Week 8 – Wedding proposal video turned into a Unity game – Team RoGUE’s The Proposal

Sample of one of the spectators

               For the majority of the past week, my group and I were busy working on our prototype 2 assignment, which was to take the video of Isaac’s proposal and turn it into a game that was supposed to capture the feeling of the surprise wedding proposal video. After thinking about it for a while, my group and I came up with the idea to use the game DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) as a foundation for our game. It would help to convey the mood, happiness, and upbeat of the video to the player, allowing the player to feel the rhythm and beat of the song. Our level was to be created using Unity, and at first we thought it would be challenging to use Unity, but once our programmers got the hang of it the game turned out really nice. In the end our game involves the camera moving along a set rail system, with spectators rooting for you (to get married), and while the player is playing the DDR aspect of the game. 

DDR aspect of our game

Lose screen

                Everyone in the group worked on at least one model to be used in the game, and each one had to have a specific animation before being put into the game in Unity. We then put the camera on a rail system so that the camera will follow a specific route to get from start to finish, so that the player does not need to concentrate on moving. Arrows are constantly being created near the top of the screen and will fall down at a constant rate, until either the player hits the corresponding key or it hits the floor. If an arrow hits the floor, the player automatically loses 10 points, and should they press the wrong key, they will also lose 2 points. The player only starts out with 100 points, so the point of the game is to destroy as many arrows as possible by hitting the correct key, while keeping their points above 0. Should the player reach a negative score, they will lose the game and be directed to the lose screen with the option of restarting the game. 

Exceeding the 200 point threshold - hard difficulty activated

                Another feature we had implemented in our game was a point threshold, where if the player exceeds 150 points or 200 points, the difficulty of the game would increase, and the chance of getting double arrows drastically increases. This is to ensure that good player would get a challenge while beginners would be able to play at an easier level. Once the song ends, the player is then victorious and will see the win screen saying that the bride has accepted their proposal. 

Win screen

                That’s all for this week’s blog, stay tuned for more next time!

Week 6 – Back to school, optical illusions, and making sound cue-based games!

            Finally back to school and attending classes again, after a family emergency had kept me away from class for 2 weeks. This week’s first lecture was about optical illusions and awareness, which I found to be interesting. We were shown a video featuring 2 teams of players, one black one white, playing basketball. We were told to count how many passes the white team makes during the video clip. In the end everyone who guessed it right was happy, until it asked if we had seen the “moonwalking” bear, which actually passed through the players amidst the confusion. This video was apparently used to test our awareness level, where I’ll admit I didn’t catch the moonwalking bear passing through the players. 

Discussing which game to use

Voting on which game to use

                For the second lecture, we were told to design a sound cue-based game for Professor Nacke to play while blindfolded. It was pretty hectic as the class voted to pick one game for the professor to play, and finally we had chosen to let him play a maze game using sound cues to avoid the player hitting the walls. We had removed all the chairs and then made a maze using all the students in the class. We then tested the game twice using Mike, once blindfolded and once without a blindfold. When professor Nacke tried it, it worked pretty well since every time he was about to run into somebody or an object, someone yelled a “beep” noise to keep him on track. He made it to the end with little complications, but in the end the game was as fun or challenging as we thought. To make it more interesting, we could have had someone narrate a part of a story at certain checkpoints in the maze, as well as having more sound effects to make the gameplay more dynamic and interesting. The idea behind this was from the game Battlefield, which would make the game more fun and satisfy professor Nacke’s expectations :)

Layout of the maze and desired path

Watching as professor Nacke attempts the maze

                Stay tuned for more updates to my blog next week!

Week 3 – Creating a Risk-Style game and Presenting our Portal 2 level!

               This week went by fairy quick, and although we didn’t really do an in-class activity on Tuesday, we got a homework assignment to take home and work on as a group. The assignment was to create a game using a world map, similar to the one in the board game Risk, using the categories: romance, fine arts, social experience, turn-based, and race. We plan on creating a Romeo and Juliet themed game that is turn-based, where players race to find their lover, while also providing a social experience. There will also be some fine art on the board when we make it. 

Layout of Level 2

                This week we also had to present our Portal 2 levels that we spent weeks creating and finalizing. For my group, we had created two different levels, which were play tested constantly for the past few weeks. We believe our levels are optimized and are ready for presenting, as we had met all the criteria, and even exceeded some of them. Our levels feature meeting the time requirement and even exceeding it, as some people have taken over 30 minutes to beat one of our levels. We also put in 5 of the 6 logic gates spread out through both our levels, including the NOT, AND, NAND, OR, and XOR gates.

Example of one of our gates

We also met the other requirements such as faith plates, turrets, three types of gels, timed mechanisms, T-flip flop, reflection cubes, and dynamic lighting throughout the level. 

Faith Plate

Turrets

Reflection Cube

3 Types of Gels

Overview of Level & the Exit

               

          

 That’s all for now, stay tuned for more updates to my blog later this week!

Week 2 – Human Foosball and a fun game involving poker chips and cards!

              This past week has been pretty good for me, as we finally got divided into studios for our game development workshop. This was especially good news for me, as I was anxiously waiting to see if I’ll get grouped up with my friends, which is exactly what happened. We will strive to create an even better game this year! This week’s two lectures were also interesting since we got to design and play a ball game with the class divided into two groups, while in the other lecture we got to play with a very interesting card game.

                The ball game that my group chose to design was none other than “human” Foosball, which is very similar to the tabletop game except it is played with lots of people. We were not allowed to change the goal of the game, and the goal was to get the ball into a box that was placed on top of the table. The rules we came up with were pretty simple, players will stand in rows of 4 players, with the back two rows facing forward and the front row facing backwards (please see the diagram below):

 The black rectangles represent the tables in the classroom, and the blue and red dots represent the players, and their respective positions. The arrows represent the direction that each player should be facing, and the white box in the middle represents the goal.

Players can only use their hands to hit or touch the ball, and cannot grab the ball at all. Should the ball get stuck on a chair or touch the floor, the ball is “served” to the opposing team. At first the game was pretty chaotic as players were randomly hitting the ball in random directions, with some players even trying to hit each other with the ball. It was also hard to get to ball into the box to win, especially if players did not cooperate as a team, and especially if the enemy was adamant on blocking the way to the goal. I’ll admit this game reminds me a lot of volleyball mixed in with Foosball, but in the end it turned out to be very interesting and fun to play.

                The game the other group had come up with was similar to basketball, where players hold the ball, pass it to other teammates, and can only take a maximum of 3 steps before having to pass it on. All players stood on top of the tables, and can hold the ball as long as they want, but still must adhere to the rules. 

Goal cards

Plastic chips

                During the second lecture, we split up into smaller groups this time and played a game that involved several goal cards and plastic poker chips. The rules of the game were fairly simple, where players put a randomly picked chip (the “shooter” chip) on the edge of the table, and must tap it to hit other players’ chips. If you hit another chip on the table you get to keep it if it doesn’t fall off the table, otherwise it goes back into the bag. The meta-goal of the game was to complete as many goal cards as possible, and the rules that we used was for every player to pick a goal card and to complete that goal before anyone else can complete theirs. This game was pretty fun for us to play with, although it did have some issues. The biggest issue was the fact that the plastic chips provided were too light, and a lot of the time when a player taps their chip, it would jump over other chips and not hit them at all. In the end, we decided to change up some of the goals by adding our own custom goals, such as jumping over other chips or hitting 3 chips at once.

Custom rules and goals

We also added our own custom rules, such as if players jump over another chip, they can take it and receive double the amount of points, or if you hit another player’s chip you can actually take points from their total score. 

Scoreboard after the first game

Final scoreboard, with a winner

Overall I found this week’s lecture and activities to be fairly fun, and I hope that lectures in the future will be as enjoyable as the past week has been. Stay tuned for more blog posts next week!