For my Smoke Screen prototype, I rigged up a PVC skeleton, which I then wrapped tape to connecting the acrylic plastic sheets to the PVC perimeter. I drilled holes into the bottom PVC pipe to act as a vent that slowly dispersed the fog upward through the acrylic pathway; and the end results are great. One thing I know is that this set up will look great with a rotoscoped video playing, as it would give the floating holographic screen illusion. Another thing I need to take into consideration for a final rendition, is the make and aesthetic of the smoke screens themselves, as although this rendition worked great as a prototype, it still looks a bit ghetto. Overall I think I’m making immense progress with everything and I am happy with how these results turned out.
So I was able to somewhat accomplish the trick I was going for, except the end result is no where near the level of intensity that I was going for. I used an old rotoscoped video of myself to project just an image of myself onto the smoke, however the clearness of the end result is just sorta good, not mind blowing or anything like that. I hope in the future I’ll be able to make this effect look realistic enough to yield quality holograms, or quite possibly, I may have to go for an entirely different route to achieve the holographic look; all while still incorporating a fog machine for aesthetic choices obviously. But if I do still use the fog machine idea, I may have to develop an exterior contraption of some sort as well, such as a clear thin guide that leads the smoke in a flat linear path. My only issue with this is its no longer holographic and is instead just projection onto a clear foggy surface. However I think testing this idea is still good to use as a backup.
Here’s a loop that I created, that I later converted to a graphic symbol, which gave me the ability to see what I was editing while I keyframed this symbol across the “pink screen”. I chroma-keyed the pink background stage instead of a blue or green one because there were shades of blue and green on the actual animation itself. This allowed for a clearer image overall.
It’s not done… However I think it’s a good start for the intro scene. Pls excuse the horrible render quality as I had to export a smaller file size in order to get it to be small enough to fit on this site’s parameters. If y’all got questions I’d love to answer
This Story Based RPG is a wild adventure throughout unknown lands, in which our main protagonist, Osiris, is tasked with finding parts for his crew’s fallen airship, which has found itself crash landed on a plethora of floating islands. Throughout the story, we learn about a race of mechanical beings called the Custodians, who are referred by the townspeople as mecha-men. These mechanical beings have been living underground for centuries, only coming to the surface for maintenance and repairs on the town’s infostructure. For years there has been peace between Mecha-Men and humans; however, ever since the islands split apart from an unknown mysterious reason, the mecha-men have been rising to the surface far more frequently, and far more upset at the humans. However, none of the townspeople truly know why this is, and after listening to their leader, Chancellor Topaz, everyone starts to believe that the mecha-men are just a crazy and violent race of people. After 20 years have passed since the splitting of the islands, tension has gained between the Mecha-Men and the humans; and with the Chancellor still in office, hysteria towards the Mecha-Men has only grown. It is around this time that we find our protagonist stranded on one of the islands from his fallen ship, and when he attempts to find parts, he is also told by townspeople to “take care of” some of the Custodians. After hearing how bad of a race of beings they are, Osiris decides to battle a few Mecha-Men, which inevitably leads him to one of their underground dungeons. Here he discovers the truth. Mecha-Men are suffering now worse than ever, mainly due to the fact that the energy they received from the original island’s core for centuries, is now fragmented into 7 pieces, which in turn makes them weaker. And to make matters worse, we now know that the reason for the core’s splitting, was not a freak occurrence, but rather a deliberate attack taken out on the mecha-men by the Chancellor in an attempt to harness the core’s energy for himself. Now Osiris has a new goal; protect the custodians and fight back against the evil government that has been spreading lies to its people for decades.
After the first playtest, I had to learn how to balance out the difficulty level of the battles, as they were either far too easy or far too hard to win when encountering one. After going into RPG Maker MZ I made tweaks to this aspect of the game’s mechanics, as well as making adjustments on minor details such as character face images which play out for the important characters, as well as adjustments on the map layouts, soundtrack, and dialogue, to make things seem more navigable for the player.
The message I wanted to portray in this game is to never judge others based on another person’s perception of them. We see this heavily in today’s society with politicians spewing lies about entire races of people, labeling them as murderers and rapists, when in reality, life without these said people could make life for everyone else far harder. Overall finding the truth in every situation and having humility for other people, and not judging them before you get to know the entire story is a life lesson that I think everyone should learn.
My next steps with this game is to truly flesh everything out, and have more events such as mini games and especially a boss battle between the crew and the Chancellor. During the final boss battle, I want the chancellor to exhibit his full range of magical powers, as well as morph into a monstrous demon of some sort. Once we defeat the chancellor, Mecha-Men return to their peaceful custodian state of being in which they help out the humans now that the townspeople have learned the truth about the Mecha-Men as a whole, rather than listening to lies spewed by their evil leader.
one of my videos wouldn’t upload but I showed it in class still :/
My modular board game, Invasion, was originally inspired by an experience in class with virtual games that introduced me to the concept of socially aware game design. One of the games that sparked my interests was Factorio, a game centered on resource extraction and automation. While its gameplay mechanics are impressive and engaging, I found myself disagreeing with the underlying narrative: the player’s advancement depends on the destruction of the planet’s native ecosystem, which is portrayed as an endless horde of alien bugs. This depiction not only dehumanizes indigenous resistance but also reinforces a colonial exclusive mindset that doesn’t give the Natives any true chance to win. So, I took it upon myself to introduce a similar concept, only this time with two opposing sides; each with advantages and disadvantages attributed to their culture.
after looking back in my discography, however, I came to realize that I took quite literally no pictures of the prototyped version of this game, that is except for a few aftermath photos of what it looked like after I had torn it up and used it to create the final iteration of the game.
The picture seen here is just half of the base part, which connected the rest of the modular tiles on top of it through a slitted grid of 43 segments for modular tiles, also cut out with that same material, foam board. I guess I was so wrapped up in creating a finalized version of this game, that I didn’t take the time to document the prototype to my wishes. Especially since I was so focused on iterating the game until I had such a clean final product. In the end, my new goal was to make a colonizing/defending/battling simulator civ game like Civilization 6 or Settlers of Catan; However, first I needed to figure out how to refine the game mechanics, as originally when I had built the prototype, the only playability that I had accomplished was movement and action cards. However, this seemingly made the original play tests of the game feel very un-dimensional and flat. Kinda lacking a sorta thrill if you will. So, I decided to hit the white boards in the laser cuter room and begin working on a mapped out description of a battle system.
Overall the battle system added a huge benefit to the game’s final touches, as well as a touch of excitement that I knew the final game needed. A big change that I inevitably ended up incorporating into the final rules was also the un-inclusion of an Event card deck/system, in which originally I had planned on making it so that every time a player rolls a 13, they must draw an event card, which would in turn determine how that round would play out, with advantages and disadvantages towards certain sides throughout the gameplay. Later on, I tried incorporating the concept of drawing an Event Card before every round. However, after completing quite a few play tests at home, I then decided that I didn’t want to junk up the rounds with too many mechanics. So, in turn, for the final set of rules I decided to axe this completely.
Another game iteration that I changed throughout the process of polishing this game into a wonderfully crafted final product, was the look and feel of the board and tile pieces themselves. For every piece, I had originally planned on having a numerical value on each tile correspondent to that said value, as originally I thought this would help aid the player in understanding how to play better, and although when I removed these numbers, the overall class reactions seemed to originally be against that decision, I still fully back my decision to remove the numbers as it not only makes the game look more aesthetically pleasing, but with only 3 numerical values to remember, I thought it was also a fun way to get players to learn and actually comprehend how to play, rather than being told what to do. I also upgraded from a spray painted foam board cut out, to a series of evenly 3D printed clean cut tiles with texture and character to them, which I then painted when completed.
I accomplished this clean finalized look by combining 3D models that I was able to find off of the internet, with an excruted hexagon shape, and meshing the two together in blender before sending it to print as an STL file. Above are some examples of what the 3D models of the physical pieces looked like before they were sent to the printer.
I then decided, I wanted the actual board piece itself to be something a little more crafty than a cut out foam board, so I hit up the wood shop in efforts to create a base that all the modular pieces could live on out of plywood. I also cut this board to be a hexagon, to go with the hex aesthetics of the game.
With a little paint work, I ended up making the overall look of the game beyond what my original expectations for it were, and I couldn’t be more happier with how it turned out. Below is a video describing in depth, step by step detail of how to play the game, Invasion.
Overall, I think that there was a huge difference in what took place at my apartment, vs the play tests that went down at school. Anyone I introduced the game to at home seemed to take more of an interest in the game, as they were not only seeking a thrilling and fun experience, but they were also willing to learn about how to play and have strategy and all that good stuff. Simply with the original rule book that I had for everyone in class, this wasn’t enough. Nobody was receiving the hard core understanding of mechanics and why certain things are the way they are throughout the game. I found many of my classmates questioning the game before taking the time to understand it; which is totally fine. However, for some reason it was night and day in terms of enjoyment of the game itself. My friends at home truly took a liking to what I had created, while in school, it felt almost as though they were looking for things to change, not for the better, but rather for the easier route of not having to memorize complex game mechanics with layers and steps to them.
Finally, I decided that a great way to help my peers understand the game more without it feeling like a bore to them, was to add an in depth visualization/instruction manual to go with the finalized version of the game. Here, I showed not only how certain mechanics worked in the game, but I also laid everything out in a much more visually appealing way than I had the original instruction sheet; as the original instructions were simply words conjoined all over a google doc, which understandably can get dull quickly for certain players who are more visual learners.
Overall, I think this project was a great experience for me in terms of learning how to take a concept and fully flesh it out. I mean everything from minor detailing on the board itself to a visualizer to go with the game as though it was in a box at some game store. I also learned who my target audience for this game was. My one nerdy friend Johnny seemed to like it the most, and he has ran quite a few DnD campaigns before. All around I had fun making this and would recommend that everyone uses the resources provided by the school as without these resources I wouldn’t have been able to complete such an amazing piece of work in such a short amount of time.
2. The closeness between my opponent the entire game
3. I wanted to have a way to defend, even when I didn’t have enough spikes to win that round.
4. I would probably give more meaning to the cool lil drawings on each tile piece
5. Maybe add a tad bit more depth with how the characters can interact with other characters in a way thats more than being reliant on the spikes. Like special abilities or bonuses.
This is the Lord chancellor, he is 16 X 29 pixels big, and his art style was inspired by Akira Toriyama’s art showcased in Chronotrigger, with a less chibi style look to him, and more focus on the shading, highlights, and color variants.
1. What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played?
The fact that there wasn’t a clear enough direction with the game
2. What was your favorite moment or aspect of what you just played?
The fun in this game primarily came from the social aspect of finding out what everyone said about each other
3. Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldn’t?
There wasn’t necessarily any game mechanics besides listen and write, which I can get down with but at the same time I am a sucker for something fun that still makes me think.
4. If you had a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be?
I would try and give more prompts each round and make it so that players felt like there was more of a structure behind what was being asked, so that it didn’t feel like the moderator was just trying to make us jab at each other’s throats for no end purpose. Again, I’m okay with us jabbing at each others throats as long as there’s still a clear reasoning as to why.
5. What should be improved with the next version
Just more direction really, maybe add some more in depth mechanics. Aesthetic was cool af though.
6. What was the games message
I think the message was to see how “friendly” everyone truly is when we sabotage each other directly for no ulterior motives.
