For my interpretation of this theme, I chose to use moths, and “attract” them through a level with the use of sources of light (candles, here). It’s somewhat of an indirect control scheme, which is an idea I’ve always been interested in developing around. Being able to issue commands that must then be “interpreted” by the characters you’re controlling offers something unique, as we must discover what our commands do when we issue them, and can’t depend on the immediacy that controls give us in most games

“Patapon” is an excellent example of this. You issue your drum commands, which are then interpreted by your patapon army, and the resulting action comes from them, not from your direct input. You can enter any set of drum beats possible out of the available sounds, but only those with purpose to the army will be used. In a way, you must learn to speak their language to command them.

This week’s game isn’t something as complex as that, but you must learn how to best navigate the space with the moths in order to help them to their goal.

I hope you enjoy it, and as always, feedback is greatly appreciated!

week4_attraction_final

Photo by "unconstructive_bry" on Flickr

After using the theme “100 Things” from Experimental Gameplay to produce “Envy” last week, I’m going to use “Attraction” as this week’s theme.

This month’s Experimental Gameplay theme is “Rejection,” which I thought that “Attraction” fit well with, as a contrast. I plan to tackle “Rejection” next week, with that game coming just in time for Valentine’s Day.

This bit of pre-planning will help to lock in my theme for the weeks, and force me to commit to the theme and less to the game I can design around the “best theme” of the list I’ve got in front of me. At the same time, choosing a topic ahead of time just gives me that much more time to think about it, and that much more to have going on in my brain while trying to focus down on the current week’s game. The locked in theme from last week, where I really had no choice about it, challenged me in new ways, and led to something altogether different than I might have produced if given a full choice about what to base the game on.

Here is the final version of “Envy,” my game based on the theme of 100 Things.

I hope you enjoy it.

In searching for a game, I struggled to find that idea that “just fit,” and worked with the theme. 100 Red Balloons, 100 Dalmatians, 100 Lights, 100 this-that-and-the-others — nothing seemed quite right for me on this piece. Something clicked a few days ago, and my ideas poured forth for a game dealing with our “relationships.”

These days, much of our social culture exists along the cables of the internet, via social sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). We friend everybody we even met once, and eventually, have more friends than we know how to truly deal with on a regular basis. The feed of information becomes overwhelming itself, let alone actually interacting with them, even through a quick, easy to create message. What if we had to deal with just 100 of them, but they were prone to leaving us behind if we didn’t pay them attention quickly enough? How many could of these relationships could we truly deal with and manage to maintain?

Thus the idea for a somewhat more artsy game, that I’ve come to call “Envy,” was born.

Here are the first two builds of this game. Move the cursor over a box to “connect” with a person and quickly renew the relationship, but watch for failing ones, as once that friend is gone, they’re out for good. How many can you maintain in this game?

week3_100things_v1

week3_100things_v2

(please play before reading feedback questions below)

Questions to lead the feedback –

• Which version was more appealing, graphically?
• How many relationships could you maintain?
• Is the pace at which the icons shrink adequate?
• Does the message/commentary communicate well?
• Should the icons be smaller/larger at the start? By how much?
• Was the play session time length adequate? Should it be longer/shorter?
• Did you actively decide to leave behind any relationships? How did you decide?
• Any other thoughts?

Thanks, yet again, for any thoughts or feedback you might have!

Photo by yamagatacamille on Flickr

Week 3’s theme comes to us from the the Experimental Gameplay Project, which is a result of the class that inspired my work on these little games. Each month, this site chooses another theme upon which to base a game, which must be completed within 7 days, prior to the end of the month. This schedule fits in wonderfully with mine, as Sunday is the last day of the month, and an excellent time to try and complete a game by.

This month’s topic is 100 Things. It has proven, for me at least, to be a difficult topic to tackle.

I don’t know yet what my 100 things will be, or even what I’m going to do with my 100 things, but I imagine as time crunches down on me for getting this project completed, the game will start coming together. I’ve still got a fair bit of time left on this one, comparatively.

More updates on this one as they come!

Source: thecaucas on Flickr

So I came to the end of this week and came up a bit short in the art department for the game. Part of this was due to time constraints, and part was due to some nasty issues I had with a pixel art program called Pixen. Regardless of these issues, here is what I’ve come to call the “Deadline Edition” of my game based on the “Guardian” theme.

If you’ve got any thoughts or feedback, I’d love to hear it. I hope you enjoy it!

guardian_deadlineEdition

Included in this version is a bug fix to reset the enemy count each time the game is reset — preventing cases where no enemies show up while playing. (Thanks, Ben, for spotting that one!)

If at some point my schedule allows it, I’d like to fix the art here, but the most important aspect here is that I feel the gameplay is working, for the most part.

]]> http://www.rendersmith.net/blog/archives/164/feed 0 http://www.rendersmith.net/blog/archives/159 http://www.rendersmith.net/blog/archives/159#comments Sun, 24 Jan 2010 06:45:15 +0000 renderSmith http://www.rendersmith.net/blog/?p=159

Guardian (Photo:ciberia via flickr)

I’ve been a bit behind schedule on getting things working this week, but I’ve got my first playable version of my game based on the theme “Guardian” up now, ready to be downloaded below.

The thought behind this game is that the player is a guardian or defender, protecting something significant that is easily destroyed. The player is an ultimate guardian, impervious to all attacks and equipped with a projectile weapon. If the enemies are able to reach the object, it is destroyed/explodes/bad things happen, and the game is over.

While moving through a level or world, the player must push the object to move it, but must reduce their speed, as well as sacrifice their ability to defend much of the onslaught while doing so. It is up to the player to determine the best path, and the best times to push or to defend the object. The level is completed upon pushing the object into the goal space at the bottom of the level.

In this version, I focused on getting the ideas down to a playable version — the plan is to lengthen the level to twice or three times the length in the final version (due tomorrow — yikes!). Of course, the art is brutally rough as well, but hopefully should be sufficient to communicate what it needs to for tonight.

Since this is the first playable version — a few questions –

• Were you able to complete the level? If not, what was the biggest issue keeping you from it?
• Would you change the controls at all to make them more intuitive?
• Was the number of enemies adequate?
• Could the movement of the enemies (speed/jumping) be improved at all?
• Was the pushing speed tuned properly? Should it be slower/faster for better play?
• Did you ever feel the need to shoot at an angle? Was it useful if you did?
• Any glaring errors/bugs that you noticed?
• Additional thoughts?

Thanks for any feedback you might have for this version of the game — it’s definitely useful to hear from real players about their experiences!

Guardian_Game_v1

It’s already Thursday, and I only really settled on the topic yesterday, but I do still plan to try and crunch hard this weekend to get this game done in time to have the final version posted Sunday night or Monday morning before work. The potential for better art may suffer a bit for this, but the focus of this experiment is on the gameplay and proving that those ideas work before all else.

Busy times ahead, but I do plan to keep posting as things move forward, and I should hopefully have an early build by Saturday morning.

Above, I’ve included an image of the final version of “Multibreaker.” Not much has changed in the way of the dynamics of how the game plays from the previous version, but I’ve dropped in some more complete visuals to help the experience.

I plan to do a post mortem of this project in the next day or so, which will be posted up as soon as it’s complete.

For now — enjoy Multibreaker!

Multibreaker_final

New version, now with faster moving ball and respawning bricks.

Today’s task — art and final adjustments!