If at first you don't succeed, redefine success

This weekend has turned out to be very eventful, events of which I will discuss... now.
So firstly one of my friends from sixth form who abandoned me for a better life in Lincoln came back to Felixstowe this weekend for a 'photography session' but I know he came back to see me.
So Friday evening was spent re-establishing and catching up with each other over a friendly game of Call of Duty: Black Ops. This time was used to test the various multi-player set ups that we could find including expanding our knowledge of the new Zombies maps. Its safe to say we aren't as practised as we used to be and failed miserably only hitting round 9.
A night in with an old friend on Black Ops is a night well spent I believe.

Saturday, I have work in the mornings at a well known DIY store that sells items for your Home, or as some may call it your Base.
On a 10% day the shift flies past and generally due to the bustling customers and amount of work I end up doing, I don't even notice my shift ending. Saturday was however the light switch on event in the local town. Now I spent most time with Amy in the scouts tent keeping warm, or as warm as possible in such weather.
Pictures to follow when I get the chance to upload, the lights switching on was epic as ever.

Sunday, the reason this post begun. Spending the day with Amy, for her birthday she got a silicone cup cake mould, only it was 25 times the size of an normal cupcake.


Having dabbled in a bit of cooking during the previous summer holiday I fancied my hand at creating a huge cake... We viewed a few recipes and decided the one that uses only 4 eggs (instead of 10) would be the easiest and cheapest recipe. After a quick trip to Morrisons and taking advantage of their chocolate deals, we had all the ingredients for the cake.

After a very messy hour in the kitchen we finally had two half's of the cupcake mould filled and in the oven. I quickly found out that putting chocolate in a blender is a bad idea as it doesn't grate the chocolate but in fact creates little balls of sweet goodness.
After an hour cooking the two half's were "cooked" or burnt... your choice. It was at this point that making the cake into some form of Mario Mushroom style cake went out the window due to the fact it was a mess...
Nothing a little bit of icing cant handle and so the below image is what we were left with.
After a quick count, 6 or so layers of chocolate were used in various forms
Having handled chocolate all day however neither of us could stomach actually eating a piece. We have been informed it is 'very nice' and having eaten most of the cut off's, I can agree with them.
So at first we did not succeed, we just made a sextuple chocolate cake... and that's success!
The only problem now is we have to eat it....

Ross, Out.

A day of lecture

So today, for the first time in a long time I had the day off work long enough to attend some extra lectures in the Wednesday afternoon session. There were two lectures to attend both with varying degree of possible interest.
The first was a representative of the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification)
Talking about his job in classifying every film, game and tv show available, from the obscure anime's to the highly anticipated upcoming releases.
The main aim was to explain what each classification would allow, so where an 18 may allow sexual scenes but only if they are justified by context, a 15 rating can only portray sexual activity with no 'strong detail'.
Using various clips from films etc, the lecturer showed scenes from 'Batman -The Dark Knight', 'The Ketchup Effect', a strange anime whose name I forget and multiple others.
We were then asked to classify these clips to a specific rating. Each with varying degrees of violence, sex or bad language the calls for these films were tight and bought up a heated debate.
The Batman film in particular, the opening scene and another in which one character 'stabs' another with a pencil. Using the BBFC guide to classification we can deduce that the film deserves a 15 classification due to the fact that although there are scenes of violence they do not 'dwell on the infliction or pain or injury' (to quote the guide itself).

So after the first interesting lecture we moved on to the second of the day. This was the Machinima lecture with, lets face it, the inventor of Machinima (or one of its founders at least) Johnnie Ingram.
Writer of 'Machinima for Dummies', he set about helping the audience understand what Machinima is and how it works in the film industry. Although not a huge factor at the moment, Machinima is slowly becoming more renowned in the gaming world as various creators use engines from the likes of World of War craft and Halo to create short entertaining films for people to view on the internet.
Red vs Blue is one Machinima which I used to watch (heck I still do - even if Johnnie reckons its for 14 year old sweaty kids...)





I have always been a fan of editing movies and or just silly video clips of me (with a lightsaber obviously) and this introduction to Machinima mixes two areas in which I am interested. Gaming and Filming/ Film editing
Now on a games design course I chose the more interesting (to me) option for what to study however my second choice would have been media production. So Machinima caught my attention in the industry in which I wish to study and soon be a part of.

I have noticed a very common similarity between all external speakers in the industry who have been running our lectures.
To get a job in a company that you wish to be a part of, Spam.... 'Spam the hell out of them' to quote Pixelh8, A sound producer in Ipswich, he basically invented Chiptune and is currently a huge part of the music film and gaming industry.
So taking this knowledge with me I can safely say I have learnt something new for the week
Or is the saying to learn something new every day?

Ross, Out.

Horses Are Nature's Dominos

Its been a while since my last post and this space I believe will be used for an update on my recent goings on.

So now our group projects are in full swing, we are making assets for our game 'Circuitry absurdity' and we are slowly making progress. Having created a board game version of the game, to strip back the visual niceness and concentrate on actual game play, the game has been adapted in many various ways. From the original 'Drag a piece and place it to make a circuit', we now have a randomly generated 'piece' pile, a points system, various appliances to connect to each valueing differently dependant where they are on the game board, 'hazards' (for example water). A recent iteration that changed game play entirely was the 'bridge piece'. Where originally your circuit could not cross wires, this piece opens up multiple options for the player to extend play time and to incorporate more of the appliances during the game. Although this concept may make the game more confusing for the child (after all it is a key stage 1 game) this new tile creates various issues in the way of 'possible' and 'illegal' moves. On a computer game these 'ilegal' moves can easily be found and error message appear however in the board game, inexperienced players may forget or not see where an illegal move has been made thus rendering the game impossible to complete. Iterations are being incorporated with new concepts at the same time taking concepts out when they don't work. Using the '15 minute method' as I like to call it, we can test game 'updates' quicky and efficiently without loss of vast amounts of time.
Screen shots or scans of our board game may appear at a later date on my blog, however keeping everything in uni, I don't have access at all times...

To practise the 15 minute method a board game concept for an off-line RTS style game was provided with a hexagonal board and a quick set of rules for movement and firing.
Initially, playing the game was required to understand the rules and get to grips with all possibilities and problems that might arise within the pre existing rule sets.
A move, move turn, turn and shoot card were originally available to the player, each turn consists of the player laying one of their cards and then in the aforementioned order, the turn plays out. (so players who laid their move card take their turn before players who laid their move turn card and so on and so forth)
As we were working in groups, we first came up with iterations to edit the movement sets to help or hinder players when attempting to 'shoot' each other. This meant easier movement but also meant that when the players went to shoot each other one could more easily step out of the way. This made the game more tactical and also meant that players were more inclined to be offensive than defensive.
Another iteration was a 'Sniper card'. We changed the 'Fire' card so that it could only reach 5 hex's and then made this 'One use' card that could span the entirety of the game board. This opened up problems of players being killed instantly when the game starts however as they could not avoid being shot (as they were all facing each other to begin with as a tactical ploy to get the first kill)
In an effort to stop this instant kill issue we created 'Spawn points' these were designated hex's that when you begin instantly face you the opposite ways to your opponents, thus you need to turn and move before you can kill anything.
This process went on for a little while however we managed to iterate 5 or 6 new concepts into the game (some better than others) relatively quickly in around an hour.
The 15 minute method is extremely useful to not become attached to the game itself as you havn't spent hours trying to iterate a single concept which may turn out to be a flaw/failure.
Once again scans and images are not currently available... I may be able to edit them in later...

Along side Uni work I have had an offer for a bit of extra design work. This opportunity arises from the use of this blog! I have been in contact with Games producer, Mo Touman who has given a brief for me to consider, creating concepts that might eventually go into production if the idea has any possibilities behind it.
So hopefully I could be involved in my own game concept coming to life in the near future which is very exciting. I have always been the player of games, getting the opportunity to finally be the creator is astounding. I joined my uni course looking for this possibility, for it to come so soon is a god send. I'm itching to get involved in this new brief.

Well these were my recent, memorable and notable activities for the week and so rounds off my blog nicely.

Oh and the name of this blog isn't so random...
http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-228.png

Ross, Out.

Reveiwing History...

Sometimes whilst playing our visually attractive and overly technical computer games, it is hard to remember where it all began. With modern titles releasing in greater numbers every year, each with new technologies, updated graphical interfaces and game play mechanics, are the games of past years forgotten?
For my next task in Critical Games studies I am to create a 'review' of sorts using all the terminology and knowledge in which I have been studying the past few weeks.

This is a draft for an essay which will be used to generate my final grade.
(I am currently not sure as to how good this essay is, it is my first time writing about and reviewing games in this way)

For this assignment I have chosen to review Donkey Kong.

When games were first computerised, designers and developers would have had a vast canvas of opportunities for game play mechanics, stunted only by technological limitations. As gaming was a relatively new concept, only explored via board games, some aspects used in early computer games were taken directly from non electronic games then expanded upon. A lot of other concepts were invented in this early time, concepts which were not possible in board games.

Originally games could be broken down into 5 elements of design, these were:
Interface - How the game interacts with the player
Rules - Restrictions on what the player can or cannot do
Goals - Objectives for the player to achieve
Entities - Objects in the game
Entity Manipulation - How the object is interacted with

These elements when used in board games are fixed and often will not vary throughout game play. When applied to computer games, there is the possibility for each of these elements to change as the game state can be changed as and when the designers see fit for optimal gaming experience. In Donkey Kong the rules will generally stay the same however as you progress new rules are added, giving the player a 'Hammer' ability and extra ways to score points. Although the goal will stay the same, the methodology to achieve the goal will vary dependant on the game state. Similar to the rules, the Entities in the game advance as the player does through the game, suddenly the way in which the player interacts with these objects changes dependant on strategies to achieve their goal. For example gaining or ignoring bonus objects, or deciding to avoid a barrel by jumping or climbing a ladder.

The actual game interface will also change as the player advances through the levels. This introduced new possibilities to game designers, described as 'Spatial Segmentation'.
Donkey Kong has been acclaimed one of the earliest 'Platform' games. Using various inspirations from film and television, Shigeru Miyamoto (lead games designer for 'DK') used cut scenes and animations to advance a simple plot. This meant that multiple screens could be included thus creating 'Levels'.
Levels were one of the many early inventions in gaming, along with Waves and Bosses, creating new game play divisions like this added new possibilities for games designers. As a player plays through the levels, the difficulty may increase thus extending game play time, or as Mega Man games explored, the player choosing the level, depending upon previous levels completed other may become easier to complete as new abilities are granted.

Donkey Kong, folowing a Ludus, rule bound style of play, pushed gaming to new bounds. The game could be argued as one of the many Nintendo games that made the term 'Nintendo Hard' a phrase used among gamers to express the immense difficulty of a level or wave in a game. This term can be broken down to denote one of the 8 terms in Leblancs Taxonomy that games designers will use to provoke an emotion from the player.
Donkey Kong successfully utilises Challenge. This makes the game re-playable as for only the most skilled players could use effective timing to overcome the final level of the game.

Donkey Kong has successfully utilised goals to create purposeful interactivity between the player and the game interface giving the player reason to continue in their attempts to complete the game. With the goal always achievable, the player must respond to the game state with snap decisions, for example to either jump or climb to avoid barrels or fire balls, in a struggle to reach the top of the level. Using this structure dictates how the player will attempt to complete the game as not only is timing required but the use of perceivable consequences of the players actions.

Back to basics game play concentrates less on the graphical interfaces for the player to focus on, but more on actual game play mechanics, or in simpler terms, how the game works. This means we can discover how the game is built up easier as there is less focus on the aesthetics involved in the game and more upon how the game is actually making play more engaging.

Refrences

Paul Brownlee, Nintendo Hard vs. Easier than Easy
from his blog 'Scramble Dash'
available online at:
http://www.scrambledash.net/?p=52


So hopefully this has covered enough criteria for a decent grade. As I write I feel as though I go off topic a lot so I appreciate any criticisms or guides upon where I could go with the final essay.

Otherwise thanks for listening =)

Ross, Out.

Halloween?

Being a student, it would seem that I am currently not in the financial state to celebrate such trivial events such as Halloween. Instead my friend and I decided it would be a better idea to buy 4 pumpkins at reduced prices on the 1st November so that we could be creative for a day.

Doing a games design course we decided to theme our Halloween on games (or games of films) we know and love.
Our results are below.
Surprisingly this was the last pumpkin we attempted however Sean broke the 'mouth' as it were thus resulting in a flawed pumpkin design. I don't think I need to say what it was meant to be however it is meant to be a Space invader.

This was an attempt at the Spider-man logo. Although it looks pretty good as an end result, the cello-tape holding it together is not shown.

This was my first attempt at an actual artistic pumpkin design. I am very impressed with the results and I quite like the final image. It is not however the best pumpkin I have created, the next image will show my favourite attempt at pumpkin carving...

There is no need for me to introduce this pumpkin design, for my second attempt I believe it is quite good. This exercise was a very fun waste for a day however and I have never looked forward to the day after Halloween so much.
Trick or treating? Who needs it? The day after is where it is at.


Ross, Out.