BA6: contextual study: Research political game: Bioshock infinite

Bioshock infinite

Bioshock infinite is a first person action game set in the year 1912 in where you play as Booker Dewitt in search of a girl in order to satisfy an unknown entity. Booker must  travel to the floating city of Columbiain order to find the scale. This city is meant to be a representation of the southern America evangelical Christian states with racial discrimination to black people and a fundamental Christian view of the world. Quickly events go wrong from book in which he is accused of being a false prophets and its chase by the inhabitants of Columbia finally finding the girl Elizabeth Booker discovers that she has special powers and Booker prize to take Elizabeth away from the brewing civil war between the Vox Popuil a black revolutionary group and the Colombian military. 

Bioshock infinite has a political on the two meant to represent the era in history of black discrimination and slavery. I'm trying to show a story for a third person perspective of being in the middle of this feud. Though not being the main point of the story this political  undertone definitely put a massive impact on the story with the players feel sympathetic towards the Vox Popuil and disdain for the Colombian people.

Link in to the racial component of the game is the Christian undertone in that the city is ruled by a profit and once the Herald back to a time of where they consider America to be a Christian nation and that God was the force that kept America great. this is not really a components of the game which is explained more or less given as a explanation why people follow and also it is used because this was the norm for the historical time even though the world is set fictionally. 

gameplay consists of normal first person action similar to some other games with some salt differences as for example  plasmas which were used in the last bio shock games make a return as vigors which are similar special powers with different abilities such as controlling enemy is or casting exploding fire at enemies as well as the feature of the Skyhawk which allows players to go around on on rail pass in order to get to new places. 

Bioshock infinite takes a very different road compared to the modern games having many political undertones contained in this story really helps to set the back drop of characters and places explaining why the city is self-contained mentor represents the idea of state seceding from the American union because of the abolishing of slavery. even having attractions in the city about bashing black people for exampleone of the most defining scenes of the game is in which when you first come to the city of Columbia introduced to the environments greeted very nicely from all the people around and then invited to a raffle in which the player does not know what is happening is then shown because a man decided to marry a black woman they are slandered and going to be stoned to death it is at this stunning realisation that you know what is happening and what these people are  it is a horrifying way of discovering what's this places an absolutely amazing moments in my gaming history. Just because of the sheer way it makes you feel angry  just from this game alone pulling for me this is one of my top moments in gaming because of the sheer shock of what that moment represents and how it symbolises past tendencies.

BA6: contextual study: Research artistic game: Limbo

Limbo

Limbo is a heavily stylized platform game in which the player most of the danger also complete puzzles in order to progress through more levels. released in July 2011 the game is met with praise from most viewers and was also released on the Xbox live Arcade and the PlayStation store to where it was met with more praise for being a fresh new idea in the games industry. dropped into a world small trials were only given the path in front of you to follow. Play will encounter dangers from giant beasts and is well  environmental trust these lemon to be overcome by the player through completing puzzles and finding a way through to the next area.

the game starts off with simple puzzles such as moving boxes to jump onto ledges or dragging certain objects along to overcome another object or even moving chapter of the way in order to get past them. The puzzles inevitably increase in difficulty and complexity with some puzzles involving using traps in order to sever spider likes to that will unblock your path and likely progress.

Limbo has a good combination of art style and game play which gives it a fun and unique feel compared to other games. in terms of its  are facts on people didn't have such an effect as other games do but more provided a unique gameplay experience through this new art style and think it gives out a significant message compared to some of the games  but through its art style shows games in a new light which begs to be explored more.

BA6: contextual study: Research educational games: Zoombinis

Zoombinis

Zoombinis is an logical educational game based around mathematical puzzles and problem solving skills.

the game was released in 1996 primarily sold to  primary schools in order to encourage logical thinking and problem-solving. The main premise of the beanies is that you the player have to guide the Zoombinis through problem-solving puzzles and reach the end in order to say youth as many as possible. Through the trials if the player makes mistakes they will lose a Zoombinis as the player will only start with 16 once the player loses all losing beneath they will have to start the game again.

The game starts off with the player on a strange mysterious island and then the player is asked to create an number of Zoombinis. The player can choose feet, noise, hair and eyes  this will have an impact on the puzzles wait to show that the game.

These different features of the Zoombinis is the basis of all puzzles within the game and most of the puzzles will involve the player trying to discern different logical puzzles. For example the first mission is where the wire has two bridges in front of them and they must send Zoombinis across the bridge to safety.  thou one bridge will not let this Zoombinis cross because of certain features they exhibit this could be one bridge will let red noses through and the other Brits will allow all other types of noses through. the player has to then work this out in order to get the Zoombinis cross safely if the player fails to many times the bridge will break and all the others Zoombinis will be left behind. this is similar for almost all the apostles is presented differently staffing acts easy puzzles than when the mail to more difficult ones. In which the player's mentor use problem-solving skills in order to work out how to  pass them.

Zoombinis purpose is to educate's primary school children and introduce them to problem solving. Using this simple ascetic and also simple game design is able to allow children to employ this problem-solving thinking and giving them a sense of progression and feel of completion when the complete puzzles and save Zoombinis.  as well the player is encouraged to save as many Zoombinis as they can I will feel a sense of accomplishments if they can save all 16 out once reinforcing that players need to be sharp and focused in order to achieve this goal encouraging players to her in their problem-solving skills and become better at solving the problems. Which in turn increases problem-solving capabilities of young children improving their overall education.

Zoombinis is one of a rare breed of game it is an educational game which happens to contain fun gameplay something which is often missing  from the game industry as most educational games tend to be low budgets and don't engage players this game contains a large following of fans even to this day with a new working of the game coming to iOS and android soon the combination of educational and fun gameplay allowed this game to be revolutionary for its time and allowed to educate people while also keeping them thoroughly enjoyed giving it a much more powerful message that most games today as of this game will educate you and make you enjoy at the same time.

BA6: GGD(games design documents)

Games design document

after creating my prototype gameI have to work on the game's design documents this was meant to be a visual show of features within the game and explaining them fundamentally to a viewer here are all the pages from the GDD which I've created.

BA6: Game prototype V.0.8

Evolution prototype V.0.8 Physical changes to towers

the physical change system was something  I wanted to implement to highlight some of the basic mechanics of the game. The physical changing mechanic works off a different script called the upgrades what this does is it takes the current variable of the tower which is the current tear that time and once this tier reaches a certain point it then physically changes the tower. For example when the tear of the Tower Bridge's five the tower has a new physical change  making it look different from other towers.

the way this works is that the tier change 5  is a game object and once the tear of the tower is equal to 5 this game object will become active and visible  this is shown in the images below.

this system is meant to be a precursor to the full random upgrades of the towers that is meant to be implemented in the full game this is a demonstration very mechanic image or show the players how towers will upgrade.

BA6: Game prototype V.0.7

Evolution prototype V.0.7 feedback number 3 

When releasing the version of the game V.0.6 allowing other people to play the game they found that the tower selection option was fairly useless  saying that there was nothing to do on this menu is offered no purpose which I intend to address.

upgrading system

I went about this by creating the upgrade system for my game and implementing this into the start menu difference to my actual game idea this basic operating system is meant to be a precursor to the full operating system which will be implemented in the full version of the game. This is for the use of the prototype in order to show upgrading of the tower to demonstrate the players how it will work.

the grading system would work directly off the tower selection menu and wood integrates many of the scripts in the game such as the basic tower script and also the UI scripts. I used basic button controls in order to allow players to use these upgrades.

Once the player upgrade to tower the current tier of the tower will increase by one every time the upgrade is implemented there are limits to the upgrade which can be set through the script console and also this tier system will be implemented later in a way of physically changing the appearance of the tower. from the basic Towers script the upgrading cost per upgrade can be changed as well as the maximum of great potential of the tower this is the basic fundamental upgrading system which will be implemented into my game which future versions will contain much more heavily detailed variables.

BA6: Game prototype: V.0.6

Evolution prototype V.0.6 Tower selection

Tower stats

the next mechanic implementation I put into the game was the Tower selection mechanic. This mechanic work when players place down the tower onto the grid layout and when they exited the build menu they could select the towers simply by clicking on. this would then bring up a box around the tower indicate you have been selected and also will bring up statistics about the tower is currently selected to the left of the screen.

Basic tower script upgrade

This is so the player can see the current stats of the tower and when the upgrade feature is implemented to the game earlier to see the changes that will happen to the stats of the tower.

the way this feature works is that it attaches the UI to the tower when it is instantiated and keeps invisible in the background once the player selects the tower this UI becomes visible displaying all of the current stats of the tower and when the stats change so does the UI text this script you users text objects in order to display and has to be dropped and selected onto this script in order to use the text to display the information.

Over the way the script works in which the player can select a tower works off this script alone the selection text which means that only want out to be select the time the way it works is that when that I was selected the tower is selected variable is equal to true an end when the selection mood is equal to true the tower can be selected and once the player deselect these towers both of these variables tend to false meaning attends off the UI information giving the appearance that it has disappeared.

BA6: Game prototype: V.0.5

Evolution prototype V.0.5 feedback number 2

when I allowed people to play the version of the game V.0.4 I asked for some feedback about the more improvements that the game could undertake in order to have their gameplay. Some people asked for a feature similar to that of other tower defence game is a great layout of the tower placement instead of the tower is being placed down randomly on a flat plane they would have to take up a square in a grid format.

Build manger

I took this advice on board and one about creating this new mechanic I did have to look into many different tutorials on how to cope with something like this but in the end discovered a way of using ray cast in order to create this grid layouts. 

Raycast tower selection

The way this this script works is that their attaches to a camera then it created a break asked from the camera  every update if the rate cast hit a player pad which is an object with the type of player pads it will then select this object and cover it in a new material.

once this had is highlighted it can then be used to instantiate a tower and then once that a tower is instantiated on top of this it changes the pads tag to power its full which means that it will not become highlighted when it are as constructive meaning that players can understand here another tower on top of this effectively creating a grid layout system the towers.

BA6: Game prototype: V.0.4

Evolution prototype V.0.4 Tower information display

Tower UI

after I had created the Tower UI selector I decided to extend this feature by implementing display information about the solar tower. As previously  when the player selected one of the squares they would only be able to construct one towers on the map books with this feature it would allow players when selecting one of the towers from the UI to bring up a small menu given a description about that tower showing certain information about.

Tower script Upgrade

The information that is displayed is taken from the original free file of the tower of the information from the original prefab it is then displayed through scripts onto the screen meaning that if players were to alter the values of the tower in order to balance the game out they would  then change on the UI.

BA6: Game prototype: V.0.3

Evolution prototype V.0.3  feedback number 1

In v.0.2 I was able to implement an enemy and tower system into the game in which there was a rebellious states bought a very basic amount of game play of the game. I subjected this to scrutiny from different people and asked their feedback in order to improve and iterates upon whether games at the moment. Even though the game has not had all its features implemented I felt that getting feedback would allow me to build some core features which would help  improve the game play.

The feedback I received was mixed with players asking for a multitude of different new things to be implemented into the game three of the biggest feedback that received was that players would like to have the ability to place down different towers as well as have a speed up time feature and also an enemy counter to show them how many enemies were currently on the map at that time so I won about implementing these features into the game.

Enemy counter

When about making this feature by creating some changes to different scripts. First off I went about changing the basic enemy script that's every time an enemy is instantiated it would increase the value on the enemy counter as well as the current enemy counter which shows enemies on the map of the current time. Once the enemy units were destroyed they would subtract one point from the current enemies on the map telling the player how many enemies are currently on the map and how many have spawned in that way if.

 Time multiplier

The time manipulate the feature was asked for by a few people and is a relatively simple script to implement into the game. I first created a time script which would identify if the time of the game was running at one times normal this would be a normal speed it then instantiated a button onto the UI allowing the player to increase the speed to 3 times the normal speed and then if the speed of the game was three times faster the button were changed to allow the players to change the time back to normal.

 Different tower types

this mechanic was one of the most difficult to implement so far as I had to look into various new coding techniques in order to create this. I had to use a lot of complex array structures in order to create this mechanic and here are the final console image of the script.

what this does is allows is  placing the game object which has to be selected in order to construct the tower for example clicking the green box in the UI would then allow the players to construct the basic tower these are labelled at the top as tower one tower to tower three then the rest of the raise in the script line up to the three UI objects at the  for example elements 10 in all of the raise links up to the basic tower UI and this is how the script against the information on how to construct the tower and also how much the tower will cost to the resource system