World and if people would purchase it. When creating our actual product for retail we could include something related to MarioKart in order to attract more consumers.

People play testing the board game

Overall I believe the game was a huge success and that if it was released into the market it would be purchased by consumers.

The Documentation continues!

The documentation documents as long as they are, are needed in our full design of the game. Like stated earlier it is essential in getting an in-depth idea of what the game is actual about.

The concept design document is almost completed and now I am turning my attention onto the scope document which is one page that describes the high-concept and core features. This is one page document describes what makes our game stand out from other games.

I would like to put a lot of colour and concept designs on this one page to grab the attention of the reader. I don't want to make it boring but it needs to be detailed enough that all our points are understood. The design must stand out and bring people in towards accepting and wanting more of the game. I believe it needs to "sell your game" so that people will remember and look for it when it comes out or try and find more detail about it. Team Lightning's OverDrive is a 2.5D vehicular action racing game that will have a playable demo soon and we hope that people will want to play it.

Concept Design - our primary design that describes our game. A vehicle equipped with guns blasting though an insane explosion.

The game is coming along and with the documents being implemented the programmers of the game can also look at these reports and see them as sort of a checklist. After finishing an aspect of the game they can say "yeah okay, let's move onto the next thing," organization is very important in making a game because it can get confusing and something can be missed. We hope to bring our game into the real world soon and that it can give the player an experience.

I believe racing games are very standard and if we can make OverDrive stand out from the rest it will be something that players can enjoy.

Documentation

Creating the documentation of a game consists of a bunch of reports that are needed to keep the team and the group on track. From background story to a detailed breakdown of what people are doing the reports are kept for organization.

Lance Lionheart holding a custom made light machine gun in one hand and a pistol in the other. Lance is all about blowing things up and getting the job done.

Vincent Molotov a evil genius that worked for a company that stole his invention and now is seeking revenge.

I have started the "Concept Design Document" and this pretty much describes the game in difference aspects. So far i have covered the story and background of each character in the game. Creating each background story gives a feel for each character. This is an ideal thing to do because without a story inform users who your playing its just another random creature that can move and shoot. I believe people need a story to get fully involved in a story and that is why the story and detailed information about each character is very important.

The story we have created is about three characters that join a highly classified agency that takes care of the world without anyone knowing. I don't want to get to much into the story because I don't want to ruin anything but the organization is called Lightning (like our team name : D) and the main obstacle they must face is a evil genius that creates a super engine and wants to use it to take over the world.

I really enjoy creating and expressing the feel of the game because if people think your game is "lame" before they even play it then they won't experience this amazing game that will hopefully be finished soon.