Week 2 - The Game Mindmap
I've begun this week with a task to develop a mindmap that goes through the 5 main points involving the game I'll be making in my University. The 5 main points are Technology, Gameplay, Concept, Risks and Timetable. I bring up important points in these topics and I then expand on it with short details.
Click to expand
Week 4 - Notable Rule Analysis (L4D2)
For this week, I've been given a task in looking for a rule within a game and review on one of them. The game that I've chosen for this analysis is Left 4 Dead 2 and the rule revolving around car alarms.
To keep the description brief, Left 4 Dead 2 is a linear FPS that revolves around 4 survivors trying to reach an escape from a horde of infected (Not zombie) whilst tackling the special variants like Spitters, Boomers, Hunters, Tanks and more.
One of the obstacles that the players face is a car with red flashing lights
inside the windows. These are found in fixed parts of the map at certain
locations, like roads at the first part of No Mercy and the infamous
impound in The Parish campaign. The character dialogue and notifications
will let you know that this car or group of cars is to be avoided at all costs
and so, this normally substitutes as a rule to not interact with the car.
If this rule is broken and the player touches the car by jumping on it,
shooting, hitting it or an explosion occurs next to it, the car starts an alarm
that alerts the horde and so the players are left in peril and have to
survive the horde. There's no control on the horde or what special infected
show up in the middle of it, so the only solution is to fight it.
In most cases, this can be done accidently with a poorly flung throwable
or a missfire when shooting at an infected or special. This can be more
frustrating when one player is pinned by a special infected and firing a
weapon can be a risk. A proper solution would be to use shoves or melee
weapons to easily dispatch of enemies, but even these methods can
trigger an alarm.
However, there are flaws with the rules that are easily broken with a few
factors. One example is the range of the car alarms that when shot or
blown from a distance, it doesn't trigger the alarm; This is seen in the
video with the lights turning off when at a distance This could be an
intentional design, but breaks the rules of not touching the cars in general.
Another inconsistency is that fire bullets don't trigger the alarm when
other bullet types trigger it. This could counter the issues of missfire, but
it's an exploit nonetheless with a low chance of happening due to random
item spawns. The final one would have to be the infected and their
interactions on the cars. Anything that the infected do to the props such as
standing on, firing or hitting the car does nothing to trigger the alarm
which is a hard contradiction of what was established to the survivors
about the rule.
To fix these inconsistencies, I would suggest making it so that the fire
bullets trigger the car either way so that there's no exploits in the rules.
Another would be so that distance doesn't affect the car alarms in any
way and that the car alarms trigger regardless. The final change would
be so infected interactions on cars trigger the alarm. These are in the
form of Charger rushes, Spitter fire, Tanks flipping the car and more. To
avoid continuous triggers, infected can be programmed to ignore climbing
these cars and either go around them or climb other parts.
Click to Steam page
Week 6 - Game Review (First Draft)
Demonstration videos in the Parish impound
No Mercy subway car with infected climbing (Ignore the hotdog mod)
I have been tasked for this week to write down an essay that reviews a game of my choice. The game that I chose was Jet Set Radio. Below, you're able to view my essay via a click of the button: The essay is 4 pages and includes images for some certain topics where visuals are important.
Click on the Yellow button to enter the PDF.
Week 8 - Video Game Review (Second Draft)
After my first draft has been reviewed, I had to make a complete rework and redo the review so that it's more tied to the main 3 topics (Interaction, Play and Visual Language), avoid using my own opinions and instead rely on more outside sources, and then redo my referencing so that I use Hardvard instead of Chicago referencing.
You'd probably notice that the essay is a lot smaller and the images are removed. My idea is to strip it down for an easier read and cut out anything irrelevant to my goals.
Click on the Yellow button to enter the PDF.
Week 9 - Interaction Diagram (Game and Watch: Mario Bros)
For this week, I've been given a task to create an Interaction Diagram based off whatever game I chose. It would have to be a basic game and I would have to breakdown the components and their interactions between another component using the diagram.
The game that I went with was a Game and Watch Multiscreen Handheld called Mario Bros where the objective is to move Mario and Luigi to move boxes into a truck via escalators. Dropping any box results in a miss and 3 misses ends the game.
Below is the diagram listing all possible entities that have an interation with one another.
Note: N/A stands for the items having non-occuring events to either item.
Click to expand
Week 11 - GDD Analysis
For this week, I was tasked to make an analysis sheet on a Game Design Document. I was given a choice of many different types of documents from games that weren't released to ones that did and possible changed a few things on release.
The game document I chose was a Wii pool game called Pro League Pool. I reviewed the overall quality, some issues with improvements and brought up the finished product through reviews.
Click on White button to view GDD of my choice
Click on the Yellow button to view the Analysis
Week 13 - Vision Document
This week has given me a chance to write my own Vision Document for a game that I'm thinking of and could possibly develop further down the line. Using other Vision Documents as examples and blueprints, the final VD is ready to be viewed here.
Click on the Yellow button to enter the PDF.
Final Week - Pitch and last draft
For the final weeks, I've refined my final draft for the last time and have made very slight improvements in my wording. I have confidence that this is the best I've done to improve my work and that I'm finished.
Click on the Yellow button to enter the PDF.