MDDN 243, Project 3, Barriers and Collisions

For our game our character will be inside different rooms in a house. At the moment we are aiming on having 3 rooms with 3 different sizes which represent the different levels of the game.

We have decided that the level which we are working on is going to be our level 3, which is the largest level. Around the edges of the level we are having a barrier or according to Stencyl a 'Terrain'. These will make the character know where the ends of the map are so he cannot enter the terrain, but will instead be blocked by it.

We are also going to be using Terrains when we are going to add obstacles into the game like desks and chairs. The character will be able to move under then but will be stopped when they hit the legs of the objects.


Each of our characters have a different collision box which is dependent on the character. Here are some examples of the collision boxes for 3 of our characters.

Each character will differently interact with other objects

The Battery
will collide with
- The baby
- Power ups
- Walls
-  Obstacles on the map
- Other appliances

The Baby
will collide with
- The battery
- Walls
- Obstacles on the map
- Other appliances

CCDN 231, assignment 2, Final hand in

Here is my final write up for assignment 2

Open publication - Free publishing - More apples

MDDN 243, P3, sound and animations

James is our sound guy and he has made some real awesome sounds for our game. We have one track which is looping while the character is in the main screen. He has also made sounds for the power ups and the start and end game screen.

At the moment we just have the starting screen sound and the in game sound. They are both made to cross fade over 2 seconds once they go from level to level.

Alex has made this first lot of animations for our character. These might not be actually used in the final game but it will be similar. He has made the walking animations and the charging animations. Adding the walking animations was easy because we had the 8 way movement as the default movements. But the charging animation got quite difficult to sort out.

We have made it that enter is the button which you will press to charge up the character. Here is the first part of the code which I used to try and get it to work. 

What happened with this is that when enter was pressed it would change the animation but it wouldn't change it back. So I added this section of code to make it work.

So what this part of code means that when the button is pressed it will do the animation but when the button is released it will go back to the original animation.

Here is a video of what happens in the game

charging from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

MDDN 243, Project 3, Health Bar

For our game we want to have a health bar to show the charges for the battery and the other appliances.  At the moment the battery and the appliances will have 10 health points and will be going down by 10 intervals.
The Appliance charges will go down by 1 point every 5 seconds.

I am thinking of something like this for the health bar

We want there to be at least 3 different colour ranges on our health bar. We want green for 60% +, yellow for 30% - 60% and red for 0% to 30%.

When coding the health bar for the battery, I drew a green line to show the full health. I tried to make it that the end X value will be reduced by 10 whenever the Battery charge goes down by 1. This didnt work as I wanted it to, so in the end what I did was that if Battery charge = 10 it will draw a green line and if Battery Charge = 9 it will draw a different like with the same starting X and Y and the same end Y but the ending X will be shorter. This was repeated for every one of the 10 different segments for the batteries health. The colour also changes slightly each time going from Green to Red.

MDDN 243, P3, Sharing Charge

The first thing which I am working on for our game is the ability to transfer the charge from the battery to the other appliances.

To do this I have used Attributes. For the level which I am doing all my testing on, I have made 3 different Attributes. The Attributes type for each one of these is number.

- Battery Charge
- Stereo Charge
- Vacuum Charge

When the scene is created I have set all 3 of these attributes to 10

I have made it that every 4 seconds Stereo Charge goes down by 1, and that if Stereo Charge becomes 0 than the Stereo actor will die. The same thing is applied to the Battery Charge except for the every 4 seconds aspect of it.

I have created a region around the Stereo Actor. This is called Stereo Region

This region is so that if the Battery Actor is inside it that it has the ability to transfer its charge to the stereo.

For this to happen the Stereo first must be alive (have a stereo charge greater than 0) and if the battery actor is inside the region. Than if the enter button is pressed stereo charge goes up by 1 and the battery charge goes down by 1.

Here is all the code which i have used to create this

Here is also a video of what I just explained of how it would work in game

testing charge swap from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

CCDN 231, P2, Peer review

For my Peer review I had two other students review my work. They were Emma Fawcett and Zachary Freiberg.

Something which we all picked up from this tutorial was that the way we did the 500 words was wrong. I need to chose just one of the 3 experiments to write about. I am thinking of mainly focusing on either the swan or the golden apples.

Review from Emma Fawcett

Open publication - Free publishing - More ccdn



Emma stated that I didnt use any references. Which is something that I forgot about when writing my first draft. It something which I really need to do for my final. She also noticed several spelling and grammar mistakes which she helped fix

Review from Zachary Freiberg

Open publication - Free publishing - More ccdn

Zach also notest the same things that Emma did. He noted that I need to talk more about the wider social and cultural ‘structure of feeling’

MDDN 243, P3, Character

For this game our character is a little battery guy. This is an early concept of what we might want out character to look like. Since Alex is doing the art of this game he might want to change how he looks depended on how he looks in game

In the game our character has 3 default behaviors which are found in stencyl
- 8 Way movement ( the ways which he is able to move)
- Camera Follow (so the camera will always follow the character where ever he is on the screen)
- Cannot Exit Screen (so that the character doesn't disappear once he has reached the end of the screen)

Before we were all designated specific roles here are some drawings of characters which I made for our game

These will not be the Appliances which will be used in the final game. I am just going to be using them for the time being until Alex has drawn the proper appliances.

I am mainly going to be working with the stereo and the Vacuum Cleaner for my testing.

MDDN 243, inspiration

our game we are looking for inspiration from two games which some of us have played quite a bit.
The first game we looked at is called 'The binding of Isaac'

It is an 8 way, up down game. Our game mechanics are going to be similar to the binding of isaac. We want out game to also be an 8 way movement game, but if it gets to complex with the animations then we will just stick with a 4 way. 

We also want all the objects in the game to be face on to the player, even though technically you are looking at a birds eye view of the level.

The other game which we are looking to is the Pokemon game series.

What we are taking from these games are the notion that you are always in the center of the screen. So in some aspect our character is just going to be moving on the spot. The only exception we are having to this is when the screen shows the sides of the level. So then our character will move freely until he has moved the screen away from the ends of the level

CCDN 231, Peer Review 500 words

Here is my 500 words for the for the in class peer review

Glamorous: full of glamour; charmingly or fascinatingly attractive, especially in a mysterious or magical way.

Attractive, pretty, beautiful, lovely, charming, entrancing, elegant, dazzling, enchanting, captivating, alluring, bewitching

The Everyday Experience of eating an apple is something that a lot of people do. There is not much that could be changed to make this experience feel a different way. But I found a few ways that I managed to get the user to feel ‘glamorous’ (see above definition). I changed the look of the apple 3 different ways to try and show this in a glamorous way; I changed the colour of the inside of the apple to a more golden colour, I cut the apple to make a swan, and I plated the apple.

I got 3 of my friends Anand Patel, Jessica White and Carolina Casas to do on experiment each. If the 3 of them mention any 2 of those words listed above I am concluding that it is a positive test.

With the first change to the apple I changed the colour to make it golden. Gold objects are often recognised as glamorous objects, so I believe that changing the colour to gold that it would change the experience to a glamorous one. Anand was the participant for this. The first time he saw it he said that he was ‘surprised’, that he ‘felt like a king’. Before he started to eat the apple he said that it looked pretty and alluring which are both list words. While eating, he stated that he could taste a sort of ‘rich’ taste even though there was no change in the taste of the apple.

If you have ever seen apple art you would know that people make some really glamorous art from the fruit, so I carved the apple into a swan. Jessica was the person who tested this experiment. When she first saw the swan she immediately said that it was very elegant, pretty and attractive. She even stated that it did look very glamorous. And, while she was eating, she stated that she felt it was really delicate and didn’t want to disturb the form of the apple.

For my third change instead of just having an apple in a bowl like they normally are I put it on a plate and decorated that plate with Flowers. Carolina tested this experiment. The first thing she said when she saw the plate was that it was beautiful. After eating the slices of apples she stated that it was a lovely experience, not because of the taste of the apple but because of the way it was presented to her.

MDDN 243, P3, Roles

Because we are in groups for this project we are all given specific roles which are are going to be doing to make our game. We will also be doing other stuff than what our main roles are but for the assignment we are mainly focusing on what our roles need us to do.

I am going to be working on the coding aspect of the game, I am also going to be doing a little bit of the artistic side of the game.

Alex will be the main drawing designer for this game. He will also work on some of the animations of the characters

James is mainly focusing on the sound of the game but he is also working on the drawing aspect.

CCDN 231 Experiment 3

Experiment 3

'Plating'

For my third experiment I decided to try and show a typical version of glamour and decorate a plate of apples with flowers all around it. My friend Carolina (Caro) Casas was the person who I experimented on in this assignment. I wanted to show that the aesthetics of how something is presented is something which changes the users mood. If I were to present this is with dead flowers then I would guess that it would not be a good experience for the user than it is when im using live flowers

The first thing Caro said when she saw the plate that it was beautiful. There was no confusion to how it was created. But she said that it was a great way to try and get people to notice a plate of apples. While she was eating the apples she said that when picking up the pieces she was quite delicate because she didn't want to disrupt the pattern of the flowers. 

In the end she said that is was a lovely and glamourous experience. Not because of the taste of the apples (because there was no change in the taste) but because of the way that they were presented to her

Overall I believe that this experiment was a success and that caro stated that she has quite a glamourous experience while testing my experiment. Since she stated that to her it was a glamourous experience I dont believe that there is anything else that i could of changed in the experiment.

CCDN 231, Experiment 2

Experiment 2

'Apple Swan'

For my second experiment I got my Friend Jessica White to experiment this. For this one I decided to cut the apple into an object. In a previous post I posted my attempts at trying to carve a rose. Because that was to difficult I did some research into what else is classified as glamourous and I came across the idea of a swan. Carving a swan wasn't as hard as I thought that it would be. But i believe that it did show a glamourous feel to it. For this experiment I want to show that the form of an object can change the users mood.If it were still a plain apple they wouldn't feel anything but the changed form changes there mood of what they are doing.

When Jessica first saw it she said that she was confused by what it is. But when she looked closer she realized it was a sawn. She was confused at how it was made. When touching it she was quite nervous about touching it because she thought that it might all break, so she was very delicate when taking pieces off.  She stated that it as very elegant, pretty and attractive. Which is something that is related to glamour

This experiment I think was a success has she said many words which are linked with the word glamour.