Setting up for the Final show.

For the final show we have to set up a board with examples of our work. I wish however that I could of had a screen with the exe of the game I made but if that doesn't come through I intend to set up six different images of the game, screenshots and mockups using the assests I made.

Working with others

Both Dave and myself are making our games in a program called The Games Factory 2.
With this program there's a section that helps us to program the aspects of our game. Since there was alot of diffents things and it was our first time using the program we sometimes got stuck on certain aspects.

To start with to work out the collision between my characters and the objects I made a reference point that is hidden behind the background layers, with this it meant I could have my sheep and cow move behind and infront of boulders and other obsticals that I could place in my game. Dave was having trouble with his animation where his character would jutter while walking, by showing dave what I did with mine he was able to use the same technique to smooth it out so it would run properly.

Both of us have characters that used mellee attacks however collision between the character and the enemy meant the whole body would do damage instead of just the weapons or the foot of my character's kick, using the same reference idea we had it techically "shoot" a box that's hidden and when it would make contact with the enemy it would do damage. By setting it so it fires at a speed of 0 making it so it can't move we was able to make it so when the attack happens it would only be on the area where we set the "attack box".

However this added a second problem for us as this "attack box" would appear at the start of the attacking animation instead of when they should of make contact with the sword swing or when the kick was fully extended. After tinkering Dave was able to use the value function so the "attack box" would appear later in the animation. Basically as the game starts we assigned a value to the character for example we set to be Value B, then a number to it is set which we used 100, then we made it so every 0.01 seconds it removes 1 from the value, then set it so when we hit the attack button it would reset the value to 100, finally a condition was put in for when the value of B hits 80 the "attack box" would appear. With this we were able to delay the "attack box" appearing to be in time with the animation by changing the number of when value B reaches. It was a bit technical but it worked well for what we needed.

I wanted to have a shadow underneath my characters however I couldn't figure out how to make it transparent with the game engine, even making it semi transparent in photoshop beforehand and importing it in didn't work and I was pretty much having to accept solid shadows until Dave figured out when he was playing with some settings that there was a transparency value within the coding section I could use.

Minecraft.

WHY IS MINECRAFT SO SUCCESSFUL?

-Minecraft is a TOY.
There is no real goals. The player is essentially handed it and told to go play.


-It's a SANDBOX style game.
With modding availablity and the fact the game is still in development, new stuff is getting added all the time along with texture packs to change the visuals to the style that suits the player.

- The player can use their own CREATIVITY in their work.
You can construct and use your own imagination to shape the end result, the player is limited only by their own imagination.





- The game is SOCIAL.
With online multi-player servers the game experience is improved as players are able to create and share what they make with other people and friends who play the game. With this it lets the players gain more interest by working together or against as the case may be.

Minecraft.

MINECRAFT PLAYSTYLE:

Minecraft as I've said is based on simplicity, basically releasing the player and letting them choose what they wish.




This basic sandbox style of gameplay has boomed with pre-sales reaching 2,284,290 at the time of this post. It seems that the game's style and freedom appeals to the mass market at this time.
The choices of play can range from simple exploring, building towns and other structures to creating statues and pixel art with the different materials and colours available.

Minecraft.

WHAT IS MINECRAFT?:

Minecraft's website

Minecraft is a game that started being developed by Markus Persson who eventually made a gaming development team called Mojang, the game itself is in Beta at the time this was typed.

The game itself pretty much is a first person game where the player is spawned in a world where everything is made of blocks and the goal is to simply... survive.

That's it... the whole premise of the game is what the player makes of it. There are day and night cycles and at night monsters such as skeletons, zombies and spiders spawn to try and kill the player, meenwhile the player is able to gather resorces such as wood, stone, sand and many others and is able to craft items to help them survive whever it's a pickaxe to mine stone or a sword to help fight the monsters.

Catherine Eardley's PDP blog.

Things to look at:
Minecraft -
How does it play?
What makes it so successful?
Simplcity of gameplay over higher graphics?