Pac-Man

Pac-Man was released in 1980 in Japan and was developed by Namco. Pac-Man became a social phenomenon that sold a large amount of merchandise and also inspired, among other things. As in Pac-Man released, it invented a new type of genre ad appealing to both genders. Pac-Man popularity was really high back then, that is why people often credit Pac-Man being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all the time.

Interactive

Pac-Man is a very simple game. It allows up to 2 players play at the same time. Pac-Man is controlled by the player through a maze, eating dots (which is usually called pac-dots). The player is allowed to control the Pac-Man to 4 different directions, which are right, left, up, and down.

Setting

Pac-Man game uses a maze-like environment which has pac-dots spread all around the maze. In the middle of the maze, there is a little home of the Pac-Man enemies.

Concept

The concept of the game is to eat all of the pac-dots. There are 3 enemies, which are Shadow (Red), Speedy (Pink), Bashful (Turquoise), and Pokey (Orange-Browny). These 3 enemies have the ability to eat the Pac-Man. However, there are 4 special pac-dots (which are bigger in size than usual pac-dots) that can allows Pac-Man to have the ability to eat the enemies, but in temporary times. When Pac-Man ate the special pac-dots, all the enemies turn in to blue like a ghost. Each enemy eaten, Pac-Man will get 200 points. Additionally, each pac-dot and special pac-dot eaten, Pac-Man will get 10 and 50 points sequentially. When all the pac-dots have been eaten, the game will load into the next level.

Goal

The goal of this game is to control the Pac-Man to eat all of the pac-dots with out being eaten by the enemies. 

Challenge

The challenge of the game is to avoid being eaten by the enemies. The player has to make their own strategy so that they are able to eat all of the pac-dots with out being eaten by the enemies.

All images is derived from: Pac-Man — & Wikipedia.com

Play Pac-Man!

Game Design Week 5 Workshop

Today in workshop, we studied about elements of RGP board games. It includes making character, understanding the rules and regulation, skills, purchasing equipments and weapons, and defining the character characteristic.

First of all, I personally think that RPG games are only those video type of games, which we able see the characters move visually. However, today I learned something new, which is learning to play RPG board games.

Description

Title : Microlite20 Purest Essence

Created by : Robin V. Stacey, Darrell King, and Al Krombach

Stats: Strengh, Dexterity, Mind

Races: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings

Classes: Fighters, Rogues, Mage, Clerics

The game documentation also includes rules and regulations, level advancement, monsters list, equipments list, adventuring equipments and gears, spell lists, and guide to game master. In this game, we are allowed to create our own magic skills and other stuffs.

This game also provides character sheet which is pretty cool. We could keep track of our money (wealth), characters specifications and descriptions, weapons and equipments, skill rank, and character statistics.

The game was fun at the first time, we are allowed to choose our desired characters details. We also purchased weapons and equipment. However, when it gets to play the game, the game master was often confused on understanding the game play. It was also complicated when everything needs to be calculated using dice. As the matter of fact, some needs to be calculated in different type dice. For example, we to calculate the Hit Points, we need 6-sided dice. However, when it comes to calculating the attack of monsters, we need some type of dice. Depends of the monster, there are some monsters which need 8-sided dice and 10-sided dice.

Pong

Pong or usually marketed as PONG (all upper-case letter) is a two-dimensional tennis sports game, and is one of the earliest arcade video games. PONG was released in 1972, was published and developed by Atari Inc., a video game company founded in the same year by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Back to when PONG was released, PONG was one of the video game, which reached mainstream popularity.

Interactive

PONG is a very simple game, yet exciting game. PONG imitates the gameplay of tennis sport, which has two players. One player plays on the left side, and another plays on the opposite side. In PONG game each player controls an in-game paddle by moving it up and down. The players use paddle to hit a ball back and forth. When the ball touches the paddle, the ball bounces to the other side. The aim of this game is to get more points, points are earned when one player fails to return the ball to the other. To move the paddle, the players need to press 'W' or 'S' keys to move it up and down consecutively, or simply move the mouse up and down.

Setting

PONG is a two-dimensional game. Back to the earlier days when PONG was released, the setting of the game is black and white, where paddles, ball, and the barrier are in white; the rest is in black colour. However, today, we can play this classic game on Atari Arcade website, and the game is redesigned to be more attractive, and more colour involved, such as gradient colour white for the ball's colour, paddle's colour of each side is now distinguished, and the rest are in gradient colour of black (not a flat black colour). There are some cool effects added as well, such as the effect of the ball moving, the ball bouncing off of the paddle, and the effect of celebration when one side gets points.

Original Design of PONG

The Design of PONG Today

Fireworks effects adds excitement of the game

Goal

The goal of PONG game is similar to tennis game in sport, which is to earn more points. To earn more points, one must be able to return the ball to the opponent side, and if the opponent side could not return it back to the other side, then the opponent side is fail, and the other side gets the point.

Challenge

The challenge in PONG game is, the paddle can't be moved to the tip of the corner, this makes a little gap which a ball can pass. With this gap, we can control the paddle so that the ball would pass the gap. However, to control the paddle is not easy, due to the ball is moving and we have to predict the correct location of the paddle.

Again, another challenge is to return the ball to the opponent side. The ball movement is dynamic, according to the force of paddle gives to the ball. Because of the dynamic, we have to predict where should we move the paddle in order to get the ball touches the paddle and returns the ball to the opponent side.

All images is derived from: PONG — Atari.com & Wikipedia.com
Play PONG!

Game Design Week 3 Workshop

This design challenge is taken from Brenda Brathwaite's blog.

Materials - paper, post-it notes, pens etc.

Mechanic device - dice (or even cards/spinners)

Organisation - pairs or small teams dependent on size of class.

In this week's workshop, we were practising a race game. Basically, in race game, players need to start at point A (start line) and get to point B (finish line); one player also must win.

We formed a small group of 4 members which is Chandra, Budi, Nathan and myself. After a team discussion, we decided to have a start point in the bottom part of the paper provided by the lecturer. As in the papers there were 6 half of hexagon block at the start point of the game. Hence, we used a 6-sides-dice to decide which member should place which block.

Since the paper provided by the lecturer contained of hexagon blocks, then we decided to only use the 3 edges of higher side of each hexagon. The players' movement would be determined by these 3 edges.To play the game, players need to get the random number by shaking the dice. As each player moved, they would leave a path (like an increasing snake). Thus, each player would have a head and a tail.

The movement of players would be

 Where

- P represents Player

- Number 1 to 6 represent the number gotten by shaking the dice

When Player gets number 5, he must move 2 blocks ahead, however if he gets number 2, then he only moves 1 block to the front.

The rules of this game is

• If Player 1 hit Player 2's head as he moved, then Player 1 must get back and start again from the start point.
• If Player 1 hit Player 2's tail, he could not move. However, the Player 1 could jump the Player 2's tail if only he gets to jump the blocks which were occupied by the Player 1.

Apart from generating the rules, we also added conflicts to make the game interesting and enjoyable. We added a bunch of special features to random blocks. The special features were

• Move back according to dice number.
• Roll again.
• Deduct other player(s) steps according to dice number.
• Back to the start point.
• Swap your front head with one player.

Big Nose the Caveman

Big Nose the Caveman is released in 1991 by Camerica. The game is a NES game and it is a side scroller. The work of the game was done in a port for the Sega Master System in 1993-1994, but it was never released commercially. Even though, it was never released commercially, the prototype version of this game exists with slightly different title which is Dinobasher: Starring Bignose the Caveman.

Story

Big Nose is the main character who is very hungry and he travels through many islands to find his dinner. In the beginning of the game, the story begins with the Big Nose sees a flying bird, and he imagines that bird could be tasty if he could cook that bird. Finally, as the result of that, Big Nose follows the bird. So I presume, he travels the island to find that bird.

Interactive

The actions involved in this game are walk left and right, jump, shooting, and strike. The control of this game is also simple. To jump, press X from the keyboard, to strike and shoot press Z, and press the right or left arrow to walk to the right or left respectively. Big Nose strikes the enemies through his club. Along the way, there will be bones that needs to be collected to increase the point. There will also be a purple grape-shape item, that if the Big Nose collected that item, the Big Nose's skin will turn from light brown to dark brown. Also, with that item, Big Nose could shoot through his club. Along the way, there will be bunch of holes, and Big Nose needs to jump those holes in order to survive. The enemy which is sort of an animal from earlier times, and in purple colour, is coming based on the script. If the Big Nose touches the enemy, then the Big Nose will die, unless he has eaten the grape item, then he has his second chance

Setting

The setting of this game shows an environment in primordial time and it gives an jungle environment. This could be easily seen by the skeletons of animals in the lower part of the screen and the very high trees. The Big Nose himself, dresses like an ancient person, who dresses in animal skin.

Concept

As what the story tells, the main character, Big Nose is very hungry and he travels to find food. He uses his club to strike the enemies. Along his way to find the food, Big Nose could see challenges such as enemies, and holes.

Goal

There is no specific goals in this game. However, according to the story, Big Nose's goal is to find food for his dinner by travelling through many islands . Presumably, t the end of the game Big Nose will fight the big purple enemy.

Challenge

The game is simple, we needs to fight enemies, to jump the holes, collect the bones, and also collect the special item. However, the game is also very difficult due to inability to restart from the last checkpoint once all lives are gone. Big Nose also easily dies in single touch with the enemy, unless he has eaten the special item which is purple grape-shaped item. 

All images is derived from: Big Nose the Caveman — Nintendo8.com
Play Big Nose the Caveman!

Missile Command

Missile Command is an Atari, Inc. game released in 1980. The game is quite simple, as in the above picture, there are three missile guns which aims to destroy the missiles which are going to come from the top of the screen approaching the cities. We, as the player need to protect the cities/buildings from the missile attack by shooting and destroying the incoming missiles.

Interactive

Interactive explains the CORE game action/mechanic of the game. The action involved in this game are shooting (fire a missile) and move the missile guns to left and right. In addition to this, player can shoot a special weapon, but this is only available in multi-player model. To play this game, we only need a mouse to fire the missiles. Only with a mouse click, the nearest missile gun will fire the missile. There are three missile guns, but each missile gun has certain area limit in shooting the missile. For instance, the middle missile gun can only shoot from where its place until the are between left missile gun and middle missile gun. If the player wants to shoot in left corner area, then it is a job for left missile gun to shoot the missile.

Setting

There is no specific setting for this game. However, the player could choose either play in single-player mode, or multi-player mode. Additionally, if the player choose to play in multi-player mode, they will have special feature that they can fire a special weapon by clicking 'Launch' button.

This game uses simple and nicely design environment with buildings and cities are displayed in the lower part of the screen. Additionally, it also provides dark cloud, presumably to create a dramatic and strong feel for war.

Concept

In Missile Command, there are three missile guns which each of the missile gun has certain area limit in shooting its missile. The game begins with missiles coming down randomly from the sky or the top of the screen. Let's call these incoming missiles, unidentified missiles. The player needs to destroy the unidentified missiles by fire the missiles from their missile guns.

Goal

The goal of Missile Command is to protect the city from getting destroyed by the unidentified missiles by destroying them.

Challenge

The game sounds simple to play. However, the real challenge is to calculate the distance and time between the missile gun shoots and the missile reaches the mouse-click position. For me personally, this challenge begins to be felt when I reached level 8 when the my missile kept missing on destroying the unidentified missile because I clicked the mouse too slow and it ended up the unidentified missile kept coming down before my missile reached them.

All images is derived from: Missle Command — Atari.com
Play Missile Command!