My 8 Week Experience in CSG-110

Throughout the first 8 weeks of while I was in CSG-110, it was a new, interesting experience. I learned a lot for the first 8 weeks and not only that, this class became the first time that I had to work with a team to design/develop a game.

There was a rating where I had to give myself which one of the following:

5 - Epic

4 - Awesome

3 - Meh

2 - Teh Suck

1 - Crit Fail

Even though my team give me a 4, I'm the type of person who would rate myself pretty harshly so I decided to rate myself a 3. I missed the first 2-3 weeks of class and the moment I arrived, I felt behind due to the 2-3 classes I missed. I managed to pick myself up and understood the concept of the class quickly. 

The one thing that I need to improve is communicating more than I'm currently communicating with my team. I'm capable of contributing ideas and concepts for my team, but when it comes to outside meetings like Skype, I tend to not be sociable. Maybe because of how there are times where if a question is asked on Skype, it would end up being ignored. 

I've helped out with the first powerpoint by researching information on the business model and connecting it to our business model canvas before it was later on revised and finalized. 

My other strength is that if I was given a task to do, I would definitely finish the task or if its a task to research something, I can find good intel on it. 

Even with my contributions, I feel that since my emphasis is programming, at this stage now, I'm not able to contribute to a major part of the programming aspect of our game. The reason why is because I haven't programmed for over 2 years. The concept and logic of programming is familiar to me but when it comes to the actual coding, I need to refresh my mind and start familiarizing myself with it. 

I've programmed games before back in high school for 2-3 years. I remember my first game was a simple tic-tac-toe game. I then programmed the game Othello, checkers, Scrabble, and then Asteroids.

                                    

If I knew how to/remember to actually code right before coming to this class, I feel like I would've had this skill to contribute more to programming the game. Right now, I'm currently spending my free time relearning and familiarizing myself with programming Java.

History of Video Games

In class today, I learned lots about the history of video games based on the documentary Video Games: The Movie.

I thought that this documentary was interesting and i decided to watch it again on Netflix. Video Games The Movie looks into the history of video games from the latest gen systems all the way back to the first video game made on a computer screen. Games were at first, based on a simple design such as the first pong game. The moment games like these first came out and was available to play, many people became interested in it. Developers noticed that in order to change things around and turn it up a notch, they decided to upgrade to having better graphics.

Games were at first available to be played at arcades. People would go to different arcades to spend countless hours just playing many different arcade games. After awhile, things changed up a bit the moment that consoles were made for the players to have at home to play games.

Games now became to be developed as an 8-bit game. Nintendo was the head of releasing games that were made as 8-bit and consoles that ran an 8-bit processor. Games such as Mario were a huge hit within the franchise.

Later on, consoles were made with a 16-bit processor. With this, graphics began to look much better and it would allow the users to do more things than with a console with an 8-bit processor. Graphically, games began to look much realistic instead of having simple colors due to the number of pixels that could be used to compose an image.

Years, later consoles began running 32 and 64 bit processor. Their became a new transition from the way consumers can get video games, Instead of having cartridge, CDs were made for newer consoles since these consoles and games were now able to store more due to an increase in memory. For handhelds systems, cartridge later evolved into chips. Graphics and game play performance were now advancing as 3D modeling and animation became a huge hit.

Rock Paper Shotgun

In class today, I was given the task to look up a websites or partnership where you can post your game on in order to make it known. I can across this fantastic website where not only can you post your game there and have it reviewed, there's many information that the site has to offer. This site is Rock, Paper, Shotgun.



Rock, Paper, Shotgun is a PC-only game based website that would be willing to write reviews about your game. To get your game to stand out more, the site wants developers to follow certain sets of rules. These rules were made in order to make sure that developers make it seem that their game if worth looking at instead of plainly saying "Look at my game. It's going to be interesting and fun!" They want more than that. Here's a link to what the site want...

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/hey-prs-and-developers/

Besides helping out developers get their game known, the site is also known for putting out news on pc games and pc related topics and issues. They would end up posting upcoming PC games and make a brief description of it. Some of the description would be what the game is or what's a good recommendation to who should play it. Most of these posts will be blogs of other developers.

Not only do RPS gives reviews about a developer's game, they also give reviews about other games that recently came out. They look at the pros and cons of the game, what they struggled with in the game, and things that they liked, and many other analysis.

If you want to see the works of other developers, RPS also has a section where you can look into the work done. There would be tons of information regarding a developer's game and not only that, it comes with a free downloadable game that the developer made.

There's also a section that helps people out to get to know PC more better. This section focuses on the different specs and hardware of PC. It looks at things related to PC such as monitors, resolutions, graphic cards, CPUs, pros and cons of certain different products, what product or specs they recommend to have, and many more. Not only that, they also post up information regarding a new type of technology that's planning on being released or is in the process of developing.

Game Design Document

Today in class, I learned how to make a game design document. A game design document is a type of outline in which it has details about how a game is going to be built. Within a game design document, there are numbers of key points that the document needs in order for it to actually turn out to be something that can be read.

Within a game design document, there are three key features that defines the game which is the concept of the game, the design of the game, and the production of the game.

The concept of the game would mainly be looking at what the game is. Here, this part of the document would include the description of the game. The description of the game or overview serves as a introduction to what the game design document is going to cover. The genre of the game would be specified and also the targeted audience, whether it's a specific age group or a specific demographic. Key features of your game could be discussed within the concept section in order to pinpoint what really makes your game more special than the others and how it could stand out.

The design of the game mainly looks into the aspects or work that's being put into making the game. Some of the things that can be looked into would include the different designs of levels, characters, and environment. Since designs of levels, characters, and environments are some what "vague" topics, you need to go more deeper in details. There are tiny aspects that has to be included to making and designing of each of the main topics of design. When looking into the character design, the things that could be looked into is how the character were actually design or the different ways that they were design. For level design, look into the way the level was design such as the programming done and the animation. Since most likely there were other ideas before finalizing what to actually have in the game, it's a good way to include previous designs, sketches, ideas. There's also audio and graphics that can be looked into within the design of the game.



The production of the game looks into the time management part of the whole process. It can include the time it took to work on certain parts of designing the game or the time spent working on the document. The document wouldn't be a 1 day thing that could be finished that fast because to make a good game design document, it'll take more than that. After one game design document is finished, there will be times where changes has to be made and different versions need to be made.

The biggest key feature are DETAILS. Details are what would make a successful game design document. Describe almost everything that comes into mind within the design of the game. Even the littlest details can have a huge impact because it brings life to the document. If a design document lacks details, it'll end up being really boring. Visual aids can also be helpful if there are times where details wouldn't be enough to show something. Visual aids can come in forms of graphs, spreadsheets, videos, demos, animations, and even pictures