Mike Vautour - Time

Time seems to be a huge factor right now. I'm getting more and more worried as time goes on and more pressure keeps getting piled on my shoulders. I simplified the assets enough where i won't have to focus on environment much more after this week, and i can focus on character stuff. Thank god for small miracles.

Matthew Jordan- Another day another Question

Our free-running racing game is a very unique game because it is an attempt to mix together two very popular styles of gameplay into one, racing games and free-running games. Racing games have always been a popular game genre; people love to race one another in a friendly competitive setting. Free running games are a fairly new genre but players have latched onto them because of the experiences once can have while playing them. As for what we are adding to our game that makes it different, the game itself is actually something completely different. The two styles of gameplay are significantly different from one another and there have not been games dedicated to the combination of both. Some games have a free running mechanics in them and will have races as sort of a side mission that the player has the option to completely ignore if they want to.

            A major aspect of our game is the inclusion of co-op racing where team members must help one another in order to win the race. Both the acts of racing and free running are very independent activities. When racing the runner only has to worry about themselves and what is in front of them, getting into first place is the number one goal of every racer. Free running is more or an expression for the runner. People who free run use it as a way to relieve stress and express themselves by creating a path way that they alone have chosen to run. In our game we want to take both of these fairly individual activities and make them more of a team based activity. In our game you are always watching your partner because you both need to cross the finish line in order to win. Having co-op makes the players who are more used to worrying about themselves start to focus more on the path ahead and what their actions will do to affect their partner.

            The second major aspect of our game that makes it so different from anything other similar games is the addition of a changing environment. When players run through the tracks in our game they will find that our racetracks are not like most other racetracks. The environments in our game are always changing whether the player wants it too or not. As players are running the map they can activate various triggers around the map which have a number of effects on the map that can both help and hinder the player. This was put into the game to help create an environment where players must be quick on their feet in order to win while helping their fellow teammate by creating new pathways that are easier to traverse.

            This post is my response to a prompt from my Game Development Capstone course. The post asked me and my group to answer the question “How the expanded range of game possibilities that we’ll discuss in the workshop can be applied to the game that you’re making. For example, if you are making another iteration of a game set in space, what could distinguish your game amongst the others of its kind? The answer to this question could be the foundation for your post” in a way that connected to our section of the project.

Another week and i'm still Mike Vautour. 10/21 Update

Another year older, and another year wiser they say. And i believe that. In the past week i feel like our team has made a lot of personal strides, and everyone is really united right now. If i had a nickle for every time i thought that this semester i could but a gumball, but at least we're at the point where we can finally bust our asses to make this game. So lets make this game.

Capstone Workshop - Mike Vautour

1.       The game we chose to look at is called Mount & Blade: Warband, and it was released in 2010. It addressed its intended audience well. The game didn’t look great from what I’ve seen, but the different mechanics and gameplay that it introduced were fantastic and innovative.

2.       The intended audience is rts (real time strategy) players, and people who like medieval settings. Also people who are a fan of sandbox games. This worked well for its intended audience. It really set itself apart from other games in the sense that you have to fully control the combat (which is what really interested me). You also have full control of what you want to do in the universe. You can put yourself in power; you can follow someone in power. Honestly there are no limits to what you can do.  There are also 300 vs 300 people battles. Not many games can handle that amount of networking, and art while still having a functional game. The concept seems to be historically accurate, and it seems to be concise throughout the entire thing, and they also added a lot of accurate representations of how combat works while keeping the mechanic simple for a player to use. If the art was better I would say that they would innovate the way multiplayer games are going now. However the art in the game wasn’t that impressive; especially for when it released. It was still an impressive feat to have 300 v. 300 battles.

So I’m not going to say that our idea is the most creative or unique idea on the market right now. Currently we have a lot of different games that our core gameplay is competing with, and our idea is heavily influenced by the James Bond movies and the portal games. As an artist I would like to come up with an art style where I can make as little assets as possible to achieve something great. If I create four cube based assets, but make it so each side of the cube functions like its own asset I can lower my workload to create some really cool unique assets. If each side of the cube essentially became its own asset that gives me 6 assets per cube, and 24 assets for the four cubes I create. That would also help my teammates with the designing of levels, and I believe that would show my versatility as an artist. As far as the actual concept, well an underground base or lab. What can I do as an artist to have that environment stand out and seem innovative? I really need to do more research to find out what all of the tropes in popular culture are. If we were to make it to next semester I believe I can make some different assets to almost tell a story, or convey a message. Sometimes making art with a specific message can be a negative thing, and it may detract from my art as a whole but I like the idea of satire and social commentary in a game. For example if we go with the idea of test subjects we can have different test subject rooms, and we could make different test subjects based on what is popular in the media or the news right now. Like make a girl with a horse head and have her tongue stick out to make fun of Miley Cyrus. I really want to work on something that I’m going to have fun with. That’s always been the case with my artwork. I want to find a way to be innovative, but also at the same time I would like to have fun being the innovator. There is a lot riding on the art style and how it fits into our game and how it looks, so it would be a shame if I were the one to mess that up. As far as actually standing out in the genre it might be hard to get some spotlight on a racing game that features characters that are running. We should look at classic sonic the hedgehog games, and how they pulled off characters racing without vehicles. I feel like the fact that it is a racer without vehicles already makes our game stand out. Not many games would take a huge risk like that. There are a many challenges with getting a character to feel right along with giving the player the satisfaction as a racing game does. For example if you drive a car you expect to go a certain speed. As a human you are expected to go a certain speed, but in a game that speed would be too slow. So finding the right fun balance between these will definitely help us stand out in the long run. With the lab we just need to make it an interesting art style, and we need to find things to differentiate what has already been done in these setting before.   

Matthew Jordan: Context Conflict

     This week we started to focus more on the context of the game and we have come up with two solid ideas we have not been able to decide on. Both ideas have aspects about them that make them appealing which has lead to the current conflict we are in. The first idea we have revolves around the player being the size of an action figure or doll while racing around the house of the toys owner. This idea allows for fun with perspective which would mean that we could turn ordinary objects like a pencil or a pile of blocks into various obstacles for the racers. Another fun aspect about the perspective of a toy is the idea of physics, objects such as marbles or a sponge could provide a surface that would cause the player to slide around and force them to try and maintain their speed and position as the world fights against them. The toy idea is very appealing because it allows us to make create fun assets and maps that revolve around the toy theme.
     The second idea we have is more of an abstract world where the race track would form itself in front of the player as he/she ran the track. This style of map would create a race that is more spontaneous because of the somewhat randomly placed obstacles and appearing trails. The triggers would still be in play but they would need to be re worked in order to work with the new way the other parts of the map appear. We enjoyed the idea of this map because of how unique the idea is and it means that we get to have more fun creating the various parts of the map. As mentioned before we are struggling with this choice because both ideas are so appealing and are within scope.

Matthew Jordan - Everyone's game

    This week was focused on creating more of a team oriented level to show how our game could be the co-operative experience we had hoped for. In order to make this happen I needed to have more triggers to the level that would create pieces of environment that teammates could use as an advantage. I can say that actually figuring out where the triggers will go and what effect they will have on the level is was a very fun experience and I look forward to it. Another part of this week was creating a more interactive environment for the player to move around with along with the triggers. A valuable lesson I learned from last week is that when designing a level or putting together a prototype I should always design it from the players point of view. Last week when I was putting the level together I was in the mindset of a designer, I knew were all of the trigger spots where so I assumed the player would not mind there being any sort of material on the the triggers in order to see where they were. Yet when the prototype was presented materials on the triggers was the something everyone asked for. By ignoring what the players wanted I made the game less about how they would experience it and more about how I would experience it. Because I knew where the triggers were it created an environment that was almost too dependent on blind luck and most people didn't know where to go in order to set off any triggers. After last weeks critiques and rebuilding the prototype level I learned that to create the best player experience I need to be able to design as both a designer and a player.