Prepare To Die: A Game in 48 hours.
During my junior year at ISU, I discovered that there was a game development club. Since I have such a fondness for games and was interested in making them myself, I went ahead and joined with them. Flash-forward a couple months and the club was setting up a gamejam, where we got into teams and tried to make a game in a weekend. 48 hours to make a game is not a lot of time. However, I got together with a team of two other guys, and we set off to make the best game we could. This game was the product of that.
Prepare To Die is the product of that 48 hours of work. At the beginning, it was meant to be a stealth game, but that was going to be too hard to make in only 48 hours, especially if we had to make good AI for it. Luckily, someone had put some AI online that we were able to use for it. In the end, it was more of an action game with some stealth elements.
Prepare To Die is the product of that 48 hours of work. At the beginning, it was meant to be a stealth game, but that was going to be too hard to make in only 48 hours, especially if we had to make good AI for it. Luckily, someone had put some AI online that we were able to use for it. In the end, it was more of an action game with some stealth elements.
Throughout the project, our group learned a lot about the game design process and how to successfully make a game that feels fairly good to play. I personally learned a lot about game maker, since I had never used it before and it was what we chose to use to create the game. I also learned a bit about how to work with a tight deadline, since we had to do as much as we could in only 48 hours.
We ended up using the internet a lot whenever we were having trouble with something, since you can find solutions to a lot of problems if you look hard enough. There were also a lot of functions built into game maker, since re-implementing things that we can already use seems pointless.
If you want to try the game for yourself, there is a download link below.
We ended up using the internet a lot whenever we were having trouble with something, since you can find solutions to a lot of problems if you look hard enough. There were also a lot of functions built into game maker, since re-implementing things that we can already use seems pointless.
If you want to try the game for yourself, there is a download link below.
prepare_to_die.exe | |
File Size: | 9427 kb |
File Type: | exe |
Dungeoneering
Dungeoneering is a large project that a group of us from the Game Development Club were making. It is a card game with asymmetrical gameplay. One player is the dungeon master, and the other player is the hero. The dungeon master's job is to defeat the hero, while the hero's job is to live through everything the dungeon master throws at him/her until the dungeon master is no longer able to play any cards. The inspiration behind this game was old dungeon crawler games and DnD types of games, so everything is themed around that idea.
The premise of the game is that the dungeon master sets up multiple piles for the hero to choose from. The hero has to pick one of those piles for his encounter. These piles can consist of monsters and traps, which take resource points for the dungeon master to play, and treasures, which give the dungeon master more resource points, but also help out the hero in various ways. During these encounters, the hero can play ability cards from their own hands in order to help them with the encounter.
Unfortunately, due to many members of the group having too much other work they had to get done and the leader of the project having to leave the university for personal reasons, the game never got very far off the ground.
The premise of the game is that the dungeon master sets up multiple piles for the hero to choose from. The hero has to pick one of those piles for his encounter. These piles can consist of monsters and traps, which take resource points for the dungeon master to play, and treasures, which give the dungeon master more resource points, but also help out the hero in various ways. During these encounters, the hero can play ability cards from their own hands in order to help them with the encounter.
Unfortunately, due to many members of the group having too much other work they had to get done and the leader of the project having to leave the university for personal reasons, the game never got very far off the ground.
ISU Zombies
ISU Zombies is a game that a team that I was working with created for Android devices. The idea behind the game was to take the Zombie game that is played by numerous different college campuses and create a digital version, that could be played any time without nearly as much setup. It integrated with facebook to provide login support, and we created many profile services such as keeping track of kills, becoming friends with other players, and being able to view stats for other people through their profile.
The premise of the game was that a group of players were zombies and the rest of the players were humans. The zombies would be able to attack the humans by coming into close proximity of a human, and then by tapping their icon, they can initiate the attack. This sends a notification to the other player, which tells them that they need to run a certain distance away from where they currently are in order to escape the attack. Once the set time has run out, if the player has run far enough away, they will dodge the attack, otherwise they will become a zombie and the player who attacked them will gain a kill.
The premise of the game was that a group of players were zombies and the rest of the players were humans. The zombies would be able to attack the humans by coming into close proximity of a human, and then by tapping their icon, they can initiate the attack. This sends a notification to the other player, which tells them that they need to run a certain distance away from where they currently are in order to escape the attack. Once the set time has run out, if the player has run far enough away, they will dodge the attack, otherwise they will become a zombie and the player who attacked them will gain a kill.
There are a fair number of options that need to be specified before a game can be created. Some of the basic information includes the name of the game, whether the game is public or private, and the max number of players for the game. We allowed the game creator to set some of the game mechanics as well, such as the escape distance, the escape time, and the attack range, though we had some defaults set for all of these. They also needed to specify the start and end date of the game, so each player who joined knew exactly what date the game would begin, as well as a start and end time for each day. This was specified because we believed many of the people who would be interested in our game would be college students, and could potentially have classes they needed to go to. The start and end time gave the players a period where the game was inactive, so that they could focus on classes, or be able to get some sleep. Once the game began, a small number of players chosen at random would become a zombie.
Once a game was created, other players can search for the game from the join game menu. Once the player joins the game, he or she can talk to all the other players using the game chat. There is also a personal chat that can be started between friends by visiting their profile. Once in the game, the player has the ability to leave if they want, and the creator of the game has the ability to change the options if they feel they need to.
Once a game was created, other players can search for the game from the join game menu. Once the player joins the game, he or she can talk to all the other players using the game chat. There is also a personal chat that can be started between friends by visiting their profile. Once in the game, the player has the ability to leave if they want, and the creator of the game has the ability to change the options if they feel they need to.
While we felt that we did a lot of work on this game, and made a very respectable mobile game given the time we spent working on it, there was a lot more that we had hoped to accomplish, and would have had we had more than one semester to work on it. One thing we had hoped to accomplish was to add a team chat within the game, so that the human team and the zombie team had a way to talk to each other and strategize, but we weren't quite able to finish that feature before the final demo. We had also talked about adding some form of AI zombie that would move around randomly and attack people so that everyone would have the chance to be human, but we ended up running out of time before we had a chance to implement it, so we chose the simpler option of choosing a few people to start as zombies at random. We had also talked a little about some different game modes, such as a one person survival mode, or something completely different like a capture the flag mode.
Working on this project gave me a much better sense of how work typically goes when working with a team. You don't have to worry about doing everything, you just have to make sure your part gets done and trust your team will do their parts as well. It also showed me some of the difficulties with having to communicate different parts of the project between different teammates, since sometimes you may think it should work one way, but someone else thinks it should work differently, and then you have to make decisions about which way is right. Fortunately, the team I worked on worked very well together, so we were able to accomplish what we felt was a lot.
Working on this project gave me a much better sense of how work typically goes when working with a team. You don't have to worry about doing everything, you just have to make sure your part gets done and trust your team will do their parts as well. It also showed me some of the difficulties with having to communicate different parts of the project between different teammates, since sometimes you may think it should work one way, but someone else thinks it should work differently, and then you have to make decisions about which way is right. Fortunately, the team I worked on worked very well together, so we were able to accomplish what we felt was a lot.