furbet

[furbet]

Victorious-Alpha

If you’re suffering from procrastination and can’t get work done, don’t worry you’re not alone. Please test out my app and program Victorious and see if it can help you overcome this bad habit of ours. This is only in the alpha stage of development.  

I hope this program can help you in the most personal way because it did help me out during lockdown. 

Below is an example of my daily routine and how I use the  structure of this program to be more proactive with my work. 

[A guide of daily my Essential Checklist] 

I’d use choose the 30min Focus Session in Victorious to achieve activities that are 30mins in length. In the above case,  I will do 30mins of reading and drawing in the morning to activates my brain before tacking harder tasks. 

After each session, you will be rewarded with a gem; this gem gratifies you for your effort in strengthening your mindset. 

Available only on APK Android for the meantime. 

Please try it and provide feedback, it will be valuable to me in order to make an effective app to help others.

Download LInk and Survey:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1wqeq8mfuZHix58vr8epOkBgZQNF8w0av

Thanks xoxo

[furbet]

Happy Vibes

[furbet]

Unit 4 was to create a game on VR Cardboard.

My team decided to go with the theme of a bank heist escape room- except breaking in instead of an escape.. 

The game has three puzzle the player has to solve before breaking into the vault. 

Solve the puzzles by investigating the surrounding of each checkpoint and the clues that are given. 

The max game-play time is 25 mins but it can surely be achieved under 10 mins...if you think hard enough..then maybe lol

The artist did a tremendous work on the assets, absolutely splendid with the results of it given that we only had 1 week to do them.  Big thank you to them!

What I take from this project is that i feel that i have improved and is now more confident in programming then prior to this project. I learnt different ways to logically solve a problem. 

The most important achievement that i found from doing this project is my moral and commitment to making this imagination work into a game. Even though the scope seemed ridiculous to achieve and there’s adversity, i pushed still through and finish the game. Its definitely not polish and it needs more iterations but the game will get there one day ;) will be fully sick!!

 After completing this project, i think i need to hone on my leadership skills and dealing with team members who don’t put in full effort into doing the work. I think next time i can give them easier work, tasks that’s more engaging and fun- such as game testing the puzzles and reviewing, something like that!  

If you’re interested in playing this game, you can DM me and i’ll get to ya :)

[furbet]

Ye Olde Beach Disaster

Download this game for free: https://furbet001.itch.io/yeoldebeachdisaster

 A 2-day game jam with unknown programmers, artist and topic sounds daunting. Little was I wrong, this turned out to be the best experience I have had so far in the gaming industry to date!!

We were instructed to participate in a 2-day game jam from our tutors at AIE- and the topic that was randomly generated was ‘Ye Olde Beach Disaster’. Straight off the bat, the team started brainstorming elements that resonate with the words old, beach and disaster. Within minutes, we concluded to have pirates, ice-cream, and a game-play that can be ‘disastrous’ and HELLA humorous.

We came to an agreement that the game would be a survival game with a muscular ice-cream man, who will defend his town by making and throwing correct ice-cream at incoming pirates.

In the above picture, the design I had in mind would be something like Overcooked, where you have to choose the correct flavours and send them out. Each pirate can order up to 3 ice cream.

We had a long think about how the player and cart will move- some questions I had in my designs included:

·         will it roam freely and shoot ice-cream at all angle and direction??

·         Will it be auto-aiming, since the player already have a hard time focusing on movement?

After a prototype testing (sorry I don’t have a picture of this ☹), we iterated on the gameplay. We decided to have the movement to only be Horizontal, the player will choose the binding keys that are assigned to individual flavours and shoot vertically at pirates.

 Prototype 1

    Alpha

Some highlight of obstacles that we faced during the Alpha version:

·         Sand looked VERY off; I requested to have a shore with a different colour grade of sand and water.

·         The cart was not moving fluidly and consistently- the cart will drift off when movement is pressed too fast.

     Beta-Gold

Adjustments we made during the Beta-Gold version:

·         Implemented Waves into the game to give it a bit more challenge; so more pirates will be spawn and they will move faster as the wave is higher

·         The ice-cream flavour at bottom of the screen needed to be polished

·         The ice-cream UI at the top left needed to stand out more.

 Overall, it was an amazing experience- I made new friends, everyone worked extremely hard to get this game out in 2 days, and am VEREY satisfied with the game. The game definitely fulfilled the humorous theme.

Feel free to download the game at the link below. Have fun 😊!!!

[furbet]

Uncharted 4

Uncharted 4 is a franchise of Uncharted founded by developers Naughty Dogs and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.It was released on May 10, 2016. 

Uncharted 4 is an adventure story based game with a third person perspective. During the course of the game, the game introduces various physical tasks such as:

Climbing

Swinging on ropes

Parkour

 Hiding

Shooting

Puzzle solving 

Uncharted game loop involves identifying the mission, moving through various environments to get to the destination. Throughout the journey to your next goal, Drake will come across enemies, obstacles and intricate puzzles. 

What i loved about this game was that it was immersive, it feels like you ARE Drake, and you were playing HIS epic story. Naughty Dog perfected realism.  There were a few design features that made me feel that way in particular:

the first 5mins of the game was just packed entertainment, it included, driving a boat, shooting and familiarizing with the movement.The first 5mins  capitalize the player’s attention and interest, and lets you know that this is gonna be an action adventure game packed with excitement.

When you die, an ominous dying heartbeat sound starts off loud and then fades alongside a vibrating controller. It was actually overwhelming when i first died in the game because it felt REAL. 

The combination of brilliant sound clips used to accommodate specific scenes that wants your attention. 

The movement mechanic was so fluid, perfecto! Especially rock climbing in the game is easy but it makes you think where’s your next grip to hold onto. Of course, you can simply spam jump to fly through the obstacle, but stopping to think makes the movement more meaningful. 

Another thing I found awesome and noteworthy was to keep the autosave to be frequent. Uncharted’s autosave/auto loud was efficient for a player- the respawn wouldn;t not be far from where i died, this saves me time on the grind that i had repeated 10times at least.

I've gained a bunch of design knowledge and inspiration playing Uncharted 4. One important knowledge was that I’ve learned how the designer delicately introduces new mechanics when it’s needed at the right time- they spaced the learning curve wide and not cloaking up the players brain with mechanics at once.

Thank you to Naughty Dogs for the hardwork and talent in order to produce such a memorable game. it was sick as!!

[furbet]

Unit 7- Production

UNIT 7 POST MORTERM

 HERE WE GO! The last unit for this course- we have to make a functional game with a team of 11 people consisting of designers, programmer and artist.

Our team, Codename Lemon, wanted to make a game named as SWEET THIEVES.

Sweet Thieves is a 4-player party game about playing as a chameleon stealing/eating pancakes set in a terrarium. The intended game loop is to collect the pancakes and drop it off at your base, and the player who has the most pancake wins.

 Platform

PC

Points of View

3rd person, ¾ fixed

Theme/Mood

Abstract,  Colourful, Playful 

Target  Audience 

Casual, Younger  gamers

 The core mechanic of the game is:

·         360 movement

·         collectable pancake

·         tongue lash: attaches onto objects and pulls you to it

·         Venus fly traps: acts as your defender at base. Activate it by ringing the assigned bell.

                    Concept Art:

  Probuilder mock-up:

Alpha:

After Alpha, we faced a BIG brick wall and I started to shit bricks because we realised that up until this point of production, we actually haven’t designed the level yet and the current map design doesn’t feel fun. This had to be the biggest challenge during the whole game production.

The map should make the player feel:

·         Pressured, anxiety of being chased

·         Excitement of stalking opponents- like a maze

·         Enough space to enjoy the tongue lash

 It took a numerous amount of revision to finally settle with an ideal skeleton of the map AND a superseded game core loop introducing the Venus fly trap mechanic.

Translating from Brain to SketchBook:

  Map 1:

Map 2:

The gameplay still felt incomplete; so back to the drawing board.

I felt that the game was missing a mechanic and perhaps this whatever mechanic can help shape the map and also make the players feel the way we want them to feel. Introducing the Venus Fly trap!! And they are position at your chameleons base to defend. Activate the your Venus -Fly -Trap by pressing the assigned button next to your base, If player is hit by your trap, they will be respawned back at their base.  

  The team was happy with the new mechanic and the layout of the map. The next step was to decorate the F out of it. Our lead artist Kaz is the Manz, he absolutely smashed the maps using Post Process effect.  

Beta Map 1:

Beta Map 2:

At Beta launch, we got people to play test our game and we received mixed feedbacks. The major issue with our game was that there was a lot of bugs (tongue glitch, character is stuck to the environment, pancake flying everywhere etc) and the worse part was that no one played the game of how it is intended to be. Players just had fun wrapping the tongue and just messing around.

In my eyes, that was a total disaster even though people had fun because I want people to play how the game is SUPPOSE to be and the intended emotion the game will derive from a player. I WANT THAT!

What I learnt from feedback:

·         Got to make the game as dumb proof as it can be so that even my grandma will understand it when she plays it

·         Add different colour contrast in the map to re-direct the player’s mindset to focus on the objective.

What we implemented for Gold:

·         Flickering base lights when player collects pancakes to indicate you have to return to base

·         Placed more yellow and blue flowers at their base to attract players.

·         Tongue wrap only last for 6 secs

·         UI Sprite of pancakes to show players how many they have on hand.

Gold Map 1

Gold Map 2

I couldn’t have been anymore happier with the end result of this game. As a team we did an amazing job at building this game. Everyone in my team should deserve a big round of applause.

This unit has been SUPER fun, I’ve definitely gained a lot of knowledge in level designing, stages to think about when designing a game, player’s emotion and also an experience to work effectively in a group to produce a ONE EPIC GAME.

[furbet]

Unit 5 Testing and Quality Assurance

In Unit 5 Testing and Quality Assurance, we were introduced to the many types of testing procedures that can be used to QA a game. 

Our teacher, Shane, had assigned everyone with a game from  www.alphabetagamer.com.

I was assigned with a game called Hourglass and Eatvolve and had to perform a user, bug and smoke testing for this game.

What i excelled at in this unit:

Motivation to break a game… trying every possible situation to find potential bugs that causes crashes, potential progression stopper, and cosmetic

Planning all work and getting them done prior to schedules.

What I learned:

To always use OBS to record gameplay- a bug sometimes can recur 100% of time, but sometimes it may be a 1% chance.  

Use webcam to capture players reactions. Reactions is very important in testing.

Be very specific with the steps to activate these bugs

A detailed description of the bugs and how it can affect the production of the game before shipping.

What i found difficult:

Finding various people who like different games genre to play the game. I think it’s very important to find people with different taste of games as one will struggle than the others in playing a particular game (example, puzzle game). 

In conclusion, it was a fun unit to experiment games and understand the importance of QA testing the hell out of a game. I have mad respect for QA testers because if it wasn’t for their hard work, then a game will not be a full functioning game.

[furbet]

Unit 3 Narrative Design

In this unit, our game design class studied the art of Narrative Design; we learnt different narrative tools that can hone an audience understanding of a story, such as camera angles, audio, objects that directs a player etc. 

Our class was assigned to create a Vertical slice of a story of our choice. Vertical Slice is a 90sec trailer  of a full shipped game. 

My game was called Panapee, it’s about a panadol inside a body. Panapee’s mission is to navigate his way around whilst defeating the evil. The intention of this vertical slice was to integrate an environment, challenge and a goal. 

The idea was to introduce an environment at the start of the game that looked evil and didn’t resemble the inside of a body (I wanted the player to explore this area). Further down the game, the game would display various body part elements that subtly insinuate that you may be inside the body. At the final area, player will 100% realise that they are inside the body because they will be situated inside the brain. 

Panapee was narrated to be powerful and intelligent- he was there to make the evil feel inferior. So initially, the player had a gun that shoots projectiles and collect white cells to trigger doors. 

However, I was not content with the game that was created. After releasing alpha version, i decided to scrap the whole game and started again. 

New mechanics that was implemented:

Protagonist has an orb that rotates around him, this orb can change the colour of objects (white cells and green cells).

 The intention of the game now is more of a puzzle genre; the player will need to make contact with colours to trigger doors. 

Close up camera angle on  the antagonist kidnapping and escorting white cell- to capture player’s attention and to manipulate them to follow/rescue the white cell, which leads them to the correct direction. 

Players feedback was very positive after the new change. The rotating orb was cool, and the game felt great. However, one thing that didn’t go to plan was that the players did not follow the direction of where the escort went. 

Overall, I enjoyed this unit as i have learnt a lot in class and through my mistakes. Honestly speaking, I was not pleased with the outcome of the game as it was not fully fleshed out and did not achieve the vertical slice intention- ran out of time due to redesign, didn’t add the correct texture on specific objects, perfect meshes.. But like I mentioned above, these mistakes will be rectified in future game developments. 

[furbet]

In unit 2 prototyping,our class was taught the fundamentals of coding using visual studios and how the principle of exploiting your ideas into a pseudocode and translating that to C#. The coding resources that were given by AIE included: variables and functions, basic movements, triggers, array and list,

Our assignment for this unit is to build a game of our own interest using the knowledge learnt in class. 

The game that i decided to build is called Soundiative: it’s basically a sound trivia game, where players are to choose 1 of the 4 videos that matches with the sound that is played when the level starts ( the sound is extracted from one of the 4 videos). 

The sound should practically match with all 4 videos (judged by our intuitive)- example, frying a beacon sound: video of a sandpaper applying friction, frying an egg, bbq snags or frying a beacon. 

Points are given based on how fast the player chooses their answer. These points are stored and can be used to barter for extra lives. Lives is a trump card that is used if a player loses a stage.

However, the game was not completed to its finest potential on due date; a few things didn’t turn out the way that was planned out in the GDD- it lacked aesthetics and some mechanics did not function as intended; overall it was horrible and just shithouse, but still proud of myself for transitioning my imagination to reality.  

I found myself having trouble with coding, there would be times where i would sit there for 4-5 hours scratching my head trying to decipher where i went wrong in this script of code. For example, a player is treated with points based on how fast they answer each level; these points can then be used to purchase ‘lives’- logically, the scripts looks correct, but obviously something must be wrong because it doesn’t work lol.

Level interaction was also problematic that crossed my path- the coding did not work and I had to find a balance consequence based on feedback. The pesudo-code for this script is if a level is achieved then the following level will be unlocked, and if a player fails a level they will drop back 2 stages. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv1Bi6ao_J8 teaches you on how to do this. Subsequently, I did exactly what was taught in this video. 

But DUDEee, i knew imminently something was going to be wrong when that play button is pressed. ANDI fucken knew it, it didn’t work!!! I copied what was in the video but still failed :(. 

The issue here is that 3 levels drop is not implemented when a player loses a level. Instead, the level is being played from level 1.

Not only did the plan fail but i had also received negative feedback on the level system; the received feedback had commented that they blasted through the stages, not caring about the consequences of losing a stage (the 2 stage fall back does not scare them). This is a BIG red flag for this game, the game focuses on player thoroughly analysing the sound and videos. Subsequently,  i had to iterate this game to counter this. 

The idea was to create a checkpoint that exist when every 5th stage is completed and if a player loses prior to the 5th stage, they will start back at the previous checkpoint- a bonus game will be presented to a player when they reach a checkpoint.. I believe implementing this concept can capitalize a player’s focus and determination to complete each and every stage to reach a checkpoint. Random bonus rounds given at checkpoint can capitalize a players curiosity.  

In summary, I have learnt a lot from this unity- with doing basic programming,level designing and problem solving to make the game better. What i will do differently in the next unit is to ask more questions at alpha and beta stages to get to understand the player’s personality. 

[furbet]

Amateur Testing 1:  Rough sketch of a character idea for my game BoBabBlitz. Character is a jellyMan with fruits in them.  Having difficulties drawing up a jelly haha, but i will get there!!

[furbet]

AIE Unit 1

Game Design Unit 1 at AIE have been COMPLETED! It has been an epic 1 month of absorbing knowledge and experimenting theses skill upon class work and homework.

In this unit, I have honed my skills in management, creativity, presenting/public speaking and analysis.  We learnt how to decapitate the mechanics of board games and video games and analysis them, create mini projects in Unity and Photoshop, game history and psychological discussions.

Learning MDA framework (mechanic, dynamic, aesthetic) was extremely important for me because I am now able to use this framework to analyze games and understand the game’s intention.

Subsequently, we had to design a GDD with the knowledge we have learnt (which includes the MDA framework). Now, prior to the course I have already made a GDD for a hired coder, so I had some knowledge of what should exist within. However, the GDD that was taught to us was much more intricate, highlighting all the materials to put in to nurture effective communication to our viewers. After learning the fundamentals and extensive knowledge of game design and GDD, I was able to iterate my own project GDD and have start 2 more new GDD that will be my mini projects (COMING SOON, will share my mini game journey in here!).

Two of my weaknesses in game design prior to the course was understanding art and their programs and ways to expedite the prototypes of my own projects. Fortunately, we were taught the fundamentals of using Unity 3D-probuild (asset) and Photoshop and now I am able to use these skills to quickly build vague environments- enough to analyze the game’s feel and intentions.

Pro-build asset

·         We participated in exercises that instructed us to mimic a picture with the use of Probuild (see picture below)-

·         What I learnt from the exercises was that it’s a very simple tool that can be used to build prototypes of the game’s environment.

·         Now, I will implement Pro-build with all my work as it’s definitely faster to build an environment through Pro-build, rather than with Blender- especially because I want to quickly analyze the feel and physics properties of a game and be able to quickly rectify them.

Photoshop

·         Again, we participated in exercises that encouraged us to experiment the tools in photoshop.

·         We learnt how to implement tools in photoshop to create a variety of things.

·         One of the exercises was to make textures and import them to Unity- decorating our project using Probuilder.

 Overall, I had learnt a tone in this first Unit- both practical and theological. This unit had also reassured me that I wasn’t going insane (when I was designing my games, I would always ask myself a shit tone of psychological questions about a design… I thought my game was destroying my mind); this unit had definitely showed me that its essential to interrogate the designs both logically and psychologically. I am pumped to implement what I have learnt to the next units of game design J looking forward to it!!

[furbet]

Beginner Guide  -    Review

Publisher: Designer: Davey Wreden Game release: 1 October 2015

This is the first game that my school had us to analyze. I did a brief google search on it prior to starting the game, and it came to my sense that this game did not captivate me at all-  the game’s graphic and synopsis was not appealing to my interest. BUT i played it anyways because it was for class discussion.

The first 10mins of game play was so painful; i was trying so hard not to cringe and spew my boredom out. After the next 10-15mins after, something magical changed.

Boy oh boy did this game prove me wrong; i was so immersed with the narrative, my mind was racing, questions floating around- i even started to interrogate my screen hoping to seek answers from Davey.  

The story of the ‘Beginner Guide’ is the core mechanic of the game and the true challenge in the ‘Beginner Guide’ is understanding it in its entirely, in which you wouldn’t.  In each chapter, the gameplay and the story conveys detailed, but vague, messages/statements (very contradicting, but yes that’s the beauty about this).  The core loop of the game is having the narrator implanting these thoughts (through words and image)  into your mind to make you feel ambivalent from your journey of the game. I believe that was Davey’s intention was to make the audience think and he sure did accomplish that.

Throughout this game Davey had identified Coda’s inner demons in relations to game design and had provided subtle gameplay solutions for them. The message he tried to convey had resonated with me as an game designer, and quite frankly, it helped me clear my depressed mindset.   

So the plot twist to this experience was that, i was so immerse in trying to debunk Coda’s true identity, intentions and behaviours to further understand the story, but because of how they game had resonated with me, i know believe that i am Coda!

In conclusion, never judge a book by its cover! This game was brilliant because of how well the script is written to manipulate the audience in questioning and interpreting the story; but it also reminded me that games can resonate with a gamer and can actually help them in their everyday life. Thank you Davey Wreden for teaching me that!

[furbet]

Quick Intro

Ello, My name is Pat and I am a former structural engineer/project manager who is now a game designer wannabe. Subsequent to quitting my job,my goal was to produce a game that can make people smile and to find their emotions. To hone my game design knowledge i had decided to attend AIE on November 2018.

In my life time, i have not yet found a game that i have rated 10/10.So in this blog i will share my honest review and encounter with games that i play, in a hope to find the eminent game in every genre. 

To the public, because i haven’t explored THAT many games, feel free to recommend me games that you think will lead me to finding the ‘perfect game’.

In addition, i love conversing with people who has similar hobbies and interest as i do, topics that we can delve into and have an open discussions.  i will post up topics that i am curious about, stop motions videos and serene photos

[furbet]

Hello world

A new game designer is born