Lets Talk About The Vidya Games

(Hurray for all cap titles!)

Games used to be about nerds making games for other nerds; now adays, it’s a company making a product for a consumer. The whole market has change and it’s been like this since late 2004-2005. Some time after Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne and Halo came out. It really started to change around 2007 with the rise of console gaming, EA’s reign and Activision’s tyranny.

PC Gaming started to go below the radar and console gaming started to thrive. I’m a bit of an asshole when it comes to this because I feel obliged to protect the PC platform at all costs from those console peasants.

Console gaming, in most case have heavily stagnated the market. Bare in mind, this is only my opinion and I don’t want to start some debate on Tumblr about this. I’m sorry if you play a lot of console but I’m fairly against it in most cases. Though there are a few exceptions and I am fully aware some games are actually better for console. I’ve never really been a console gamer. It always felt like the inferior platform to me and that’s not going to change any time soon. It’s taken me years to convince my console friends to come to PC and basically all of them have now made the switch and are enjoying it much more than they did the later.

Sorry, getting back to the point. Games have become a means to make money nowadays. Instead of having a passion for what you love and making games for other gamers, a lot of developers are locked down by their publishers who whip them to death to spew out games for the masses. It was all about sales and how many units you could sell. The more “general audience appealing”, “modernized gaming” and “casual gaming” has been enabled by that of the console market. Only recently has PC Gaming started to make it’s glorious and foretold comeback in the era spear-headed by our glorious Gaben with his wondrous Steam and the sudden sea of Indie developed games. I don’t know what happened in the last 3 years but things are starting to go back the way they used to be.

My point is, I started this game development course as an attempt to get the gaming market back to it’s roots. To start making awesome games for the PC that people would want to buy and play but from what it seems like it, I’ve somehow gotten lucky and started in a time were PC Gaming is suddenly flourishing! The indie-gaming market has done what I’ve wanted to do for the greater part of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sad or anything, I’m honored that I can be a game developer in such a time that I have so many facets and places I can post and share my content with everyone. Things like Desura, Steam Greenlight, Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Humble Bundle and all those wonderful places.

Not only that, but all my favorite older game developers are starting to come back from the ashes! Richard Garroit, Chris Roberts, Peter Molyneux and a bunch of other developers are getting their games and ideas funded on Kickstarter so they can make games without the restriction of publishers. It’s a damn good time to be a developer and I’m so glad to be part of it all.

(This post went from a weird opening, to console hate and PC elitism, to heartfelt gamer message, I apologize for the topic-swerving. This is probably mostly sleep induced. I really should pass out soon. I HOPE I MAKE SENSE)

GameCon and UOIT Game Development Event

My GOD this week has been just terribly hectic. I haven’t played a game in 3 weeks. I’m slowly loosing my mind more or less. Monday to Wednesday morning me and my group got together for all hours of the night and the majority of the day to get the game up and running fully for GameCon (Which took place on Wednesday). I barely sleep on a regular bases but recently, it has been even worse than usual. I remember last week I somehow fixed my sleeping schedule naturally but this week completely ruined that again considering the massive amount of work me and the rest of the group had to do. Some of it was our own fault considering we left it to the last minute but Jesus, that was a terrible ride.

Moving on from the tragic stuff, Wednesday was somewhat of a success! Most of the hard work we did throughout the week had paid off as basically EVERYONE loved our game at Gamecon. Almost anyone who didn’t know who we were and what year we were in assumed we were 3rd year which was fantastic. The day was definitely long though. Standing there talking to people for hours and showing them how to play the game and whatnot was so taxing. It wasn’t as good as LevelUp ‘cause at least there was other random developers games there we could look at but everyone’s stuff at Gamecon we already knew about.

Anyway, with all the good reception we received, we assumed that we were a shoe-in for the awards at the end of the show. We had a ton of people vote for us, as well as a bunch of teachers that were totally into our game. Though, somehow we still didn’t end up winning. 1 group in particular won more than 3 awards alone which we weren’t too happy about. Though, at least it wasn’t like in LevelUp were we lost to people who USED engines rather than MADE engines. It was a little easier to swallow in that sense.

Regardless, everyone loved the game and we got some good feedback from the public once again. Hogue and the rest of the teachers were also really interested in our game which was also pretty cool. It still baffles me how we didn’t even one award though.

That aside, there were also a few problems that we encountered throughout the event. Mostly involving the constant power-outages from all the different computers plugged into the walls. As well as some administrative stuff we had to take care of too. I enjoyed myself though and the group was relieved that they didn’t have to work so intensely on the game anymore until after exams. Though, that didn’t get rid of all the additional work we had waiting for us. That’s all cleared up now though so I finally have time to sit down and do these  “Hogue Blogs”.

Also, a friend of mine was nice enough to take this picture of my group which I edited and is now on our website and the header for our Facebook group. Good feels bros.

Montreal Game Summit (MIGS) Trip!

MIGS was, just, oh my goodness, haha. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Easily worth the money spent to go. Montreal itself was frigin cool. It felt like Toronto but smaller with less people walking around making noise; it was nice. It also had an abundance of Poutine which was fantastic. I gorged on Poutine whenever I could. Though, the trip to and from was terrible for me. I have pretty  bad motion sickness so the 4 hour bus ride sucked for me. Food and sickness aside, MIGS was so cool.

When we first went down the escalator that brought us to the schedule room, I got insanely excited. I almost didn’t even take my coat off (Even though it was pretty hot down there) while running around looking at everything. I ended up going to coat-check because I did want to start sweating. Soon after, me and Evelyn went around to all the different booths and talked to all the different companies that were there. Square Enix was probably the nicest one though. We probably talked to them for the longest amount of time. They kept saying how badly they wanted interns and how they’d love to hire us. Though, considering we were still in school and don’t actually live in Montreal, we couldn’t obviously.

Though, we also did talk to one of the producers of Visceral Studios (The makers of Dead Space) and he was super energetic and loved talking to us. He really had that Hollywood-American feel though, so it was sort of funny. Regardless, he was an awesome dude and also said Visceral Studios were looking for interns as well. We more or less figured out by the end of the day that all the companies there really wanted interns, haha. Hopefully the offer will still stand once school finally finishes.

Lunch eventually came and the sleepiness started to kick in. We didn’t really get much sleep the night before because we had to wake up pretty early to be ready for the conference. I ended up going to a bunch of different lectures, with the Bastion one probably being my favorite. Amir Rao, the director of Bastion over at Supergiant Games was the one giving the lecture and he was such a down to earth dude. For example, around the middle of the presentation his laptop started to mess up so he couldn’t really use his PowerPoint anymore or show us the older builds of Bastion. Though, he acted like a boss and closed the laptop and actually said “F**k it, I’ll do it live!” and proceeded to just talk about Bastion. He was so engaging and really entertaining to listen to, even without the PowerPoint to follow along with. It was fairly inspiring. I hope that if this all ends up working out for me that I’ll be able to work on my stage fright and pull something like that. I also watched some lectures on Unity and one from the gentlemen from who made Mark Of The Ninja. At the end of the lecture I went up and talked to Nels Anderson, the guy giving the lecture and talked about some of his idea and some of the old games that he loved.

The next day we also went to the final presentation of it all, which was with Peter Molyneux. He was supposed to be at the convention but apparently his team was having problems with the Curiosity servers and had to stay in Britain to help figure out what the issue was. I was pretty bummed about it but he ended up giving the lecture over Skype with some PowerPoint which was pretty cool. He made reference to a lot of his older games like Populos and Dungeon Keeper which was great for me though I feel like a bunch of people didn’t understand.

The whole trip overall was pretty wicked. I was really tired the whole time though and the trip was long back and forth considering the sickness but It was definitely worth it. I would be totally interested in going again next year.

My LevelUp Conference Experience (Toronto Convention)

So LevelUp was pretty amazing. Walking up and being ready to go was sort of hard but once I got to my group’s house to start gathering up our stuff, I started to get pretty excited (Even though I was sleepy as hell). Vincent drove us to Toronto and we walked to the Design Exchange Center.

When we got there, there were a ton of other group already waiting. Apparently most of them had been waiting for 2 hours already so I was actually pretty happy I slept in a bit. Our group started to build some levels with the in-game editor to show off to the public while Divakar worked on the game some more. Once Hogue gave out tables for the groups to start setting up their laptops and games, we quickly got our stuff together and then left Vincent to take care of the booth while the rest of us went out to eat. To say the least, SaladKing was pretty delicious.

Anyway, when we got back there were supposed to be high school kids that came around to look at our games but they never showed up but eventually the general public started to come in and look around. It was pretty awesome having people and other developers all around us. It felt like a little mini-PAX or something, haha. It was even better when people tried our game. They kept asking what engine we used and would be so surprised when we’d say we coded it ourselves. A lot of the time, they’d think we were in 3rd year or something along those line and be blown away at the fact that we were only second years and we did all that by ourselves.

We more or less got some awesome feedback on our game. I don’t remember hearing one bad comment about it; everyone basically loved it. People from Ubisoft and another foundation approached us and gave us their business card which was also pretty awesome. People were genuinely interested in our game. So we might actually be able to get some funding for our game over the summer for development. Things are looking up. The rest of the slow was okay, it felt longer than it should have. Our group didn’t win any award but we were the only ones who actually won any prizes. That made it okay I suppose. By the time we finally got home, I had fallen asleep in the car and zombied my way back into the house and fell asleep. Such a terribly long day but interesting nonetheless.

Possible Future “GTFO: The Double Dungeon Debacle” Shaders

Games are awesome; and now a days, not only are they awesome, but they’re really pretty as well. Though, to make these games pretty, little programs created within a game’s engine called “Shaders” must be used to create those virtual worlds come to life.

A game without shaders is fairly bland and is generally pretty limited unless it’s more sprite based. There’s a long of things in a game that you would never guess was a shader. Such as that “drunk” effect your character gets when he’s drinks too much virtual wine or when you’re sprinting really fast and the camera blurs due to the motion. Even the simplest thing like shadows is considered a shader. All of these things are fairly essential if you want to make your game flashy to make it stands out from the rest.

This semester we’re going to be spending a heavy amount of time on shaders. This post is to show an example of what sort of shaders would be good for my group’s game, “GTFO: The Double Dungeon Debacle”.

On the left is our original game without any shaders. On the right you can see a very crude example of a cell shading shader has been added.

A shader such as this could be used in a situation where the player has enter a “Ghost Realm” so everything is very foggy and exposed as if it were seen through the eyes of an apparition. Similar to that of when Frodo, from Lord Of The Rings, puts the Ring on and it goes all foggy such as the one below.

The most typical shader would be of the one you see below. The added shadow effect below the player and NPC models as well as the semi-fog-of-war around the player character. The only light source being the illuminating circle around the player. All things considered, we’re in a dungeon so it’s safe to assume it will be dark, lol.

These are examples of simple shaders and I’m excited to learn about the different ones we’ll be working on throughout the semester. I just hope the exam wont destroy me, haha.

tacgnol asked: Oh luca, where art thou?

My bb lover, I am off, in a void of vidya gaems and streaming. I miss you, my dear Tumblr friend. All of you, I do! I come on and respond to anyone that messages me because I still get email notifications.

I’m always curious as to how everyone’s doing but there would be an insane amount of Tumblr to catch up on and it got to the point where it felt like work logging on every day to see every thing :(

Making posts also took forever for me because it had to be original and really well tagged because I’m a nut for that. So yeah, I love all of you and miss you dearly, but Tumblr is so much work :(

I love you bb, don’t forget all those wonderful nights we had in Paris while on webcam, naked and sometimes on the toilet. Also, tell Michael to put a shirt on ~

Prototype Game 11 - Healthy Game Design

Name Of The Game:

Food Fight!

Game Rules:

• How To Play

There are two decks, Vegetables and Fruits and 4 categories of each divided into Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. The objective of the game is to destroy the competing farmer’s land. A mysterious scientist has provided you with a growth hormone to create warriors from your produce.

There are 6 plots of land that each farmer owns. If they are all destroyed the farmer will be forced to retire. Each season is two turns for a player. There is a maximum of 5 fruit or vegetable fighters at any time; however they can still be grown on a plot of land. Each Category of fruit and vegetables can only be grown at the start of the season, and at the end of the season they are ready to fight and move to No Man’s zone.

If the produce cannot be moved to the zone after maturity, they will decompose after half a season and be shuffled back into the deck. There are exceptions such as the mushroom. There are 4 phases in a turn: Draw, Grow/position, Battle and End phase.

• Draw

You can draw one card per turn.

• Grow

You may place produce down on a plot if it is the start of the season if it corresponds to their type. You may also move grown Fighters to No Man’s Zone if there is space.

• Battle

Fighters have attack and defence points. The defence points deplete as they are being attacked. If they die, the side effects of the growth hormone infects a growing produce and decomposes it or if there is none then a plot of land wither aways and dies. The destroyed fighter is sent to the compost.

• End

If you have more than 7 cards in your hand, discard one card to the compost. If the previous step does not apply or has been done, you may draw one additional card on your next draw phase if you have destroyed one or more plots of land this turn.

• How to win

The game ends either of the farmer’s 6 plots of land is destroyed. One of them then sells their land because they cannot live off it anymore and it is turned into a new mall.

Development Process:

As per usual, all of our group members gather at my house and talked about what the game would be about. We read the homework document and understood that it generally could be anything, as long as fruits were involved. That said, we moved ahead with an idea that I had about a Risk style board game involving fruit. We later realized that this was more difficult than it originally had seemed and ended up working with an idea that Evelyn had about a card style fighting game similar to that of Pokemon and Yu-Gui-Oh.

With the Pokemon style in mind, it was obvious that everything had to be changed to a Fruit themed game. We decided that every card had a season that it would be best in and that the seasons would periodically change as the game went on. Making certain cards more strong during that specific season.

From there, it was obvious that all cards needed a health number which we named “Defense” and an attack value. The players would attack each other back and forth using their cards and relying on the season for those mid game advantages. The players would also have some form of health pool that would deplete as your cards continually died. This was your over all health and once that was finished, you would die and your opponent would win.

After realizing that game also had to incorporate vegetables, we made half the cards vegetables and the other half of the cards fruit. So the battle would take place against these 2 real life mortal enemies in an attempt for domination in the farmer’s farm plot and later into the domination of the human’s diet.

Once everything was decided, Clement worked on the game rules, Laura started the bases of all the cards which would later be sent to me to touch up, sort and then add titles and descriptions to. Evelyn created all the values for attacking and defense and Jesse, as usual, worked on balancing the game.

Prototype Game 10 - Chaiyya Chaiyya: The Party, Music, Dancing Game

Game Set:

• Dance move card deck.
• Chaiya chaiya music CD.
• Cd player and speakers (not included).

Game Rules:

01) Place CD in CD player.
02) The group of players decides who of the group will become the dealer.
03) The dealer shuffles the card deck and places it face down in front of him/her.
04) The rest of the players line up side by side, at arm’s length away from each other, in a semicircle in front of the dealer.
05) The dealer then draws a card and places it face up in front of him/her.
06) The dealer then demonstrates the dance move depicted on the card in front of the other players.
07) The dealer then starts the music from the beginning.
08) The players start to dance on the 4th beat after the beats begin in the song.
09) The players then dance the move on the card while keeping to the beat of the music.
10) When the move has been performed the turn is over.
11) Repeat from step 5.

Additional Rules

01) All proceeding cards after the first card is placed to the right of the previous card drawn.
02) The players must perform all the moves in the face up cards in the right order.
03) The players must keep to the beat of song while dancing.
04) If a player does not keep to the beat they are out of the game.
05) If a player does not perform the dance moves correctly, they are out of the game.
06) The job of the dealer is not only to draw cards and demonstrate the dance moves but to also watch the other players and kicking them out of the game should they not follow the beat or perform incorrectly.
07) A player wins when they are the last player standing.

Development Process:

The development process for this game was very quick as the majority of our game’s code was due this week. All of us were very much hindered in the actual design process of this so the game suffered a little because of this excessive amount of other work that needed to be done on top of this.

Regardless, the process started within the end of the Introduction To Graphics lecture. Jon had an idea as to what we could do for the game and then we all sort of put our input in. Jesse was very adamant about getting his idea to work but we passed on it because we did not like the fact you had to throw tokens at people to make them stop dancing. I digress, Jon expanded his idea and we all added to it. From there, we were all tasked with drawing a minimum of 2 dances. These dances would then be sent to me (Gianluca Leal) and I would add and name them into the card design I made.

Once all the card were designed, I sent the file off to Wesley and/or Jesse and he would then take them to the print shop for them to be printed out and cut for the class presentation.

Prototype Game 09 - Remixing & Modifying (Tic-Tac-Toe)

The Remixing:

For the first part of this assignment, we are tasked on “remixing” Tic-Tac-Toe so that it uses chance factors instead of, or as well as skill factors. The rules of Tic-Tax-Toe are simple in the you are either X or O and you must place one of your letter in 1 of the 3 by 3 squares every turn to try and make 3 in a row to win.

To dictate chance, I’ll be using a D8. After placing their letter, the player must role a D8 to create an event. Depending on the number, an event will occur in the game or on the grid. To scale up the game a little, the game grid has increased from a 3 by 3 to a 4 by 4. This is because some of the events would be unbalanced if the board was so small. The events correspond to the numbers on the dice and they are as follows:

• 1. The board has reset, clear all letters!
• 2. You have received an extra turn, place another letter.
• 3. Remove one of your opponent’s letters.
• 4. A null/wall tile has been added to the board, this can be placed anywhere, including on top of already placed letters. (A null/wall tile blocks that spot from both players and cannot be removed unless the board is reset).
• 5. You have missed a turn!
• 6. Your opponent misses a turn.
• 7. Move one of your tiles to a new location.
• 8. Swap one of your tiles with an opponent’s tile.

With these 8 events and a larger grid, I hope to make the game Tic-Tac-Toe more entertaining to play.

The Modifying:

For the second part of this assignment, the game I decided to modify is that of my original game which I made earlier during the year called “GOLD RUSH!”. I’ve chosen to do the chance factor; as the original rules of my game are sort of skill based with some chance involved. I’ll be making it mostly chance. The original rules for that game are as following:

• Gold Rush must be played with a minimum of 2 players to a maximum of 4.
• The goal of the game is to reach the end of the path to reach the gold mine before the rest of the miners!
• Roll dice and move the corresponding amount to move yourself closer to the end.
• If 2 players land on the same spot, they enter into a shootout!
• The 2 players must duke it out in a duel to see who comes out still alive! Choose the location in which you want to shoot your opponent, roll for your aim modifier and then roll for your damage multiplier!
• Each players has 50 health. The loser of the duel loses a turn and must move back 1 space, while the winner of the duel.

The main part of the game that involves skill is the shootout portion of the game. By removing the ability to pick the location of where the player is targeting to take a shot and adding a 1 shot 1 kill system, I have changed one of the main core mechanics. When both players enter a shootout, they both roll a dice, the one with the higher roll is the winner of the duel.

On top of changing the shooting mechanic, I will also be adding an event system. Once the player has rolled for their movement, they then roll a D10 for an event to occur in the game. The events will positively or negatively effect a player’s gameplay. The events are as follows:

• 01. You find a trail of gold dust on the floor to follow; Move forward 1 space.
• 02. A cowboy gave you a wrong direction; Move back 1 space.
• 03. You make camp and it seems to be a quite night; Nothing occurs.
• 04. You lay a fake trail of dust for your opponent to follow; Move opponent back one space
• 05. Your opponent is hot on your trail; Move opponent forward one space
• 06. You got a good rest last night so you’ve got a keen eye today; Win your next shootout
• 07. Your arm and wrist have been hurting all day, your aim is off; Loose your next shootout
• 08. The hot air doesn’t wake you from your slumber; You miss a turn
• 09. Your opponent falls down a hill; Your opponent misses a turn
• 10. You find a nice town to rest in; Nothing occurs.

With the combat system change and an event system added, I’ve change my game to be more chance based rather than decision based.

Reference to the original game.

Prototype Game 08 - The Starry Night (An Art Game)

Game Rules:

• 2-6 players.
• Group pot of tokens, one white, one black.
• Tokens have to keep a constant balance of tokens. If they collect too many tokens of light or dark, then the game is over.
• 7 tokens in either direction and they lose.
• The first dealer is the person who knows the players the least, or is the youngest. Dealers then move clockwise.
• Each turn the binary dice is rolled and a card is played. The side of the card that is, by group consensus, what is closest to the feeling of the dice face is played face up. Each player minus the dealer then writes down on a piece of paper what they believe the card is in terms of feeling. One sentence. players are not allowed to talk during this phase.
• After each player writes down their choice, the pieces of paper are mixed and the dealer tries to decide who said what. if he is correct, the corresponding color token is put into a pile.
• Once each pile has a number of tokens equal to the number of players times 2 each, the game is over and the players win.

Development Process:

The development process started off as it normally does with ideas and whatnot. Some of the members already had ideas for the game, prior to actually meeting. A couple of the group members hung out and thought of some ideas as well. It was said in passing about the main ideas and we then decided on a date to actually talk about everything.

With exams and all, it was hard to actually find a time to meet and work on the project considering the 3 midterms and all the studying that had to be done in the mean time. Once midterms finished though, a few of us met and quickly picked a date to which we could all convene and discuess the game itself, it’s rules and which of the ideas we’d go with. As per usual, the meeting place was designated as my house in my living room.

I woke up late but Brett came early and woke me up by shooting me with nerf guns. Jesse soon arrived so I actually got up and helped out. Sometime after, Jon joined us and Wesley talked to the rest of us through Skype has he contracted some debilitating disease that had caused him to be bed ridden. Having already heard all the ideas, we attempted to decide which to use. Originally, we thought we might do a Pictionary style game where we have emotions heavily involved but that didn’t end up working. We later decided that we’d be going with a game where emotion from cards are written down and then people have to guess which emotion is what person. The game rules changed a little from there due to some discrepancies with opinion.

Once the overall idea was made, we were all assigned to make the cards for the game. Each person was to make a minimum of 4 cards. I ended up making 9 as I started having a little fun coming up with ideas of what certain cards should be. As you can see though the pictures I’ve posted, each card sort of has a theme attached to it.

When all the cards were finished, most of us .rar’ed the image files to Jesse so that he could go and get them printed out at the Print Shop at EP Taylor’s the next day before class.

Anonymous asked: What year are you in? :o

I’m in second year Game Development & Entrepreneurship of UOIT.

Prototype Game 07 - Liar’s Dice (Pirates Of The Caribbean Game)

Game Rules:

At the end of a round the winner removes a dice from their hand and gives it to the loser of the round - Evelyn

In a game of 3 or more players, players can form alliances with another player which can protect a player that is about to be eliminated only if the ally player guessed right (or is not called out as a liar) - Laura

If a player looses around they must act like Captain Jack sparrow, then the next round they can choose one of their dice and change the face value to that of their choice - Gianluca

Players may discard a “1” dice to look at another player’s cup. - Jesse

If everyone has guessed two times in a row with no guesses, re-roll one die. That die has to be shown. - Clement.

Development Process:

The construction of the rules started as usual. The group gathers at my house, in my living room and we discuss how we want the rules to be. Now this game was particularly easier and faster to make compared to the rest of our projects. This game didn’t involve a board or cards, just a few rules and dice, making our lives significantly easier.

We started bouncing ideas back and forth while Laura shouted about negative feedback rules and whatnot. We got a few that works but in the last little be, we started to doubt our rules so many of them were rewritten with new context and syntax.

In Class Board Game - Battleship Variation

Game Rules:

WIP

Development Process:

The class time was very limited but we got to work right away.

Prototype Game 06 - Elevator Action (ATARI Classic)

Game Rules:

The object of the game is to gain as many floor cards as possible, through playing general cards and effect cards.

To play, seperate the cards into two decks: Floor cards, which consist of three card types:  Secret Documents, Agents, and Getaway car.

All other cards are shuffled and put into a seperate deck.

Each player then draws 7 cards from the non-floor deck.

One player, determined by a rock paper scissors contest, draws a floor card and puts it face down on the table. The player to his or her left then has their turn.

On a player’s turn, they can play one of two types of cards: General cards or Effect cards.

General cards play like rock paper scissors and uno. You can play a like card or play a card that beats the card in terms of the strength triangle of:

Falling light->Kick->Gun->Falling Light

Falling light beats kick and so forth.

If at any time a player can’t play a card, he skips his turn.
The objective is to be the last person to play a card while making sure his opponents can’t play cards. If an entire round goes with no cards played, the person who last played a card takes the floor card and gains the appropriate points determined by the card.

The game ends when all 30 floor cards have been played. Players then add up all the points they’ve obtained through floor cards. The player with the most points is the winner.

Development Process:

Such as passed assignments, everyone convenes at my house and we gather around the table. I had the idea of doing Paper Boy but the consensus wanted to do Elevator Action. Some group mates already had quite a few ideas for it so I just went with it because my idea wasn’t as fleshed out as theirs. From there, considering it was a card game, we didn’t need to design a board or anything like that. Most of the work consisted of coming up with the rules which you can see above.

Once the group decided on the rules and picked out the kind of cards we wanted, Jesse came up with the balancing and the majority of the bits that made the game work as a whole. With that, I went upstairs and started working on the different cards in the game.

Laura provided me with this sprite sheet she somehow came up upon and I worked with that. Thank God for me, the file was a .PNG, making upping the image size considerably easier for me. I took most of the sprites and made an outline of what  I wanted the card to look like. I decided to keep the background color because it somehow fit the game. Though, I didn’t think any of the sprites would make a particularly good border so I quickly made some lines around the center to have more going on in the card.

The final product looked like this, with each of the items within the border changing depending on what card it was. There is a total of 12 different cards with different images and texts. The most lengthy process of the card creation was actually taking all the text from the sprite sheet and making it into a useable text. Cutting each individual letter, copying, resizing and then positioning them all took more than a few hours.

Once the card were done, I handed them out to the rest of the group members so they could add them to their blogs and print them out for the next class.

Prototype Game 05 - Class Wars (Collection Game)

Game Rules:

• Everyone must start within the middle of the board.
• The player must decide which hallway they wish to go down to start.
• ==> Players may only move 1 spot per turn through the entire board.
• All hallways take 2 steps to move through the whole hall.
• Once decided the players must choose a which class path they wish to take.
• Once a player chooses a path, they must stick with it until the final exam is written.
• The players must always move in a counter-clockwise manner.
• ==> Unless they are within a hallway.
• Player may re-enter hallways.
• ==> This rules still follows the counter-clockwise as well as the class-path ruling.
• To win, the player must get an A in all of the 8 classes.
• ==> Each class’ mark is made up of 2 assignments, a midterm and an exam. The total grade is out of 36. Add your dice rolls up to see your final grade.

Items Included:

• The Nerd Wars Game board.
• X2 D6 Dice
• Point Tokens

Color

• Green
• ==> Path changer. The player must choose which direction they wish to move in.
• Purple
• ==> Assignment. When landing on an assignment tile, the player must roll a D6 to decide which grade they will receive. The grade is out of 6.
• Orange
• ==> Midterm assignment. When landing on a midterm tile, the player must roll two D6s to decide which grade they will receive. The grade is out of 12.
• Red
• ==> Final Exam. When landing on a final exam tile, the player must roll a two D6s to decide which grade they will receive. The grade is out of 12.
• Blue
• Dice Roll Event. Roll two D6s to get a number. Once rolled, check the “Dice Roll Legend” to see what happens.
• Yellow
• ==> Hallway. Walk.

Mark Legend:

Game Development Process

The development process started out the same as any other. We sat down as a team at my place and we brain stormed some ideas. The girls, that being Evelyn and Laura, came to the table with an idea they had about nerds fighting for marks. We all had our own ideas but theirs was somewhat more fleshed out than our own so we went with there.

We added more to the idea, made it simpler and easier to put onto a board based system. Once we came up with more of the ideas of how the rules worked, the girls started laying out the board design.

We originally wanted there to only be 4 class types but we had so much extra space that we ended up adding another 4 classes to attend. This would also lengthen game time and would allow more time for the players to interact and play with each other.

Near the end, we figured that the players should follow a certain path on the board and shouldn’t be able to roam free. It would waste a lot of their time and give other players with more direction an advantage, so all players must follow arrows that are on the board and can only go in those directions.

Me and Clemant then finished up on the rules and the girls put the last touches to the game board. We chose a name for the game and that was it!