For a good while, we have been working in game maker. This week, we are starting on a project to improve one of the pre-existing games that we have made. One thing that we were supposed to improve upon was the game progression and interest. We were to implement certain features into our game, using the knowledge that we already had about making games, to make the game more interesting. As the games were, they did not have enough in them to make them interesting; they lacked a good sense of difficulty. The games had a good and basic set of game mechanics, but their difficulty ranged from a few asteroid (in the game Galactic mail) to a couple more asteroids and a few more moons. The problem was that they were too basic. after a while, the player would get tired of the game because it lacked a sense of achievement or progression. For this project, I chose to improve the Lazarus game, as it seemed to be the easiest to work with. One thing that needed major improvement was the level system. The levels ranged from a single block obstacle at the start, to three boxes and a harder-to-reach button. For this, I added more levels with different types of obstacles. First, I changed the walls so that the player had a smaller space to move around in, then I made it so the player could block the button if they were not careful about where they stood, and finally, I make it so the player could get trapped under a wall. Another thing I have been trying out is a type of box that is indestructible from the other boxes, but also light enough that it wouldn't crush any other box. This feature would help a player set a stack of boxes so they aren't super frustrated when their stack of boxes is crushed by that one stone box. This would help the game progression by both speeding things up as time goes on as well as balance difficulty and playability. When considering the general game progression of this game, I feel that what I have done doesn't really help the actual progression, but it does acknowledge the players own desires and expectations for the game.
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This week we have been working hard in game maker to build a video game. We were given tutorials for each of these games to follow in order to make these games correctly. The first assigned game was called Evil Clutches and the goal was for the mother dragon (the player) to collect her babies as well as avoid or kill the demons that were coming after her. The player had the ability to move the dragon up or down as well as shoot fireballs at the incoming enemies to earn points. The goal of the game was to collect the most points. Overall, making the game was quite simple as the tutorial for the game was very detailed. I was able to finish this game very quickly, which put me ahead of the rest of my class. One mistake, however, is that I neglected to follow the "finishing touches" part of the tutorial as carefully, and missed a somewhat large part of the game information. The second game we "made" was a game called Galactic Mail. The objective of this game was to deliver all the mail to each moon colony without being struck by the passing asteroids, which would destroy the player's starship. Like the previous project, I was able to finish this in a short amount of time with little to no problems with the game, putting me further ahead in the class. One problem I did encounter during this was the ship controls not being as smooth as they should have been, causing the player to be unable to move the ship properly. When going back into the ship controls, I found that I had not enables the 'relative' option for the movement key. I learned that the between relative and nonrelative will effect your game in a huge way, making the game either move with fluidity, or in short bursts depending on the action the player is performing. The last game I made was a game called Lazarus. The objective of this game was for the player to avoid the stacking boxes while trying to reach the button to get to the next level. Although this game was much longer and more complicated than the other games, I had no trouble while making the game. In this game, we were told to make a cheat button to allow the player to skip levels (strictly used for grading purposes). After finishing this game, I had a lot of extra time to help my peers with their games. I realized while helping others that one simple mistake as forgetting to enable something or not can determine if your game is playable or not. Game maker is a really useful tool for learning to make games because it tells you about the mistake you made. If we were using real game making engines, I feel that a lot of people in my class would have a lot of troubles making the games because they would forget about those little things and not be able to tell what is wrong. One example of this is from the peer I helped the most with my extra time; she was having a lot of troubles with her falling boxes in the Lazarus game and she couldn't figure out why. I explained to her that she needed to have a collision event with every box in every falling box object. Since she didn't have these collisions, her game would crash when one box came in contact with another box without a collision event. These projects from the past week have taught me a lot about how games are made and how they function. When I apply this game knowledge to the video games I am currently playing, I can understand basically what the game developer did at each turn to make the game function. It is really interesting to see. This week, we began to create games. We were all assigned resources to make the game Evil Clutches. In this game, you were a mother dragon with the goal of saving her babies from the evil Demon Lord without being killed by one of his demon minions (being a dragon, the player had the ability to shoot fireballs to kill the minions). One crucial decision the player must make is if it is the right time to shoot a fireball. There is always the risk of killing a baby instead of the demon flying at you. The player must also decide where to move in order that the demons will not kill them when the player is trying to collect a baby. This game also has pretty good balance between shooting demons, avoiding to kill/collecting babies, and just general evasion when necessary. It also has a good balance between the player and the game and the game features. The game being as simple as it is, the game does only punish the player for making a mistake and nothing else. The game also has a simple, but distinct set of game features such as the dragon, the fireballs, the demon lord, the babies, the demon minions and the non-interactable background. The game provides rewards in the form of a point system. If you end the game with the highest score, you are put at the top of the scoreboard. In terms of game flow, I would say it flows nicely, but the game also never really gets any harder as time progresses. That being said, there is no real challenge if you know how to play the game well. Another thing that this game could improve soon is its story, because nothing of the likes are actually presented on the actual gameplay. Also. The music is just a simple song looped, which can get pretty annoying if you have been playing the game for an extended period of time. Overall, I think that this game is all i needs to be to be a good game (for my first game).
In class, we have been working through the process of coming up with an idea for a game and how to market it. We were told that the game had to be a related to a flight simulator. From that we had all the freedom to make our "game" as "responsible game manufacturers". My game involved not only a flight simulator, but also the immersive, steampunk world of a robot dragon on their quest to conquer their individual worlds; land, air, water, and fire. Being an open world type of game, there is no level system of which the player progresses through. Instead of different stages with varying difficulty level, my game will have one stage with varying difficulty the further you go. There will also be stages involving cities or towns, which could qualify as a level, where the player must decide whether to ally or attack or village and then take action accordingly. Since the villages and cities are randomly generated in both their look and placement on the map, there cannot be a real level system. There will be limits to how the cities are generated, like how small a large city can be and the general area where it can be placed, but most of the game will be randomly generated. The only exception to that is the actual map and its landmarks. In terms of difficulty, the larger cities are the easiest to find, but the hardest to attack/ally with. The smaller villages are the easiest to take out, but they are also the hardest to find.
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AuthorMy name is Anna Marshall, nice to meet you! check out the 'about me' page for more information about me! Archives
May 2018
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