When first buying this game I was excited for all the vast new technology and time put into GTA 4. First play through I just wanted to go through and beat the main missions. After playing through it, I decided to start an entire new game and take my time messing around in different areas of the game. The best thing about this game is just the city itself. The time spent into making the city must have been tremendous to get all the fine detail in. That being said going through the story line whether trying to be good or bad, like Michael points out is in my words lame. A game like this needed to have different elements of the game change due to something the player possibly did earlier. Take in to perspective Heavy Rain. If GTA 4 did even 1/100000000000 of what heavy rain did with the effect of the story lines from previous chapters that happened, it would possibly be more enjoyable. Also adding in karma would be a big hit. Take the karma from inFamous, if you were evil or good the civilians knew and would be effected by your presence. You don’t see anything like that in the game. Though it was an enjoyable game because, I like not most others will play any game no matter what reviews say. I enjoyed it but for this reading, it was the first time in two years that I had even touched that game. I think out of all the GTAs I’ll stick to number 3.
Lucas
Basic Story(might change in minor details):
We start out on the planet Delta. Here on this planet there is an island called Colony 5, where our player, Alpha lives. The town here is a mix of both technology and nature. One day the planet starts to get angry and takes over. Roots of the trees and other plants cause black outs in the town. In desperation, Alpha’s mom gives him a very rare Crammus in hope to save there town. The town seeing that Alpha has a Crammus gather around and beg him to save the town. He needs to get a bunch of parts, him unknowing what he needs, he gets ready to leave. Alpha walks to the bridge connecting the island to the mainland, only to find that the trees destroyed the bridge. So Alpha gets on Crammus and starts to fly towards mainland. [This is the first level] Once reached the mainland he travels into the forest and hopes to make it out.
This is the second level, flying through the forest as well as walking on the ground and letting the player shoot crammus’s basic weapon, bile blast.
Third level is flying through with crammus giving player controls moving back and forth avoiding deadly caterpillars.] [Fourth level is a boss battle with the giant caterpillar. When first entering the level you see the caterpillar beating up another crammus. So you must save it and you start to battle. Once you defeat the boss you save the crammus and turn out to find it is Marc’c Crammus founder of all Crammus and creator of cans of cram.
This is all we got for the story there is more levels that will be added in future. For this class we want to have these 4 levels done.
Well when you first start out, it tells you what has happened and who you are, a detective going to solve a murder. Then it tells you, that you are in the entry way. So it starts to put in the player’s mind you are in a house. Then I think at least, as you go through each room, it starts to make you think of a big house back in the old days. Then as they move on, with my description hopefully people start to get an image of the room in there head. Whatever I don’t tell them, then usually they fill it in with whatever was in a movie one time, or images of old mansions they have seen. Hopefully it will challenge them in the game world wanting them to gather clues and figure out the mystery.
I think the representation I bring to the game is that it makes it seem like it is real. The world I created doesn’t have a fantasy theme. It just takes the player through a detective role trying to solve a murder. When starting this game I started to realize that it has kind of become a Clue IF. Once I noticed that, I did start to pull a few elements from that game. I didn’t want to try and just copy it, I still wanted to make it my own. So when people play this, I would guess they start thinking about the board game and picture the board in there mind. There are some differences and hopefully whoever plays it will enjoy it somewhat.
Lucas
After reading this it actually helped me in think of more stuff to add and more stuff I could do with my IF. My world could definitely be developed more, but that would take awhile for me. I think for now what I have will pass. With the parser and output, I hopefully think I have put enough information into my game to help progress play for the player. But the only way I can make sure of it is during play testing. So tonight will help me a lot in figuring out what I have to edit.
Common Ground
When starting play it seemed like a normal IF game. It describes the room showing everything that is there. Then you can choose what to do, say open closet, and by examining clothes you learn that the first character works at Hardee’s. Then you can move around, and find out she doesn’t get a lot of money. You can do basically anything that you would think a regular person would do with any objects in the room. This makes the world believable for me.
For inputing what you want to do in the parser work well just like the world. You can interact with everything in the way you wanted. The only time would be if I told it to do something in a different way then it could understand. So it would then tell me how I needed to say it and then I was able to continue through the story.
The Output was great as with every IF I have played from this point. When I look at my game, I always am trying to think how I can improve the text. I guess that is a thing possibly in all IF’s that is always developing. But the descriptions of everything made the game more interesting and made me think of what I could do next with it.
I like to play all these IFs. Every time I play one it always gives me different ideas that I could put into my own game. I like the style of the game as far as going between multiple different stories. I like the use of the different colors as well as the descriptions. Right now in my game of course my descriptions are limited until i further develop. But this does help me out a lot. Also in every room where there is an interactions it seems like they are different. Like the whole CPR was different from digging in the sand. The dialogue was also interesting and I like the way it was presented. It was good so I didn’t have to guess what to say to the person I just got to choose. I have some good ideas now that I can use in my game. Only thing will be if I can find the code.
on to the next IF!
Lucas
When starting the game I didn’t really know what type it was going to be like. We started with a collecting of points game. Then moved on to a battle it out for trophies game. Finally we ended back on a collecting game. I had no idea our game would have this end result as it did. Though it is bad, I liked the way our game turned out in the end.
Went right:
1. The feedback was great to help us get a great functioning game.
2. Alex telling us to stick with the theme.
3. The design of the board was fantastic to fit the theme.
4. The design of all the pieces.
5. The content of the game made everyone laugh and kept it interesting.
Gotta have six….
6. Tyler always wanted to play the game and collect kids…ha
Went wrong:
1. From the beginning we couldn’t figure out a good rule set for the game.
2. The freaking snow kept us from meeting two times so we miss out on play test times.
3. The end state of our game was hard to figure out. It took us till the last play test to get it figured all out.
4. Having only two people in the group made it harder to bounce ideas off. But having two makes decisions develop faster
5. Tyler always wanted to play the game and collect kids…ha
Through this game I have learned a lot about making a game and how it all starts. I can see that it is very difficult to produce a fabulous game. I now know why it takes awhile to produce a fantastic game to an audience. That’s why now I don’t judge games so hard because I know what it is like.
Going through each of these flash games was pretty exciting. In every class you can’t always remember everything that is explained, so it has to be reviewed. That’s exactly what these did for me. It helped me remember thing that I hadn’t fully grasped.
These are an awesome tool for teaching. The best method of learning for me is hands on interaction. They actually make you want to pay attention and continue through it all. By the time I was done with one I wanted to learn move on and learn more.
The one I liked the most was kind of a tie, but more towards episode 3. The whole concept of not making a game to hard but challenging enough that it takes a second to figure it out. That is what makes a game likeable and keeps gamers wanting to play the game. The tie though with me had to do with episode 2 as well. It explained the key to any game is have a goal that needs to be reached. This really helped me because in my board game, the end stay or “goal” was the hardest part to figure out for us.
remind you guys of anything? o_O
(click on the photo to go play the game… it’s pretty sweet)
WOW, that is pretty good. ours is better!!! ha
You are Desmond in the future is born an assassin and the knights templar have him captive. Desmond escapes with Lucy where they have their own version of an Animus, which uses DNA to find information about Desmond’s ancestors. They are trying to find “pieces of Eden,” through the ancestor’s history. Now in the hands of the good guys Desmond goes back were he plays as Ezio in the 15th Century in Florence Italy, to help find other “pieces of Eden.”
As playing it, I start out as a young Ezio helping his father, a banker run tasks for him. It gets suspicious when I have to drop letter to some mysterious people. Then Ezio’s father and brother’s are captured and imprisoned. Ezio visits his father secretly, and is ordered to deliver papers to prove his innocents to a friend. On the day of the trial and hanging, the friend betrays his father, denying any papers. Ezio’s father and brothers are killed while Ezio escapes from being captured. Once escaped, he starts to train to be an assassin. After he learns how to blend, and kill silently, he then goes and avenges his father’s death.
The setting helps tell the story, making it feel like you are really back in the 15th Century. Within the story, each character you come across has their own story to be told. All these characters help move the story along as well as open up many side stories that can either be left alone or pursued to learn how everything works all together to a resulting end. The visual design of this game is amazing. All the detail that went into making each building, or randomly placing objects was superb. One thing I really enjoy is the lighting of the entire game. The sun beating down on each building just added to the scene and the realism. The city seems truly realistic with all the narrow passage ways next to all the buildings makes me believe it is Florence Italy.
1. After playing them, which took awhile, I personally liked, “Dead Like Ants.” I choose this one because after playing both, this one was easier to understand, I knew which commands I could use and which ones I couldn’t. This was even without the walkthrough when I typed in “about,” and it explained the basic vocabulary to use. From there I could really navigate my way through the level by saying out and in. which is easier to me then go north, east, south, and west, as well as keeping track of which direction you went and how many times in that direction I went like in “For A Change.” The most interesting about was about “Dead Like Ants,” painted a pretty good picture of what each area might look like if it was ever made into a visual piece. What was not so interesting was I didn’t like how on “For A Change.” Some of the lines were just plain, they didn’t really tell me what was all around the scene and it got me frustrated because I didn’t know where to move on from there.
2. When I here the words a tree moving in the wind I can right away picture like an actual tree moving. When you see a drawing, it is stationary so it makes the person viewing it hard to imagine that tree moving. When you read the words it goes right to a tree, maybe a tree that you have seen all the time. One that is outside your window and you always can imagine that one. But when you see it in a game it is different, it puts you into a different world, because it isn’t that tree that is outside by your house, it is someone else’s tree, that they created. The only good that does is, it takes you to that world so it is not like the one you live in now. If the player is wanting that, then that is a perfect ideal situation.
3. I think with this characteristic it keeps the player in a more realistic state while playing the game. Instead of it being a totally different world, and proving to the player it is by him/her actually seeing a tree. They get to think the tree could be in there own backyard. So now they have more of an emotional connection to the story. Maybe that story like “Dead Like Ants,” when you go up a tree, the character is you and you have climbed up your tree.
4. They are very similar in that you have to deal with words and figure out what words to choose. In “Today I Die,” you are selecting the words to make the story move along throughout the world. Also the mechanics are making it so the player can decide where to go, what to do, which words to use, and all of these different actions can and will have different responses to the game which makes it interesting.