SHMUP progress: Mon Oct 13, 5pm-8pm

I've gotten farther with my SHMUP reskin. There's still a few more things to work on, but I hit a rough patch with the background scrolling.

But other than that, I have all my reskin art done.

Player:

Their projectile:

Enemy:

Enemy projectile:

I've also reskinned the platforms and backgrounds, which can be seen in this in-progress shot:

I though since I went with a candy theme I'd make cotton candy clouds and bubblegum platforms.

I'll be starting the Beam Up Cow tutorial as soon as I work the kinks out of this project.

Good Game, Bad Game - Analysis and Results: Tues Oct 7

The games I chose for discussion are Grandia and Bubsy 3D. Both games are for the PlayStation 1.

Grandia is a JRPG about a young boy named Justin who goes on adventure to solve the mysteries of an ancient civilization. With just a strange rock his father left for him called the Spirit Stone, Justin goes from fooling around his hometown with his friend Sue to preparing to go up against a god-like creature intent on destroying the whole world. While Grandia is one of the many games to bring inspiration from the rise of Final Fantasy, it breaks off a little from other JRPG games by using a mixture of 2D sprites and 3D environments, making exploration an enjoyable experience as the characters interact with new (and potentially dangerous) elements as they explore the new world. They encounter vicious monsters of all shapes and sizes, and fight against them in turn based combat that varies on both character and enemy stats. As the player roams the unique and vast maps, they come across many different areas where they can find new equipment, money, items, and more in order to increase their strength and learn new magic spells in order to push forward. However, the English voice acting is rather corny so players might either get a laugh out of it or get annoyed by the characters.

Bubsy 3D is a 3D platform adventure game about a bobcat named Bubsy who needs to collect rocket parts and defeat an evil alien race. In a very limited environment that looks like pieces of painted cardboard, Bubsy can only walk in a straight line and his movements are clunky at best. His personality is quite obnoxious, and his one-liners constantly break the fourth wall (even one of the phrases sounds like the developers were patting themselves on the back). Just about everything about this game is weak, and players who can bear through the entire cesspool of disaster deserve an award for being able to stomach Bubsy's difficult controls and awful voice acting. Unfortunately, deadlines and employees inexperienced with 3D tools were unable to save Bubsy's already crumbling reputation.

The class was able to quickly deduce which was the good game (Grandia) and the bad game (Bubsy 3D).  I personally really adored Grandia, and I hope to be able to talk more about it in future discussions.

Thurs Oct 2, 8:30am-11:10am

I'm almost done with the 2D tutorial. It's really easy to follow, so I also started on making objects for my reskin. I want to reskin it so the game has a candy theme. I already have ideas for the player, projectiles and background objects, and I already got started on making the background image.

For the Good Game, Bad Game assignment, I already know which "good" game I want to discuss, but the "bad" game will take some time to choose.

Tues Sept 30, 8:30am-11:10am

The critique on out rollaballs was ok.....I wish I got some more feedback but I knew we were short on time.

After the rollaball critique, I began the tutorial for the 2D SHMUP. I'm already liking the build for it in Unity, I'd like to utilize it for my own personal use sometime.

Mon Sept 29, 8:00pm - 9:30pm

While my rollaball reskin doesn't have all the features I was planning for it, I did manage to have another idea for it's summary and I added a lot of easter eggs. It's playable, but I do worry that it will be too challenging.

As for the reading Extra Lives, I came up with three questions for discussion:

1.) What are we supposed to get out of the author's detailed rant in the beginning of the section about Fallout 3 that makes me feel like I'm reading a whiny blog post written by a 15 year old fanboy?

2.) What does the author mean by "most gamers do not care because they have been trained by the game designers not to care"?

3.) Why are the games he chose to rant about mostly first person shooters?

(I have more questions but to be honest they sound really annoyed and sarcastic because I honestly hated the author's writing)

Thurs Sept 25, 8:30am-11:10am

Having no luck with the shooting floating cans, I fooled around with models in C4D for some inspiration. Luckily, I did find some. While playing with a cube model, I created a spike. I imported the spike object into Unity and slapped on a texture that made it look really neat. I think I found my new enemy/obstacle!

I felt like my terrain needed something more exciting, so I took figure models and gave them unique poses and a mix of textures and hid them around my reskin game for fun.

Once the spikes are utilized as obstacles, my game will be complete.

Tues Sept 23, 8:30am-11:10am

Today I finished the shooter tutorial. I learned quite a lot from that tutorial, and now I'm attempting to push those new lessons into my rollaball reskin. As for my cans shooting bullets idea......I haven't had any luck yet. I'll keep trying, but I have a bad feeling that making the cans shoot at the player will include a lot more work than I'm already aware of. Still, doesn't hurt to learn more as I go. I'm also thinking about adding water and adding more peas and carrots to collect so I can make the most out of my terrain besides the center.

However, I did manage to add some interesting loop background music to my reskin. Now the game isn't so awkwardly quiet.