Evaluation

This module has expanded my knowledge of games in many different aspects. I have gained the knowledge of the history of gaming.  For example, I have looked at many previous games systems with their games and also the fundamentals of these systems. I have gained skills in developing a computer game, including understanding the elements that are required for the design of a game and techniques to creating a level in the Unreal Development Kit. I have gained the knowledge of using Kismet in UDK and can make interactions such as keys, doors, lifts, moving platforms and working with lights. Also I have worked with using terrain and have worked with static meshes and creating static meshes. If I would have had more time to complete this module, I would have developed my skills in UDK and I would have learned to do more things for my game. I plan to develope these skills over the summer and continue to create more games.

Testing for The Island Game

Floor 1

Test Number	Test	Test Procedure	Test Result	Comments
1	Test Start-up Logs	Test the logs display correctly and are activated correctly by the trigger volumes	Failed	The logs displayed twice each time they were used, I changed the log properties so that it no longer wrote the comments to the screen, this worked when I re-tested and passed
2	Test Light Toggles 1	Test Lights toggles  at the Start of the game in the player  start Room	Passed	Lights were toggled using a trigger volume and a toggle action
3	Test the Floor Switch Animation	Test the matinee on the floor switch that is used to open the first door	Failed	Matinee was not set to reverse when completed sand the test was re-done after this change was done and passed
4	Test Floor Switch Trigger volume  1	Test the trigger volume for the switch  that is used to activate the door opening at the beginning of the game	Passed	The trigger worked successfully, however initially I set the delay as 15 seconds before the doors closed. This was too long and so I changed it to 11 seconds to make it a bit more challenging
5	Test Door 1 Animation	Test the matinee on the doors that are activated by the trigger switch 1	Passed	The doors closed correctly after the right amount of time, there were no glitches with the doors collisions and they blocked access through them when they were closed again
6	Test Lift 1	Test the timing and movement of the lift	Passed	The lift had a delay to start before it moved which was successful. Also the lift movement was corrects and the triggers worked well
7	Test lights toggle 2	Test the light toggles using trigger volumes in the first lift	Passed	When the triggers are touched, the corresponding light switches on and when the trigger volume is untouched the light goes back off

Floor 2

Test Number	Test	Test Procedure	Test Result	Comments
1	Test Pickup animation	Test animation effects of the pickup for the maze door 1	Passed	The animation worked correctly and also so did the Destroy function work when the player touched the trigger volume
2	Test Maze Door 1 Animation	Test the door slides into place correctly and check all of the collisions	Failed	The door had no collision on it both before and after the animation so I needed to change the static mesh options and add in a collision type
3	Test trigger switch  1	Test the trigger for the 2nd maze door works correctly	Passed	The trigger worked correctly and also the logs that are linked in with the activation of the trigger were displayed correctly
4	Test trigger switch 2	Test the trigger for the 3rd maze door works correctly	Passed	The trigger worked correctly and also the logs that are linked in with the activation of the trigger were displayed correctly
5	Test Trigger switch 3	Test the trigger for the 4th maze door works correctly	Passed	The trigger worked correctly and also the logs that are linked in with the activation of the trigger were displayed correctly
6	Test Maze Door 2 Animation	Test the door slides into place correctly and check all of the collisions	Passed	Doors worked correctly and there were no glitches with blocking volumes etc
7	Test Maze Door 3 Animation	Test the door slides into place correctly and check all of the collisions	Passed	Doors worked correctly and there were no glitches with blocking volumes etc
8	Test Maze Door 4 Animation	Test the door slides into place correctly and check all of the collisions	Passed	Doors worked correctly and there were no glitches with blocking volumes etc
9	Test Lift 2	Test the timing and movement of the lift	Failed	This lift was required to go up to the top, wait shortly and then fall down to the bottom of the lift, however the blocking volumes were wrong and often I would fall though the lift at different areas of the lift. If fixed the lift by adding in some blocking volumes so that the player will not stand too close to the doors, therefore the test passed once I made the changes
10	Test Lights Toggle 3	Test the light toggles using trigger volumes in the second lift	Passed	When the triggers are touched, the corresponding light switches on and when the trigger volume is untouched the light goes back off. There are also warning lights that toggle of in the same manor when the top of the lift is reached

Floor 3

Test Number	Test	Test Procedure	Test Result	Comments
1	Test Logs	Test the logs just outside the exit door of lift 2	Passed	Log displayed correctly
2	Test teleport 1	Test that the trigger for teleport in the hole of floor 3 works correctly	Failed	Although the teleport work correctly, there was a problem that the player would lose 6 health points every time they teleported. After some looking at I could see that the reason the health was being taken away is because the falling speed of the player remained the same as when they were falling down the hole, and therefore when they came through the teleport, they hit the floor at the higher falling speed and the player took damage. Therefore I moved the trigger volume up higher so that the player did not fall as far before being teleported back. The test passed after this change was made
3	Test moving Platform	Test all of the moving platforms	Passed	The platforms all moved correctly, I did need to move the platforms about a bit to match them up how I wanted, but there was no technical faults (Note: This test has been done on all of my Floor 3 moving platforms.)
4	Test Trigger switch 4	Test the trigger for the final door	Passed	This door slides up and away from the hole in the wall allowing the player to go through
5	Test Teleport 2	Test the teleport that returns the player to the start of the platforms when they have hit the switch	Passed	The teleport worked correctly and took the player to the right place
6	Test Light Toggle 4	Test the first light toggles using trigger volumes in the last corridor	Passed	The lights toggle on, off and on again in quick succession
7	Test Wall push animation	Test the matinee for the 3 wall pushers	Passed	The pushers are set to start from the trigger that opens the door, they all have different delays to start so that they all move at different times
8	Test Light Toggle 5	Test the second light toggles using trigger volumes in the last corridor	Passed	The light came on correctly
9	Test Moving Platform	Test the first moving platform in the last corridor	Passed	Timing needed to be adjusted but otherwise it worked how expected
10	Test Light Toggle 6	Test the third light toggles using trigger volumes in the last corridor	Passed	The light came on correctly
11	Test Moving Platform	Test the last 2 moving platforms that join together in the middle	Failed	The platform didn’t connect properly and the collisions were wrong, also timing needed to be adjusted
12	Test Lift 3	Test the final lift in the last corridor	Passed	The lift goes up to the gap in the wall and the game is over, no problems with the lift

Atari 2600 VCS

This weeks blog I done some research into why the Atari 2600 VCS was so popular in its time. It all started in the very early 1970's when America's public gained access to Pong and other Atari Classics in the arcades. After these became a huge success due to the unique selling point of the games, the Atari was created in 1975  along with a home version of Pong which proved to be a smash hit. More games began to release from various companies. 

The Atari 2600 VCS was released as a console that would have a larger and longer sles life cycle than the previous atari games consoles.The Atari 2600 VCS hadextra features such as seperate difficulty switches for both players, a setting for both black and white and colour televisions. The Atari 2600 VCS also came with a set of paddle controllers which ment that the customers could purchase any game without the worry of not being able to play it on the system. The best feature that the Atari 2600 VCS had was that majority of the games came with many different variations. Atari 2600 VCS then went on to create home versions of games such as Space Invaders, Astroids and Missle Command which won the public over dramatically. 

At this time in home entertainment, the likes of the Atari 2600 VCS were the only thing closest to Video Games. This is why they became so popular, because the public generally went to the arcades to play these games and now they were avaliable from the comfort of thier own home.

Character Diamonds

This week I am required to make a character diamond for a medival  england period and create some situations where based on its characterists it could make an interesting scenario.

Strong

Arrogant

Brave

Strategic

Scenario 1

An enemy comes in to attack the player with a hostage.

The player may focus on thier strategic side and try to plan a way around the hostage and get to the enemy to take them out, or they may focus on thier arrogant side and rush into the attack and end up either hurting the hostage themselves or provoking the enemy to do so.

Scenario 2

A group of unknown individuals arrive close to the players land in search for raw materials.

The player may wait to see if they are armed and/or hazardous then make a move to try and scare the group away from the players raw materials. Alternatively the player may try to take out the group single handedly as the player is strong, brave and arrogant.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud...

 This week I am looking at the poem from William Wordsworth called I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. I have decided to split the poem up by each verse linking to a new level of the game.

Verse 1

A game set in the sky, You move through the clouds, able to walk on them, jump between them and make your way through the fast paced side scrolling world until you reach an open sky where you fall into the next verse. The cloud could also be the character. This also reminds me of the cloud man in Mario where her comes down on a cloud and throws spikey turtles at you. 

Verse 2

A game set in space, you are a star that has to make its way around the galaxy, moving from one end of the solar system to the other end.

Verse 3 

A game set in the ocean, you are a sea life mamal, perhaps a dolphin. This verse reminds me of the game Ecco the Dolphin on the Sega Megadrive.

Verse 4

A game set in a dark mysterious room. Low lighting and strange sounds fill the scene. The player is trapped inside the room and must an exit. There is little lighting and the player must first find the switch, there is a window that is mostly blacked out by dirt, but there is a small wipe on the window where the player can see a bright a vibrant field full of bright breen grass and colourful flowers.

Virtual World Effecting Real World

After some researching on the internet I found a post about a real world arrest of a man for stealing virtual characters of the very popular RuneScape. The post reads -

'A man who hacked into accounts to steal virtual characters and their possessions on one of the world’s biggest multi-player online games has been arrested.

In what experts believe is the first case of its kind in Britain, the man obtained log-in details for RuneScape, a web-based role playing game with more than ten million members, to steal their “virtual” characters.

Players in the game have often spent years creating their online characters by completing set tasks and activities.

Police believe that password details were obtained through a so-called phishing scam where a fake internet page tricks people into handing over their personal information.'

To Read more, Follow the link: Real-world arrest for man who stole runescape virtual characters

Game Design - Key Techniques and Common Terminology

For this week, we took a look at key techniques and termanology used in game design. This blog I will be looking back at the games Colossal Cave Adventure and NetHack to identify what techniques were used. 

Colossal Cave Adventure

This game is a turn based game, you select what you want to do and it does it, then the game stops and talls you what has happened and whats new, then you make your next choice. As Sid Meier has famously said, "A Series of Interesting Choices" . The player must choose which way in which they will go and take the game turn by turn.

NetHack

This game is also a turn based game, moving one space takes up one turn. Therefore when the player moves a space, all enemies etc. will move a space at the same time. The internal economy avaliable in the game is objects that can be picked up to use on other objects.

Introduction to Kismet

This week we were introduced to Kismet. Kismet is used as a visual scripting tool in Unreal Tournament. Kismet can be used to make various actions and events. I have had a go at making a light switch that can be turned on using a trigger volume. Next I want to try make a toggable light made from a switch. I believe that this will be a similar process as making a trigger volume and turning on a light. Also i need to look at how to use the Matinee function as this is used for doors, lifts and moving platforms. I look forward to making objects and using kismet on them, I expect that using a combination of different types of interactions could make some pretty cool events.

Design Documents

I have been looking at various design documents for videos games this week and have been comparing them with each other to see what makes a good design document and whats makes a bad one.

I have looked at three design documents. The design documents for Claw, Grim Fandango and Technomancy. 

The Claw Design Document

The Claw design document is very detailed however quite boring. The document has extensive detail and the layout of the document is well structured and organised, however the use of images is limited and needs more visuals to help get the idea of the game across to the reader.

The Grim Fandango Design Document

The Grim design document is a very illustrational design document. The document expresses the main elements of the design through many visuals such as diagrams, images, flowcharts and tables. From a coders point of view, this design document would be insufficient data to create a game from, however it would be a concept art maker's perfect game design document.

The Technomancy Level Design Document

The Technomancy design document has a focus on technical data based on creating the levels, however it does not include any information on characters, story and/or concept. This would be a good design document for a level designer, but to create an entire game from this design document would be very difficult from a coders and concept art designer's point of view.