Aquila: Rise of the Emperor
I was unaware that the Roman emperors had war planes, but maybe my knowledge of history is lacking here. It's also possible that I've misunderstood the game's setting, or maybe the planes could be a placeholder for something. Nonetheless, I was confused by them.
Regardless, it is impressive that the team had a digital prototype working at such an early stage of the project. Although apparently buggy, using temp art work (at least I hope so), and small in scope, their prototype seemed to cover the primary mechanics of the game. It appears their testers at least enjoyed it, which bodes well for the final game. Also, their testing seems to have uncovered plenty of bugs and missing functionality (such as stat feedback). All in all, this thing looks rather promising, even though it's being made in GameMaker.
Deep Field
Uhm, a strategy game within a spatial field? I guess it sounds impressive but I'm clueless as to what it means. Apparently it all comes down to blocking balls and throwing them at targets. Not sure where the strategy is to be found in that. I also didn't understand how the 'acting it out' testing really worked or what they discovered from it. The mechanics seem so dead simple that I can't imagine it taking more than a few hours to make a prototype in Flash or GameMaker, which seems more useful, unless 3-dimensionality is somehow absolutely critical.
Somehow I got the feeling that the following phrase was used sometime during development: "Okay guys, we can't seem to figure out what we wanna do, so let's just roll around in chairs and throw balls at things."
The Legend of Chopstick Chung
I rather liked the visuals in this presentation and the game looked surprisingly polished considering the early stage in the process. The idea was also communicated well and seemed well thought out. As a concept it's pretty simple, but it allows for a lot of creativity and opportunity for expansion. It is important though to focus on the presentation and polish of each minigame rather than churning out too many half-developed ideas. But it looks like this is exactly what the team is doing, so I wouldn't be too worried.
Dynasty
A bit confused by this one at first but reading the testing doc cleared things up a bit. I'm still not sure what role the MSN games played in the testing, but I was quite impressed by the look and feel of the paper prototype. I remember seeing this 'paper window' approach in 312 as well, and it really fits well with the RPG genre. It just makes sense not being able to see what's coming up. The history and puzzles add plenty of additonal points of interest, and at least make it sound different from a lot of other RPG concepts, even though the game's working details are still rather unclear. But keys and moster fighting are involved, which are always fun.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Weekly Assessment #6
Well, it looks like we're making a Flash game now. It's not entirely surprising, considering the issues we've had with Torque. Even judging on the limited basis of what I've seen of it, it's really not the most flexible or approachable working environment one could imagine.
Fortunately, however, we do still have plans to pursue the Torque version of the game after classes end. If we can pull it off, the extra initiative ought to make it look even more impressive on a portfolio. Also, making a Flash game is hardly a total sacrifice. Sure, 3D is cooler but we can cover most of what we set out to do in a 2D format. My little 3D ship still looks pretty good as an animated sprite. My poor buildings though are another matter; I just don't know how I'm gonna get them to work from a top-down perspective. My towers have been reduced to sad little circles now. Sigh.
On a positive note, at least the development of character stuff shouldn't be affected by this change in format. So, whatever we want to do with the cutscenes and in-game chatter should potentially be just as cool. Thus, I would like to invest a considerable fraction of my resources on the characters, and I've mostly been working on a model of Clyde this past week.
The game prototype also turned out rather nicely; Lawson clearly knows a little something about Flash. Today's (or technically yesterday's) testing session may have been a bit last minute, but I think we got some great feedback and highly positive first impressions. And now that we finally have something tangible to work with, I expect our team meetings may prove more productive.
Fortunately, however, we do still have plans to pursue the Torque version of the game after classes end. If we can pull it off, the extra initiative ought to make it look even more impressive on a portfolio. Also, making a Flash game is hardly a total sacrifice. Sure, 3D is cooler but we can cover most of what we set out to do in a 2D format. My little 3D ship still looks pretty good as an animated sprite. My poor buildings though are another matter; I just don't know how I'm gonna get them to work from a top-down perspective. My towers have been reduced to sad little circles now. Sigh.
On a positive note, at least the development of character stuff shouldn't be affected by this change in format. So, whatever we want to do with the cutscenes and in-game chatter should potentially be just as cool. Thus, I would like to invest a considerable fraction of my resources on the characters, and I've mostly been working on a model of Clyde this past week.
The game prototype also turned out rather nicely; Lawson clearly knows a little something about Flash. Today's (or technically yesterday's) testing session may have been a bit last minute, but I think we got some great feedback and highly positive first impressions. And now that we finally have something tangible to work with, I expect our team meetings may prove more productive.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Third Round of Critiques on Paper Prototypes
Stick Ninja
As far as I can figure, this game is a 2D platformer or side-scrolling action game. If this is the case, I don't quite understand why the paper prototype appeared specifically designed for a five on one confrontation. In a side scroller I would expect enemies to be rather sequential.
Then again, there were plenty of things that I didn't quite understand from the presentation.
Bigger text and less lines going through text would also have made the thing more readable.
Apparently there are multiple characters, but the only character property is a combat bonus, making higher bonus characters simply better. This seems like a strange use of character choice, but maybe things will be different in the final game. There also seemed to be a number of different weapons with different bonuses, and something tricky about calculating attack points that the testers had difficulty with.
In the prototype the mechanics seem to boil down to selecting the right weapon for the right enemy type and picking the order in which to attack enemies. But it seemed to me that the enemy type was always known to the player and that weapons could be switched between attacks, so I'm unsure what exactly prevents you from always selecting the best weapon. Similarly, I didn't understand why it mattered what order the enemies were attacked in. Of course I may have misunderstood the game, but it didn't seem like there were any choices of significance for the player to make.
Zodiac War
This one appears to be just a 2D fighter, little different from Street Fighter or the dozens of others out there. The well defined nature of the genre undoubtedly makes things easier as there is abundant sources of reference for what mechanics are known to work, but it would also have been nice to see a few touches of originality.
The presentation for this prototype was very light on information, and even the testing doc does not really explain exactly what mechanic was being tested. It appears they translated the fighting game into cards, representing movement and attacks, but it remains unclear how these were used. Are attacks played simultaneously to simulate the timing and moments of vulnerability that are so critical in the genre? Do some attacks overcome others? Is there a longer delay with some attacks?
In addition, the results of their testing sound rather useless, as good pace, attack variety and clear controls are absolute common sense for any fighting game.
Crack Quest
Although the gameplay is far from original and the subject matter is questionable, this game was impressively far along in the production process. This alpha version of the game (or maybe pre-alpha?) certainly allowed for more accurate testing than a paper prototype would have. It seems their testing response was pretty positive, with the only issue being the length/unskippability of the cutscenes. Given the genre and ludicrous story, I certainly wouldn't be too interested in watching them unless they were artistically mindblowing or something. I'd say if the intro cutscene is longer than about five seconds then cut it back, put in a skip button, or integrate the story into the gameplay.
As far as I can figure, this game is a 2D platformer or side-scrolling action game. If this is the case, I don't quite understand why the paper prototype appeared specifically designed for a five on one confrontation. In a side scroller I would expect enemies to be rather sequential.
Then again, there were plenty of things that I didn't quite understand from the presentation.
Bigger text and less lines going through text would also have made the thing more readable.
Apparently there are multiple characters, but the only character property is a combat bonus, making higher bonus characters simply better. This seems like a strange use of character choice, but maybe things will be different in the final game. There also seemed to be a number of different weapons with different bonuses, and something tricky about calculating attack points that the testers had difficulty with.
In the prototype the mechanics seem to boil down to selecting the right weapon for the right enemy type and picking the order in which to attack enemies. But it seemed to me that the enemy type was always known to the player and that weapons could be switched between attacks, so I'm unsure what exactly prevents you from always selecting the best weapon. Similarly, I didn't understand why it mattered what order the enemies were attacked in. Of course I may have misunderstood the game, but it didn't seem like there were any choices of significance for the player to make.
Zodiac War
This one appears to be just a 2D fighter, little different from Street Fighter or the dozens of others out there. The well defined nature of the genre undoubtedly makes things easier as there is abundant sources of reference for what mechanics are known to work, but it would also have been nice to see a few touches of originality.
The presentation for this prototype was very light on information, and even the testing doc does not really explain exactly what mechanic was being tested. It appears they translated the fighting game into cards, representing movement and attacks, but it remains unclear how these were used. Are attacks played simultaneously to simulate the timing and moments of vulnerability that are so critical in the genre? Do some attacks overcome others? Is there a longer delay with some attacks?
In addition, the results of their testing sound rather useless, as good pace, attack variety and clear controls are absolute common sense for any fighting game.
Crack Quest
Although the gameplay is far from original and the subject matter is questionable, this game was impressively far along in the production process. This alpha version of the game (or maybe pre-alpha?) certainly allowed for more accurate testing than a paper prototype would have. It seems their testing response was pretty positive, with the only issue being the length/unskippability of the cutscenes. Given the genre and ludicrous story, I certainly wouldn't be too interested in watching them unless they were artistically mindblowing or something. I'd say if the intro cutscene is longer than about five seconds then cut it back, put in a skip button, or integrate the story into the gameplay.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Weekly Assessment #5
Our prototype deadline is coming up and I'm hoping we can, at the very least, get some of my models into a pre-prototype tomorrow. At the minimum we should end up with some of my terrain pieces floating in the sky, with my flyer model flying around them. Naturally, for the prototype deadline in week 12 we need to have the bomb mechanic working. Perhaps not entirely polished, but at least functional.
For my part, there shouldn't be any problems getting some art into the prototype. I've dramatically changed our main player vehicle into a much improved, and probably final, form. I've also finished the mobile garage and four different buildings for the ruins. I've tested the main flyer and some of the ruins within Torque and everything has been pretty smooth sailing so far. I've only needed to go back for a little tweaking with scaling and multi-mesh grouping to get things to export properly.
As far as the characters go, I haven't managed to do anything further. At the moment, I'm thinking of doing just shoulder-plus-head models for all the character others than Clyde. I would, however, like to get Clyde fully into some cutscenes, and in any case we need a simplified clyde model to put in the flyer's open cockpit.
Our regular weekly meeting is on again for tomorrow at noon, and hopefully Lawson and Matt have gotten some cool stuff working. Fortunately, I don't have to mess around with that ugly code. All I've gotta do is extrude some cubes and paint them.
Things to do tomorrow:
- get my models into Lawson and Matt's pre-prototype
- texture the hippie vehicle
- get as many ruins done as possible
For my part, there shouldn't be any problems getting some art into the prototype. I've dramatically changed our main player vehicle into a much improved, and probably final, form. I've also finished the mobile garage and four different buildings for the ruins. I've tested the main flyer and some of the ruins within Torque and everything has been pretty smooth sailing so far. I've only needed to go back for a little tweaking with scaling and multi-mesh grouping to get things to export properly.
As far as the characters go, I haven't managed to do anything further. At the moment, I'm thinking of doing just shoulder-plus-head models for all the character others than Clyde. I would, however, like to get Clyde fully into some cutscenes, and in any case we need a simplified clyde model to put in the flyer's open cockpit.
Our regular weekly meeting is on again for tomorrow at noon, and hopefully Lawson and Matt have gotten some cool stuff working. Fortunately, I don't have to mess around with that ugly code. All I've gotta do is extrude some cubes and paint them.
Things to do tomorrow:
- get my models into Lawson and Matt's pre-prototype
- texture the hippie vehicle
- get as many ruins done as possible
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Weekly Assessment #4
I wish I'd gotten more done this week, but the 355 programming junk has really weighed me down, along with several other projects and BOL II. I have no new concept sketches this time, but in my opinion there's nothing else we really need. The characters are more or less set in stone, and the ruins are often easier to think up in Maya than on paper.
The terrain has moved forward a little bit, and at least I can say with fairly high confidence that the required workflow is clear now. It's only a question of spitting out building models and texture maps from here on out. Plus, the models for the mobile garage and hippie vehicle are complete, so it's only a matter of texturing those (although that will probably take quite a bit longer than modeling).
I am expecting a bit of a lull in other projects next week so I should be able to get more done, particularly next weekend. But to be honest, the other parts of the project were still in relatively early stages of development in the last meeting, so perhaps I shouldn't be too worried. Our regular four-hour meeting is on for tomorrow afternoon once again, so I guess I'm about to find out how the whole thing is shaping up and what kinds of targets I should be aiming for.
And now for some sleep...
The terrain has moved forward a little bit, and at least I can say with fairly high confidence that the required workflow is clear now. It's only a question of spitting out building models and texture maps from here on out. Plus, the models for the mobile garage and hippie vehicle are complete, so it's only a matter of texturing those (although that will probably take quite a bit longer than modeling).
I am expecting a bit of a lull in other projects next week so I should be able to get more done, particularly next weekend. But to be honest, the other parts of the project were still in relatively early stages of development in the last meeting, so perhaps I shouldn't be too worried. Our regular four-hour meeting is on for tomorrow afternoon once again, so I guess I'm about to find out how the whole thing is shaping up and what kinds of targets I should be aiming for.
And now for some sleep...
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Second Round of Critiques on Prototype Presentations
Last class there were another four presentations and one of them was ours, leaving only three to crit this time. So, here we go:
3rd Cloud
It was interesting to see someone actually doing an electronic prototype. With the introductory description and abundant screenshots, it was also easy to get a feel for the type of game they were making. But being unfamiliar with RPGMaker, I was unsure how much of what I was seeing was original and what things were part of the engine. I'm assuming that all of the art is not original content (though I could be wrong about this), so I remain unsure about whether the team is planning to pursue original art or not, or how much planning/effort actually went into this stage of the game.
The presentation, however, was quite engaging and I got the feeling they really learned from their user testing. They seemed to realize the different styles of play that apply to RPGs, the issues of equipping items, and various associations/expectations (such as random monster encounters) arising from familiriaty with a host of similar games.
Drive-thru Tycoon
This presentation wasn't as entertaining as the previous one, but I did like the exceptionally thorough description of the prototype's mechanics, as well as the testing circumstances. I found quite a few grammatical errors in the document and on occasion found the text a bit too small.
Overall though, the prototype and testing process seemed well thought out and quite successful. This genre also seems to translate very well into paper form, and aside from the AI, it appears that all of their major game mechanics were representable.
Food Fight
As I understand it, this game is intended to be a realtime, Flash-type game about cafeteria food fights, but it was represented in paper form as a turn-based Battleship-look-alike. I could, however, be mistaken here.
As with many other presentations, I found this presentation a little short on information provided, but I really liked the look of the prototype setup and the game characters. In fact, judging just by looks, this was the most impressive paper prototype thus far. Looking at the setup image, this could almost be a fully fledged board/card game in its own right.
Since I know very little about the prototype's mechanics or what the final game mechanics are going to be, there's little I can say about what could have been done differently here. From the team's own observations though, it seems they had quite a lot of issues with the prototype, which is surprising considering the competent look of the setup.
3rd Cloud
It was interesting to see someone actually doing an electronic prototype. With the introductory description and abundant screenshots, it was also easy to get a feel for the type of game they were making. But being unfamiliar with RPGMaker, I was unsure how much of what I was seeing was original and what things were part of the engine. I'm assuming that all of the art is not original content (though I could be wrong about this), so I remain unsure about whether the team is planning to pursue original art or not, or how much planning/effort actually went into this stage of the game.
The presentation, however, was quite engaging and I got the feeling they really learned from their user testing. They seemed to realize the different styles of play that apply to RPGs, the issues of equipping items, and various associations/expectations (such as random monster encounters) arising from familiriaty with a host of similar games.
Drive-thru Tycoon
This presentation wasn't as entertaining as the previous one, but I did like the exceptionally thorough description of the prototype's mechanics, as well as the testing circumstances. I found quite a few grammatical errors in the document and on occasion found the text a bit too small.
Overall though, the prototype and testing process seemed well thought out and quite successful. This genre also seems to translate very well into paper form, and aside from the AI, it appears that all of their major game mechanics were representable.
Food Fight
As I understand it, this game is intended to be a realtime, Flash-type game about cafeteria food fights, but it was represented in paper form as a turn-based Battleship-look-alike. I could, however, be mistaken here.
As with many other presentations, I found this presentation a little short on information provided, but I really liked the look of the prototype setup and the game characters. In fact, judging just by looks, this was the most impressive paper prototype thus far. Looking at the setup image, this could almost be a fully fledged board/card game in its own right.
Since I know very little about the prototype's mechanics or what the final game mechanics are going to be, there's little I can say about what could have been done differently here. From the team's own observations though, it seems they had quite a lot of issues with the prototype, which is surprising considering the competent look of the setup.
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