Ryan Crim, Week 2 Journal PPJ, Blog post 2, GMAP 378

Content with Hours (Examples included):

During class last week, as a team, we ran down the list of mini/micro-game ideas that were brainstormed at the meeting that I was unable to attend. After all of the ideas were explained, I chose to take the ‘Claw Game’ idea along with a pun that John came up with for the name, Abducktion, and run with it. Just to note, from my understanding, the initial idea was a 2D experience where one of the humans would aim the claw at aliens hanging from the top of the screen to try to get the duck being passed between them by one of the players outside of the ride. In addition, I was provided the quick mock-up shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Mock-up for initial ‘Claw Game’/Abducktion idea

The first thing I did was take some time to brainstorm exactly how the game should be presented as well as how the flow of the game would work. Below is a list of some of the thoughts I had that influenced the design I went with. (1.50 hrs)

• Given the first-person perspective of the Drexel Ride and the angle in which this game would need to take place to get decent motion, it made much more sense to make the game 3D as opposed 2D.
• Since the humans are in a spaceship and the name of the game is Abducktion, having a traditional tractor beam seems to make more sense than a claw.
• Since tractor beams aim at a downward angle, having aliens at the top of the screen passing the duck would not work. Therefore, given the carnival atmosphere, shuffling cups with one containing the duck seems to work.
• Although this is a micro-game, I did not like idea of excluding the second human, so I thought of an X-Ray ability that can be used to show where the duck is for a very short time during the game.

With the brainstorming out of the way, I worked on creating a functional greybox for Abducktion. This included adding a temporary icon to the game select screen, setting up the scene with placeholder art, adding the appropriate UI, and writing scripts to work out the mechanics of the game. Below are the scripts I wrote and what their purposes are. (4.00 hrs)

• AbducktionMaster 
• Handles UI for timer and score
• Keeps track of whether the game has started/ended
• CupSwapper (Alien input)
• Keeps track of positions of the cups and receives keyboard inputs to swap the positions
• After time expires, raises duck cup, adds points if necessary and removes the TransformWrapper
• Updates cup materials when entering/exiting X-Ray mode
• StartTrigger
• Determines when the cups have fully lowered at the start, triggering the game/time to begin
• TractorBeam (Human input)
• Keeps track of the current beam position and receives controller input to move to new position
• Receives controller input to enter X-Ray mode as well as handles the logic and UI for X-Ray mode

Therefore, at this time, the flow of the game starts with the cups being lowered and the middle one covering the duck (Figure 2). After it is covered, the aliens use F, G, H and J to swap the cups, while Human #1 uses left and right on the Left Analog stick of the controller to move the tractor beam to keep track of the cup containing the duck (Figure 3). This continues for about 7 seconds, at which point the cup containing the duck is raised. If the tractor beam is on the duck, the Humans win, otherwise they lose. In terms of Human #2, at any point during the 7 seconds, they can press the ‘A’ button on their controller to go into X-Ray mode for 1 second, which causes the cups to go semi-transparent revealing the current position of the duck (Figure 4).

 

 Figure 2. Start of Abducktion micro-game

 Figure 3. Swapping of cups and differing position of tractor beam

Figure 4. X-Ray mode triggered by Human #2

Content Positive:

- Brainstormed and modified the given ‘Claw Game’ idea into the current Abducktion

- Completed a greybox for my first mini/micro-game

Content Negative:

- N/A

Total Hours for the week: 5.50 hrs

Ryan Crim, Week 1 Journal PPJ, Blog post 1, GMAP 378

Content with Hours (Examples included):

After meeting as a whole team at the end of the first class, I took a little bit of time to read over the GDD and familiarize myself with the layout of the Perforce and Slack channels. (0.25 hr)

Having a better understanding of the game and process, I tried to brainstorm some rough game ideas as well as quickly look into some implementation ideas. One of these ideas involved creating a tilting platform with a maze (see idea 2), which was not too difficult to implement thanks to this helpful link (http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/maze/). However, there were a lot of early collision issues that would need to be worked through to make this idea solid. My rough implementation for High Strikers (idea 1), went a little better, but there are also cases where the hammer collides a bit weird with its surroundings as well. Below are short descriptions of each of the rough game ideas I had. (1.75 hrs)

1. Throughout the arena, there are High Strikers (strength machines to hit with hammer) that the humans must go around and trigger to show their strength. The first player walks around while the second player controls the hammer. The aliens could modify the position of the High Striker machines or disorient the playing field in some way. Furthermore, if it were decided to have actual micro-games, then the idea of moving around could be eliminated and the players each control an axis of the hammer to hit one High Striker before time runs out.
   
   Figure 1. Screenshot of rough High Striker game
   
   
2. The humans are placed inside of a maze on a tilting platform. By tilting the platform, the humans slide their way through the maze trying to get to the end goal that is placed on the opposite side of the maze. Meanwhile, the alien abilities could include swapping between two mazes every so often to try to throw off the humans rotating the platform to change the controls.
   
   
   Figure 2. Screenshots of rough maze game switching between mazes
   
   
3. The humans need to get through all of the crowds to make it to their favorite ride, in the style of Frogger. One player is in control of moving, while the other is in charge of rotating the view to see where incoming obstacles are. The aliens can slightly disorient the humans to slow their progress. 
4. The humans are in charge of a face painting booth, so they are given a stencil to fly above and try to match with paint. The first human controls the flight while the second controls when the paint flows out. The aliens affect the “person” being painted, such as having them sneeze, etc. to try to mess up the paint job. 

Furthermore, on this past Sunday, we had our first group meeting that I tried to remote into since it is not an easy task for me to make it down to Drexel on the weekend. I was able to connect into the Skype call with John and Xavi, however, there were connection issues that caused all of the voices coming through to sound extremely robot-y and not understandable at all until eventually the call dropped. (0.25 hr)

One note I did get from the meeting was that the programmers were tasked with implementing a scene to show the correct handling of the TransformWrapper as well as score and timer updating, so I took my High Striker scene and added it to the project to show that I could implement those features (see Figure 1 above). In general, the process of adding a mini-game to the system was not difficult, but there was a tad bit of confusion with how some features of the structure work. (0.50 hr)

Content Positive:

- Gained an understanding of how to add a mini-game with a timer and score

- Brainstormed and roughed out a few very basic games ideas

Content Negative:

- Remoting into the first meeting did not work, therefore I missed most of the discussion

Total Hours for the week: 2.75 hrs