MDDN 243, Project 3

First Group Meeting

We had our first group meeting on the 27th of August.

We came up with several more ideas for Alex's game and also what we are going to do between the end of the meeting and our next meeting which is the next thursday

We answered the question with Kah wants us to have my next class

What Is It?
Bird’s-Eye view energy saving game.
Why Do I Want To Play This?
Learn about energy sustainability in a fun way.
How Do I Play This?
Use the arrow keys to navigate the character, and the “space” bar for both charging and shooting.
How Do I Fail?
Run out of time, when all the appliances die.
You run out of energy.
Is It Fun?
Yes.
Do I Want To Play It Again?
Yes, if I didn’t get a good score/good face and want to beat it.
Do I Want To Show It To Others?
Yes, want to teach energy sustainability in a fun way.
What Does The Game Look Like?
A Bird’s-Eye viewed game, where each level is a household room. Things like furniture will be obstacles.
Is The Mechanic And The Message Closely Tied? Does The Audience Get The Message?
Yes, the main aim of the game is to use as little energy as possible.
Is This A Complete Game That Can Grow?
N/A

Other things which we have talked about are things that might stop you from completing your job.

We did some research to find things which are bad for batteries and we couldn't really find anything which could really work in our game. But something which we did find and which is what we are contemplating using as a 'bad guy' is babies. There were a lot of articles about babies eating batteries so we thought that this could be an interesting idea, we think that if we do this the player will remember it as it would be something which other games wont have.

By the next meeting are all going to bring sketches of what the appliances in the levels could look like. And then we are going to pick out the best aspects of each one and combine them together 

MDDN 243, Project 3

For project 3 I am doing a group assignment.
The two other people in my group are

Alex Le
http://www.alexledesign.tumblr.com/

James Holder
http://jamesholderdesign.blogspot.co.nz/p/introduction-to-game-design.html

We are working on alex's game concept.
We are meeting on the coming monday to discuss what each of us are going to be focusing on during the holidays and what we are going to bring for the first interim presentation on the 26th of september

MDDN 243, Project 2, Write up

My idea for this game is to have a time trialed maze. In the maze you play as a small energy ball called bolt. Bolt lives on a house circuit board. And the house has a lot of appliances on at the same time. As bolt you only have a limited view of the maze. Throughout the maze there are other red bolts, which represents turned on appliances, which also have a limited view of the maze. For bolt to be able to see more of the maze he has to turn off all the red bolts which makes his view increase. And the aim is to get out of the maze as fast as you can while also trying to turn off all the other appliances. To make the game more appealing, throughout the level there will be blue bolts which give you a limited power up of a better view of the maze.

I want my game to show the idea of saving power. I want to show that having many appliances on doesn’t give you much power. But as you turn them off that you have a lot more power.

The game controls for my game will be a simple 4 way arrow movement game. It is also a time trial so there will be a timer somewhere on the screen, which will start once you start moving.

For the look of my game I want it to have a similar look to how pacman is, I want the user to see it and be able to figure out how to use it without having known much about it. 

MDDN 243, Project 2, Stop motion

Here is a short stop motion video of how my game would play out.


MDDN 243, Project 2 from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

Even though this isnt a paper model I still managed to get a couple other students from out class to try it out on the computer and they thought it was an interesting idea,

MDDN 243, Paper tesing

For this project we were asked to make paper prototypes. I tried this and it did work well for what i wanted to show. It was to difficult to try and find a way round having the entire board black except for specific areas. I tried to find a way to get it to work and here are the images from my paper prototypes.

 Becuase it was quite close to the hand in time and I didnt think that I could start again and make something to good standards, I decided to make my prototype in illustrator becuase i know that what i want to show is able to be done on there.

MDDN 243, Project 2, Maze

For my game I want a maze that isnt to hard on the first level, but if my game gets chosen and then my group decides that we want more levels then it will get more harder.

I want the maze to be sort of like a electrical circuit board for a house. And it sort of represents different rooms in the house.

Here is the maze which i am going to use for this concept presentation
It will be different if my game does get chosen.

There is only one way to exit this maze

I have also added in the characters for my maze to show where they will go

The green bolt isnt in this picture because I came up with him after I took this image and was already halfway through doing my stop motion

MDDN 243, Project 2, Character Progress

Here is a Illustrator version of my character which i am going to be using for my second project. I am calling him Bolt for this project

Throughout my game there will be other small objects like my character which will give the player a better edge in the game

A red bolt is what you want to turn off. They give out a small circle of light similar to bolts. If bolt touches any of the red bolts, then the red bolts light will disapear and yellow bolts light will increase. It will stay at leats that size throughout the game no matter what. These red bolts are meant to represent turned on appliances which are on in the hosue

Blue bolts don't give out any light and are randomly throughout the maze. When the player finds one of theses there light will incrase to cover a lot of the screen, but this will only be for a short period of time. So when this happens this is when the player has to really think of what there next move will be.

A green bolt will be at the end of the maze and will also not give off any light. One a player reaches the green bolt then all the remaining red bolts in the maze will disapear and then the yellow bolts light will then show the entire maze. Making the game over

CCDN 231, picture of 5 apples

Apple 1

Apple 2

Apple 3

Apple 4

Apple 5

CCDN 231 Final hand in

I would like to thank:

-Rosalyn Hpa

Stephanie Hpa

-Ricky Cheung

-Chantelle Meyer

-Andy Brady

For there participation in this experiment

For my CCDN project 1 I have decided to work with the everyday activity of eating an apple. I am mainly focusing on two senses, Sight and Taste. I took 5 of my friends and family and gave them all each a different type of apple. They cut it into 4 pieces and told them that every 15 minutes that I am going to ask them to eat a piece and also comment on how the apple looks at each stage.

At 0 minutes there were no surprising results from what the testers said about the apples. The key words that came out of the test at 0 minutes were that the apple looked Juicy, Crisp, Crunchy, Sour, and Sweet. Those were the outcomes, which I predicted would happen. But with the taste there was a little bit of a surprise. On Apple 3, the Participant said that it looked very sweet, but the result of that was the complete opposite where it was said that it was quite sour.

During the first 15 minutes was when the most change happened to the apples. Apple 1 looked really unappetizing to the participant. It continued to look dry but also has already started to become brown. But the taste was different than how it looked and still tasted quite juicy and really crunchy. Apple 2 and 5 both seemed to look like they have aged slightly and both participants said that it looks just eatable. They both also stated that they had already become sour but still crunchy and juicy. Apple 3 and 4 still looked the same as it did at the start. Apple 4 tasted exactly the same, but Apple 3 had changed from sour to quite a sweet taste, which is quite surprising.

At 30 minutes the apples had changed slightly but not much. Apple 4 was the one with the least change. The only thing which changed from the looks and the taste was that it had started to lose its glistening. Apples 1, 2 and 5 all looked unappetizing. But the taste of the 3 still tasted pretty much the same. The participant for apple 1 was quite surprised that it still tasted really juicy and crunchy even though the looks didn’t make it look good at all. Apple 3 still looked really similar to the others, all the change was that it just started to look brown, but somehow had become even more juicy than it began with.

At 45 minutes there was very little change. All 5 apples started to get browner and started to look dry. All 5 participants said that they wouldn’t want to eat one of these apples after 45 minutes of it being left out. But after tasting them the participants who had apples 1, 3 and 4 stated that they still taste really nice, but it’s just the look of them that is off putting. Apples 2 and 5 on the other hand tasted really sour and only one bite of each was taken. Both participants said that it was really hard to eat because of the over welling sour taste

In this experiment I came up with the conclusion that if an apple doesn’t look good that doesn’t mean that the taste will also not be good. This may be different though as more time goes on.  

MDDN 243, Project 2 Character

I decided to go with the energy ball idea for my character.  I have done several quick sketches of what I am thinking could possibly work for my character

After those sketches I came up with this as my final design for my character. The next step for this will be to bring him into illustrator and create a better version of him

CCDN 231, Testing, Project 1

Open publication - Free publishing - More apples

MDDN 243, Project 2, Inspiration

For my maze game, i got a lot of inspiration from pac man

The main things i like about this game is that there is a specific pattern which the player has to use to complete the game. I also really like the power ups in this game which make the ghost able to die, but also that it doesnt last for that long

MDDN 243, Project 2, Progress

After the first presentation for this project I have decided to get rid of my first idea about having several different levels in my game where each focuses on a different type of sustainability.

I have decided to focus on one of my level idea.

The idea which I am going to focus on is where you play as a ball of power and you are in a circuit board. The circuit is made into a maze which you need to get through. The entire screen will be black, so you don't know where you are going, except there will be a small illuminated circle around you so you can just see where you are going. Throughout the maze there are other red lights which illuminate a small section of the maze around them as well. If you ever hit one of these then there light will turn off and yours will expand. The game will be a time trial game where you try and escape the maze as fast as you can.

MDDN 243, Project 2

Coming up with ideas for this project has been quite hard. While thinking of ideas I thought of this game which i used to play back at school where you are locked in a castle and you have to go through several puzzles to get out of the house. I cant remember what the game is called but it has given me an idea of a game that I could do for this project

For one of my levels i have thought of the idea that you go through severel rooms to try and unlock something and you can only have one of the lights on at a time to save power. This is kind of showen in the image above but i dont really like this idea.

Another idea which i am thinking of doing is that you are in a car or bike and driving along the road and you have to dodge litter on the ground. But when you are in the car your vision starts to get fogged up and you cant see that well, unlike when you would be on the bike and it would be all clear

I kind of what to stay away from this idea though becuase I think that there might be other people who might have a similar idea to this

MDDN 243, Progress

For my game I want several levels, at least 3. And for each level I want there to be a different objective in it which would have something to do with different ways of sustainability.

I have thought of a few different types of sustainabilty which I could incorperate into my game.

Pollution

Car Pollution is a major aspect of sustainability so I was thinking of maybe a level where you have to decided to use a car or a bike. My suspicions would be that peoples first choice would be the car, but then as time goes on I want the screen to become foggy and you cant see where you going so ultimately it would take more time to do than it would if you took a bike.

Saving power
I know that a lot of people dont turn off lights when they leave a room, so I was thinking that to have several rooms which are all dark and you can only have one light on at a time or you start loosing energy. The more energy that you lose the longer it would take you to finish the objective

Littering

Litter is something which a lot of people do so I had the idea that you had to collect several pieces of litter and recycle the litter. And somewhere in the litter will be a key or something which you need to have to open the final door

CCDN 231, Progress

I have decided to change my idea from gelling hair, because I couldn't find many people who would actually let me video them doing it. I am now going to be doing eating an apple for this project. This idea is a lot easier to get 5 people involved. I have already gotten 3 people to do it. What I have in mind for this topic is to get 5 apples which are reasonably the same size. Whenever the person who is participating in my assignment takes a bite out of the apples I want them to place the apples down on the table and I will take a photo. From this I will see if people have a sort of preference to how they eat it and will also note down any interesting works or sentences which they say while eating it.

MDDN 243, Development

 I took a screen shot of my 2 scenes for my game, i decided to have a scene which says game over once all 4 baby penguins have died

MDDN 243, Development

For my game i am protecting other sea creatures from the trash. Because i am a penguin i have made it that you protect baby penguins which are sleeping.

For the baby Penguin i have just shrunk the size of my main character and have got rid of the cape. I have also given them a light grey colour to show that they are babies

I want to also add a dead penguin at the bottom to show that you dont want the penguin to die. so i just merged my baby penguin and the beer can and made him completely white

MDDN 243, development

I have sketched a can holder which i am going to use for the enemy for my character

After drawing my character i have re done it in illustrator to make it look alot better than it is