One Year Later...

It was last year that I've posted here. Since then I have stopped attending San Jose state and started going to Cogswell College in Sunnyvale. It's not a very large or well-known school, but certainly a hidden gem. I'm still pursuing a career in game design, majoring in game design art, which I should have been doing the whole time (I'm still not sure what digital media art is, but I know it's not the degree I wanted). I started Cogswell over the summer, and I've been taking 3d modeling classes and finishing my basic art classes. For my final for figure drawing, we were required to create a portfolio of our work for the semester: five pictures from the beginning of the semester and 30 others of our choosing. The teacher recommended that we post our portfolios online, so I thought I would dust off my old blog and post it here. I'm taking this class for my major, so it still counts as game design right? So anyway here's my work.

I remember in my last post asking myself if I would continue my blog after my game development class. No one actually reads this, so there isn't much point in writing this explanation. But maybe someday I'll actually use this blog to document my game design experiences, and people will actually read this. And maybe they'll look back and see these early posts. So sure, Why not? At least this will explain the random assortment of pictures below that I couldn't figure out how to properly align.

Speaking of which, the pictures should be in chronological order, from oldest to most recent.
Anyway, I'm almost 10 minutes late for my last modeling class... I should get going.

-Zach Hutton

My Portfolio

Okay last blog post. I mentioned I would do a part 3 in my previous post, but like everything I'm running behind.
This post I was supposed to discuss my final project. For this, we all worked on developing games. My contribution was working on the sprites for a classmate's game, Nick Saric. The game was the Outsider, and I don't have a link for it... okay I'm a complete mess, this post was due two days ago, and I have other things to catch up on, and I had a headache... okay whatever.

I worked on the sprite for the main character, I kind of had to teach myself how to animate, so I probably didn't get as much done as I wished, but I had a bunch of projects due... okay now I'm making way too many excuses, but I'm stressed and overwhelmed and just want it to be over. Besides the main character I was going to do a zombie sprite

I did this last minute and didn't have time to put it in the final game.

The point is, making a game involves a lot of time and investment. I didn't have a whole lot of time to invest, and now I know not to have so much on my plate and manage my time better.
Anyway, I should contact Nick for a link to the game.

I have thought about the use of faqs and replay value before. I'm a fan of JRPGs, which do involve a great deal of time investment, and I came up with the criteria that a game is good depending on if I want to use an faq or not. If I like a game, I'd be willing to play it again to find all the secrets; If I don't like it, I'll use an faq to find all the quests and items in one playthrough, because I do not want to play it again.

It's an idea that I've considered when it comes to designing games. I wouldn't want to play through the exact same game again, especially a JRPG, just to get one thing that I missed. And if I'm expected to play through a game several times just to find everything, forget it I'll use an faq. If a game offers replay value, it needs variety, offering things like unique choices and branching stories, and they better be distinct and game changing enough to be worth playing again.

A lot of these ideas occurred to me when playing Persona 3 and Chrono cross. I played and enjoyed Persona 4 without a walkthrough, and going into Persona 3 I decided I wouldn't use a walkthrough, giving me the chance to explore everything the game has to offer, doing multiple playthroughs as needed. One in-game month later and I saw that this game wasn't as fun as Persona 4. I wasn't going to play through Persona 3 again, I could barely stand playing the first time. I didn't like the idea of building my Social link with Kenji over and over again (freakin' Kenji... no asking your teacher to date you is not a good idea... okay I'll support you just so I can max this social link and then completely ignore you.)

The Persona games are unique in that you are limited by the in game calendar, only able to do a few actions each day. If you don't play right you won't be able to accomplish everything in one playthrough. If I wanted to max all my social links, do the quests, fuse all the personas, etc. I would either have to do multiple playthroughs to determing the best strategy or use an faq. Even in Persona 4 I opted to use a walkthrough for my second playthrough. I wouldn't want to play through a game again, doing all the actions I already did on one play through, just to do the few that I missed.

In Chrono Cross, I thought it was really cool that there were 40+ characters that can join your party. Like Chrono Trigger, there were multiple endings, so I thought the story would play out in unique ways depending on who was in your party. Not even Mass Effect met those expectations and that was ten years later. The story branched off maybe 2 times, and one decision barely had any difference between choices. Both branching points in the story reconvene and continue on with no difference, save maybe a few characters in your party. Yes, of the 44 characters, only 9 depend on the story branches, you only get one of three in the first branching point and three of six in the second. Half of the characters join your party just by advancing through the story so you'll get them no matter what, and you can get all the others in the same playthrough. So in total, a second playthrough is necessary to get four characters, and a third just to get the last one. And there are maybe a handful of moments that whoever is in your party causes something to happen, so doing a replay with different characters in your party is mostly unnecessary. Only one ending out of the twelve is affected by characters in your party, the rest are like in Chrono Trigger and just depend on when you fight the final boss. None of those characters change the story in any influential way by having them in your party. It's just the same one, unless you get a different ending, which just means it's the same story except it's cut short.

That was a game that on paper seemed like it offered a ton of replay value, making different choices each play through. But it's not enough variety to play through the same game, going to the same locations, and occasionally reading some dialogue you haven't gotten before or getting a new item. I'm not going to play through the same game over and over just to get a character I missed. Not when I have an faq to tell me how to get them.

So that brings me to my point, or points. When it comes to walkthroughs a game should encourage discovering things on your own without any sort of guide and without the fear of missing something. And if a gamer does miss something, playing a game again to get it shouldn't be punishment, playing a game should be fun. I could play Braid again to get an item I missed because it only took a couple of hours. Getting something you missed in a JRPG could take hours, an experience made worse if it's the exact same one as before. There should be variety in each playthrough, otherwise they should just skip over all the stuff they've done before to get whatever missing thing.

However, I could be wrong on both counts. For now, I'm tired. I might bring up my counterpoints in a third part later.

Well finals are around the corner. I have two projects due Monday, a third due Thursday, and various final essays to turn in. Also of course I have one more blog post due. I'll take a break from making game sprites and write an article of my choice: I'm gonna talk about Braid. This won't be a review of the game, in fact I expect anyone who reads this has already played the game.

Last week in class we were discussing "art games," which boiled down to why applying labels to things, whether defining art or a game, is harmful for whatever industry. Of course when discussing art games, the Indie darling Braid is inevitably brought up. Art games of course need to be analyzed, and I mentioned in class that I didn't get it, and my teacher replied with. "Well maybe you should play it again."

I had played Braid before, and I really enjoyed it. The puzzles were challenging and creative and the graphics were artistic, overall it was a unique experience. One thing I didn't like was the "plot." If you have played Braid you'd know why plot is in quotes. The story was told in through books at the beginning of each world. From world to world the parts of the story are disjointed, but each section has a theme to it that is applied to the gameplay of each world. That I really appreciate, each level is more of an abstract metaphor rather than a direct retelling of the events that unfold (the whole wishing to undo mistakes thing in the story and the rewinding time game feature presented in the first, or second I should say, world.)
By the end of the game I thought I would understand the story, having each of the story fragments combined for a full picture, and in that regard I was disappointed.
I had heard the plot twist of the game before I beat it: you're really the bad guy and the princess is running from you, and I thought the epilogue text would go into it. Instead I got even more disjointed story elements that seemed to tell different stories: is it about a girlfriend? A mother? A candy shop? A bomb? Just a crazy guy? I remember looking online to see if there was a coherent plot, and the most that I got was "the game was vague and meant to be left up to interpretation."
I think that really turned me off of the game. Jonathan Blow just decided to be vague and said it was "up for interpretation" in order to seem artsy instead of actually coming up with an ending.
So I loaded the game up on steam and got through the game on my day off. I got to the end with the epilogue books, and once again the books didn't make sense. I remembered there were hidden books but forgot how to read them, so I looked up a walkthrough for the ending, and I saw something I didn't know about, a second ending.
Wait, what second ending? How do I get it? I got everything in the game, how do I get it? Wait, what secret stars? There's secret stars in the game?
I had no idea whatsoever. I guess once I beat the game I put it down, I didn't really feel like doing the time trials, so there was no point to keep playing. But now that I knew there was something else, I was stumped on how to find them. I didn't see any indication of their existence or where they could be.
I looked online for a walkthrough on how to get them, and saw that one could be permanently missed, as you had to arrange the puzzle pieces in one of the puzzles in a certain way, but couldn't move them once they were assembled.
Well that's a dumb mistake. I have to play the whole game again just because of a glitch? Obviously the creator wasn't thinking. So I started a new game, and followed an faq to the first star. Once I was in the right room, it told me to wait 2 hours for a cloud to float to the other side of the room.

Nevermind, not only was he thinking, but Jonathan Blow must be an evil genius.

So I played through the game, and found all but one star. The last one is in the last/first level, appearing only after you have the others. This time though, you actually have a chance of reaching the Princess, and when I did so, she exploded.

Yeah That happened.

After that, I was able to get to the Princess's room to get the last star (I now realize this sounds like one of those fake video game rumors you heard on the playground about catching Mew or unlocking Sonic in Melee.) and then I went to the epilogue room, which was exactly the same. Of course now I saw the game in a new light. What I thought was just a potential theory for the game's plot is now more concrete: the princess is a nuclear bomb. I looked online again on meanings, and this time I saw an article that linked the fragments of the story into one cohesive take of a scientist named Tim who worked on the Manhattan project and was obsessed with creating the atomic bomb. That idea was always there, but I couldn't put the pieces together (like a puzzle... I see what you did there J-Blo) and I still held onto the idea that the Princess was a person. Her blowing up did change my thinking.

So yeah, this did change my opinion of the game, but it made me think of something else. If I had never looked at an faq, I wouldn't have known about the stars or ending. But by using an faq did I rob myself of the replay value of discovering it myself? I'll continue this in part 2.

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.