Kodu Pac-Man

Screenshots of Gameplay

  

Screenshots of Important Characters 

Playable Characters (pg.1)

 Playable Character (pg.2)

 Playable Character (pg.3)

NPC (Rover)

Tree (Important Code)

Questions

1.  I tried to keep my version as close to the original as possible. In particular, I kept the lives and respawning, and also the powerups. Nothing really is different, but I did make NPC respawning different from the original and also made the entire game harder, since it's only one level.

2. As I said before, I tried to keep everything as close to the original as possible, but I did code the tree on top of the wall so when the character respawns, they get a certain amount of time on top of the wall, which can be seen as an immunity for a period of time. Also, I made it so that a new rover is created every 25 seconds, since it would be way too easy if the playable character just ate all three original rovers in the first 5 seconds and there were none left. This way, there's also an increase in difficulty as time passes, so this can also be seen as some sort of pressure to finish the game quickly.

3. Honestly, Kodu has a lot of bugs and I had to work my way around a lot of things. The respawning took me a long time to figure out, and then not every object would work as a respawning point. I also couldn't set it so that WHEN: Scored white EQUALS 0 points, DO: end, since the game would just end automatically when I started it, so I had to set it to BELOW 0 points. A lot of the times I would get confused on when to use the "once" tile. Plus, the rovers would just get stuck in walls if I used the code from the tutorial, so I had to google that and try something else. I never really figured out how to make the playable character's movements more controllable, and I realize that that's probably not a problem on my behalf.

4. I made the point system invisible because one of my testers said that the points got in the way of the character and she couldn't see what was happening. I did that by turning off score visibility for red in the world settings. Although it's not visible, when the character eats all the apples, they still win so it didn't cause too much trouble. Another tester said that the game was a bit too hard, and since I already had the respawning feature, I took out one beginning rover. Mr.Strudwick suggested that I make the respawning character more visible, so I made the tree as small as possible.

5. The next step would be to add more cool features and powerups, and also figure out a way to fix the movement of all the characters. Basically, to make the game more enjoyable to play.

Term 2 Learning Plan

1. I would like to try all the different programs I'm offered, in order to choose my favourite to continue and work on. Of course, we're already doing that, but I'd like to try things at my own speed. Everything sounds cool at the moment, but I'll look at the programs that are already locally installed and try my hand on those first, like Gamemaker, Alice, Unity, and Blender. I would also like to try programs and programming languages that aren't locally installed, like Python and Java.

2. I plan to experiment with every program first, and possibly do a small project for each. The internet is a wonderful place when it wants to be, and I can probably find anything I really set myself to find. To start, I can totally look at some tutorial pages and videos, like this video on Gamemaker basics,and Codecademy offers some cool (and long) tutorials for programming.

3. I think it would be best to work by myself for now, since I need to grasp the basics first, and having a partner might render it. Later on, though, if there's a good reason, I'd definitely do something with a partner.

4. Well, I definitely will have questions or difficulties, so my teacher seems like a good resource to ask for help. If I find a program that looks interesting, but needs to be installed, I would also have to ask my teacher. I can ask my teacher and friends if I don't get what I'm doing or I don't know what I want to do as a project.

5.As I said before, I'll be doing little projects here and there, and I'll know that they're successful if my beta-tester/a classmate thinks that they're fun and not buggy. If I have time, I would also want to try doing a (few) larger project(s) to improve more on the program of my choice. When I'm finished with something, I'll post on the blog, probably in the same format as the Kodu intro and PacKodu post.

6. Learning the basics of a program is fairly simple, but improving on it is hard, so to at least get a grasp on what I'm doing, I'll probably need at least 3-4 classes to simply learn the basics. Then, I think smaller projects will take around half a month to complete (depends entirely on how well I work with the program), and larger projects might take a month or months to complete.

7. AHHH LETS GOOOOO

Kodu - Intro

Screenshots

Of game

Of playable character (Kodu)

Of CPU(s):
Rover

 Octopus

Questions:
 1. The programming was fairly easy, or at least pretty logical. The rovers is naturally faster than the Kodu, and the octopuses are just really slow, so I didn't think that it would be a fair game or fair chase. To change that, I went to the character settings and changed the forward speed multiplier, turning speed multiplier, forward acceleration multiplier, and turning acceleration multiplier, and tested it several times to make sure that, even if the Kodu was being chased by one of the CPUs, it would still have a chance of getting away from them.The controls were pretty inflexible and Kodu had to be exactly on top of the apple to eat it, so I tried to make the Kodu mouse-controlled, but that didn't work.

2.  My original idea for the game was to make the apples and rocks the same size, then make some rocks red and some apples grey, thus increasing the difficulty of the game. Jenessa found that really hard, since I also had points taken if Kodu bumped into a rock, so I took out the taking of points and replaced it with "move slowly", and I also made the apples visibly larger than the rocks so the player would actually be able to tell which ones were apples.

Video Games: The Movie

Questions 

1. Video games became successful because of its interactivity. People had never been able to control a character on a screen, and that gave them a sense of control and power. Now, a few things that make a game popular is the story, gameplay, and graphics, which all contribute to the interactivity of the game and the immersion of the player. They help a person escape momentarily from reality. Also, with games like Pacman and Pong, another appeal is that with a concept that simple, gamers are constantly encouraged to do better than before.

2. Video game manufacturers got a little too overconfident. They thought that the consumers would just accept whatever the makers spewed out, no matter how awful. There came bad game after bad game, and when the notorious game, E.T., came out, it was the final straw. The gamers lost interest because games had lost/not improved on what they were originally liked for: creativity, interest, gameplay, etc.

3.Video games are definitely a form of art. After all, what is art? It's something that someone has put work and heart into for the appreciation of others. In fact, I think that video games are not only a form of art, but also multiple forms of art combined together to form a type of interactive art. Music, literature, and artworks are all considered "art", so why shouldn't video games, which contain all of these and have people who work hard to make them, be considered art? Many people work together for up to years to make games that people can enjoy.

4. The next evolution in games is definitely virtual reality. Although it is already happening, and is evolving at quite a rapid pace, the virtual reality that game-makers are hoping for is full body immersion. The problem with these type of games is that many gamers, while they like to immersed in the game, don't actually want to have to actually move. After all, a major reason people like to play games is that they can experience a unique story from the safety of my couch. Plus, as time passes, I think it'll get harder to actually come up with a unique concept that can attract an audience.