Global Game Jam Retrospective

This past weekend I participated in the Global Game Jam, where small teams of game designers, artists, and programmers participate in a 48-hour marathon game developing session within a set theme and constraints. This year the theme was deception, and for our time zone the constraints were “Rain”, “Plain”, and “Spain”. Rather than make “My Fair Lady 2010″, most people went with other really off-the-wall and quite “indie” feeling ideas.

The group I was in decided to make a game that took a lot of inspiration from A Boy and His Blob, only with the twist that halfway through the very short game the blob turns psychotically evil and tries to destroy everything. Entitled “ConquistaBlob”, the game was about a young Aztec woman and a mysterious blob on a quest to save her village by traveling to a temple and getting some kind of MacGuffin. The blob would transform in one of three ways depending on different corn being fed to it. Upon reaching the temple, the twist that the Blob is actually sent by the Conquistadors reveals itself and stuff goes quickly to pot. We didn’t quite get to that part, though we had all the elements of it. Rather than be disappointed that the game wasn’t quite complete and was a tad buggy, I’m instead more impressed by the work of our programmer being able to solve a majority of the collision detection problems as well as get some actual platforming going by the time we had to submit it. Sure the game wasn’t perfect but we had a beginning and end, and even had created two stages, something not many other games had. We also had some pretty nice chiptune music and sound done by Ken Snyder, who also did music and sound for just about every other game done at WPI’s game jam. Big props to him for working so dilligently.

I was in charge of doing artwork (and in fact, really the only artist), and I feel I did a pretty good job in making an 8-bit styled world with associated characters. I’ll put some animations of them up on the portfolio part of my page at some point later, which will even include stuff that wasn’t able to be included in-game. For now though I’ll just put up this image I made as our “victory” splash screen, and the parody of a NES game box I made really quickly as well just because.

A winner is you!

Game of the Year in Mexico in 1987!

Also something I learned (besides making games in Java is hard work), is that I should look into the Flixel library for my flash game dev project that I’m still, slowly, trying to complete. So overall I feel this was a weekend well spent in terms of making me feel confident about my abilities to some degree.

Anyway you can attempt to download ConquistaBlob from the Global GameJam site by clicking here. Be warned it seems we had some trouble uploading it and it may not work. Since I don’t have the files necessary that’s something unfortunately out of my hands.

Graveyards of Outer Space

I started playing Mass Effect 2 today. I didn’t actually mean to. I had only beaten Mass Effect 1 for the second time (but the first on the PC) a few hours before. Yet it was calling to me, as new games are wont to do. So I opened up the box and noticed the “Cerberus Network” login card, figured it was worth at least having access to whatever bonus DLC they had, and fired that up. What it sparked, along with the game itself, made me feel really good about owning this game even if I don’t get the outcome(s) I am aiming for on my playthrough. There are some spoilers, slight I’m sure but I don’t want to ruin anything so more after the jump. This should not be taken as a full review of the game as I feel I have really just started to get to the meat of the game.

Final warning. I really feel that this game needs to be experienced fresh so if you don’t want any part of it spoiled please do not read ahead.

More TF2 Cartography

I’ve finally finished laying down all the exterior landscape and interior (sans one stairwell) of my TF2 map. Some things still need to be fixed like the fact a lot of props are invisible for no reason, though that might be my rendering options right now. Anyway here are some in-engine shots, enjoy. I know in the first image part of the roof is missing on one building, but I fixed that along with some other architectural errors.

Thinking I might add a battlement or a Radome to the top of the central building

As I said some props seem to be randomly invisible, like this cap point base

Mass Effect 2: Choice is Yours, Don’t Screw Up

In less than a week I and many others will become proud owners of Mass Effect 2, the much-awaited sequel to Bioware’s sci-fi RPG epic. However unlike many others I probably won’t be playing it immediately. See I only recently had the chance to sit down and start playing the PC version of Mass Effect, since I got the sequel for the PC now that I have a computer capable of running it. Currently I’m nowhere near finishing and with all the stuff I have to do (TF2 map, searching for work, etc.) I doubt i’ll have it done by the time my copy of the game arrives in my hands. Nonetheless I will keep myself as spoiler-free as possible because I want to go in untainted by experience and truly experience Bioware’s sinister plan to make moral choice a big deal in games.

Just from what I’ve read, they’ve not only made is so that Shepard could permanently die and thus be out of the third game, but also many if not all of your party members are equally as likely to be killed. All based on choices you make. Bioware is playing for keeps, and I think for those who get attached to characters, they’ll find themselves weighing the issues at critical junctures and hope they’ve made the right choice. Or end up playing the game over and over just in the hopes that they don’t screw it up this time. Or maybe even just accept the fate they wind up with, feeling regret but ultimately believing that they did make the sacrifices necessary. I’m just throwing things out here, I know many people don’t get emotionally invested in games but some do and it helps enforce the “games are art” argument.

It’s also a big risk being taken by Bioware, with the possibility of killing off the protagonist leading to vastly different game experiences in the third entry in the series. In fact they’d almost have to create two different games, one would think. However I feel they probably already have a plan, and I look forward to finding out what it is. For a game that I didn’t think was anything special when I started playing it, I’ve now found Mass Effect to be one of the hottest new IPs around, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

Rising from the Inky Depths, it’s Atlantis! Wait, it’s just my TF2 map

So I said at one point I didn’t have any proper screenshots of Moai Island in its slowly emerging new form, but I figured I should show at least something, so here are a couple in-editor shots of the new above-ground level housing the capture point.

Outside view of the whole structure portion of the map

Inside view of the Capture Point Room

For a better view of what the whole level is going to look like, here’s the floor plan as seen from above:

Here's a Schematic for ya...

In addition to the room on the upper level I also added another room underground, or more correctly turned a hallway into a room so that now there is going to be a room full of computer servers for players to run and gun through. I also moved the entrances to the underground portions over to the sides of the level. This does make them slightly uneven so to counterbalance that I’m going to add one more connecting hallway as seen in the diagram below.

Proposed Hallway

After that it’s just going to be a small matter of re-doing the terrain, making it into a displacement, surrounding the island with water, and adding the titular moais on the surface so people aren’t completely at the mercy of Snipers.

Away to the New Year

Well 2009 is over. I can say, honestly, that I did not accomplish everything I wanted to. Graduating from WPI was pretty damn awesome in the grand scheme of things though. I finally know now the reason I went on a hiatus from my TF2 map dev, particularly that I actually didn’t like the direction it was heading in. I’ve decided it needs to be more above ground and less underground. Probably still going to make custom Moai things for it though. So that’s one of my many resolutions that I have for 2010.

In other news I recently purchased GTA IV for the PC. Now those that know me well know I was a bit unkind to GTA IV in retrospect, but to be honest it was a pretty good game, just not…GTA enough. But the reason I got the PC version was for its video editor, which essentially allows people to create and share machinima videos easily, since the video editor is a powerful editing suite in its own right that lets you focus cameras where you want, even on people not directly in the “action” so to speak. Here’s an example of something I whipped up.

Now of course the other problem with GTA IV on the PC is that it’s notoriously unstable. I figured a year after its release would’ve been plenty of time to iron out bugs but this has not been the case. There seems to be a problem with my game wherin it freezes up the entire computer after i use the video editor and go back to the regular game. Which is a shame really…because the video editor is a lot of fun. Despite these problems I’m still really enjoying playing it again.

Maggots!

Uninspiring title but I figured it fit. So I’ve finally had some time to play around with the newly-updated TF2 now that a lot of the serious bugs (most of them related to Steam connections) have been ironed out. It’s a lot of fun. So far I’ve only unlocked the Direct Hit (precision rocket launcher that trades splash damage for speed and damage) and the Equalizer (pickaxe that does more damage and increases your speed depending on how little health you have, also has a taunt that causes the soldier to cook off a grenade in a suicidal explosion that causes 450 damage in a 6-foot radius). The Equalizer so far is my favorite of the two. Being able to travel almost as fast as a scout when at critical health and being able to dish out massive melee damage as a result is a sick amount of fun and a good way to take one, two, or even more guys out with you in a rush that would make even the miners of 1849 look like turtles.

I also had some time to experiment with the crafting system. So far I only really know how to make scrap metal out of 3 of the same item, and all I had on hand for that was 3 extra ubersaws, but I think this works out since it means people have to do a lot of crafting and thus have to play for a long time to work up to stuff they want, thus keeping the system from being abused (in theory).

Oh and in case anybody doesn’t know somehow, the soldier just barely edged out a victory over the demoman, securing the unique fourth item which is a pair of boots that reduces rocket jump damage. Ideally an item that would truly benefit either class so a good idea from Valve indeed.

Craft Fair

So over the past few days Valve (yes, I’m talking about them again) are doing not only their dual Soldier and Demoman class update, but they’ve also decided to add a competition to it, in which whichever class kills more of the other gets an exclusive 4th class upgrade. Pretty nifty in my opinion, which apparently is not shared by a lot of people on the Internet because they still think the L4D2 boycott is still going on (I’ll get to that in a moment). Over the weekend however, Valve introduced something that is either a great idea or it has the potential to be the idea that finally breaks TF2.

A Real Donnybrook of Solo Game Development

One of the bigger problems of being a person that does not really enjoy programming is that, even when I learn how to program it still remains a chore. Case in point, I’ve been experimenting with Flash CS4 enough to the point where I can make a vertical shooter. I also understand enough about ActionScript to the point where I think I can make an idea I’ve had in my head for the past 9 months a reality. The problem is that, as a non-programmer, the idea of doing more programming turns me off the idea entirely. Having said that though I plan to use this weekend to at least get something achieved graphically to start showing the idea in its most basic form, and then hope that maybe i’ll be more open to trying to code it. It’s not so much sophisticated as it is that I haven’t found a good enough tutorial on powerup chains/tiers (like in shooters like Gradius or Raiden) yet.

Renovating the site.

I’ve moved some things around on the site, so some people may have to update their bookmarks (yeah I know, what people?). The sidebar will show the changes most clearly but I’ll also list them here.

1. Artwork has now been arranged by genre (although I still need to figure out where the TF2-related work I’ve done should go).
2. the link for the Game Development page in my portfolio is updated as such. I changed the permalink slightly.
3. I added a contact page, which is really just my email address for now.