Talisman, A board game with hacks.

So in preparation of my group project and main project I have been looking at different non digital games, My latest test I decided to look into a board game that had eluded me for a long time..... Talisman.

Talisman is alot like munchkin where players are put into a roleplay environment without actually developing a backstory for their player and campaign, The goal is to complete tasks to get to the crown of command in the center and progressively kill off the other players. Sounds complex? Thats the simple part.

So we began! We each selected 2 random classes and chose our preferred one, we were warned that a class had been banned as it was considered overpowered and broken to use. Once we started we each ran around completing tasks etc. in preparation for the end.

Early in the game i realised how overpowered my class was, In exchange for not taking items off of a player i could deny them combat bonuses against me and only take a life from them thus killing them faster..... That was a interesting turn of events for me (being a pvp player by nature) which i later realised had no ill effect if it was used on a wild creature (as they are not deemed characters) so i would guarantee wins early on.

My inner munchkin took over as i cleaned the board of posessions and wins and eventually raced into the middle to stop the other players from winning, This is where the game became complex.

As a warrior my friends could roll an additional combat dice as well as being naturally good in combat, This eliminated the chance i had with my rolls as my ability was not allowed in the middle and i was out matched in combat. My abilities were slowly stripped, my armour removed and my allies turned against me. All in a few combat phases..... As a person who spent the entire game searching for items and quests to power me up so i could go in no problem I felt angered that my quest was in vain as it gave no real help. But sure bad loser right? I only lost it cos i was bad? Nope, The rules had messed us over.

Now when i say the rules, I mean the initial rules we started on. You know the ones that should make sense and by the time you got them all working and the games rolling..... You realise that one is out of place and your just clutching at straws while you lose everything you love. The rules state that you may perform one action on a space (Hell they even included a flowchart) but the actions we were coming up with meant you could avoid a hard challenge by just dropping a item on it then picking it up next turn when you were sent back..... The whole point of the last section is to test the player each step.... But we could re write it how we saw fit just by doing one action that we were legally allowed to do..... Now ive been doing games design for 3 years.... My tutor would spit on this game for its complexity and the little evidence of testing.

I could take all of these rules into a machine to rewrite time, Submit it and get a 3- because it was that bad when it came to flaws. Everyone remembers the first time they found an exploit? (Nintendo world championships die twice and get 50 coins in record time) but really? In a board game that has expansions, a title and a publisher? Was it really tested with todays audience in mind? I played for 5 minutes and was already killing advanced monsters but got messed early on the end? Hell we had a guy grabbing the rulebook every 5 seconds to test if he could walk in one direction and say "Actually, We cant do this.... its X when you can" But the testers didnt see this coming?

All in all... it is a fun game, But why make it so complex? Every gamesjam, Every module and every god dam game online that make it big.... are the simple ones! Why do we still bother with complexity? We almost didnt play it cos of how long it took to arrange and play.

Rant over though i advise you to check it out, See if the same happens to you and maybe see if the monk really is that overpowered?

Street Fighter 4, Why did i put you off for so long?

After the most busy week (working honestly!) i decided to finally purchase street fighter 4.

Now i know i said last blog that modern games are really easy, Well that just isnt true when it comes to fighters. Fighting games have always had the rep of "your either a pro or you button mash" I dont fall under either of those, Im proud to say it. I suck when it comes to them and yet..... I love them.
They hold that perfect line between challenge and skill, Im sure everyone who plays games has that one special time when they were stuck for so long and beat it. Street fighter 4 did that to me every step of the way and you know... It actually made me feel good to get over the hump.... But im getting ahead of myself lets slow down.

After getting back from eurogamer yesterday i noticed that the majority of the limelight was not on the new releases, It was the fighter games. Street fighter 4 has been out for many a moon and yet it featured many consoles with matching fight sticks and some older versions even featured in the arcade section of the expo. The game is not without its flaws (more on that later) yet the crowds gathered to see strangers compete against eachother in button smashing combat. Heck, It was even featured as part of a tournament that took place over the day which was a nice sight to see as it attracted a bigger crowd than most other events.

But after watching the pro players hammer into eachother with combos that never ended and roars of applause from the crowd with each victory I began to crave something. There i stood having owned 1 street fighter game in my life time and never feeling like it appealed to me wanting to play the game. It only hit me  how badly i really wanted it when i realised i had memorised alot of moves from the game (HADOUKEN) despite never having looked at the manual for one.

So after declining a night out (sorry guys) i chose to spend tonights beer money on the game and told myself i would not exit the game till i had completed the arcade ladder. For the first time in fighting game history, I had pledged myself to seeing a campaign to its end on my first run. Not gonna lie here, I wanted to give up so many times yet couldn't. I spent 2 and a half hours learning chains and moves for no real time gain to prove to myself that i could actually do it. Below is my stage by stage analysis... Its a good read.

Stage 1 - Dhalsim, Standard match really was a punchbag for me the majority of the round. No real challenge and made me feel alot better than i was at the game.

Stage 2 - Zangief, Oh man. I'll just clarify now zangief has never been a character i enjoy going up against. On the last one i played he cleared me constantly. But you know im not going anywhere right? Zangief was a pussycat this round, Maybe my inner rage taught me how to destroy him..... or i was put on a pedastool by the difficulty.

Stage 3 - El Fuerte, Never seen this guy before must be a newbie. The ai made him seem very eratic, I took a loss this round then got 2 victorys. No challenge once i saw his moveset its all speed based so a few upper cuts and projectiles from time to time put him down a peg.

Stage 4 - Abel, Oh man this is where it picked up. I lost my first 2 rounds against this guy. His backstory reveals hes a very throw based character as well as using heavy striking moves to chain into his throws. I should have seen it coming as this guys a prototype for the boss (more on him later) who kicked my ass. Abel was my first real challenge as he is very hard to counter and u have to be good at opening against him.

Stage 5 - Blanka, Oh man the wildman himself. I remember how crazy this guy was in number 2 let alone in this version. I took 1 loss against him before i clicked at how to counter him, Hes also naturally hunched short which made it hard for me to tell when to use aerials and projectiles or even when to grapple him. This combined with his classic electric shock huddle that removes any attempt to land an attack made this a enjoyable challenge.

Stage 6 - M. Bison, The original badass..... Not as badass as i remember. Bison seems to be showing his age as he landed a few combos but was far to easy to juggle. Maybe by now i was used to the AI's chaining or it was taking it easy on me. Either way i scored 2 more vistorys without a loss.

Stage 7 - Balrog, Now were getting serious. Balrog has always been a bruiser. Someone notorious for slow but powerful attacks and he did not disappoint. I scored the first win and got a bit cocky which lead to me being destroyed a few times. The AI would always pull back from defeat and devastate me (though he never landed a ultimate attack on me) and eventually i learnt not to let him get a break and to lay him out asap.

Stage 8 - Rufus (final hurdle before boss) New guy who happens to be based off of american feedback towards what needs to be in the game. Rufus is the rival of ken (the guy i was using) and is a deceptive character. I wont beat around this point, He is VERY obese and looks to be the standard comedy effect character with a goofy attire with a major napoleon complex. the round began and i landed my standard opener when one punch got landed on me. that punch opened it for the AI who chained an unholy amount of combos on me cutting my health bar down to next to nothing. I managed to sneak a win now i was back in concentration but lost the round with 2 losses. Before i started the next attempt i did some research. A design implement added to this guy was an ultimate move that had a deceptive range, this explained the sudden death of my character and the crazyness on screen. Using my noodle i managed to fluke a win (after losing 6 rounds) and went on to my final challenge.

Stage 9 - Seth. Before i start this guys review, i knew this was gonna be a train wreck. I'd seen him on big screens being used by guys who would spam range till their opponent got close with next to no health and killed.

Now i managed to open alot better than i did against rufus and managed to fluke him down to 5% health each fight. Though i still lost i learnt that he was a interesting character and Capcom had admitted to making him over powered.
Finally i managed to get a win in and inbetween a drink i heard "NOW YOU WILL SEE MY TRUE POWER"...... If you have seen the terminator before you will know that when he goes down he knows the opponent and comes back swinging with more malice and intent.
Seth is no different, When he loses a match his counter ticks over and he goes into beserk mode, He teleports, spams and grabs every chance he gets. When i say every chance i mean the 0.5 second after landing a hit. I had no time to recover and would often be on the receiving end of a old school combo that would leave me down for the count. Eventually i managed to fluke a win and finished arcade..... when i say eventually i mean 38 agonizing rounds before winning 39th.....I was so close to quitting but each punch i landed made me crave another, I physically felt like i wanted to kill the guy who coded him. Hell i tried to work out how he worked code wise then used different techniques.
When i finally won i tried not to yell at the top of my voice...... Hell its a game right?

With a cinematic and one last achievement i turned the game off and relaxed.

Looking back on it, I wish i did get street fighter as a kid and picked up the new ones when i could have. The game gave me the challenge i'd been craving for so long and yet rewarded me with the satisfaction id been looking for all my gaming career of beating a hard objective. Defeating seth will take over my old achievement of beating halo 3 ODST on the hardest difficult in a few hours and will easily be a conversational point for my gamer friends who play street fighter.

Next time, What am i doing for my group project? You will find out soon.....

A small update in regards to my recent ghost status....

Well it certainly has been a long time.... Not that anyone noticed (cry more) but ce la vie!

Well lets get down to what i've done since last time you heard from me.

Working to a brief i challenged myself to make a 3D model of myself.... Lets just say that went amazing! Though it wasnt perfect (but for my first try i was impressed) i was really pleased with it as my brief handling skills seem to have surpassed my first year time keeping (finally?) and overall i enjoyed doing it :).

After i got the assignments out the way i began working on small projects and all in all relaxing, I took up retro gaming as a hobby of sorts to get back to the roots of games. Im gonna put it on the table now, Anyone who grew up with those games i envy you. After 4 hours of battle toads and only getting to stage 3 i went back to halo. Now for any of the muggles out there, Battle toads was notorious for being extremely difficult as it took little damage to lose a life, the waves of enemies were neverending in supply and oh yes. You could kick the bejazzles out of your team mates. Yes thats right, A co op game, where you could pummel your friends.

Halo 3 on legendary had nothing on battletoads, Maybe we should teach the younglings of gaming to play a mandatory snes hour before they go onto xbox live? Alot less parental harassing would be supplied me thinks.

So after a few weeks of gaming and realizing i have to find a job for the summer..... I took part in the 7dayfps challenge, THE SUDDENING! - Our game about a student fighting off waves of dirty clothes that have come to life was an interesting experience :P i made the majority of assets and didnt really stop working all week.

Oh and brains eden, I did that as well! Lots of fun :D.

But yes, expect a mixture of updates coming soon, My recent obsession is with the MS DOS games i seem to ahve rekindled my love for, 4mb ram required to play? I cannot wait :)

Till then stay safe earthlings!

Global Games Jam 2012

So after a weeks worth of work on a flash game (What can i say im an art perfectionist?) i got into uni with what seemed like a weeks worth of food nervous as a mouse in a storm pipe and an open mind i was suprised to see how simple it actually was, We got our theme after meeting some of the comp- *cough* i mean guests and sat down to work.

What can i say... We had mixed ideas but me and another artist refused to decide soley on ideas and to focus on if it was realistic enough for the coders. After about ten minutes of brainstorming we got it down and began to work, Seeing as it was the first day we didnt want to stay working for to long so got some basic stuff done and decided near midnight that enough was enough and retired to ready us up for a long session the next day.

Saturday came about and with my newly packed bag (including kettle and slippers) i set back to work on animating our 3D lovechild mantis hybrid "Kevin" and set in. We managed to get most of the assets done and the game looked pretty impressive, We jigsawed the game together and gave it a try... Thats when disaster hit.

Kevin decided that his animations weren't cool enough and his coding wasnt nearly as sophisticated enough and threw the biggest hissy fit in the history of gaming. He had deliberately rejected his coding.... Well what can you do? So we took the animations away and began again, Well kevin seemed to enjoy it so far so good? Well. We put him in the game and he seemed to like them, About 5 minutes later when we added in the attack + sting animations into the game we found kevin did not like to use them on the floor and only used them in the air, Yes. A computer created character with no sentinent behavior out of the realm he was built in had given himself a better attack animation... He had invented his own crane kick, And as a side effect? He taught himself to walk biped without a biped walking animation.... We were stunned and amazed, The creature we had hated about 5 minutes before had now captured our hearts with an affectionate display of helpfulness.


So we had a working alien in the game attacking running boxes. Time for the rest of the animations? Yeap, Easy work compared to kevin. About midnight we had all of our assets in the game working and to some extent finalised, Time for sound? Well... It took a while and with alot of procrastinating, (See stream for details) but we got there, Our sounds were put into the game close to the final time and we finalised the game.


Feedback? We got some amazing sound feedback off pixelh8 who ended up giving us an award for it!!! They loved some of the artwork and said the game was good, Though the controls were a bit complex (No idea)


Overall, I LOVED every minute of the games jam, Was such a good experience and cant wait till my next one :)

Rotoscoping - Simple animations made easy :D

Well rotoscoping is a popular form of animation/digital media production.


Remember when you were a kid? Remember getting up on a cold saturday in your pyjamas with a bowl of sugary goodness and watching power rangers all morning?

Well....You were actually watching a combination of shows! The fight scenes were actually from a japanese show about kids with dinosaur powers.... Believe me this killed my childhood when i found out. After all who didnt love the white ranger? Or what kid didnt want to be him....Well i feel sick now, The white ranger in the original was a young child who used his powers to skate around town causing havoc and using his powers of wind to look up girls skirts....School girls skirts...Well enough about my traumatised childhood....Back to the lesson in hand.


So you want to animate a simple animation, Your not interested in crystal clear quality but you know what you want to see. Well heres how you can shortcut a simple animation cycle and apply it where ever you want in the future.


Find a simple animated GIF of a walk cycle. I used this one shown below.

Now save this image and open up flash.
















Create a new flash document (AS3) and import the image into flash's library.
You should have something close to this.
Now double click the Symbol in the library.

Highlight all of the frames in the timeline and right click Copy Frames


This will be what you are tracing












Go back to the initial scene (top left hand corner) and paste the frames into Layer 1.
Click the lock next to the layer icon so that we don't change the animation.
Create a new layer and position it on top of Layer 1.
Now on layer 2 position the slider over the black dots on layer 1 and Press F6, This will create a new frame over each dot. After you've done this each time you should have something similar to below.

Now comes the fun part.
On the first frame of layer 2 trace out a basic shape as shown here on the character, Then draw a circle for the head.

Repeat for each frame, This can take a while but its worth it!

Now when you've completed tracing delete the original animation layer so your stickman layer is only left.

Now again copy the frames from the timeline after highlighting them.

Now open a new file and create a new symbol, (Right click library and new symbol) Double click the symbol so its opened up and paste the frames into the timeline.

Return to scene and drag the symbol to the stage.


You should now have a looping animation as shown below.














Click Me to see the animation


Not just humans have walk cycles....

Very simple art added with a few tweens

Using shapes instead of tracing is another method

Added a tween to make it look interesting




Well thats all for now folks! Hope thats made your animating lives a bit easier ^_^

Stone harvester - Sorting the pebbles from the stones

Theme for this weeks reading? Sorting! And to start things off, well.....what better way for us to start than a good old fashioned sort out.


Theme? Who did the reading and who didn't.....So my hard work payed off!


Sorting is a simple process to build a game on, Why? Because we do it all the time without even noticing it. For example? Count to 6 using your fingers. Now split it into 2 halves and add 1 to each. Most of you will have split onto two hands with your thumbs down. You've just sorted without realising! Well back to the fun side, Below is a very easy game i created using house hold objects.


To play you will need

1. Pack of cards
2. A handful of 4 types of counters (Different colors etc. about ten of each for 4 players)

How to play

1. Deal out all of the cards between players as well as an extra hand. (So 5 hands between 4 players)
2. Players sort their hands out how they prefer.
3. The spare hand is placed in the center.
4. Players draw a card each then pick a card from their hand to play face down.
5. Players turn their card over at the same time.
6. The player to the left of the highest card played then has to decide if he wants to raise the value with another card, This continues to the left until all players are resigned or until two players are left and have tied with scores.
7. When a winner has been chosen all of the cards played down are placed aside from the field and the winner gets to either take a mercy counter or rolls the dice for a random counter.
8. Rinse and repeat until the end of the game, If the spare hand runs out shuffle the burn pile and place face down.

Aim of the Game

1. Collect 3 types of one counter (not including mercy)
2. 3 mercy counters can be changed for another counter of any type.

Stone chart (replace as necessary)

1. Black Pebble
2. Green Pebble
3. Blue Pebble
4. Black pebble
5. Green pebble
6. Blue pebble

OMG I TIED WHAT DO I DO?
This took a while to work out.


When the game ends with two people in a tie break the cards up into suit wise and match the highest to the highest etc. until all the cards are laid out in pairs. The winner of a pair is whoever has the highest of that suit. After all of the pairs are shared between the two whoever has the most wins the round.


If there are not enough suits to match eachother they may be substituted as required. For example.


Diamonds is the strongest suit
Hearts is the second strongest
Clubs is the third strongest
Spades is the weakest suit.


This means a 2 of diamonds can be placed instead of a club and beat a Ace of clubs.


Hope you enjoy!

Joker Poker - Quite possibly the simplest game i have ever made.

There are 3 stages other than the gameplay in a board game that can affect peoples opinions on it.
First would be the rules, If the game takes forever to learn and each person interprets the rules in a different way the game will never be played the same.
Second is the setting up time, If tokens need to be placed one square apart on a 2k square board or if the GM has to put the kids to bed and then find an hour to sort through hundreds of cards....Well the game must be either really good or really bad.
Third would be the packing away time, If every turn x amount of players receive x amount of tokens to place on the board then at the end everyone makes an epic dash for their cars in a bid not to tidy up...well you get the point, simplicity is the key.


That's why using a mini brief of "matching game" I created quite possibly the simplest game ever made.....Thats somehow fun?


What you'll need

• 6 Sided Dice
• Pack of playing cards (With jokers)
• These Rules

Rules

1. Deal out 7 cards per player. (Max of 3 players per deck used)
2. Everyone looks at their hand.
3. Dealer rolls the dice and compares the result to the chart, (See below)
4. Starting from the dealer each player plays a card from their hand relative to the result on the chart, If they can't then they must draw a card from the pile.
5. Once each player has gone once the dice is passed to the second player.
6. The game finishes when one player has lost all of their cards.

Additional Rules

1. The joker can only be played when the dice result is either of the jokers relative to the color.
2. Runs can be played of the same suit relative to the result. (EG 4-7 hearts)
3. Runs of any suit can be played on the black or red result. (EG 6 hearts 7 diamonds 8 hearts)
4. Jokers can be played in runs on red or black result as long as they are the same colour as the result.
5. If the cards in the deck run out remove the top card and shuffle the rest into a new deck.

Chart

1.  Hearts
2. Diamonds
3. Clubs
4. Spades
5. Any Red
6. Any Black

Let me know what you think!