The game I looked at was Last of Us!
The primary mechanics of the game are moving, climbing, jumping, shooing, swimming, examining, etc, all the essentials for a Adventure game.
The puzzle I looked at specifically was a puzzle where you have to help Ellie, your "sidekick" character get across this body of water because she doesn't know how to swim. I like this puzzle because it doesn't tell you specifically what you're looking for, you just know that you have to help her get across. The puzzle's layout is pretty linear, as you can't advance the story without getting her across. You swim down and explore the environment, and while the path is linear the colors also do a nice job showing where you need to go!

Immediately after you submerge, you see bright yellow wall like the ones above surface!

linear path, leading color!

This puzzle uses very subtle "unusal use of object" and "maze" puzzles. 

The game makes the player feel smart because it leads them to believe that they found the thing all on their own! They could've gone different ways, or got lost,but they found the thing and now they feel a sense of accomplishment. 

hero Prop sketching!

Game Design: Hero prop brainstorming!

1. Tonfas to bowstaff
2. Power gauntlet to shield, shield circles around and extends and then securs around forearm 
3. ear piece to helmet
4. glove grappling hook, extends to forearm and has different spots for the wire to secure without putting strain on the arm of the person 
5. super sci fi flamethrower, can switch out the different thingies so it can spit flame and acid and other crazy things
6. crossbow to blade, sides of the corssbow pull in and down to secure, then blade extends out? 
7. Projectile power gloves, sides or something extend out to provide support to arm/hand and have charge up and cooldown indicator
8. Halberd that has joints so it can bend near the blade and snap back
9. wrist/arm guard to claw thing? 
10. Jetpack backpack

Coming up with ideas is hard 

Multiplayer Analysis!

Attract Trailer!

Arcade hits!

For programming class our newest assignment is to recreate a classic coin arcade game. So my partner, Sebastian, and I chose to recreate the 1980 multi-directional shooter Berzerk!

Some challenges we foresee in the recreation in this game lay mostly in the AI and how they spawn/react/attack the player. 

Game Features List: 

• Camera movement/transition between cleared levels
• AI
• Enemy behavior
• kill volumes 
• HUD

Researching a list of assets and features present in the original 1980 arcade multi directional shooter  Berzerk to recreate it in Unreal Engine 4.

1) Player- can shoot in 8 basic directons
2) camera- top down
3) Wall collision- kills player
4) Enemies: Robots (multi colored), Evil Otto
Yellow Robots- slow
Red robots- very hostile
Evil Otto- spawns after fixed period, jumps through walls. moves the same speed as player horizontally but faster in the up and down directions. He is intended to quicken the game.


Player is damaged by: Walls, lazers, collision on robots, near exploding robots, Evil Otto.
The simplest way to make Evil Otto and and the player work is probably to have no collision on walls and instead have a Kill-Z
HUD:
simple, shows only number of points and lives

Basic gameplay:
Player navigates through randomly generated rooms containing a simple maze and enemies.

Attract Trailer

I really liked the 2:E3 gameplay trailer because I feel that it showed off the environment, car, and mechanics very well! I liked that it started off slow, then to hype the view the shots lasted no longer than 3 seconds at the most, and everything was very dynamic.

HUD research!

The car I modeled was a 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle SuperSport, and though I couldn't find an accurate picture of the dashboard of that exact car I found a bunch of interesting references to other Super Sport cars from 1965-1970. So I'm thinking of just taking the bits I like from each ones and combining them into one super awesome HUD!

That's the first image I found of a 1965 Impala SuperSport, and I like the shape of it and the trimming. My car has very similar trimming, so I think I'll incorporate that into my design. The circles on the side are also appealing to me.

The second image I found is of a '65 Chevy malibu. There's a clearer view of the speedometer, so the design I'm thinking right now is the circle and then around it is a rectangle with trim, similar to the headlights of my car.

and font reference~

and  quick mockup for the font I think I'm going to use, which is a 150% scaled Impact and the speedometer and where the other thingy is gonna be 

Particle, Dust trail!

So for programming class we had to make the particle we researched on, and I made a dust trail that follows the car's back wheels and kicks up little rocks.  cool!

Particles: Dust Trail Research!

For my race track level I think that having a dust trail that follows the player along the dirt road would be awesome. So I think I'll try to make that!  

Right now I'm thinking that I need to combine a Dust particle tutorial and an Animation Trail tutorial to achieve what I'm going for.

If that doesn't work out, then I at least want to get some dust clouds going to go across parts of the road.  Hopefully if I get my foliage animated it'd look cool in combination. 

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/107728/how-can-i-activate-an-anim-trail-in-my-pawn-bluepr.html

Barrel and turret!

Before spring break we had to make a barrel and turret for our race track levels! Since I didn't plan on having projectiles in my level, I made an oil barrel being shot out of a regular turret cannon.
yep!

Analysis: Track introductions

So we had to find a good video that introduces a race track, so I chose to do Sonic&Sega All Star Racing because it's not Mario Kart. Anyways, I feel that they preview the level really well. They show off not only the stunts, and obstacles but showcase what the level visually looks like and also items and boosts. The announcer guy is kind of weird, but doesn't distract from the introduction.

more destructibles, but this time barrels!

So for programming class we have to make a "barrel" that explodes when you damage it. It's also encouraged to have it fit the race track, but I wasn't really planning on having explodable objects in my race track so I'm going to make an exploding oil drum that smokes and then explodes after the player drives into it.

like those!!

for my turret I don't really know what to do so I'll just make a cannon turret thing

updated destructible!
Now there are ~*particles*~ and ~*sounds*~ and ~*no collision*~

Highway Road closed barrier destructible~~

Race track storyboard

So here's my storyboard beat sheet thing for my race track! I tried to highlight key events that player would experience while on the track.

maybe race track ??

for my racing level I want to have a desert themed biome with lots of desert plants and sedimentary rock cliffs.

I want to have these kind of rocks, and also the ones that arch over. I want players to drive under them, and have some of them fall over during the race. 

I'm not completely sure what time of day I want it to be set in yet, but I was thinking more of either dusk or night time, but I think dusk would be better.

I was also thinking about having neon signs around one of the major landmarks, which is a small motel.

and also rails to stop players from going where they're not supposed to for the first half of the map, then it switches to off road using detour signs. For that part I want it to be narrow and players can fall off the map here. 

So this is the map of what the track would look like... as you can see the first half is regular high way with twists and turns, aim is for players to just go as fast as they can to get ahead of the others before they get to the middle part where the challenges are. I want to implement falling obstacles that the players have to avoid, and then a corkscrew jump because those are super cool. yeyeahyeah

Arrrrraaaays

Arrays!

Learned about Arrays in Programming the other day, so I made a little heart design.
cute ~~~

Platformer level~

So the first assignment for Game Design II is to design an introductory platformer level! 

So that is my rough papermap

and that is my illustrator drawing.

• Where is it? What time of year is it? What time of day is it?
• It's located near a small village located in the hills. I imagine it is summer or spring, as everything is still green. The time of day is night time~
• What is the conflict? What is the twist?
• You're the sherriffdetective of the small town near the hills, and you have to collect the coins to follow the path that the grand thief used to escape and catch him.
• Who else lives here?
• People live here, and also animals like bunnies and wolves. 
• What does their architecture look like?
• cute little village houses.
• What happened in the environment prior to the player getting there?
• It's a quiet night, a night where no one would expect to be robbed. 
• How did the player arrive to the environment? What brought them there?
• The small town life was one you always wanted, quiet, calm. I guess that's what also attracted the thief. 

2D Side Scroller Analysis

The game I think has an excellent introductory level is Cave Story(2004). The game does an excellent job of introducing the theme, mechanics, and feeling of the game within it's first levels.
Before the level begins, there is a bit of an expository cutscene that hints at what the plot of the game is.
After the cutscene is over the player begins play in a small room, and is given no explanation on how to play the game or what the objective is. In the first room the play can see a health refilling machine, save station, a platform to jump on above water, and a door. There are no enemies in this first map, so the player has enough time to play around with all the buttons and see what everything does.

When the player goes through the first door, they transition into a now explorable level. The right side of the map is closed off by blocks, so the player is forced to move to the left. Once they move  to the left, they now encounter spikes and bats.  Both of these hurt the player, but the player learns through trial and error that they can jump to avoid getting hurt. Halfway through the map, the player can regain health through a health station, and continue going down through the level. The player is then introduced water and another monster that does more damage than the bat. At the end of the level, the player finds another door and is able to go inside.

In the next room, the player sees a sleeping NPC and a treasure chest. The player goes to the chest and achieves a gun. Playing around with the buttons in this room with no enemies, the player can figure out how to shoot the gun and defend themselves.
Since there are no other doors, the player backtracks through the previous level. The player can now kill the enemies that hurt them previously. To the top and the right of the level, the player can now shoot down blocks and kill enemies to continue onto the rest of the game.
Once the player gets through the first introductory level, they see a cutscene that completes the story that was previewed in the exposition.