Transformation - Crunch Time

At this point, I wasn't able to give them the artwork on time and I need to catch up with Anders with all of his code that he already put in. I started by putting the artwork of the bad monster which started as a space ship with four eyes. 

At first I was thinking of a cartoony style game which robots will invade the planet earth and the player would need to destroy the four eyes of each. I'm starting to do the other simple artworks like the text and the interface.

Transformation - Added Ideas

In further developing our boxing game, we thought of having four hit panels in our game in which players will have to hit them. When we talked to some of the tutors, they told us to explore more than what we have now but we're getting to the point on where the concept is already set up and it's already solid. One of them suggested to have a combo system on which player can get more points when they hit some of the hit areas, it will make more points. That initialize on evolving the idea of what we had into putting up an ordered hit area where they need to punch it in chronological order. For example the in the upper left panel is the first one to hit before the bottom left. This is also a good idea where the difficulty changes as well. 

In this case I had this reference from the arcade game Point Blank where player needs to shoot the targets in a specific amount of time. In implementing this idea, I thought of putting the aspect of having a time limit in order to move on to the next stage. The targets are one of the main elements of this game and I would also like to put it into our game as well by having four panels to be hit which could lead on to making the combo system as well as gameplay.

I also suggested to them if we could add some LED on the punching pads that we're going to use similar to this video. I wanted to make the LED light up in the pads when the yellow indicator in the game appears as well, synchronizing the processing and the arduino side of it.

It would be great if we could do this but time limit is wouldn't be good enough to implement it.

Transformation - Start of Work

As the start of working on our project, Anders had a lot of worked on the programming more than I expected. Since he knows more of what's in the program code, I just decided that I'm going to do the artwork for the game but I'm also helping Anders some hand if in case he's struggling in some bits of the programming. When we were deciding on the artwork, I had some struggle on deciding what's going to be the character opponent that's going to be in the game. I had in mind that instead of referencing from the internet and copy a character, I decided to make my own character from scratch. Since we're making a game, it should be an original character that we made too. It's somewhat logical when you think about it.

I also talked to will regarding the controller that we're about to make. Initially we thought about having a stand with a wooden platform that players could punch it. There's going to be two kind of platform, One is the box type where there's 4 holes that players could fit with their fist when they punch. Another one would be a square type which there are four panels in each side including the rage button on the middle.

In the square type box controller, we consider about the player getting carried away with the game. If they punch too hard, it might fall over or destroys the back of the box. In the 3D Labs, someone suggested to us to make the stand in a U shape so that it would balance itself when someone strikes too hard.

We're considering the use of metal bars for the stand so the weight would be distributed to the ground entirely and wouldn't be easily to knock of the controller. 

Transformation - Inspiration of the Boxing Game

From the last weekends I had thought about the game which I always see in the arcade and searched for that boxing game where they had to punch a sort of boxing pad and when they punch it it would transform into being destroyed. This had me worked out on looking for that name of the game and finally got it in the end. It's called Sonic BlastMan

This is a transformation of not just the enemy/opponent but also how you punch hard in order to destroy completely the opponent. I got to say this is a great reference that we could use for the game since the transformation has two aspects. One for the game and another for the player. I had a thought of using accelerometer to sense the strength of a punch

This punch acceleration is one of the ideas that I

had in my where we could get the data of how strong is the punch and be able to connect it in processing to manipulate the data through the opponent. The only problem for this is that the materials that are posted from the tutorials isn't available here in new zealand. We have to order it and it would take days till it get's here.

Here's the list of the materials it would need if we're going for this type of controller.

http://abieneman.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/punch-acceleration-sensor-%E2%80%93-part-2/

Transformation - Statement of Intent

I was interested on making the transformation as the gameplay goes on, the character will change it's elements like size, speed, and difficulty as the player does it's moves for the game. These connection between the physical and the virtual will have good side of perception of what the player needs to achieve. 

One of the games that I made from the past is this ninja roll ball rolling game http://eyemobi.com/games_fattyninja.html.. This is somewhat similar to the brief of what we are doing at the moment. 

In other terms of transformation, I also have an idea of changing the use of the controllers in terms of player's game experience. For example a fighting game where the player should use either a weapon or it's fist to handle different situation or environment on the game.

Exploring ideas is like waves of the beach. Sometimes you would gather all these information and compile it then it would turn out that some ideas aren't going to be as good as unique when it comes to having an original idea. 

But having a purpose of the game is most important. It's like putting a backbone of what we're doing on to this project. I told the group that we should consider why we're doing this type of game and in the end we would agree that we like this type of game. 

I think in making a game, it doesn't matter much on what the player's experience. You make the game because you like on doing it. It's like an expression of what we're doing as well. This also makes the player fascinates on the game that you made, just like looking on a masterpiece of an art. 

So on the basis of this project is to do what you like to do within the concept of transformation. It would be great that combining all the aspects of transformation into the users would be such an aspiring work and a good practice for us in designing and implementing.

Transformation - Start of Ideas

During the start of second week, I haven't got in touch from the last two days of the group. I catch up to them with all of their ideas and hear them out on the progress of the research and development. As I heard about anders who made an initial game on somewhat like a spaceship game that transform colours when he hits the enemy. 

At first, my response is that it doesn't explore much in depth about what is transformation in other environment of a game. There's need to be something that is more complex but not over to the top since our time budget is very limited. 

After seeing what anders had made, I pitched to them about my idea of transformation for the game. During the weekends I was searching for many games that includes today's game as well. I saw a lot of different transformation in terms of the gameplay, but I got more interested on the side of some games where they need to change their speed or pacing when playing the game. Just like an example in wii sports where they need to change their position or speed of smashing their racket, this would be a good exploration of in depth transformation. 

I told them that we would make a boxing game that has a storyline which it changes it's enemy into something else. They agree on it and got into trying it out. Anders and I worked on making the game as soon as we all agree on it. We went on sampling an image that we got from google and tried it if it's going to work. There's also a source code from openprocessing where there's also the same boxing game. We used that as a reference 

http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/26864

Will started on drawing some sketches for the controllers for the boxing. This was a very productive day for us.

Transformation - Technicalities

I suggested to the group about using the game maker called Construct 2. It's a html5 script game environment which it is good for web base platform game. I was thinking of using this since it would be easy for us to make the game itself and might have more time to spend on making the hardware controller. The only problem for this was, no one isn't knowledgeable on using this platform, and I myself isn't good enough on using this. The chance is that we would go on using processing instead. Since I had experience on using processing, I told them that I could do the coding since it would be a great help on having more experience on it since I'm also taking simulated environment. Anders is also on board on doing the coding as well. I guess before choosing Construct 2, we have to ask Daniel if we're allowed to use it for this project.

Studio II: Transformation - Initial Response to the Brief

Our brief is to start off a 2D gaming with the concept of transformation and a customized controller. Our group is consist of me, anders and will. When I heard about making a game and a customized controller on it, I felt nostalgic about this project. From last year, I made a customized controller for making a game base from the short films that we made form last year first semester. We brainstormed on the game itself before moving on having the concept of the game. There were a lot of games out there it could go with the transformation concept. The game snake is one example of transforming of a small thing into a long huge snake. If there's thing to consider for transformation, it's about changing an image into another by using the physicality of the human. And another thing for this brief is that they point out those old retro games that has those elements of transformation. So my initial thought is that, the game wouldn't be too much complicated but yet there's a uniqueness on its aspect. It also has the element of transforming the players experience within the game that affects the gameplay as well. Base from my experience on making games when I was in first year, I lead them on to how it would work base on the time frame that they had given us. We wouldn't go for too much complicated stuff, yet something unique to the eyes of other people. I consider budgeting the time to what we would like to do in terms of making the game lively and fun.