If you've read my past Pokemon and game related blogs it probably comes as no surprise to you that my favorite Pokemon game is Pokemon Black and White versions. These games have a riveting story line backed up by an interesting cast of characters all packaged in what is still one of the hardest Pokemon games to actually defeat. All of these would be great on their own but up until recently I hadn't realized just how deep this game truly goes.
The land in Pokemon Black and White is based off of the real-world location of the USA. I've written blogs in the past about how GameFreak brings this world to life in the Pokemon and characters of the game. However the deeper I look, the more I see that there is an elaborate comment on the way American society functions as a whole. The main evidence of this is the two main legendary Pokemon in Black and White. Zekrom and Reshiram are the legendary Pokemon of ideals and truth respectively. The legendary Pokemon of each region usually represent the heart and soul of that region, the core values of the real life people who live there. In different regions we might see a sun God Pokemon or a Pokemon that controls time. Instead we see in America that ultimately we pursue our own goals. Instead of deferring to higher gods or powers, in America the ultimate power is your own will to get things done. The legendary Pokemon also reflect this aspect in how they follow humans. Most legendary Pokemon are found in far off places. They avoid humans or actively seek to destroy them. Zekrom in Reshiram however follow humans by nature. Even in their Pokedex entrees it claims that they follow a trainer with strong truths/ideals. Could it be that GameFreak is making a larger comment on American society by doing this? We can't be sure. However, one thing is certain, these Pokemon games are much deeper than many people give them credit for and deserve to be looked at in greater detail from time to time. -Why I like Pokemon Black and White -What is GameFreak saying about America with Reshiram and Zekrom?
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Frustrated by some difficulties we came across in designing our first tutorial, we decided to take a day this week and look back at the work last year's CTE class did in VR. Their goal was to create a simulation for a prison to advocate it's renovation into a senior citizen's home for veterans. This project was a large undertaking and the first of its kind in the game design pathway.
To complete this project, last year's students modeled out the prison taking many trips there to measure and photograph the area. Creating models of everything in the prison, they then took those models and put custom textures to them making the prison come alive. This is how I think my group will create Durham School of the Arts next year so it was useful to see how well it had worked in the past. Another thing we were able to find in the old project was how they decided to move the player around. Using a point-and-click method, the player could navigate between prepositioned anchors letting them explore the whole facility with out having to move around their play area too much. This might be useful once we start programming our game next year and explore options for how our player should be able to move around. -What CTE worked on last year -How they made it -What we can use from it If you're reading this blog you probably are aware of the massively popular game Fortnite. From its release onward it has had huge success and become a large phenomenon in the gaming community. After having become the center of memes and jokes so quickly, it can be easy to forget the genius that went into the making of this game. In this post I intend to unpack those core ideas from the viewpoint of a pure observer (being someone who has never played the game).
The first thing I want to delve into is the core game play. For those who don't know, Fortnite is a survival shooter game where 100 players are dropped onto a single map. These players must then find guns, ammo, health packs, and more as they struggle to be the last player standing. This battle royale style of game play is far from new. Popular video games in the past such as H1Z1 and Player Unknown: Battlegrounds use a very similar style. So what does Fortnite do to change the formula? Fortnite adds a construction portion. Using a building style similar to games like Rust or Conan Exiles, players in Fortnite can construct ramps, walls and other protective barriers. This addition gives players a new feature to explore and master which is a welcome change to a genre that has been looking for something new. However, this isn't the only thing Fortnite has done to improve its game play. Fortnite's art style and general feel is perfect for appealing to a wide audience. Earlier battle royale games have stuck to a muted realistic art style. After all, this style makes sense for a harsh realistic FPS which is the target of games like H1Z1. Fortnite has switched this style for a much more cartoon and inviting experience. This opened up the game to a much wider audience. Now not only could the competitive community play an intense battle royale, but casual players could also have fun with a visually exciting game. Fortnite shows that your game doesn't have to be incredibly innovative to be a success. By tweaking old formulas and choosing an effective art style, a game can reach a wide audience and improve on its predecessors. -Why am I looking at Fortnite? -How they changed game play -How they changed art style -The takeaway These past couple of weeks in Game Design, we’ve jumped back into Unity. This isn’t the first time this year I’ve worked in Unity so I didn’t have a hard time getting used to coding or any of the general editing skills necessary for Unity. However there is one key difference between what I’ve been doing in Unity and the new stuff I’m currently working on. That difference is previously I had focused solely on 2D games and in our new unit we’ve entered the world of the 3D.
So what’s different? For a comprehensive list you can look at the button below but to make it simple: Another Axis and Lighting. The first difference is rather obvious and is the addition of the Z-axis. This has major impacts both when setting up your scene and when programming. You have to be careful whenever coding not to forget that objects need three inputs when you transform them them. The third axis also means you need a different kind of rigidbody component for the physics to work. Another major difference between 3D and 2D is using lighting. In 2D lifhting is generally very generic. Using 3D suddenly you need to think of how lighting will affect your scene. If you are using a single source of light what will happen when the player gets out of range? Or if you choose to go with a directional light how will that affect how your scene looks and how objects look a small they move around. -what are we doing in game design now? -what are the diffences between making making 2D and 3D games? -Z-axis -Lighting Last year for my final project I made and infinite running game named "Bleed Out!". This game was made entirely on my own without anything except sounds being taken off of the asset store. While this game was a pretty good first attempt there are some things that I definitely could have changed to make it better. In this blog post I plan to go back over Bleed Out! and discuss the successes, failures, and challenges that came with making my first game.
First off, this game is NOT user friendly. Without me behind the player directing them to the controls a new player would have a hard time discovering the rules of the game. Some of the controls are intuitive but still a small tutorial phase surely wouldn't hurt to make sure players can start playing and exploring the limits of the game ASAP. This could be solved with a quick title screen when the player boots up the game. This would be quick solution which I could add in maybe about the time it would take me to create the title page in Photoshop and would give the game a more professional feel. Beyond this main shortcoming the game has many graphic and mechanic glitches that aren't very noticeable but could be solved. This would require more work going back and looking at my code to make sure it's economical and not causing any errors. Using Debug.Log to find where the problems are would be the quickest way to go about this process and then using google to find answers whenever a problem comes up. All in all though the game I made is pretty fun (at least to me). I used my own creativity to come up with a custom double jump code as well as a special invincibility skill for the player to use. These successes truly make the game fun to play and I could see myself actually playing the game a bit in my free time. It lacks a professional feel but that is to be expected for an independent game from a first time maker. I can work on getting things cleaner in the future and making games that are even better. -What's Bleed Out! -What went right? -What went wrong? Recently I've been playing a TON of a new game called Hex:Shards of Fate. If you've read my many of my past posts you'll know how much I love the card game Magic: the Gathering. However, magic's online client leaves a lot to be desired. This is where Hex has come in.
Hex is a card game very similar to mtg in it's core mechanics. At it's base it is yet another card game in which two players use resources to play cards and reduce their opponent's life total. However, one thing Hex has done really well is change the things it can change about magic's formula using it's power as a fully digital TCG. An example of this is how Hex is able to track cards through different zones. You can put modifications on cards in Hex, then shuffle them into your deck. Next time you draw that card it will still have the modifier you gave it earlier in the game. This adds a new depth of play to Hex that can't possibly be replicated by a physical TCG. Another good thing about Hex is its price: free. THat's right Hex is completely free to download and play. This means that while you don't start out with all of the top-tier cards you need to be a competitive player you can grind for those cards without paying a single cent. If you don't want to put money into Hex you don't have to. However, if grinding for hours against AI opponents isn't your thing Hex also has an in-game economy. Using websites like Hexprimal.com you can just go ahead and buy a tier 1 deck and get playing competitive Hex at a high level instantly. Might I add too that the most expensive Hex deck at the moment only barely reaches $200 dollars all said and told (compared to magic's expensive formats where tier 1 decks average $500 and up). Lastly I'd like to point out Hex's single player campaign. That's right casuals: single player. This is a cheap way to have fun playing hex and get free rewards. There's even a storyline which from what I've seen, while it lacks the history and detail of magic's decades-long saga, has incredible diversity and creativity you don't often see from mainstream games these days. But, to say anymore than that would be spoilers. This game gets many thumbs up from me and I've included the download below for anyone who would like to check it out. -What is Hex? -Why I like it -Why you should too Video games are more popular than ever before. They come in all shapes and sizes: In consoles, in handhelds, on PCs and on phones. It is hard to find someone, in a first world country, who has never played a video game these days and, with the expansion of games use in education and business, this dwindling number of non-gamers is set to take a nose dive. Among all this the number of people who don't want hard or long games is increasing rapidly. Though it may seem impossible to fathom for fans of games such as Dark Souls or pro-gamers who play for hours each day, not everyone wants to be challenged or forced to commit to a game. This growing community of casual players has created an entirely new axis of gaming for publishers to cater to. Casual games have to be several things: easy to learn, instantly rewarding, always accessible. Now more than ever these requirements can be checked off by the growing area of mobile gaming.
Mobile games seem simple on the surface. How much effort could it take to animate a bird to play between a couple of pillars? The essence of mobile games is in their simplicity. Everything about a mobile game needs to be simple from its menus to its rules. This simplicity is something that really sets apart the popular mobile games from the ones that flop. recently an app called TBH gained huge popularity among the high school crowd. Part of this success is how it, like many other popular apps has a seamlessly simply sign up process. Throughout the whole process I only filled out two text boxes. Yes, long gone are the days when people want to sit through electronic form after electronic form giving obvious amounts of personal information. This app has shown that you can gain access to the same amount of information in less than 30 seconds. Are mobile games the future? Yes, they are. They teach us important lessons about simplicity and accessibility that will soon shape the entire game industry. -What are 2D games? -Why do people like them? -Why are they important to the industry as a whole? The most recent addition to the Pokémon saga may be the weirdest game in the series yet. But does that make it worse than the previous games? I'll be honest: when I first saw this game I thought it was the death of the series. The weird cast of Hawaiian characters and increased hand holding just didn't click with me and for the first time in a while I found myself wondering if I'd actually buy the game at all.
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AuthorSamuel Henry is a Senior at DSA in NC. He has 3 years of prior experience in the game design pathway and he's looking forward to becoming a great game designer. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools Categories
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