2012年1月24日星期二

Week 2 (Jan 18 - Jan 24) Individual Assessment

This week we Team Raspberry focused on the initial design document, and we are getting more comfortable interacting with Kinect too. We first had a 2.5-hour meeting on MSN on Wednesday night, discussing according to the requirements of design document. We came up with many inspiring ideas, although we are still not sure whether some of them can be really implemented with such a demanding schedule...However, this design will be updated according to our developing processes, and we'll never let any brilliant idea flip away!

As for detailed arrangement, I was responsible for the script-writing part of the document. Anna and Kenny designed the game world and the artful poses of the protagonist, and drew the map (They were indeed fantastic arts!). And ST was the supervisor of document quality, especially the part of technical implementation of core mechanics. The whole document added up to 19 pages and I believe that it illustrated our design ideas quite clearly.

2012年1月17日星期二

Week 1 (Jan 11 - Jan 17) Individual Assessment

I must admit that as a computer science student I am quite worried about this semester with IAT 410's pressure! Let alone I'm now the project manager:( But anyway things went well up to now, and we felt good working with each other. That's a really good thing.

Last Tuesday (Jan 10) we established Team Raspberry. Other team members are Ching Kin (Kenny) Yuen, Jihui (ST) Shentu and Yiting (Anna) Zhi. We will make a good team as each of us is good at something: Kenny is a designer, Anna can do 3D modeling, ST is a wonderful programmer, and I'm good at presentation and documentation...I'm not saying that I won't take part in real development! I surely will learn everything and do my best!

On Tuesday we only decided on the most basic game concept. On Wednesday and Thursday we did researches separately. Then on Friday I held our first formal team meeting, which lasted for 1.5 hours. We discussed quite efficiently and followed the requirements of the concept document, and assigned weekly tasks in the end.
  • Me: Scripts of concept document, first half of presentation.
  • Anna: Storyboard.
  • Kenny: Visualization of concept document, last half of presentation.
  • ST: Kinect trials.
During the weekend we worked on our tasks on a single ppt file on Google Docs, and kept in touch via email and text messages. I started preparing for my part of presentation on Monday evening. Today after the lecture of the course, we held a quick rehearsal and made small corrections. And the presentation went on well in the lab!

Next week will be for the design document, which will be even tougher. Go ahead Team Raspberry!

2012年1月15日星期日

Game Critique 2 - Real Racing 2


The second game that I chose as the object of my critique is Real Racing 2, which I suppose is the best racing game on the iOS platform. It is developed by a small-sized company called Firemint Pty Ltd. It provides immersive racing gameplay with smooth control and heart-stopping experience. And its various play modes enable players to choose one that suits them best at a certain time.







What is so fun about Real Racing 2?

  • Sensation
Cutting-edge 3D graphics makes racing on the tracks incredibly verisimilar. When you are accelerating, drifting or colliding with another car, the invoked visual effects will make it look like closely happening in front of your eyes. Nobody can resist the temptation of all those sharp excitements.
  • Challenge
Whether racing in an over-10-hour career mode, going for a quick race, or rivaling against your friends using the multiplayer mode, you are all experiencing an unforgettable obstacle-overcoming process. With the difficulty upgrading, more demanding players can be satisfied and thus become increasingly immersed in order to achieve a more solid sense of accomplishment.

A racing game does not necessarily have to involve many fun types to be successful. Instead, the pleasure brought by the two types above overwhelms any need to include other far-fetched types. Real Racing 2 is so thrilling, and that is more than enough!

How are the funs created?

Mechanics

  • 30 cars to choose from (although some require in-game purchases, which is inevitable)
  • Currency for buying new cars and upgrades
  • Various types of simulative car damages
  • 5 camera views, including seen from inside the car, which makes the player feel like really driving by himself/herself, and seen from a TV angle.
  • Many race locations with detailedly-designed tracks.
Dynamics
  • During a race, normal driving, accelerating, braking, overtaking, drifting, and crashing are to take place at different times.
  • The performance of a car is determined by its acceleration, top speed, and handling, comprehensively.
  • In the career mode, the player can use earned currency for purchasing new cars, upgrading or maintenance.
  • Unlike most racing games, Real Racing 2 provides several control options, where you can make use of tilting and touching the screen simultaneously for a smoother and more controllable gameplay.


Summary


Real Racing 2 surely deserves its reputation as the best racing game on iOS heretofore. At least for me, it remained my first choice for leisurely spending my time before I lost my iPad...


2012年1月14日星期六

Game Critique 1 - The Legend of Sword and Fairy 4


I have been a fans of the game series The Legend of Sword and Fairy, also known as Chinese Paladin, since I was about 8 years old. This RPG series developed by Taiwan's Softstar Entertainment has long remained one of the most popular games in China, and the latest sequel, The Legend of Sword and Fairy 5, was released in July 2011. Anyway, I picked The Legend of Sword and Fairy 4 as the object of my first critique and will discuss the reasons why I love it so much.




The Legend of Sword and Fairy 4 (to be written as T4 below) presents to players a fantastic magic world in an ancient Chinese setting. Traditional Chinese culture, widespread folk stories, and supernatural immortals and monsters are integrated perfectly. During the adventure of the avatars, they fight against foes, interact with people they meet, and develop emotions. At certain times, one of them may gain a significantly overturning understanding of himself/herself, or enable a major change in his/her character. All these are presented in a subtle Chinese style, which strongly caters to my tastes, as I am such a devourer of traditional Chinese story elements.

What is so fun about T4?

  • Narrative
Who can deny the charm of its roller-coaster and mysterious plots? Actually, I fell into pondering and even burst into tears for several times during my gameplay. Also, the characters' names, the lines, and the names of items and magic skills are so delicately and poetically designed that they make you feel satisfied by simply reading them.
  • Expression
Subtle emotion expression requires the player's wholehearted devotion in order to obtain an all-round comprehension of the characters' complicated emotions, which I suppose is, unfortunately, difficult for those who do not understand the Chinese-style introversion. But T4 surely did a good job in the eyes of we modern Chinese who cherish but not necessarily follow this tradition.
  • Discovery
T4 involves a plethora of labyrinths, which are quite intricate but not extremely hard to solve. Instead, their charm lies in discovering treasure, hidden plots, beautiful or horrifying settings, and of course, killing foes.
  • Sensation
The 3-D effects of T4 cannot be praised as wonderful compared to games developed by EA or Blizzard, but it wins with its background music. As a traditional music appreciator myself, I have always been thankful that there is a game which combines this type of music with modern gaming experience.
  • Fantasy
An ancient world with somewhat superstitious settings (e.g. the 5 elements Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire and Earth, similar to Wu Xing in Chinese philosophy; or the overall world view of 6 Parallel Worlds: Gods, Immortals, Sirens, Demons, Humans and Ghosts) provides incredible adventurous experience.



How are the funs created?

A brief discussion of the mechanics and dynamics utilized in T4 can address this question.

Mechanics

  • Items such as weapons, armors, potions and those intended for special purposes.
  • NPCs or monsters everywhere in towns or labyrinths.
  • A wide-range set of attacking methods and magic skills.


Dynamics

Since the game world of T4 is pretty huge, it makes more sense to analyze its dynamic behaviors. Also, only by this way can we obtain an understanding of its elaborate embedded small game systems which undoubtedly enhance the player's overall experience.

  • Basic dynamics of almost every Action-RPG game, such as fighting, level-up and various points-up, consuming items, conversing with NPCs, buying and selling, are all well integrated.
  • Fighting system: T4 adopts semi-turn-based fighting instead of a turn-based or a real-time one, which ensures considerable time intensiveness without too much nervous pressure. After all, T4 is basically for relaxing and appreciating, not for a stressed gameplay. In addition, after winning a battle, the player's performance will be graded automatically and given extra bonus items, encouraging not only winning but winning as impressively as possible.
  • Weapon and armor upgrading system: There are numerous strengthening effects that can be added to weapons and armors, e.g. higher critical hit rates, stronger defense against lightning-attributed attacks, etc. The player must first buy the corresponding tutorial in a certain shop, and then collect needed items from certain types of monsters, some of which can be extremely difficult to obtain! Finally, the weapon or armor can be upgraded with a certain possibility of success. If it fails, the weapon or armor along with the items will disappear, no matter how precious they are. So the player must deliberate before doing this!
  • Puzzles and small games: Sometimes passing through a place requires certain tricks. If the player is not that intelligent, the only way for him/her to figure them out may be searching for solutions online...


Summary

The core concept and the biggest selling point is the Chinese traditional beliefs prevalent in the whole game. It may still be a little immature compared with those excellent world-renowned games, but it means a lot to those who cherish ancient Chinese culture and wish to see its expression in modern techniques.

Finally, I would really like to recapitulate that I love T4's extravagant nomenclature so much!


2012年1月12日星期四

Welcome to Yue Liu's blog!

Hi everybody,

This is my blog for the course IAT 410.

My weekly individual assessment and game critiques will be posted here.

If there is any problem, please leave a message here or email me at shia199122(at)gmail(dot)com.