Retro Game Review - Pre 1985

As part of our course we are going to review a retro game, the reason for this is as they are fairly basic we can focus on the core mechanics and use the vocabulary we have learnt so far on the course.
The task was to review a game which was released before 1985, much to my annoyance Bubble Bobble, Alex Kidd and Double Dragon all failed to meet this criteria being released in 1986 and 1987, however after a bit more research and getting a bit more nostalgic I found Paperboy

I originally watched my brother play this when I was around the age of 3, I presume that I also played it at this point however I can’t remember if I did or not however I seem to vaguely have an idea about the game so I must have played it at a young age somewhere along the line.
So by the 17th of December I shall have written an incredible 1500 word review of the core mechanics and game play style of Paperboy… hopefully… I will honest.


Maybe

Bibliography - Nothing to do with religion

This blog post is going to be slightly different to my others, no don't worry it will still be poorly constructed and not actually make much sense, I am going to be detailing and demonstrating that I know how to do a Bibliography.On Thursday we were shown the different ways of doing a Bibliography and had it explained to us by Eddie.
For my own personal benefit but also for yours I am going to get the definition of a Bibliography;
Bibliography : a list of writings with time and place of publication (such as the writings of a single author or the works referred to in preparing a document etc.)
For this task I am going to be using a couple of different resources which are available to me as a student to demonstrate this.

Below you will find these wonderful and probably incorrectly formatted examples!

Books:
DOVEY. 2006., Game Cultures: Computer Games As New Media. [online]. Open University Press

Ver Hague, Jim; Jackson, Chris. 2006., Flash 3D: Animation, Interactivity, and Games. [online]. Elsevier Science & Technology.

Articles:
PC Dome Magazine, Hungary.,Computer games are fun? On professional games and players’ motivations., Jun2005, Vol. 42 Issue 2, p117-124

Hecker, Chris. Communications of the ACM, Jul2000, Vol. 43 Issue 7, p34-39

Contributions:
Kotler, Philip; Wong, Veronica; Saunders, John; Armstrong, Gary. 2005., Principles of Marketing. . Pearson Education UK

Namkee Park;  Kwan Min Lee;  Seung-A Annie Jin; Sukhee Kang. . International Journal of Human - Computer Studies, Nov 1, 2010, Vol. 68, Issue 11, p822

And that's it for now
I'm not completely sure I've done this correctly but I can always have another go at a later date

Making Pong Flash

Today We worked on making a basic version of pong with flash, now I've done this before at college using ActionScript 2.0 but we are currently using ActionScript 3.0 which is annoyingly very similar and different at the same time so I've spent most of the time getting confused as I try to get out of the habits I had in AC2 and get used to the different syntax of AC3.
I royally messed up with my game and with a lot of help from Chris (as in he nearly remade the whole thing) I (Chris) got it up to a standard that it actually did something! next week I'll hopefully manage to add scores and make the trajectory random with a speed increase.

Here it is in all its basic glory!
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1935579/pong.swf

Another thing I have done today is make some the elements I'm going to use in our reskin/redesign of Sportswheel
I am most pleased with the planet I made and here it is below;

We also met up with our groups and had a little mini meeting about our group project
I am in a group with
Ross Fraser
Sean Edwick
Tom White
Adam Woodhouse

and together we will be working to create Circuit Absurdity (a concept design by Ross and Sean) which will be a Key Stage 1 game to teach children about circuits.

Paidea and Ludus in Videogames

Paidea and Ludus

Before I begin writing about Paidea and Ludus I thought I would firstly just explain what they mean so that I myself know but also you reading know.

Paidea: effectively "play" for pleasure

Ludus: more constrained by rules, with a clear outcome (eg "winning")

I'm now going to talk about games which I am familiar with which use both Paidea and Ludus,
A game which I played fairly recently so it is still fresh in my mind is Mafia 2 so I will cover this first.
At a glance Mafia 2 is a similar game to the grand theft auto series, you run (or drive) around a city, completing missions, progressing through the story and by doing so, causing mayhem with guns and explosives.
One of the great appeals of these games is you can really choose how you play it, if you want to you can explore the city, go on rampages slaughtering everyone, collect money and buy new clothes. This is a more Paidea approach to playing the game
On the other hand you can follow the story which will take you towards the end of the game, it will unlock new areas, new cars and new weapons, you'll still have the occasional rampage but it will apparently be part of the story, this is a Ludus approach in that the game is saying, here is your mission, you must get here, find some way of getting there.
The above approach is fairly interesting in that you have the Rules of the mission (which in my example is going to be get from A to B) which provides the Ludus approach, however since you are free to get there how you wish you can have a more Paidea approach to it, you can choose to walk or drive, to kill people on the way or not, the choice of how you do it is up to you.

My second game which is 100% Paidea is Minecraft
Minecraft is difficult to describe, in essence it is a block world sandbox where you collect rocks, sand, trees or water and you can build just about anything you want with it, there are no objectives, goals or set tasks, Since it has single and multi player it can provide some interesting results, when playing with your friends you make up your own rules, ("if you break my stuff I'll break yours") but apart from that you are completely free to do whatever you like.
However thinking about it a bit more Minecraft does have some Ludic elements, they aren't exactly rules but more an agreement (going by the "if you break my stuff, I'll break yours") if the rules are broken chaos would ensue just like in other games.

Agon, Alea, Ilinx, Mimicry

Agon: competition
Alea: chance/randomness
Ilinx: movement
Mimicry: simulation, make-believe, role-play.

I'm trying to think of a game which would cover all of these elements and I'm not sure if it will but I'm going to talk about Quake, Quake Live to make it easier for me.

One of the large elements of Quake Live is the ability to duel people, a 1 on 1 competition to see who can kill who the most, this is very competitive as it is a test of skill between you and your opponent, This is the Agon element of Quake, The Alea element is slightly difficult to cover but I guess it is in where players spawn, each spawn point is decided on where players are at a set time and then a random one in the appropriate section of the map is chosen (usually the other side of the map to where combat just happened). Ilinx, movement is key in Quake, it means you can survive and dodge and also beat your opponent to weapons and armor, Mimicry is slightly difficult to place into Quake however I believe it is there because you buy into the role of killing your opponent, you believe that is your goal and you play the role of your character in achieving that goal.

And thus ends another boring blog post :)

I have no words & I must Design - Greg Costikyan

We have recently read a section from Greg Costikyan's book, "I have no words & I must Design"

From this we took notes and tried to summarize each section into a few key points.

The Text in White is what our group came up with at first and in Green is what the class agreed on

Interaction: Costikyan talks about the relation of Puzzles to games, Puzzles are static, Games are interactive.

A Puzzle needs purpose for a player to successfully interact with a game

Players choices and Interaction shape the game state

Goals: A player needs a goal to achieve otherwise what are they playing it for?

Create purposeful and Progressive interaction

Struggle: A game needs to the correct level of struggle to involve the player in the game, without struggle a game would be too simple and the player would have no challenge, at the same time a game can't be impossible.

Every game must have some struggle, without this there is no sense of achievement and victory, however it can't be impossible

Structure: A games structure filters the players through so they can achieve their goal, structure adds to the struggle.

Players need rules within the game world to add challenge, make it more interesting and influence behaviour

Endogenous Meaning: Something in value in a game doesn't have value in reality.

Things have a value and meaning within the game,  keep the game fiction

Evaluation: Interaction, Goals, Struggle, Structure and Endogenous Meaning are all needed to create a game and all required by each other to work correctly

The elements do appear to be linked together. All these elements do not necessarily mean fun

After this we then applied these to a Key Stage 1 flash game on the BBC Bitesize website

The game we applied this to was Clock Works and is used to teach children about telling the time

Interaction: The interaction comes from trying to solve the question which is asked.

Goals: To select the correct answer from the 3 options given

Struggle: Working out the time on clock, adding the time stated in the question and getting the correct answer. The times to be added to each other aren’t always simple.

Structure: The structure of the game is basic however it is there in the 3 options that the player is given, this provides the structure to answer the question and therefore progress.

Endogenous Meaning: The values which the player must use to get the answer don’t have any meaning outside of the game, however the skills they will learn will.

Evaluation: All these elements are needed to create the game and hopefully make it fun for the players


A link to the game is below;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks1bitesize/numeracy/time/index.shtml