Game Idea Research

The Game I Decided

I would like to be able to make a game that I would like to call Space Pong. The game is basically exactly like ping pong but it has been re masted to more of a space theme. The reason why I think that this game would be to work I because I feel like the game itself can transition within the space background and would look good visually. I also feel like the objects can be designed in such a way that it would be able to fit the space theme or make it at the least futuristic. I think that the concept itself would be very popular and original in that genre.

I want the game to be able to be a local 2 player game. I would like the game to be able 2 people fighting to protect there planet from a meteor also know at the ping pong ball. I feel like it would make sense with the background I am going for with stars flying around randomly in the background and we have asteroids that can collide in the middle of the players and hit the ping pong ball which makes it random on where it will go.

Game Mechanic Ideas

• I would like it to be point based so whenever you score you have to reach a certain number for you to successfully beat the opponent
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• I would like to have a system so whenever you get a certain hours played altogether with all the game you will unlock new maps.
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• I would like to be able to have new skins for the Ping Pong Paddles to be unlocked with every 10 victories.

Here is an image that shows a familiar idea of what I have in mind.

I am trying to get a background during the game like this but I hope to get map moving and having meteors coming out randomly.

Unity Tutorial 2

I really did enjoy the part 2 of this tutorial because it had a lot of useful information regarding how to make the textures look realistic. It also helped me by recapping how to add new textures in to use them when designing the map. I was also very impressed when it came to how easy it was to add objects like water to the map. There are some things that I found hard to grasp and that was the understanding of the coding itself because everything has a purpose and plays a part in the game development process. I am looking forward to being able to make vehicles because it will be fun to try drive and explore the map that you made with machines and equipment also I am looking forward to making my own game with functional NPC's that attack you.

I was able to follow the instructions without any problem on YouTube

Down below is some of the Achievements from the Tutorial  

We made a wall and added a wall texture to it to give it the real look.

We also added new stone texture to the ground to make it fuse together naturally for a realistic look.

We added water to the map to make it look more relatable a mountain type terrain.

Game Elements

What is Game Elements?

What are the Qualities of a good game?

The first thing we must do in order to know what a good game looks like, is separate the qualities that may have been applied to the game. There are some main themes that are used in almost all the games and that is that they have rules, conflict, goals, decision making and uncertain outcomes.

What are Atomic Elements of Games?

Well it may have a different meaning or answer depending on who you ask but it is some parts of the game that when you really take a look at it you can see the themes. For example these are something you may consider when looking at the atoms.

• Players
• Objective
• Rules
• Resources and Resource Management
• Game State
• Information
• Sequencing
• Player Interaction
• Theme(Backstory)
• Games as System

What are Critical analysis?

I know whenever you see critical analysis you thinking that you have to look through somebody work you would say that "It is nice" or you might give it a rating or talk about the bugs and problems. It does not mean trying to find something wrong in the work, you have to give feedback that the person can work off of. You must talk and compare it to other games to see or know what is missing or what could be added to help improve the game. This way you can get your ideas across to make it better and the developer knows where he went wrong and is able to improve or add more that can help benefit you both. If you get stuck try to ask yourself these kind of questions during your Critical Analysis.

• What challenges did the player face?
• What actions do the players overcome?
• Do players affect each other and have purpose?
• Is the game worth playing again?

Players

I think that players are very important to a game because you must really consider how the game will be able to function with a number of players. The reason why players is so important when planning is the amount of players in the game can be the difference between how hard the game is as well as how quickly the game finishes. When making a game make sure that it is suitable for the game map and the game does not break or taken advantage of. The things that you should think about when making a game regarding players would be.

• Are the players even?
• Can players join or leave during the game? 
• How does this effect the play?
• How many players does the game support?
• Must is be an exact number to complete?

Information provided here

Objective

When making a game the most important thing that every game needs is an objective because without it there is no meaning and reason to do it. The objective can be used in a lot of different ways because in the game it can be used to make people achieve the goal or follow the story line. The thing that you should think about when planning an objective would be.

• What is the objective of the game?
• What are players trying to do?
• Does your objectives benefit what comes next?

Information provided here

When it comes to making a game there are a lot of things are variables that you should really plan for but there is a book that has been proven to help challenge the game designers mind and help with brainstorming and help sharpen your game design skills

Information provided here

Feedback Thoughts

Fixed Mindset

Isolated Mindset

I was reading about "what fixed mindset is" I found out what it is about and the problems of fixed mindsets. I think that fixed mindsets can go both ways in terms of positive and negative because to have a fixed mindset is to be 100% certain about what to do and why you are doing it and sticking to the same routine day after day which is very good if you are good at what you do and are doing very well in that area or workplace. However you can also encounter problems with fixed mindsets and that is because you are not open minded, you have one sides thoughts which is a bad thing because once your routine breaks or changes you will not be able to adapt or understand what is going on. I think because they are so used to staying in their comfort zone they always want to stay in a place that they are good at. It is different to someone with a open mindset because you are ready to take on the challenges and you are completely willing to learn something new because to the person it is not starting all over again from the bottom it is adding new skills to the resume.

Why Rejection hurts so much

Emotional Rejection

I believe that rejection hurts the most because sometimes we may not be ready for it and even when we are ready for rejection we are still in disbelief over the event that just occurred. The rejection can hurt from a number of reasons, 1 of them being from something you love or care about because in your mind everything is going well and then problems happen which lead to the rejection. We are still human and are all vulnerable to devastation and heartbreak. The worse thing that can happen from rejection is that you close yourself up to the world and build up an emotional wall because you do not want to get hurt again which leads to sudden change in character. The most important reason is because we live in a world where we care about how other people see us especially when you try and invest your time around that person the rejection hurts the most when you yourself made the effort and you still were not good enough. 

Game Brainstorm

Summary

It is a game where you start off in the middle of nowhere for example lost at sea. When you notice that you are spawned on a raft that is made of wood with nothing but a fishing rod, but you also have a health bar that starts to decrease everywhere 10 seconds. You start to notice that you have different equipment or junk just floating at sea in the middle of nowhere which seems easy enough but you are also in a shark infested water where you have a shark coming every few moments biting the wood breaking it bite by bite trying to reach you.

Objective

You are supposed to use the fishing rod to throw out and rail in the objects that you see floating around the water and and also try to use it to build or improve your raft, while trying not to be eaten by the shark that surrounds you.You should try to survive for as long as possible.

Rules

Try not to get killed by the shark.

How I came up with the Idea?

I was playing a jaws games and I found it very annoying and repetitive after 5 games and I was thinking that the game could be a lot better because I had some ideas that would make the game more fun and I remembered that I could make my own game so I narrowed down on my ideas.

Summary

It is a very simple game where the camera bring you to a pipe and you have to drop your real picture or whatever image you want into the pipe and then it will appear above the pipe and it will have a countdown then when the game starts you will have a hammer and you have to hit the object with your picture on it to get points and you need a certain amount of points each rounds for you to be able to advance to the next level.

Objective

You have a hammer and you have to hit the objects and get as many points as possible to be able to get to the next stage.

How I came  up with the Idea?

I was playing a Mario game where you have pipes and you jump in and I was trying to think if there was a way to make a game out of the pipes but then I thought of a basketball machine game that had a goal to reach before you go up a stage and thought why not make a game where you can smash faces of your choice and try to level up in the process. I think it can be good for fun or maybe just to relive anger.

Summary

It is exactly like a normal ping pong but it has a space theme. You have 2 satellites that are used as paddles and you have a meteor as the ping pong ball and you have to hit it back and forth to protect your earth from exploding. You will have some  obstacles that float in the middle of the screen from left to right making it hard to predict where the ball goes and stopping straight forward received hits.

Objective

You are supposed to protect your planet from a meteor by deflecting it back to the opposite enemy while trying to be careful of the floating random projectiles.

How I came up with the Idea?

I came up with this idea because I always enjoyed playing ping pong in real life because it was very simple. fun yet very competitive so I decided to put that experience and emotion in a video game. I did not want to make it simple and boring so I made a theme that would be able to have the same parts or useful contribution in the game mechanics, I ended up coming up with a space theme

Summary

It is game where you are a comedian and you must be on stage with different kinds of audiences and you have a few options in jokes and phrases and depending on what choice you choose to say to the audience will determine the outcome of the outburst of laughter and you must try to fill the Meter of laughs to the top but you also can have the meter decreased if the joke you pick is unfunny or you take to long. It can cause the audience to boo or loose interest.

Objective

You have to try give as many good jokes as you can in a row without taking to long to decide to try and fill up the Laugh O' Meter.

How I came up with the Idea?

I came up with this idea because I was very much into watching comedy on Netflix and I thought while I was laughing how hard their job is while they were explaining in there routine the life of a comedian. I decided to make a game around the concept because I have never played a game like that and if the idea existed it was never popular enough to be known, So I wanted to try it out and see what becomes of the idea.

Unity Tutorial 01

I really enjoyed the Unity Tutorials but I found them a little bit hard to follow because the video itself was a little bit outdated so the GUI layout was changed or moved to a different location which made it almost impossible to follow but once you used your mind and explored the different settings it was very easy to understand from there.

Outline 

I had to learn the basics of Unity so basically I was spending time exploring the different functions and settings and trying to figure out make use of the objects.

I had to figure how to download texture from the internet and upload it into my files in unity and insert it onto the object or part in the game.

I was also able to mix and match some of the textures to make it look realistic which I thought was amazing because it came out amazing and you can tell without even knowing how to use unity or the more advanced settings that you can make sure the map pretty easily.

I was able to start adding props after I had mastered the manipulation and texturing of the terrain which made for a very convincing map and you could really see it coming together when only a few steps where complete.

I added another prop into the game but this time it had a script in it and it was able to make the gem (prop) rotate. It was a very new experience because we used a different coding language known as C# and I ended up using the software Dreamweaver to code the script for the Gem to work.

VIDEO PROOF!

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Game Design

My thoughts on game design.

A game designer is a person that makes games but not necessarily the coding but the assets such as the buildings or the story or rules because there are different roles to play in a Game Designer.

Game Designers are artists

Games Designers are architects - they create blueprints of the game as a prototype

Game Designers are Party Hosts - they can invite people into our game space to enjoy and see the progress so far.

Game Designers are research scientist - they make sure everything makes sense and it goes by the laws of logic and makes it as realistic as possible.

I was being shown or being thought what exactly a game was and what made it good. I learned that a good game has a play activity, rules and a lot of the time involves some sort of conflict. So of course there must be an objective, outcome and a set of rules that would lead you towards your goal it makes players make a decision trying to get the object based around the rules. Games go through something called Critical Vocabulary. Where you go and get criticism from your classmates but they help you by giving you the good and bad parts of your game to help you make some improvements or slight changes perhaps even add some of their good ideas.

Games may have some of the following:

• Games have Activity
• Games have Rules
• Games have Conflict
• Games have Goals
• Games have Decision Making
• Games sometimes involve no material gain  

We also learn that not all games are made perfect on the first try because there is no such thing as a perfect game or done. It sometimes takes a game with a lot of mistakes because a good game goes through many stages of hate and topics filled with arguments or criticism before they can change or update the game along the lines of people comments and only by making those little changes and letting the public see growth can you be a great game designer.

Links of my Interest

http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/WhatIsaGame.shtml  - I think they have a point when they say that a game bring pleasure to people it should be fun and time consuming.

https://gamasutra.com/blogs/LewisPulsipher/20110516/7453/So_Youre_Going_To_Make_A_Game_For_The_Very_First_Time.php - I agree you must be focused and ready to pursue game design and be in the right mind set if you want to make your first game.

https://gamecareerguide.com/features/602/pulling_the_plug_in_defense_of_nondigital_teaching_and_learning.php?print=1 - I think it might be eaiser for us students to learn game design on non electric games but is it going to be informational enough to give us the experience and knowledge we need to start at the best level.