Entries Tagged 'Gaming' ↓

It’s about time! I finally got a Quake Live beta invite. I got it earlier today so, I setup my account and installed the browser plug-in. Since, I was knee deep in work I left myself logged into the site and let the it cache around 280 megs of data. The data files are stored in C:Documents and Settings<profile name>Application Dataid Softwarequakelive.

Anyway, I had a chance to play through the ‘tutorial’ level during lunch. It started out very easy until, I had around 15 kills then the bot AI decided that to put up a fight. After that point, it was a hard fought game with the bot Crash closing the gap to 17-11. I also played a couple of short practice round on a few different maps. Practice rounds are easily setup with bots which will allow new comers to learn the map. Short games are nice too, ten minutes or ten frags – I could get used to that. I don’t think we’ll see too many short games during the beta but, we’ll see.

Replaying the tutorial level I found Crash remembered our previous battle and brought the fight right at the start of the match. After that all was left was to ruin my perfect standings in the game and join a live free for all match. It started off pretty going with my establishing a nice path around the map pretty quickly. At least that’s what I thought until some one who had obviously been playing Quake 3 since it was originally released. Going from zero to 15 in just a few minutes. Of course, part of his killing spree was hanging out sniping people with the rail gun – until I realized he was up there and ended that.

I’ve only seen one piece of advertising in the game so far and it’s an ad for a boxing match. I’m not sure it speaks to the demographic of the typical Quake player but, I’m no ad wizard so who knows.

I am seriously behind schedule on my game design project.  I think at least partly because I’m not really interested in doing an educational style game.  It’s not very exciting.  It kind of reminds me about when I found out I was on the team for the game that still says “shhhhh…..” over on the sidebar.  I was not very interested in the project, which made it difficult to work on.  I spent most of my time playing the still work in progress Guitar Hero for Wii.  Anyway, I’m going to buckle down this week and actually get some work done – I swear – and considering that it’s Friday already…

For the project I decided that I was just going to make a Pac-Man-ish maze style game in which the main character is attacked and then trapped by the evil “Energy Hogs”.  She then has to work her way out of several mazes while defeating the enemies.  She will be collecting power ups that will allow her to remove enemies from the play field.  Unlike Pac-Man the enemies are removed will not come back.  Once an enemies is defeated the player will see a short blurb on the joys of energy conservation – the message will display in a manner as to not cover the play field.

That’s all I’ve got so far – not very exciting – but, I’ll be whipping up a prototype tonight and continue to work on it throughout the weekend in hopes of coming up with something I’ll be able to turn in for a grade.  Of course that will probably not happen since I’m sure I’ll end up playing Left 4 Dead…

Finally, had a chance last night to get some co-op gaming in with Left 4 Dead and it was awesome!  I preordered the game last week so I was able to download the demo on back on the 6th.  I played through the single player portion a dozen or so times waiting for the public version to be released.  Anyway, it’s out now and there are zombies to be killed.  So, I’ll leave you now with some screen shots (then I need to get back to work), all the shots are 1680×1050 and show how much I need to pickup a new video card.

When I first moved out here to Portland I wasn’t sure if I’d be going back to school.  After all, school is expensive and coming up with out of state tuition is not my idea of a good time.  However, as things worked out I was able to get in and take some classes at a “discounted” rate.  So, I decided to squeeze in a couple of classes this semester.  What does that have to do with gaming?  Well, while I was looking through the course catalog and I noticed a class on game development – I like games so, I figured what the heck.  So far, it’s been an interesting little class – although still very “Game Development 101″.

The course uses two books, Game Development Essentials: An Introduction (which for some reason has Assassin’s Creed on the cover) and The Game Maker’s Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners.  The Game Development Essentials book is basically book one in a series of “development” textbooks.  This first book is basically an overview of the game development process.  The book starts out with a chapter to bring the reader up to speed with the birth and growth of the game industry.  From there it goes on to cover various player types, game types, story telling, level design, character design, interface design and some other things haven’t reached yet.  It never goes too deep into the subject matter since it’s an introductory book but, it’s just enough that it’s still an interesting read.

The Game Maker book covers the use of Yoyo Games Game Maker software.  Game Maker is a package which will allow even a novice to create a working computer game – in fact the majority of simple games can even be accomplished with no programming at all.  I’ve seen Game Maker used a few times in the past for rapidly prototyping game play ideas.  Also, there is a great freeware RTS known as Battleships Forever which shows off a well thought out project could be like using the software.

Anyway, we’re just now five weeks into the semester so, it’s time to start thinking about the final project which will be designed and built using Game Maker.  I’m not sure yet if we have an assigned topic or if we can do what we want but, I should find out soon.  Once I find out I’ll probably write up some thoughts and ideas and post them up here.