Last Updated On: Saturday, July 30, 2005 11:33 PM
The Dual Nature
Chill..
The World of Warcrack (part I or many parts...)
Now now, we shall refer World of Warcrack, uh..I mean World of Warcraft as WOW for shorter reference into this article.
First and foremost, I have been playing this game since launch date, along with all the server crashes, server lag, realm queues and such, yet I still play it. As of current I am a level 44 Elven Rogue in the realm of Argent Dawn. First time I turned the game on I was greeted by an exquisitely beautiful CG introduction, which was expected from Blizzard. Although I did expect something jaw dropping, thus should have lessened the jaw dropping effect. I still managed to pick up my jaw from the ground to which is fell.
But of course that opening CG is just a an opening, I want to know what the game has to offer character wise. I took a deep breath and went into the character creation process. Lo and behold, it isnt really complicated! Just pick a race, a class, and your apperance! No more statistics manipulation on how much dexterity I needed to start off with such and such character. Every race/class combination has a preset stats and abilities. This is pretty nice because it lets you discover your character as you play rather than blindly trying to choose what would suit your character best.
I ran out of breath... I'll put more indepth reviews later, as WOW is calling for me! meh...
Game Over:
The last couple of months was a very exciting and tiring time of my life. It was my final project requirement for graduation at Full Sail. Working on it, pouring my heart and soul into the project. Alot has happend during the project.
The biggest impact we had in our project was what we refer in class as the "Culling", 6 weeks into the final project the class lost 10 of it's members. 5 teams were affected by this event. One group lost 4 out of its 5 members. My group lost one, while others lost 2. It was a taste of the so called "Real World" that Full Sail has been so proud of giving. The class however pulled through this adversity. Alot of the teams merged together to bring to life a game. Our team assimilated 2 new members from another team.
The biggest problem with this that the new members have to be put up to speed on how the game architecture works. Alot of the tasks had to be re-assigned to properly reflect the added members. We were also lucky that we had a repoire with the new members before. So the part of getting to know them was put aside as we started to work on the project.
Making games is alot of fun because we get to do what we love to do. However that is not the main reason why alot of game developers create games, it is because of the people who they work with. Creating games attracts different kinds of people from all walks of life. This fuels the creativity brought about these different people bouncing ideas off each other. Also the bonds that people make while trying to get that feature into the game before the deadline. The sleepless nights, the heated debates over small features of the game, the time spent playing games because we just did not feel looking at code anymore.
To sum things up, game design is ALOT of work, but is alleviated by the people you work with, as everyone works in unison to create a fantastic creation called a game.
GAME OVER? nope... we are still in the intro...
LOOK TO THE STARS
Game Development Realization
It has struck me with such full force that I was knocked off my feet. This was the realization that making games is certainly no cake walk. Making a mediocore game is hard. But making a well polished that would make your grandma proud of you is way harder. I imagined how great it would be staying up all night programming a game you love. But I never thought of doing it for 3 weeks straight. Believe me when I say that programming late nights for that amount of time is unhealthy. I was fortunate enough not to get sick during the 3 week crunch time where we had to make 3 working games. After all of those sleepless nights programming, I never regretted doing it all. Because I love programming, and I love a challenge.
I had to be in this mindset in order for me to finish my games with high quality. High quality meaning that the core gameplay is fun and inspired. I have seen too many games where the technical aspects of it is stunning but severely lacks in gameplay. For example, the Arkanoids Game, the original one was a bit more slower pased than what I have. It had minimal feedback to the player as what is happening on screen. What I did was to visually stimulate the player with particles when the ball hits the bricks.
Now this is different from the just adding the particles just because it looks pretty. It is there as a part of the gameplay element as visual feedback. If I had sound implemented in that game I would have music playing in the background to set the player's mood and feel about the game.In space invaders game, I felt that the game design of the classic space invaders would not suite the society playing games today. Back then people were more laid back and more conservative. However now people are always on the go, and busy with their lives. That is why I changed the basic mechanics of space invaders to make it more suited to our society. A faster paced gameplay, a different choice of weaponry, power bar that gets drained when a bullet is fired and regenerates over time.
Also I added a little Y-axis freedom for the player. Meaning that the player can move up,down, left, and right, but only within the asteroid field.I also made the game feel more logical by turning the shields into asteroids. Since the player is hiding from the enemies in the asteroid field, it was the logical solution to put three different sized asteroids rather than the traditional shields. The result of all these changes is a modernized version of the classic asteroids formula that will appeal to the newer generation. The most fun I had developing was my Shoot-em-up multiplayer game called Gundam Gauntlet. It is heavily inspired by both Robotech and Gundam Series with lots of machingun firing and swarming homing missiles. I wanted to give the player a sense of where he is so I opted to have the view far from the player. What a player wants is the ability to see what is around them.
A big limitation nowadays in the gaming industry. The immersiveness of the game is disrupted because the player only has a small window to look through. With this camera view the player has total view of both his avatar and the environment. I want to rant more about game design but I am quite tired and have a test tomorrow. I'll continue more on my views on Game Design. Soon this blog will turn into a developer's journal as I progress along my career.
Reason why I entered Game Design: So that I can make into a tangible product my experiences as both a gamer and a human.
