Minor Project 10

Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3:

My career goal is unclear at this point. I primarily enjoy programming and actually designing games, and working with programs like game maker allows me to easily do both. I find Indy games very appealing, and at the moment I can most easily see imagine working in a smaller company where I would be able to perform both roles - programmer and designer.

I've started many small game projects before, and completed several. When putting together a portfolio, I would focus on smaller projects that demonstrate an ability to program and create interesting game designs and mechanics. Plans for larger games, and software tools to aid in game development would also be useful additions to my portfolio. I think I will end up creating software tools for myself when developing small games, and I enjoy expanding on ideas for larger games, so I will be able to include these in my portfolio.

Option 8:

Mini Project 9

Waking up with a throbbing headache, you open your eyes and see a blurry brick wall. As your vision clears, you stand up a little too fast, nearly blacking out as a feeling of light-headedness hits you. Leaning against the wall, you finally take in your surroundings: you're standing in a long, narrow corridor made entirely of bricks and illuminated by a flashlight lying at your feet.


The game takes place in an immense structure, each floor composed entirely of mazes. The player must find their way out, navigating through progressively harder mazes, avoiding the many hazards of the poorly maintained building, and interacting with the other poor souls trapped in the never-ending tower of mazes.

Sample Levels

Simple:

Complex:

Brick Texture:

Simple Maze Constructed in Maya:

Options for 11/3

I did options 1, 4, and 5. I started, but did not finish or present option 6.

Character Design

The following is a character "designed" while play-testing a storytelling dice game in GDD101. The storyline tends to get ridiculous, but I think this type of role-playing exercise has the potential to develop interesting characters that aren't as absurd as this one.

Character Design – The Mummy Lord

Positive Traits – This mummy can only communicate telepathically, but understands the thoughts of camels, ostriches, English-speaking humans, and other undead. Since becoming a mummy, he gained control of an Egyptian pyramid and its resident mummy horde. He knows the location of a spacecraft hidden deep within the pyramid, left behind by the extra-terrestrials who built the structure.

Negative Traits – The Mummy Lord is very bitter, spiteful, petty, and vindictive. He despises ostriches after one almost killed him inside the pyramid, and seeks revenge against that ostrich. Before he was a mummy, this man was a blind, deaf mute wandering the desert, and his mummification hasn’t restored his sight or hearing. He can now make unpleasant hissing and grunting sounds, but is still incapable of speech.

Visual Characteristics – The mummy lords has had little time to decay, and is very bulky for a mummy. His bandages lack the dull, yellow color of older mummies. His left arm is missing several chunks from a run in with a camel before his mummification.

Back-Story – While trapped within a pyramid in the Egyptian desert, the blind, deaf mute was almost killed when an ostrich nearly caused part of the pyramid to cave in. In his attempt to kill the ostrich, he allowed the pyramid’s undead horde to mummify him and came to rule over the pyramid.

*For this week, I did options 1 and 2.

Mood Board

Metroid Prime

Pitch Doc

Difficulty Curves

The two Portal games illustrate the idea of a difficulty curve beautifully. The game revolves around a series of tests that the player's character must pass. While the purpose of the testing is never made clear in the game, from a design standpoint they're clearly intended to teach the player to use "portals" to solve increasingly complex puzzles. The puzzles begin as very simple tasks, introducing the player to cubes that can be carried, buttons that can be held down by the player's weight or a cube placed on top of it, and the portal. As the game progresses, the player is given control of one, and later on both portals. The player is introduced to new elements, such as a deadly ball of energy that must be guided into a switch to progress through the test, walls on which no portals can be placed, and deadly robots. Every new obstacle is introduced slowly, so that the player is able to understand how to overcome that obstacle. In later levels, the same obstacle is used in new ways, sometimes combined with other obstacles, to produce a more difficult challenge. Every level builds on the previous level, teaching the player a new skill and then forcing them to apply it to a novel situation.

For an excellent example of Portal's learning curve, the 7-minute video below shows a walk-through of the level where hostile robots are first introduced to the player. As the level progresses, the robots are placed in move difficult positions, forcing the player to come up more more creative strategies to get past them.