Single Player Game

After re-watching the clip of "King of Kong" I posted last week I noticed something that I did not pick up on right away. As Steve Wiebe was about to break a record on Donkey Kong, all the different people in the arcade came to the machine and huddle around Steve to watch him. I realized that there has been a big change in the way people can interact with each other through video games.In the more classic games it was a more solitary act. There were no two player games, or at least, not many so in order to have a bonding experience with people, they would crowd around and watch. I remember doing this when we played video games.

Of course this happens now but with the integration of the Internet allowing people to play each other all over the world more people have become participants compared to viewers. But as it was in the early days of video games, viewers still have to be in the same room as the player in order to watch them. This can be, and usually still is as fun as in the early years.

On a side note I found this link to a site that has been created for a database with hundreds of video games on it. The author created an "equation" on how to be a good gamer. He says it is a parody but I still found it interesting that he took time to create this and shows that he really into video games.

http://www.rfgeneration.com/

Board Design

On Tuesday I continued trying to finish up the game board. Once I get this completed I can work on at least beginning to program the game. I figured this was going to be the most mundane aspect of the design so I wanted to get this over with first. That way I can spend all my remaining time working on how to code the game, which will probably take up a lot of time trying to research and see if the coding works the way it should. Hopfeully it won't be too hard.

The new King of Kong

Through out the semseter I will be refering back to the documentary "The King of Kong" which is a very great source to show how passionate the old game players are as well as to the extent at which world records in gaming scores are kept.

This clip is about Steve Wiebe who just broke the "official" world record at Donkey Kong. Later, there will be some problems from the reigning champion Billy Mitchell.

Snowed in but still working

photo courtesy of abardwell and creativecommons.com

So we've been snowed in for the past week and that means no school but I have still been trying to be productive. I have drawn all the remaining items I am going to need for the game and I will soon scan them and finish them off in illustrator and photoshop. I also have cut out all the pieces of Fred I will need for future animation. I plan on getting the majority of the game coded first, and then if I have time I will animate Fred. But I wanted to have all the pieces ready so I would not have to spend time on that later. I will do the same with the enemies. The next thing I plan to complete is the game board which I only have a few more things to do. mainly to add the pictures to complete the shelves.

TOPIC: Twin Galaxies

In my last post I talked about how the original acrade games focused on high scores and that is why people spent hour after hour playing games. With modern style games this type of game play has disappeared. There are however ranking systems on certain games that, because of the advances of the internet, that include players from all over the world when they are connected through a system like Xbobx or Playstation. But the original scorekeepers are from an arcade from Iowa called Twin Galaxies. They became this concept of score keeping. In order for a score to be the world record it had to be kept but Twin Galaxies. To some extent, it still is the only word on whether someone has a record in a game and what it is. Here is a link to their official site which gives a lot more information about them.

http://www.twingalaxies.com/

More work

On Tuesday I continued to work on my game, mainly trying to design all the items that are going to be in the game, such as the fruits/vegtables and characters. I have been using Photoshop and Illustrator to trace over my drawings in order to be able to place them into Flash and animate them. I was having a little trouble figuring out Illustrator and I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to animate my characters if I do use photoshop. I think I am just going to have to play around a little with the program to see what I can do. I think I am going to concentrate more on actually getting the game working, coding etc, and then once I get that done I will try to animate my characters.

Continued Work

On Tuesday I made some more progress on my game. I actually made a few of my items that will randomly appear for Fred to collect. I am going to have to check them out in the game play to make sure they work properly. They are supposed to disappear when Fred collects them but I don't want them disappearing before Fred actually touches them. I had a similar problem in one of my early exercises in Flash game last semester.

I also changed my game board slightly as to make it easier for the player to see as well to make it easier for me to code. What I have to do now is finish off the board completely and make some more items. I also have to add my characters will will consist of me copying them in Illustrator and bringing them into Flash. If I have time before the semester is over I may try to animate them too.