2 Nov 2009
So I played Left4Dead in order to complete an assignement.
How many players:
4 players. Either computer or human, preferably human.
Playable over the Internet or LAN.
Objectives:
Just survive. Get to the safe room at the end of the level with all your
friends by dying the least amount of times.
Procedures:
The player progresses throught the game by using his weapons and items
to either destroy zombie ennemies or heal himself / teammates.
Rules:
You can only carry 1 main gun and 1 or 2 sidearms, 1 explosive weapon,
1 medkit and 1 pack of painkillers.
When HP falls to 0, you are incapacitated until a friendly player helps you up.
Friendly fire is ON.
Limits to the player's actions:
The player is limited by physics and the boundaries of the level.
He can jump, run, walk and crouch, but not in an unrealistic manner. (REALLLY HIGH)
The main guns can only contain a limited amount of ammo. Sidearms have unlimited ammo.
Causes of conflict:
Friendly fire, 
players straying from the group, 
no mic (for voice chat, the game is much easiyer with voice chat),
bad players, 
stirring the witch (a particularly strong, but avoidable ennemy)
Potential outcomes:
Players can die, and can only be revived by a teammate opening a closet door at 
key locations throughout levels.
Players can also get to the safe room at which point they are either redirrected
to the next area of the level or treated to a cutscene of the ending for that level.
Dramatic elements/challenges:
This game is made to be played with other players and forces said players to be 
dependant on one another. The soundtrack is amazing.
The game is very challenging in that it possesses a dynamic difficulty. The better
you get, the better the game gets, so it is indeed consistently hard and scary.
There is very little wiggle room unless you know the weak spots of the special
"infected" (or zombies). 
Tanks: set them on fire
Witch: if aroused, a single shotgun blow to the head should to it
Smoker: turn around and blast him as fast as you can
Hunter: try and pin him while he is airborne
Boomer: make sure he is far from any player before making him explode

I guess that covers the mechanics of Left 4 Dead!
26 Oct 2009
This reading about game theory is just about the first one to actually
start make any sense at all in all the readings we've had so far.

Jenkin's article talks about how narratives are constructed.
How narratives can be implied, told directly or given to the player to 
construct. Even some of the story can be told only by the construction
of the environiment. About enacting story and narratives, it is interesting
how Hitchcock did in fat manage to create a character that is never seen.
This relates very much to the story of Fourth and how it is under siege 
by an invisible force that may not even be revealed. This invisible threat
cannot stand ignored though, as it will lead to the demise of the character
controlled by the player.

Juul  talks to us about game time. Which is also very relevant I find.
After all, it all comes down to the fundamental differences between the
factual story and how that story is told in relation to the player and 
the characters that he is chosen to embody. What is also mentionned about
cutscenes reveals a lot on how developpers still need to lead the player
through some kind of beaten path. Even though some games take gratuitous
advantage of cutscenes (such as Metal Gear Solid 4) I still find that 
the best way to tell a story is through playing and through voice acting.

In my opinion, this brings a higher level of immersion but also hinders
the control of the developer and storytellers. I come back to pacing and
I say once more that it is all a question of fine tuning and balace.

Over and out.
20 Oct 2009
Here is Ramy and I's paper on stuff we learned.
Midterm paper!
19 Oct 2009
So it's been a while since I posted. Ramy and I have been hard at work.
Here is a list of what has been keeping me busy for the last 2 weeks:

7 Oct 2009
YES! I loaded my 1st meshes into OGRE using YML files!
Robot and Ninja
to give you an idea, the file used to load such a scene is the following:
  - name: Ninja
    meshName: ninja.mesh
    position: [0, 5, 0]
  - name: Robot
    meshName: robot.mesh
    position: [25, 45, -15]
I'm soo happy right now!

If you are able to do so, this code is all up on SVN, so go ahead and try it!
5 Oct 2009
Simulation is clearly present in everyday life and not only by the digital means that we possess today.
It has been going on for millenia. How so? Well all form of game is an abstraction of reality; a simulation.
Now as far as simulation for computer games go, it is for sure one of the only mediums that allows for
simultaneous stimulation of the most senses when undergoing a simulative event.

The authors in the readings talk about a heightened sense of self-awareness and augmentend skill at hand-eye
coordination tasks. This has indeed been confirmed many times over by professionnals. Just as sport simulates
the battlefield of olden days, video games simulate any situation, including situations that are not helpful
for relaxing. Therefore stimulating the same reflexes that playing a sport will.

These readings are way too long. Please Santo. Pick one in the chapter, and maybe we won't all have to speed read.

As for work, this week I continued hacking on the YML level loader...again. C++ is extremely strict with its datatypes
Also, I found these pretty cool links.


Why we shouldn't use floating point numbers when doing 3D math.



And a cool game made in OGRE!

29 Sept 2009
So this reading was not as irrelevant and dated as the others, it seeems to me. One of the articles talks about time.
User time vs. game time.  I feel that most of the ideas introduced by this paper were spot on. The six different
elements of game time are quite accurate as far as describing a certain universal element.

What is funny about this article is that all during the text, I was expecting the author to talk about pacing.
Because that's what game time and user time is all about. Pacing. It's that thing, that's untangible, that will
most times make and break a game. Pacing will push the player to advance faster or it will make the player slow
down and study his environment for a longer time. It has absolutely everything to do with what the author was talking
about: the six elements of game time.

Anyways, here is a link to a Gamasutra article that made me think about the pacing:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4024/examining_game_pace_how_.php?page=6

This week, I attempted to turn my YML file loader/reader into a class of its own, so it could be integrated into
the abstraction layer that Ramy wrote. I also did some tests with animation states, which is going to be super important
when it will be time to give life to the city (with animations).

22 Sept 2009
About the reading. Again it feels dated. All of it. 2004 is 5 years ago, right? It also feels that most of the articles
were written by cold hearted people who cannot feel. Unable to be moved by the story of a game. For sure, if you're
playing a bad game you won't be moved by the story. Also, was it really necessary to read all those articles?
Definetly too long to allow for proper progression of any project.
  
The last reading, which dissects the mechanics and parts of a game seems fairly objective about what it's doing and deserves to live.
*Ceasar gives the thumbs up*
Simulation games only portray the gamer as the author. BS. It is also about the activity of observation. What happens to the world when
I do this? The story in the Warcraft and Starcraft series is particularly deep and pushes the player in the same way Harry Potter
pushes the reader to wonder what happens next.

Also, about agency, play Bioshock, play Silent Hill (even the 1st one) in a dark room on Halloween. You will know what agency is. Really, play them
and come back. Agency in games is completely possible, of course it won't happen in games with a poor narrative like Kane & Lynch or Army of Two.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots? A whole other plane of agency on the part of the player.

20 Sept 2009
This past week I worked on GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) and realized that we don't need the engine we were using is terribly
useless. We will probably use the default OGRE Overlay classes instead.
Also, I explred the loading of game assets using YML files. This will greatly simplify level integration as well as
simplify the codebase and give us lots of flexibility.
  
13 Sept 2009
About the holding power of video games.

The 1st thing that hit me when reading this article is that it seems dated. It's cool and all to visit the roots of video games, but I thought
that the author would come closer to the reality about video games today.

Of course, video games to exerce a certain hold on avid players. But modern videogames are more than just the thrill of being in the "zone" and
forgetting the reality outside of the world. Like the XBOX360 kid says [ I never thought I'd quote this, ever ] "The great thing about the 360 isn't
beating the games, it's showing everyone online that I did" http://humansequencer.superwailingbonus.com/files/users/Darkmage/xbox%20kid.jpg.

Game devs have found new ways to keep players addicted to their products. By adding a social element to the game for example. 
Also the "controlled" circumstances that Turkle references are pretty much non-existing the second a multiplayer game (online or offline) comes into the picture.

Nevertheless, I do agree that some games do have a certain holding power, but it must be made clear that
with the evolution of the medium, some games are not intended at all to be "played" in the conventional
sense of the term. Art games: Flower, Linger in Shadows. Although they are played, they are equally pleasing visually to the player, even moreso than the gameplay. 
These are not meant to have a hold, to be beaten, to get a high score on.
These experience games are art with more intention than the original PacMan.

One more thing. We've got a lot of work to do if we're gonna get this game out the door.
Can I go do C++ now?

Alex