Amateur Pacifists

My final is in about 20 minutes and I don’t really think I want to look over anything anymore… see a trend? So yesterday was our gold presentation and it’s nice to have everything done (barring some OS crashes and whatnot) but also pretty depressing. No excuse now to play around with photoshop and call it work.

Before I have to run off, I wanted to post the box cover art that didn’t make it into the gold presentation. It’s basically what I worked on when I didn’t feel like animating any more characters. We had a bunch okay?

Okay, off to take a final.

Well, the end of the semester approaches, and so too does the deliverable date.

Meeting later today to confirm that we’re all on the same page WRT what we need to do before the turn-in, as well as to try to get a good chunk of it done.

Meeting tomorrow with Scott to do some code cleanup, since he can’t make it today.

Meeting Tuesday with John to show him what we’re going to turn in and ask for criticisms before we do so.

I’d like to keep looking at this code after this ends, but it’s unclear if I’ll have the time, motivation, or anyone else would be interested.

This is me not wanting to “study” for my math midterm (a class, I might add, that it seems like half of video game design kids are in). As promised, a nerd has been designed and animated. She’s not quite as ridiculously nerdy as I had imagined in my mind, but I don’t think anyone will really be confused.

You may have noticed that the size of these characters are pretty friggin big. Even if scrolling is working, there’s no reason to have one person take up 0.1 of the screen. Well, when they get shrunk, little mistakes I make and stuff aren’t as apparent and detail is a lot easier to work on (yeah, I guess it’s just me being lazy).

Alpha dude is coming up next. I’m not going to give myself a set deadline for this yet because I don’t know how much time I’m going to have, but it will definitely be sometime next week. After that, I get to start working on the death animations since we’ve narrowed down our list of traps. Nick can tell you more about those. Woohoo! Death animations!

Okay, time to make my cheat sheet… oh the joys of a 200 level math class.

Katie

A bunch has been going on with characters since the last post so I’ve got some catching up to do. As people saw during our demo the cheerleader and main character vampire characters are up and running. What you may not have seen is that they were already animated. Since they were kinda tiny on the screen, the movements of their itty bitty legs may not have really shown up. That will hopefully be fixed once we get scrolling working so we can zoom in on rooms.

On a side note, I’m going to take some time here to complain about the main character vampire dude. I really wanted him to have a cane and some other members of the group wanted him to have a cane so there it is: cane.

What I didn’t count on was that the cane makes him asymmetrical so when I could just horizontally flip the walking animations in the side view for all the other characters, I had to make different ones for the left and right side of vampire dude. That’s not to mention that the cane was an extra moving part that didn’t exist with all the other characters. Anyway, that’s the last time you’ll be seeing an asymmetrical character in our game.

Ahem. Now back to business. We’ve decided to use a spread of png frames for our animations. Sorry, no fancy flash stuff. Here is the frame spread for vampire dude.

There’s something very similar for the cheerleader and the football player (who has not yet made his debut). Now I’m working on the nerd and she’s coming along quite nicely. Our group deadline for her walking animation is… well… tomorrow so I guess you’ll be seeing that pretty soon as well.
Katie

Well, we had our demo today.

It wasn’t very pretty, especially since our lovely amazing textures had been scaled down to fit until we have scrolling running and figure out a reasonable tradeoff between things onscreen at once and size of objects.

I’ll be cleaning up a few of the silly holes in our presentation that we had commented out or otherwise undisplayed for the demo, and on Friday post-submission, I’ll post screenshots of our game and editor from our presentation today, and what we turned in.

(Incidental note - 2000+ calories in sugar and a gram of sugar are productive for about 3 hours.)

Well, we have a (mostly) working Map class and editor.

After awhile of banging our  heads against the XML Serialization classes in C# (Why, oh why, can’t it serialize multidimensional arrays?), we have something working nicely. I’ll do a full writeup later, but I’m running to the meeting.

ALL FILE LINKS, WORK!

The NPCs (a.k.a. intruders/victims) will have several different personalities.

Katie’s working on the visual design of each character, but for the purpose of

mechanics I've been working with four archetypes which I've named Jock, Geek,

Alpha, and Belle.  Each archetype has its different statistics, which

probabilistically affect the victim's behavior and ability to overcome

obstacles.  The stats the victims have are Bravery, Smarts, Leadership, and

Reflexes. There will very likely be both male and female versions of each

archetype, but gender will not affect anything but looks.

Jock: Bravery-high, Reflexes-average, Leadership-low, Smarts-abysmal

The Jock is tough.  Between his Bravery and Reflex scores he can deal with most

of the common deadly traps.  He is not easily frightened and will stand and

fight monsters, be the first to venture into unexplored parts of the haunted

house, and will immediately go for to most direct route through an obstacle.

However, his abysmal Smarts score means he'll find it almost impossible to get

through many obstacles, and his low leadership means he'll rarely stick around

to wait for others to watch his back.  The Jock will probably be the first to

stumble into mortal peril, so be ready for him.

Geek:  Smarts-high, Bravery-average, Reflexes-low, Leadership-abysmal

The Geek is methodical.  She will take her time approaching each new obstacle

in order to find the best way to deal with it.  Years of social abuse has

hardened her, and she will cope surprisingly well with the horrors you throw at

her.  Given time, she will find and disable as many traps of yours that she can

find, and may even discover the secret passages you use to move quickly through

your house.  Don't give her that time.  Because of her abysmal Leadership, she

will very often choose to work alone.  Lure her away from the others and take

advantage of her low reflex by killing her with a hard-to-dodge trap.

Alpha: Leadership-high, Smarts-average, Bravery-low, Reflexes-abysmal

The Alpha Dog gets people to listen to him.  As long as he's around the others

will stick together to follow him.  He will keep others safe and will not easily

be manipulated.  If he finds the exit he'll go back to make sure everyone gets

out alive.  Kill him and the others will scatter.  Fortunately, the Alpha

generally relies on others to do his dirty work and is fragile himself.  A

clever trap in his path will soon cause his followers to be horrified at his

sudden death.

Belle:  Reflexes-high, Leadership-average, Smarts-low, Bravery-abysmal

The Belle is there to look good, and her male counterpart is a lazy pretty-boy.

The Belle is best at staying out of trouble.  She ventures into the unknown

only when desperate, and even when she accidentally comes across a trap, she

will often emerge unscathed.  The Belle sticks with others and waits for them

to clear the way.  She will prove very difficult to kill.  The best way to deal

with her is to plant a trap that can't be dodged in place she thinks is safe.

Once her guard is lowered she dies just as quickly as anyone else.

Amateur Pacifists’ Game Proposal:

Very Temporary Working Title: Haunted House

Game Type: Strategy/Puzzle

Genre: Comedic Horror

Basic Plot Summary:  A large group of travelers seeks refuge from a storm at a large
abandoned mansion.  Once inside, however, the empty mansion seems to come to life.  The
lights turn on, old furnishings appear out of thin air, and the front hall they are
standing in shifts away from the front door, leaving them lost in the center of the
mansion.  They quickly find that they are not welcome within the mansion, and must find
a way out before the ancient evil that resides within the mansion.
The player does not play as the travelers, but instead as the vile owner of the mansion,
a hobbling old vampire named [Sinclair/Vlad/Mr. Morris?].  He is too old now to directly
terrorize the intruders [has denture fangs], but has an arsenal of monsters, magics, and
traps stored in his attic.  The player controls him as he hobbles through the mansion,
setting up these traps, ensuring that none of the intruders ever leave.

Game Mechanics:  The player starts out with a limited number of points with which he or
she may purchase the traps.  Traps that deal with the intruders in a permanent sense
(death) will be expensive to purchase, and few will have a guarantee of killing those
who activate them.  So, the player must use traps that delay, hinder, and disable the
intruders while he or she sets the plans for their demise.  Successful kills will give
points which may be spent on further traps at a specific point in the mansion [the door
to the attic].

The intruders will be intelligent, spreading out to try and find the exit, and exchanging
information on which parts of the mansion are safe, and which are not.  Each intruder will
have four stats: Bravery, Smarts, Reflexes, and Leadership.  These stats will determine
the choices that the intruders will make while exploring the mansion, as well as their
ability to overcome various traps and obstacles.  For instance, an intruder with high
bravery will be more likely to choose to fight a monster that it comes across, instead of
fleeing or being frozen with fear, while a character with high smarts may be able to
figure out how to pick a locked door in its path.  Many traps will effect and control the
decisions that they make, like a ghostly piano that plays eerie music with no player,
causing the intruders that pass nearby it to become scared and stick more closely to its
nearby friends.

The player will have access to secret passages in order to move quickly about the mansion,
but must stay out of sight of the intruders or risk being attacked by them.  There will be
a number of paths the intruders could find to the exit, and the player must be sure to
quickly impede movement along all of these paths, but an intruder with high smarts may be
fortunate enough to stumble across one of the secret passages, meaning that even a
cleverly placed network of traps may have holes through which the intruders can escape.

The player must succeed in killing a certain number of intruders each level.  If enough
escape the player fails and must begin the level from the start.  If the player manages to
kill every intruder, he or she will get bonus points to spend on traps for the next level.  The number of intruders and the complexity of the mansion layout will increase with each level.

Each level should last about 30-45 minutes.

Interface:  The interface will be simple.  Most of the screen will be a 2-D top-down view
of the mansion, over which the player can see the entirety of the mansion and either zoom
out to get a wider view, or zoom in to watch his or her traps in action.  There will be an
avatar representing the player, for which the movement in controlled via the keyboard.
Traps can only be placed adjacent to the avatar.  The screen only automatically centers on
the avatar while the player is moving.  While standing still, the player can side-scroll
his or her view to anywhere in the mansion.  On the left side of the screen there will be
a control panel including an easily accessible inventory of traps, a miniature map of the
mansion with tiny dots representing intruders, a display for the current point-total, and
a display showing the number of intruder still left in the mansion, the number that have
escaped, and the number the player has successfully killed. [Possibly include a timer
showing how long the player has been playing a particular level.]

Using the keyboard the player can bring up a command menu [pausing the game], from which
he or she may Resume Game, Save Game, Load Game, Restart Level, or Exit to Main Menu.

Potential Problems:  The AI for the intruders will be difficult to program, execute, and
balance.  We’re going to have to start very simple, and add on little bits of intelligence
at a time.  First they need to be able to find there way out of a simple labyrinth, and
then they need to be able to trigger traps they walk by, and so on.  The other big problem
will be getting this all to work graphically, each trap having its own graphic and
animation, and getting all the animations to function together will be complicated, and we
may be severely limited in how many traps we can actually get to graphically work with the
time we have.  If this happens, then we’ll just have to dumb down the game, and make it
much more puzzle-based than strategy-based.

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