Next assignment: play a bunch of games. Specifically the ones listed by the teacher. A lot of them are free web games that I've already played before, so it was nice revisiting them. Two of them were You Have to Burn the Rope and This is the Only Level, which we also played in class. The first one is more of a joke, you perform the action described by the title and the game is over. It sets up the tone of a traditional platform game and standard, albeit simple, boss fight, and then the player is treated to a song longer than the actual game, playing with the idea of game length.

The other game takes that idea in a different direction, taking one level and having the player repeat it over and over, with a variant of game play each time. It demonstrates how game play can be derived from limited assets.

We also played Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy in class, but on my own time I played another one of her games, Redder. Redder is an adventure platformer with a retro style, and you explore an alien planet searching for, uh, I don't remember what they were, ancient artifacts or parts of your broken spaceship. Either way, as I played I noticed some graphical glitches, as tiles would flicker and change into other tiles. I thought it could have been due to the programming, some sort of automatic tiling thing, but it got to the point where I realized it was intentional, especially when the music started to be affected. I thought it was really cool how it played with my perception and expectations, as I would wonder what would happen to the game when I got all the collectibles.

 I had also played QWOP before (of course) and the main point of the game was the controls. Using the q,w,o, and p keys, you control each component of the character's legs as he competes in a 100 m dash. Such tedious manipulation and micromanagement of the character's movement leads to hilarious results and also demonstrates the idea of what aspects of a game should be handled automatically by the game and what should be specifically controlled by the player.

One more game I played was... Don't S*** Your Pants, a text based game where you guide a character to use the toilet without soiling his trousers. As you can tell the game is ridiculous and juvenile, but I can't help but giggle immaturely at the entire experience. Here, the game is about discovering all of the possibilities and endings, both victories and defeats, as the game tracks all the endings you accomplish. You also need to think outside the box with all the possibilities, some things we may take for granted in this step by step process, and some things wouldn't come to mind at all.

So this time around we made paper prototypes for our class so we could learn how to construct a game. While I could have made a board game just to fulfill the requirement for the assignment, I wanted to see if I could use an idea I have for a video game mechanic and see how that would pan out. It would be the battle mechanic for an RPG.

I printed out a simple hex grid and some character tokens. Red are the enemies, blue and pink are the player characters. It is a one player game with the player controlling as their choice of character and a "cpu" (me) controlling the enemies, with the goal of the player destroying the enemies. The two playable characters have their own stats: pink moves and attacks at faster speeds, and blue has the ability to attack multiple enemies at a time. What I was trying to achieve was a sort of real time battle system, but since you can't really do real time moving paper tokens around, I broke rounds of battle down into individual "beats," and it would take multiple beats to execute an attack or move one hexagon. Everyone's actions would play out simultaneously rather than in a particular order, with one character performing their actions first before another can. I would keep track of everyone's actions on a spreadsheet since it would take multiple beats to perform actions, which while tedious, would probably be along the lines of how a video game would process code, so its an important mechanic to have. I had to determine what could be performed each beat (you cannot attack and move in overlapping beats, one action must be completed before starting another. However each of those actions can be accompanied by a 60 degree rotation; characters must face opponent to attack) and also what happens when actions happen at the same time (if two characters connect strikes at the same time, damage done by player supersedes enemy damage, and enemy attack null. Also if one characters attack connects the same beat the target moves to a different hex, damage delt is 50/50)

My first play session was a few weeks ago in class. Sorry if I got your name wrong, but I think I played against Justin(edit: okay his name was Devin... or Kevin(edit: okay it was Justin, sorry)). I had the basic mechanics of moving and attacking down, but didn't balance out the stats or any other mechanics. Basically with no choices but to move to your opponent and attack over and over again, the game was pretty boring.
My next session was Sunday, with my brother Matt. I added the two different playable characters, rotation mechanic, and balanced out the stats for each character. I also tested combat with multiple enemies. This session was mostly on the pink character, as the blue was a little too complex. This was also when I determined the simultaneous attack rules and also that I should record all the actions that occur (thanks for the suggestion Matt).
Finally I got in my last session. Actually I had two, before class I had Morgan (not my teacher, but one of my classmates) play a game with me, reaffirming the need to record all actions as I had lost track of everyone's moves. During class, I played against Desiree, and she played as the blue character, and helped me fine tune his different attacks(I had to determine special rotation rules for one of his attacks). Using a spreadsheet to track everyone's actions, playing was a breeze, and we got through 2 successful encounters.
So now I have a more clear understanding of how the game would turn out. While it would be different as an actual program, I can take the principles from this game and expand on them (beats in the video game would each be a fraction of a second, for example, and character speeds can be more precise) I don't really know how to program, but I think I can at least organize and consider what I need to program for a game. -Zach

Edit: Okay so I'm supposed to post the rules so you could play:

Goal: Player kills enemy
players: 1 (enemies controlled by “cpu”)
keep track of each beat and each move.
player chooses character (pink/blue)


pink: 20 hp
attack: 15 damage
thrust, 2 beats, 15 damage
prep->impact
1 hex per beat

blue: 25 Hp
2 attacks:
side swing: 3 hexes in front, 4 beats
ready swing-> impact 1 (5 damage)-> impact 2 (4 damage)-> impact 3 (3 damage)
overhead swing, 1 hex, 3 beats
ready swing-> impact (10 damage)-> follow through (5 damage)
1 hex per 3 beats

enemy
hp 15
attack: lunge 3 beats
ready jump-> lunge (move forward 1 square)-> impact (3 damage)
1 hex 2 beats

Simultaneous impact: player overrules enemy
enemy moves as player strikes or vice versa- 50/50 chance (flip coin)
rotation: matches move speed, can move and rotate one 60 degree section in one beat, or rotate and attack in one beat.

 Hopefully this makes sense, along with what I posted before.

Okay so I have another blog post due tonight so here it is.

So a couple weeks ago we all brought in various board and card games so we could learn about design, learning about the rules and goals of different games. I had brought in the awesome game Munchkin, but never got around to playing it. Allow me to elaborate.

So my group consisted of me and four others: Amy, Frank, Cong, and Kerry (sorry Kerry if I spelled your name wrong.) We started off with a game of Uno.

 

 Simple enough, we could get a round out of the way and get to playing Munchkin. I remembered playing the game all the time as a kid and helped explain the rules; players would take turns playing cards that matched the previous card's number or color, and once you were down to one card you had to call Uno before anyone else did, or else you would have to draw four cards, and the first to play all their cards wins. Actually I ended up learning a few new rules myself (I never knew the draw two card skipped the player's turn). Anyway Frank played his second to last card and called Uno successfully, so we all had to figure out what Frank's card was and make sure we didn't play a card he could play off of. Of course no one had any idea, no one was counting cards, so we just kept playing red cards hoping he didn't have one or that Kerry could play a wild draw 4 card on Frank. In the end though Frank placed his last card, which was red, and won the game.

While we were playing, the teacher, Mr. James Morgan (whom I will call James from now on and in future posts as that is what he prefers) gave us another game, and he wanted us to play that next. I told him we were going to play munchkin, but he wouldn't have it. I think there were three other groups playing that anyway. He gave us a small wooden box with the name Fluxx printed on it, and looking at it I feared opening it would release a wormhole to another dimension. Surely enough, it did, sucking up the rest of the class period.

 

Simply put, Fluxx is a game that changes as you play it. The rules to start with are simply draw one card and play one card, with no goal in sight. The point of the game is to play cards that define the goal and define the rules, such as how many cards you draw in a turn and how many you have in your hand.



We were a bit confused at first because there were blank cards in the deck that allowed you to make up your own rules, goals, and keepers (keepers are the cards you actually play with, various tokens that you need to win, depending on what the goal is), but once we removed those from play, we could actually be confused by the game. At one point we had to draw 5 cards at the start of our turn and discard all but two by the end of our turn, and at another the first card we played each turn had to be randomly chosen by the player to our left.



 After an hour, I won, not because of what I did, but because Kerry played a goal whose conditions I already met and he didn't realize it (I didn't see it at first either, I thought the goal was to have the keepers brain and no t.v., but it was actually brain and t.v. couldn't be in play at all), so it was a bit of a hollow victory.

 

Class was over, and I didn't get to play Munchkin. Frank didn't get to play his game either, and he had just bought a new copy of connect four for this class. We stuck around after class though so Frank could break in his game.

 

He won that too.

 

So what have I learned from those games? Well I learned That Uno was about anticipating your opponent's moves, knowing what he would play next and calling Uno before he did, and also using the various wild cards effectively. In Fluxx, I learned to be aware of your surroundings. Maybe if Kerry read the card carefully enough and noticed I already met the conditions of that goal, he wouldn't have played it and gave me the victory. More importantly, Fluxx taught me to adapt to changing conditions; specifically the conditions that prevented me from playing Munchkin.

And even though I didn't play Connect Four myself, I learned there is always time for Connect Four.

-Zach

Special Thanks to Cong for the photos, and everyone who played these games with me.

Hello, sorry if this is late, I think I was supposed to start this blog earlier this semester.

Anyway, my name is Zach Hutton, and this is my first semester at San Jose State. I am currently taking a game design theory class, and our teacher is requiring us all to keep blogs, report on class activities, and express our thoughts on games. This blog is not just for our class, but is open to the public. I don't know who will read this or if anyone will read this, but I'll post anyway and who knows, I might even continue this blog once the class ends, maybe I'll find some other use for it.

By now, we were supposed to have submitted our second blog post, So I'll post it later today. For now, I'm on the bus and it is really uncomfortable to use my computer.

Zach Hutton.