Shape Shifting Shenanigans

Mumble is taking shape. Other than that, the title has nothing to do with this post. I just enjoy a bit of alliteration. :)

We showed the most recent version of the game to our professors and they said it had good points, but that we need to work on gameplay and level design more. I totally agree with them. To help give the player more choices we elected to add more abilities instead of putting a limit on the player's healing power. We decided an additional slide and bounce power would reveal platforms and, in addition, allow the player to access areas that are higher and further than they could without them.

Mike and I have been tweaking the mechanics of the game a bit. The power is now working on a hold instead of a toggle. If you were wondering, yes I got the power to show up as a circle. I had to modify a custom shader I found online, but with a good amount of playing around with it, it works well.

Our artists have been working hard as well. I'm especially impressed with Corey's work. The platforms he made have a lot of style. I can't wait to see what he can do with an entire game. Here they are:

On Thursday we will be presenting the game to our classmates to show off our progress. With the changes we're making, I'm interested to see what happens. I could see our feedback going either way.

To be continued...

Making Progress and Scaling Flag Poles

This week we started getting work done in our game. We decided to have a power that 'heals' the world immediately around the player. For now, this reveals platforms that the player can use to reach new areas, but we plan to expand it as we continue developing. It also shows a brighter, more colorful backdrop for the player. Mike and I were able to get the power working using a render texture, complete with a toggle button to activate and deactivate it.

I failed to mention this earlier but we are using the Unity game engine to create our games. I have used Unity for some other courses and it's a fantastic tool. I'm currently working on trying to make the power circular, but haven't quite figured out the best way to do it. I'm close to a solution though.

The project is coming along great. It's feeling more and more like a game instead of an exercise.

In other news, on September 15th my roommates and I beat Super 3D World on the Wii U. And I don't mean we just completed the basic levels. As my roommate, Matt Mortensen, wrote on his facebook status:

• "Super Mario 3D World has been beaten 100% with all characters, stars and stamps. I'm putting this on my résumé."

It is quite an accomplishment. Especially when everyone is killing each other to get to the top of the flag pole first, and when you have a roommate named Matt Clark who likes to throw people off the edge of platforms for no reason. :D

My review: The game was fantastic. I give it three Mario gold stars (no ztars). Playing multiplayer in a 3D world was always entertaining. Sometimes depth perception got the best of me, but it kept the game fresh. As great as the game was, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we get a single player Mario game for the Wii U. Super Mario Galaxy 3 maybe?

As always, thanks for reading. Happy gaming!

Mumbler

On Tuesday we heard the top 11 pitches in class. Out of the presentations given, my favorites were:

• Evolve and Escape - A 2D puzzle/platformer with short sections that require experimentation, restarting and evolving to complete. It’s Super Meatboy meets Pokemon meets Groundhog Day. In particular I liked the idea that controller inputs would be decided by the player, based on what they pressed to perform actions.

• Melter Man - A 2D Platformer in which the main character has a device that can melt the environment, suck up the remnants and build new terrain or objects from it.  In order to overcome hazards, the player must creatively alter the environment to make new pathways, or create objects from melted terrain in order to battle enemies.

• Switch - A first person shooter where you, the player, control a gun with the ability to switch places with another person, or movable object. This one seemed similar to portal in a way, but I love the mechanic idea.

My other favorite pitch was Mumble, which is the team I was assigned to. In the game, a boy (the player) seeks to remedy a village of sadness and mumbling. By helping people (retrieving objects, answering questions, etc), the village becomes brighter, sounds are more cheerful, and everyone around the player gains their sanity.

The team consists of:

• One producer - Chad Burgoyne
• I had never met him before, but he has an awesome goatee.
• One designer - Mitchell
• He pitched the game and I've talked to him a few times.
• Three artists - Alexa Ulmer, Kevin Anderson, and Cory Stivers
• I've talked to Alexa before, but had never met the other two.
• Two programmers - Mike Willson and me
• Mike is a friend of mine. We worked together in a serious game development class and machinima. He's a devoted, talented programmer. I'm happy to work with him for a third time.

An image from Mitchell's pitch document:

The game is strongly story-based right now, but I like the direction we could take with the art style and feeling of the game. We are working on exploring ways to make it fun. We talked about having a healing power that the player could use. I'm sure more will be decided by next week's post. Until then, happy gaming!

Wait for the Good Pitches

This week in my EAE capstone class, we have been working on developing game pitches. To get us thinking of ideas, we were assigned to find and play indie games and student games that we hadn't played before. One student game I came across was especially interesting and unique: Cloud. It's an older game, but I loved it. It is incredibly relaxing and has more of a focus on the sounds/feelings/experience than on difficult gameplay. It reminded me a lot of Proteus in that sense. I recommend checking it out sometime.

After playing a few games, we were asked to come up with 15 different ideas of our own. These weren't in-depth game design documents, but simple enough ideas to fit on a 3x5 card (similar to a typical elevator pitch).

We quickly pitched them to each other during class and, based on the feedback we received, selected one (or none) of the ideas that we wanted to refine into a one-page description. The next time we met, we presented these ideas to a smaller group of students, with more time available. The best pitches will be presented to the class and the best of those will be made into prototypes.

My idea was a game called Musika. The basic idea: A platformer where you collect parts of a song by defeating enemies, hitting blocks, etc., eventually unlocking the whole song. Using a little footage from Mario, I made a video showing an idea of how the mechanic might work.

I was a runner-up to present to the class, but in the end my game wasn't picked. Honestly, I don't mind because no matter what game I end up working on, I'll be able to add something to it and I'm confident it will turn out excellent. For me, the main take away from this experience has been:

• Pitch ideas are not sacred. There are lots of 'great' ideas that become terrible games and there are lot of mediocre ideas that are tweaked and perfected until they become amazing games.

On to making games. I'm excited to hear the selected pitches next week!