Updates + Summer Plans

It seems that it's been about a month since I last posted. Well, anyway, here's what I've been up to.

Updates

First off, I'm still creating art for the Higgins Armory Virtual Joust project along with Alfreda Smith. In March I refined and created some UI elements for the game. This included altering the existing art for the "heraldry creator" as well as creating heraldic emblems. I also created a prototype logo for the game which will be polished in the near future.

This past month I worked on creating 2D audience members to populate the stands with Freda. I did this by digitally painting sketches of cartoony people I drew and scanned into Photoshop. The people were then arranged together and placed on planes with transparency. When these planes are stuck in the environment, they'll give the game more depth and detail. Moving forward we'll be working on polishing existing aspects of the game.

Another project that I've been working on this term is a small Flash game for the WPI Game Development Club's Development Team. I didn't participate in C-term for various reasons but I made a point to help make something in D-term. The GDC Dev Teams don't have the best track record for putting out games or keeping projects alive (something I experienced last year), so I tried to keep it going this time. Luckily, the team picked one of my game ideas allowing me to work as a designer instead of just an artist.

Our game is called Building Bashers. It's a beat-em-up game where you control transformed robotic buildings and fight other robotic buildings, causing much chaos and destruction. Other than providing the idea I created a design doc at the start of the term, created some art assets, and even did some coding towards the end (menus and particles). We used flixel and various art tools to create the game; Andy Wolff was our programmer, Joey Chipman made player/boss and robot enemies, Dillon Lankenau made menu screens and some enemies, Graham Leto was our project manager and also made sounds, and I created a player and enemy robot, some GUI stuff, and particles. As with most small game projects, we didn't get to implement everything we wanted to but we have a playable game we can show off. You can try it out here!

Summer Plans

So, school is officially over and I'm going to be graduating in less than a week. That means I need to get an actual job now! I feel that I have most of the skills needed to get a job but I don't have enough to show off my skills. That said, my plans for the summer are to make some nice pieces of art and games to showcase in my portfolio and then start applying for jobs. This includes fixing up my resume, tweaking my website, and looking for places to apply. My goal is to start applying by July, which gives me about 2 months to get my act together. I also plan to update my blog more frequently with art, games, and whatever else I work on so stay tuned!

Learning flixel (Again!)

It seems like the past few times I've tried to learn flixel I have stumbled across a seemingly simple obstacle and put it down to finally figure out later. The first time I tried to pick it up I was following a simple platformer tutorial as it was going out of date and the discrepancy between the tutorial and the newest release of flixel made it too hard for me to follow along. The second time I tried to pick it up again was when I was in Japan, and I don't actually remember what prevented me from getting the hang of it then...

Anyway, I've started again and I think I've got it this time! There's a quote about persistance beating talent or something like that and I wholeheartedly believe [in] it! This time I started from scratch like usual, but I followed a series of tutorials by a classmate written for the introductory Interactive Media and Game Development course here at WPI. I think my past experience with flixel, although limited, combined with these tutorials has given me the basic understanding of flixel that I've been looking for. Hopefully I'll get to know as much about flixel as I learned about Game Maker back in high school.

To begin familiarizing myself with the flixel library, I'm going to be implementing an idea I came up with while in Japan. The player controls a traveler trying to reach his bullet train in a Japanese train station and the only thing in his way is millions of businessmen. The gameplay is similar to that of a bullet hell game except the player is pushed around rather than killed. Score is based on how quickly the player reaches the train and a time limit determines how long the traveler has to catch his train. The game itself if fairly simple and easy to expand upon. I have ideas for different types of obstacles, such as faster moving businessmen and a foreigner that follows the player around, as well as some desired features, like posting scores to Facebook/Twitter and some others.

I plan to record my progress and update my blog fairly frequently while creating this game. Although I won't post everything, I'll try to write about big milestones and have demos of my progress. Stay tuned!

Global Game Jam: Day 3 + Conclusion

With only about 6 hours left we put (almost) everything together and packaged it into a game. Like usual, scope was an issue with out limited time and resources. Despite lacking some of our desired features, we do have two levels with enemy dodo birds and collectable eggs along with the basic movement of a platformer. The psychology aspect we were hoping for is absent at the moment, but we'll hopefully be able to add it in later.

On the last day I created a few more assets as they were needed, such as a title screen, background image, and "to be continued" screen. Some of the time was more or less wasted because there was more art than tech due to having two artists and one programmer. I wish I could have helped code some of the game but I am still not that familiar with how to make games with flixel. This game jam has definitely sparked my desire to finally buckle down and learn it, though.

Although we submitted an incomplete game to the Global Game Jam site, we will be fixing it up and extending it in the hope to submit it to the Intell AppUp store to win $200. The deadline for submissions is February 28th, so we have a decent amount of time to finish and polish our game. I'll try to post some of my work on the game and our progress in the coming weeks.

And with that, go play our game! You can find it here. You can also play it in your web browser here but probably only for a limited time (as my only storage space may expire tomorrow D:).

Global Game Jam: Day 2

Saturday was our longest work day of the game jam, and we got a decent amount accomplished.

I finished up making tiles for our platformer and also created the player character and animations. Later, I worked on a base boss sprite and animation that we can recolor and decorate to make different bosses. So far we have one boss and four total design ideas. Josh came up with the idea to name them all after US presidents, so we have Dodoham Lincoln, George Washington (or Dodoington), George Bush, and The Dodo Formerly Known as Taft.

Jeff has been working on all the code himself using some platformer code that he has been working on before. I'm not sure the exact status of that, although I'm told we have basic platformer mechanics and jumping on enemies implemented. Hopefully we have a decent amount to show at the presentation at the end of the jam!

I'll be writing a Day 3 and wrap-up combination post later to recap what happens today and to hopefully show off our game!

Global Game Jam: Day 1

And we're off! I meant to write this last night but the beginning of today is good enough.

After watching the keynote and getting our theme, we started discussing game designs. Our theme this year is "extinction," which leads to several obvious routes. Two obvious ones are "everyone is [going] extinct and you have to prevent/solve it" and "make [insert species here] extinct." There's also the psychological definition which is to make a certain behavior extinct by gradually removing positive reinforcement to a stimulus or giving negative feedback to a stimulus that was once positive. Our group decided to do a combination of both the biological and psychological definitions in one; a sort of double-extinction.

The basis of our game is that the player is told that they are to make a species extinct while our game design [hopefully] makes a certain behavior of theirs (collecting coins, for example) extinct at the same time without them noticing. After throwing ideas back and forth we decided that our game would be a platformer that consists of a vengeful man in a dinosaur suit (dino-Batman, as he is currently being called) who travels back in time to kill all the dodo birds, one of which who traveled forward in time and killed his parents. The player will be told to kill all the dodo birds and presented the option to collect dodo bird eggs, which make tasty omlettes. Ultimately, the player will be killing dodo birds and forgetting/subconsciously choosing not to collect eggs.

Our current plan is to do a little research into the psychology behind extinction so that we can successfully implement it in our game. The platformer "game" part that the player sees and comprehends as the full game is fairly straightforward. It's a basic platformer with movement and jumping, enemies, and hopefully bosses. The player can jump on dodo birds to kill them and can only progress when all the dodos in an area are killed. Levels will be broken up by highly-characterized bosses that will be entertaining and fun. Dodo eggs will be placed in easily accessible areas but not right in the player's path. There will be environmental hazards like death pits and potentially one other that the player should avoid. The game will keep track of score as an aesthetic classic game feature, but lives will be infinite. The art style will be happy and colorful, and also somewhat comic. Our hope is that the game will be silly and fun enough that the player will keep playing until the end, where we reveal the psychological extinction that has hopefully occurred.

I think that's it for now. I'll try to get another post up tonight or tomorrow morning to summarize Saturday's work.

Summer vacation is almost over!

That's right. In roughly 8 days I leave for Japan, which means my summer vacation is technically over! I mean, a 4 month trip to Japan could be considered a summer vacation, but I'll be working on a project for school and not relaxing all the time.

As far as the plans I had made for the month and a half of vacation that I had I accomplished a decent amount of what I wanted to. Here's the breakdown/postmortem (I guess) of my summer break:

>WEEK 1 (May 5th - May 9th): Planning
This week was really only 5 days, so I didn't really get much done. Obviously I put together this plan but that didn't take more than a day to do. It acted more as a "get settled in at home" few days.

>WEEK 2 (May 10th - May 16th): Pokémon
I trained some Pokémon! I planned out a team a while ago but never got around to actually making it, so that's what I did during this week. Each day, I bred and trained one Pokémon from an Egg to an Effort Ribbon. During the week I thought about the team as a whole and realized that there were some weaknesses that could have been overcome with other team options, but for the most part I stuck with my original plan. I only ended up training 5 Pokémon because of the weaknesses I noticed, but I used the extra time to raise them to level 50 (with one at level 57). Unfortunately, I did not use my team against human opponents but I started testing them in Battle Tower double battles. If you're interested in battling, I may have some spare time before I leave on the 15th. Let me know if you're interested and send me your friend code! Here's my Pokémon Platinum code: 0860-9118-0984

>WEEK 3 (May 17th - May 23rd): Portfolio
This week was devoted to renovating my website and populating it with some of my recent art. I looked at a bunch of HTML and CSS tutorials (mostly CSS) online, downloaded the 30 day trial of Dreamweaver CS 5, and went to work. Having never used CSS before and only knowing some basic HTML tags, I ran into some issues during the week. I was able to overcome most of them but I'm afraid my site still has a few bugs. I tried to keep it as simple as possible so that it would be easy to navigate and easy for me to create. I think I succeeded in general design-wise, although the colors may be a bit to vivid. I received some great suggestions by fellow WPI students, most notably Alex Schwartz and Elliot Borenstein, and from WPI professor Britt Snyder. The things I will be changing in the future are the color scheme, font, maybe the contact page (just some tweaking), and giving the site more of a focus towards what I want to do when I graduate.

>WEEK 4 (May 24th - May 30th): Play
Since Super Mario Galaxy 2 came out on the 23rd and it was mailed to me on the 24th, this week was all about collecting Power Stars in outer space. By the end of the week, I had collected the first 120 and had beaten the game. With the $20 GameStop credit I got for buying it at GameStop, I purchased No More Heroes 2 and played that for a little bit. During the night I played Psychonauts like crazy on Steam and managed to beat it the following week. I also played some Team Fortress 2 and some other games, but the week was mostly filled with SMG2 and Psychonauts.

>WEEK 5 (May 31st - June 6th): Personal
I realized at the beginning of this week that I should have make a more tangible plan for it. Leaving it open just left me hanging around and not getting much accomplished. Like I said earlier, playing Psychonauts (and NMH2) leaked into this week and I didn't end up thinking about packing as much as I would have liked. Saturday was my sister's graduation from Saugus High School, followed by a small party at the house, so we were busy preparing for that towards the end of the week. I did manage to get to the Japanese Embassy in Boston to apply for my visa, and it is expected at my door tomorrow (along with a copy of Picross 3D that I got for $0.80 from lockerz.com).

>WEEK 6 (June 7th - June 13th): Packing
This is it! The final week! I will be actually packing my bags and getting last minute stuff together/done this week. This includes going shopping for clothes and other necessities, possibly cleaning up my room a bit, and making sure I have everything I need for my 4 month stay in Osaka. Hopefully everything will go smoothly, including the actual flight. I just have to remember to fully charge my laptop, DS and DS lite, and iPod Touch for the 17 hours I'll be on a plane!

Junior Year: Complete!

Yup, I just finished my 3rd year at WPI yesterday. It's strange because I'm glad that it's finally the summer but I miss school already. Having spent so much time in the IMGD Lab working and playing games has made the summer seem empty. Also, knowing that I only have one more term at WPI makes me long for it even more.

I have made a preliminary plan for the month and a half of summer that I have before I ship off to Japan. The idea is that each week will have a theme, and I will focus all my attention on that one theme so that I am actually productive and not just wasting time on the internet. Coincidentally, the themes for each week all start with the letter P. So I guess I can call it my Summer "P"lans. :D Anyway, here's what it looks like so far.

>WEEK 1 (May 5th - May 9th): Planning

It's not a full week, but it's a decent amount of time. This week will begin with unpacking all my stuff and settling in at home. I will then continue to iron out the details of the rest of my summer plans and more specific things I'd like to accomplish.

>WEEK 2 (May 10th - May 16th): Pokémon

I will finally set aside time to build a Pokémon team! I figured I'd get it out of my system early in the summer so that I can get it over with and have something ready for Japan and next year at WPI. I will probably begin the week by finishing up HeartGold and then proceed to actually building the team I planned out a while ago.

>WEEK 3 (May 17th - May 23rd): Portfolio

Since I'll have way too much time on my hands, I really should use it to add stuff to my portfolio. This school year has given me a bunch of stuff to show off, and more importantly a lot of knowledge and skill that I can put towards making more portfolio pieces. Although I am not going to be looking for a summer internship this year because of my Japan trip, I should have a portfolio that I can show off at any time, to potential employers and even just family. I'd also like to make a small game during this week, possibly in collaboration with other WPI IMGD majors.

>WEEK 4 (May 24th - May 30th): Play

What good is a summer vacation if you don't play video games? Although I'll probably be doing this throughout the summer, I thought that having a full week devoted to games would help me clear out my backlog of games. If you're interested in what my backlog looks like, here it is:

PC:

> Mirror's Edge

> Trine

> World of Goo

> Psychonauts

Wii:

> The Conduit

> Excitebots

> Sonic Unleashed

> Super Mario Galaxy 2

VC:

> Kirby's Dreamland 3

> Super Mario RPG

> Cave Story

DS:

> Sonic Chronicles

> Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

> Trace Memory

> Hotel Dusk

> Prof. Layton: Diabolical Box

> Pokémon HeartGold

I'm sure I'm missing some, and more will come out during the summer. Not to mention, there are still some on my wishlist that I haven't picked up and therefore haven't started. Also, Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes out on May 23rd (the last day of this week) so I may make this week Week 4 and make something else Week 3. Decided to swap Week 3 and Week 4 since I'm feeling the need to work on my portfolio and thinking that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a great way to start off Week 4.

>WEEK 5 (May 31st - June 6th): Personal

I really couldn't think of another theme, but this one might work. Since it will be my second to last week in the USA I thought having a week to myself (not that the other weeks aren't for myself; they all are :D) to take care of any personal things would be beneficial. This includes hanging out with my girlfriend more, cleaning up my room, spending time with family, etc.

>WEEK 6 (June 7th - June 13th): Packing

On June 15th I leave for Japan and I will be living there for about 4 months (until October 8th). To make sure I don't leave the country without anything, I've devoted a whole week to packing and making sure I'm ready for the trip. I'll be cramming Japanese language, culture, and everything during this week (although I will be studying Japanese over the course of my summer vacation).

So there you have it. A plan for using my free time well for once. And now that it's written down and made public on the internet, I have more incentive to follow it!

PAX East (Just a tad bit late...)

Yeah, so I totally didn't post at all about PAX East during PAX East. It happened almost a month ago... My bad. Instead of relying on my awful short-term memory and trying to remember everything that happened and put them all in a loooooong post, I'm just going to put up links to my Facebook photo albums for all three days and give you a highlight-reel list of things that were awesome. Then I will try to regularly update my blog. Well, I'll get dinner first and then proceed to regularly update my blog.

PAX East was probably the best thing I have ever attended. Ever. There were so many people that all came together for one reason: Because they love video games. Or because they are the parent of someone who loves video games. Or because they were dragged to the event by their significant other who loves video games. But you get the point. Although I won't be able to make it to PAX Prime in September, I will most definitely be attending the next PAX East.

Photos!

> Day 1

> Day 2

> Day 3

Highlights!

> Hung out with fellow WPI mates. Also got to show my sister the wonders of the video game culture that she could only dream about.

> POKéWALKERS! EVERYWHERE! I got between 30-40 people each day, most of them unique encounters. Lots of good items and lots of watts.

> Tried out Picross 3D, WarioWare D.I.Y., and the DSi XL at the Nintendo Booth. I might get Picross 3D (because I loved Picross DS), slightly less might get WarioWare because of the shear depth, and the XL was actually pretty nice.

> Team Fortress 2 Tournament! We won the first round and then were destroyed in the second round...

> Mario Kart DS Tournament! I won first place! It was great.

> Swag! Lots of swag, including 2 Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver drawstring bags (he gave me an extra one on accident).

> Networking and talks/panels: Said hi to Ichiro Lambe from Dejobaan Games. The I HAVE A GREAT IDEA FOR A GAME panel he was on, along with Darius Kazemi (both WPI grads!), was hilarious and very informative. I also enjoyed the Memes and Microcultures talk (seeing as how I'm going to be in Japan in a few months).

> Video Game Orchestra was fantastic, although I had to leave halfway through. Their performance of the Wind Garden theme from Super Mario Galaxy was amazing.

I think that's about it. But, again, I have a terrible short-term memory and only remember the overall experience rather than specific instances. Maybe we should make games that focus less on super-realistic graphics and more on the player's experience... But that's a topic for another post. ;)