Fall Animation and Update

Hey, quick update on what I've been doing for our game stuff:

I've finished the clean up and colour on my Hover animation and Oscar has taken them from me to add the shading,

Now I am cleaning up and colouring my rough of the Fall Animation

I also need a change a couple things on my Health Bar then it will be finished too.

Health Bar

Here is the coloured version of the health bar for our game.
I was a little stuck as for what to do for the inside of the health bar (part the represents health left)
but I will discuss this with my group tomorrow in our group meeting.

Game Update

So ive been put on the rough for our characters walk/hover cycle and the fall animation, i have started work on the walk/hover which i will contiune over the weekend and will hopefully be able to show my group a test of it on monday and tuesday.

I was also put on design for the health bar,
I done up some quick rough designs for my group to see and descided on what they liked best:

After talking with my group the final product looks like this:

This will be lined and coloured up tonight.

Game Character Concepts

 Here are a few more concepts playing round with the line and skin colour of our character.

Week 7 Gaming Blog

Gaming Blog Week 7

Never Alone

 

This week would could chose the game we wanted to play out of all the ones we had been given in week one, I decided to go back to Never Alone because I didn’t write about this game in week 2

 Unpack the first level of your chosen game (including cut scenes) – How does it tell its story, and how is the player involved in the telling (consider all of the narrative elements discussed so far in the course)?

 Never Alone was an interesting game for me to play because of the way in unfolded before you and the cultural aspects it includes inside of the game.
Never Alone is based around the story of Kunuuksaayuka (Unipchaanich imagluktugmiut – Stories of the black river people.)
The story is about Kunuuksaayuka who has to investigate the source of a sudden blizzard that is stopping him from hunting caribou to feed himself and his mother, he discovers a giant man cutting into the tundra and shovelling the loose snow away from his work, the loose snow is then picked up by the wind and becomes the source of the blizzard that is plaguing Kunuuksaayuka.

The quest for Nuna and her fox is practically the same as Kunuuksaayuka’s both searching for a way to stop this sudden blizzard that is stopping them from hunting.

Never Alone tells its story through narration and cut scenes, I think this was a good way for the game to tell its story because in the Inupiaq their stories are not written down in books they are passed down through generations by word of mouth so have the narration lead us through the story makes us feel as if it is being passed down to us in the same way with the visuals of the cut scenes to help aid the words.
Even though through this way of storytelling it does make it feel as if the player does not have an important role in the story, the player contributes by helping Nuna and the fox complete each puzzle they are faced with which in turn unlocks another part of the story line.

Never Alone is a very Linear game which means that the game creator has complete control over the story and the direction it is going in, this is good for Never Alone because by going from gameplay to a cut scene that is following the same path means you do not get lost between different stories.

Another thing about Never Alones story telling is that as you complete a part of the story you are given little factual videos, which tell you more about the culture that Nuna and this story is from which is great because you are given a chance to learn more if you choose too.

Week 6 Game Blog

This week I played Grim Fandango Remastered. Before I answer the question for this week I just want to say that I did not enjoy this game, the story by itself was interesting it was just aspects of gameplay the ruined the experience for me.
On to the question!

As the player, do you interact with a character or an avatar and how does this affect your involvement in the narrative?

In Grim Fandango Remastered you play as a character called Manuel "Manny" Calavera, One of this week’s readings talks about characters, avatars, agents and the differences between the three. After going through this article I have decided that Manny is neither an avatar nor a character but an agent this just means that he is unable to be changed or customized by the player,

“Waggoner proposes it as the central criteria for distinguishing between those video game characters that function as true “avatars,” and those which only serve as controllable “agents” for their user:
Pac-Man cannot be altered in any way by the user. He can only be controlled. His appearance and skills can never change throughout the course of the game. That makes Pac-Man an agent.”

This fact does not make agents less important compared to characters and avatars because they play an important role to be recognizable icons of the franchise they belong to.

But as the player, playing through an agents in a game make it feel like my personal involvement means less and doesn’t affect the narrative, but ultimately the amount of  involvement I have in the narrative for Grim Fandango Remastered does not change just because I was playing through an agent.

 

Jessica Aldred. 17 Dec 2013, Characters from: The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies Routledg

Week Five Gaming Post

How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?

This week I played The Wolf Among Us, I have known about this game for quite a long time, so I was very excited to be able to get the chance to play it for myself.

First let’s look at what Morality is, Morality is the idea that some forms of behaviour are right and others are wrong.

I feel The Wolf Among Us use’s morality influence well in the major questions it asks of the player, this can be seen in one of the chapters when you are asked to pick between two people who are in trouble, One is a friend of yours and the other is a stranger and you don’t exactly know how much danger they are each are in, So who do you help first? And what are the consequences of that choice.

Another thing I liked about the questions in The Wolf Among Us is that even though it felt like it was my own morality that was being questioned, and I did go for the answer that felt like the ‘nice guy’ way of doing things, it didn’t always come across that way in the game because unlike other games where when you as the player are faced with moral questions and you answer them as yourself because you are living as yourself through the character, In The Wolf Among Us you are playing as Bigby Wolf who has a very developed character with a bit of an attitude and most of the characters in Fable town do not get along well with Bigby because of his past with them, an example if this from my play through of The Wolf Among Us is when I had Bigby reach out to try and comfort a young child because in my mind this was a nice thing to do, only to have the child recoil away from Bigby in fear. This was an interesting to me because while other people could complain that it took them out of the game experience when it feels like the question is saying one thing and when you choose it, it is acted out in a completely different way. I really enjoyed this factor though (most times) because it help me get a better feeling for Bigby’s character, for me this factor made it feel there was a little less moral influence of the questions that directly related to me but it was more like I was the angel (or devil) on Bigby’s shoulder giving suggestions.

Overall I did feel there was a lot of morality influence in the questions, even if they did not always play out in the way I expected them. I found The Wolf Among Us to be a great game to play especially with friends because they felt like the devils on my shoulder.  

Week 4 Textual Analysis Questions

Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy

Do the choices made in the game result in branching narrative paths? If so, how? If not, how are the choices meaningful?

This week I played Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy the murder mystery aspect of the game intrigued and frightened me at the same time because I’m not great with horror.
As I played through Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy I found that there were options for branching narrative paths like right at the beginning after I left the bathroom (after I had killed an old man TT-TT) I could either go out the backdoor and be seen by the hobo or leave through the front door and be caught by the waitress, these different paths would slightly change how the next part of my story plays out. While these do not feel like major game changing choices they make Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy feel more meaningful to each of the induvial players because they can act out/play through the game the way they feel would be best. Another aspect of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy I like was that throughout the game there was four main characters that you got to play as, it was interesting to see how their paths through the story overlapped as well as that each characters personality means that the way they can interact with people and their surroundings is different and this also can create small branching narratives itself because some players would discover things that others would not, an example of this is that while I was searching the bathroom as Tyler who has a very laid-back kind of vibe to him . . . I may have made him use the urinal in the crime scene (which at the time was hilarious)
A quote that I feel works well with this is about type two choices:
"Type two choices are created by the desire to prevent the
state of the gameworld from becoming worse – to ensure the safety and continued
existence of the player character, and possibly to prevent the destruction of
the gameworld."
Storyplaying
Choice and Narrative in Video Games
Sebastian Domsch

The only choices in Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy I found that did not have many branching narrative quality’s was the quick time events that happened when you were talking to other characters, because in the end it didn’t really matter what you picked in most cases you would end up get all the information at the end of the conversation anyway, the only parts where I found this to be different was when the character you were playing as had an emotional investment in the character you were talking too, so of these choices could be meaningful to each player.
In the end I did really enjoy playing Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy while the choices that were presented to you throughout the game did not have huge story changing quality’s for the most part they felt meaningful to me because I could get invested in parts of my character and try and play out the story how I would if I was in their situation.

Interactive Narrative - Week 3

Prince of Persia – Sands of Time

Do the story nodes in your chosen game(s) work well to support gameplay and gameplay objectives? Why or Why not.
Nodes: A games cues a player into imagining a fictional world and participating in a story. (First person storytelling.)
Games can do this in a number of ways:

• Graphics
• Sound
• Text
• Cut scenes
• The game title, Box, Manual
• Rules

In the game Prince of Persia – Sands of Time it was easy to tell what game nodes I felt worked and others that were going to annoy me very quickly.

The graphics of Prince of Persia – Sands of Time seems pretty good for the time it was released
(2003) and worked fine to support the gameplay and the cut scenes in the game, It was later pointed out to me that the graphics in the cut scenes are of a higher quality than the gameplay but this did not bother me because It did not take anything away from the gameplay itself.

Sound was another aspect that supported both the gameplay and the cut scenes well, because at the start of the game you are dropped in the middle of a war and the sounds that you are surrounded with only help show that, the only this that I felt could be changed was that the sound volume was a little inconsistent between the cut scenes and the gameplay but this a more personal issue for me.
The was little to no text shown in Prince of Persia – Sands of Time, The only text that was present in the game was the help tips that showed you how to progress.

Cut Scenes, this is the node that annoyed me the most about Prince of Persia – Sands of Time, while in the beginning they were informative and helped to progress the gameplay along with the added bonus that MOST were skippable after you had watched them the first time, there were just a few that were completely unneeded and did nothing to support or enhance the gameplay. The major one for me was the little cut scenes I got after every time I finished a battle, it was of the Prince putting away his sword . . . and that was it, the first time is was ok because I had just won my first fight in the game and was feeling pretty good and that little cut scene just made me feel pretty badass but after it began to happed after I finished each battle even ones I had to re do because I had died it just began to be a pain cause I just wanted to complete my next mission not watch some dude put his sword away for the twentieth time.

In the end I felt there where aspect and nodes that Prince of Persia – Sands of Time did pretty well with and other parts that did not work well to support the gameplay.
 I don’t think I would go back and play Prince of Persia – Sands of Time again because the nodes that did not work made me not enjoy the experience of playing, Prince of Persia – Sands of Time is a very Ludus narrative game meaning
 “In a narrative game, the player plays to win, to beat the game, and story is mostly a lure into the game world.”  I did not feel the urge to win the game and I don’t think the story itself was strong enough to hold me attention.

Week 2 Games

Week 2 Gaming Questions

Does your chosen game(s) make user input feel meaningful in terms of story direction and progression? Why or why not?

User input is a necessity in Her Story because without it the story would not progress, i do not believe user interactivity changes the final out come of the story because the narrative is Embedded,
"Embedded - pre-generated narrative components such as video clips and scripted scenes" Rules of play: Salen and Zimmerman

The only thing that would change is the order of how you hear and see the story because of this you can miss out on other information that is not deemed important by the game system because it will shoe the ending if you find enough important information . This makes Her Story feel meaningful to the player because you are completely in control of the 'Phrases" that you input into the game database that is set up into the games, they give you the starting phrase of Murder that gives you the intro of the story which sets you up to be immersed into a believable role of being a detective.
The Game Space of Her Story is set up really well to look like an computer search engine,
"Games create 'possibility spaces' spaces the provide compelling problems within an overarching narrative, afford creative opportunities for dealing with meaningful consequences." Warren Spector