Progress So Far

Whoa... Last update was before Thanksgiving break. And here Christmas break is starting to inch closer every day, whoo!

As far as my paper prototype, I'm actually finished with it. I didn't get to film it, and I'm kind of glad I didn't have to today, because I'm really kinda sick and I wasn't feeling up to trying to explain it with my own voice.
The total number of scenes I have is seven. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, to be honest. It starts out with the title menu screen, then the next two are the instructions on how to play. After that, I added a bit of a storyline with a protagonist that you get to play as. Hopefully, it's not too boring or drawn out. The last thing I want to do is bore the player more (and come on, you have to be bored if you're willing to play a dress up game or the like). The storyline continues for two scenes, although with each scene there are three panels of text. Then you finally get to the playing part (FINALLY) and I have a few cutouts to explain how you gain and lose points, and the time limit you have and so on. The last page shows Game Over, with the options to either go back to the main menu or try to play again.
The buttons on each scene will hopefully be noticeable to the player. I have it in mind that for the monologuing there will be red arrows to choose whether to go forward to the next set of text or back to the ones before, and for choosing the different outfits and whatnot the arrows will be big and blue. I might change it to a more attractive color, but I'm sticking with blue for now. I'm not sure if there's anything I need to add or that's not needed, I'll ask Mr. Allder when he gets back. But I'm pretty confident I did most of it right, so that's out of the way as far as schoolwork.

I kind of don't want to do the whole paper prototype via video. I know that the only thing that'll be seen of me are my hands, but I have a thing about disliking myself on camera. And I also tend to get really nervous, so I'm afraid my voice will be all shaky and stuttering. I'll probably be even worse when it comes time to present the actual game, if I get that far..

Break's coming

Oh yes. Thanksgiving break is finally here~! I'm so happy to have a week off from school, but I still have to be thinking about my game in the meantime. As far as my own progress for it, I'm not entirely thrilled - I missed last class so I didn't start the paper prototype with everyone else, and I'm kind of afraid to do it on my own. I also have to look up some stuff so I know what I'm doing is right. (Although I kind of doubt that going to college would teach the way I'm setting up the game, but I don't think they care that you go exactly by the book on this stuff.) But so far everything else is pretty tip-top. Globaloria is getting a little more stressful, but our teacher warned us of this, so at least I knew it was coming.
Hopefully when we come back I'll have the paper protoype set up for what I need to get done and we can start to learn how to make this game.
I still think my team name is kind of lame, but that's okay too. Mr. Allder said we should have a link to our team page, so here ya go. I've also not really attempted to draw anything in flash yet, which worries me since the tools on it are not quite what I'm used to (MS Paint, iscribble.net, muro on deviantArt). Everything is more confusing, but I guess I'll just have to practice with it just like I had to with those.

Planning My Game

Unfortunately, our teacher isn't here, so our assignment now is to write another blog post on how we plan to create our game. Here is a picture of that link from the last post I made to that drag-and-drop dress-up game:

As far as strengths and weaknesses in flash go, I'm not too sure about them yet because we've used it so little. I've had a little experience with layers via computer art programs, but this is a different ball game. However I think I did pretty well with figuring out the coding, at least the simple steps we were given, so I'm confident once I know what code does which action I'll be fine (: If I'm as good with coding as I think I could be, I could try to help around the class for those who're confused about it. Um.. A weakness might be that I'd have to draw everything (the character, the clothes and whatnot, the background, etc. ...). I've drawn on the computer with a ball mouse (and currently trying to figure it out with a touchpad) but not much with a laser mouse, which seems a lot more difficult.

Again, obviously, my game isn't going to be full-out girly like the one above. There will be a variety of character designs to make, not just a simple fashion-day thing.

Although I'm still a bit edgy about it, I'm anxious to start trying to make this game work.

Oh yes! We're also supposed to come up with a name and a picture for our teams... I'd been hoping for someone else to do this, since I don't think I'm very good with that, but most of us are one-person teams so... I guess my team will be called Epic Flying Squirrel (Even I'm like "What?" But it sounds funny so eh. -shrug-)

Look at that squirrel! Ain't he epic?

Thinking about our games

We're really starting to delve into what our ideas about our flash games should be about, how they will look, etc. My idea is to use a flash game to teach the job of a concept artist. In it the player will be able to basically dress a "naked" doll up using drag and drop on the hair, clothes, accessories, and so forth. However, it isn't just a free "pick what you want" deal - there will be a teacher who will assign the player a specific description of who they want the character to be. For instance, if the player were assigned to make a pirate character, they wouldn't be able to make it a scientist character without consquence. The character won't have to be exactly as described (e.i. instead of just giving the pirate the proper attire, you could give him a funny hat, a lot of piercings, a parrot or a cat, etc.) but as I said before, if it isn't even close to the same idea you won't be able to progress farther in the game. The player will learn how to collaborate on ideas, learn what colors and patterns would go together (lighter and darker shades of red go better together than bright oranges and darker blues, plaid doesn't mix with stripes), and that being a concept artist isn't always easy, sometimes the character designs are later changed or altered. It's not really targeted to any specific age group, as a dress up game can be fun (and this one isn't just a simple girly dress-up-barbie-your-way deal!). Hopefully I can put this idea together and it will be enjoyable for everyone~

Mini Game

So I missed a couple of days to work on our minigame, but I quickly caught up and finished before class was over. When I started I guess I named the first step wrong, because I actually have an extra step saved, but I'm still with everyone. Now that I know what coding is and what it looks like, I can say that it is a bit difficult, but I think once I know what codes do what actions by heart it'll come to me like I'd known it my whole life. I especially liked trying to figure out what code made the rabbit move left and right, using trial and error. Hopefully by the time we get to serious business I will have learned coding much better.

My Thoughts..

Oh boy. We're gonna be learning how to use Flash pretty soon and I'm excited and anxious to hurry and get started! One thing that I am worried about is "codes". I don't know exactly how that's gonna go down, or how complex it will be for me, and having absolutely no experience at all with Flash makes it that much more nerve-wracking. And creating a mingame - it sounds like it would be easy, but I'm pretty sure that it won't exactly be a walk in the park. But I did join this class to learn about these things, and once I get the jist of it I think I might be o.k.!

Deciding on a genre

Now we've been assigned to blog about what genre of game we would like to make.

I think I would like to make either an Action or Adventure (possibly a combination of both? Of course, that might be difficult for a newbie like me right now) flash game. I know that, as far as myself, I can get bored easily with educational games. But in the action/adventure examples we were given, it was much easier for me to stay interested enough to continue the game and gain an educational experience along with it, as opposed to the other examples.

I'm still thinking about what kind of educational topic I would like to base my game around, but at least now I have an idea of what kind of game I want it to be. Oh, and here's a little preview of one of the games I enjoyed:

Curiousity and learning to link

I really love videogames, and it seems like it's gonna take forever to learn about how to make a flash video game! One of my favorites would be the Kingdom Hearts series, and some of the older Sonic and Mario games. I really can't wait to learn about this coding thing, I know it takes a lot of coding just to do simple things but it's still unknown to me.

Also, I'm learning how to link like this :) I've never done it like this before, so I hope I did it right!

My First Entry

In Globaloria I'm hoping to learn how to make flash games and do better in teams. Teams make me very nervous, because it's either I do everything, nothing, or everyone does everything on their own, so I usually do as much as I can indepentently. I'm not quite sure what kind of game I'd like to make as of yet, but I can't wait to get started! This will be my first experience with Flash and I hope I enjoy it.