What Makes Or Breaks A Game

What makes a good game?

- Good plot or story, if any at all.
- Interesting characters with personality and purpose.
- An eye-catching, but not too distracting, environment. Something beautiful to give the players something to look at and feel more submersed into the game. Visual appeal is always enjoyable.
- Lacking repetition. Doing the same thing over and over again gets boring. Variety is the spice of life (Or death)!
- Difficulty. Something challenging, but not impossible. If it's too easy, players won't feel very accomplished when overcoming the "challenge". If it's too difficult, players will get frustrated and possibly quit altogether.
- Conflict. If there was a game where everything was just perfect and no resolve was necessary, why would you want to play it?
- Logic, reason and purpose.
- Graphics, to an extent. Space Invaders is a great game, but it consists of the simplest pixelated characters. Again, visual appeal.
- Reward and punishment. If a player achieves something, they feel even more accomplished by unlocking or obtaining something. It also drives the player to achieve more, feeding them that desire to unlock or obtain more. If a player fails something, the player feels less about themselves, but depending on how you treat that failure will depend if the player will wish to continue or not. An example of a punishment would be that if you die, then you have to restart the level. Some games let you retry on the spot, and that serves massive repetition and makes it too easy. Some games make you have to redo too much, which also serves repetition and predictability. If you balance that out, it gives time for players to improve and even find things they missed.

That's all I have time for.

Sincerely,
Bleed.

What Is A Computer Game?

Well, after achieving a score of 16, 920 points on Space Invaders, I realize I very much enjoyed the game. I really want to go back and just give it to those alien jerks. Why do I want to go back and play it again? Perhaps I want to rise to the challenge the game presents in order to attempt an achieved sense of accomplishment for advancing my previous score. Maybe because I enjoy shotting pixelated aliens with a green pixelated tank. Maybe because it's simple and easy to understand.
What I believe a computer game is, is a virtual challenge presented to anyone willing to attempt it. An environment which may or may not have a background story that challenges the player to conquer it and achieve whatever goal is required to fulfill in order to successfully claim victory over the virtual world.
An amazing computer game that I always play is a game called Warcraft III. A real-time strategy that always gets me thinking about how I'm going to destroy the other player within the shortest amount of time and smallest amount of expended resources - unless my strategy involves economic decay of the opposition. I always play with my friend Brandon and always enjoy myself.

Anyways, that's my final thought on the subject, for now.

Farewell,
Bleed.

Space Invaders!

Space Invaders made by Neave Games

How high of a score can YOU achieve?

Mechanical Scorpion Preview

Hmm... Facebook...

Well, I'm not really surprised that Facebook really is just screwing with your privacy, making all of your information not only theirs, but publicly accessible to application programmers and other users, but this won't really stop me from using their network. I mean, I don't really put a lot of my information on the site to begin with, but I'm still not impressed with their treachery. My truely personal information remains confined within my mind, or within the angels I feed this information to - but regardless, Facebook can [Insert crude and inappropriate comment here]. Anyways, the only reason I use Facebook is because I have nothing better to do, I can talk to (who I actually want to talk to) people who I normally wouldn't socialize with otherwise, and I can take advantage of Facebook's poor privacy policies for the sake of my own amusement. I'm almost tempted to post something at least mildly disturbing for Facebook to absorb. I'm not quite sure what though. But anyways, Facebook will remain, despite the two times that I "quit", and will keep me informed of various thoughts of those who may or may not be close to me.

Sincerely,
Bleed.

Burn the Priest - "Goatfish"

This, my friends, happens to be my favorite song by Lamb of God when they were officially known as "Burn the Priest". Two and a half minutes of pure pleasure, wrapped within that silken beauty known as Randal Blythe's vocals. Just epic.

Stay metal, Lamb of God... stay metal.

Sincerely,
Bleed.

Learning Blog Post #19

Well, 3D modeling was at first kind of boring, going through that stupid tutorial, so I tried the snowman tutorial this class. It was definately a lot more interesting. I have yet to texture it, but I made my basic snowman. Gave him a top hat and all, and even gave him pupils. I plan to make this a living snowman. This will most certainly give me the practice I need to attempt that sword modeling activity. My sword will be rad! In fact, I might actually make the Great Knife, which only the mighty Pyramid Head is found dragging around behind him. It looks wicked heavy, and that rusty texture just looks amazing. I'll probably end up making a more modern version of it, but the magic behind it can be indestructibility. I mean, who could break that thing anyways? Anyways, I'm getting a lot more excited about this class. Modeling is slowly progressing, and soon to be game making! Oh, and I made a few sprites. Surprised? You SHOULD be!

I actually already have a game idea called, "Hungry, Hungry Fel Hound", but I'm not sure if I'll carry out with it. I'll probably end up going with this wolf idea that I had, but whatever. We'll see when the time comes. But that's all for now.

Sincerely,
Bleed.

Learning Blog Post #18

Watching a video on virtual reality is mildly interesting, but so is sitting in front of the computer, starving - feeling as if your stomache is collapsing by the minute. I think our presentation is ready for monday, so hopefully that will be a success. I also made two more sprites. What a shock! I personally like these sprites, but whatever. Can't wait for modeling.

Farewell,

Bleed.

Learning Blog Post #17

Well, I made decent progress with the powerpoint that Claire and I are working on, despite the fact she wasn't present today, but that's okay. And on top of that, I made an interesting new sprite. As Mr. Powell has said, 3D modeling is our next unit, and I'm quite excited for it. Oh, the devious and mischievous creations I'd love to birth. Perhaps I'll be able to bring some of my sprites to a more three-dimensional life. I don't know. But here's my new sprite.

Sincerely,

Bleed.

Learning Blog Post #16

The most I accomplished this class was giving Claire a link to finding Tux the penguin on Google, as well as reading about 50 pages of MLIA (My Life Is Average, in case you didn't know). As so many have posted on the site, "I felt I made the right choice."

And here is my new sprite.

Sincerely,
Bleed.