Greg Masto COM 317

Reweaving Community Website

http://www.americasarmy.com/

COM 317-Midterm

M.U.G.E.N. wasn’t able to be uploaded without the install on the ilearn dropbox and wasn’t even supported through voicethread. Created a game with obama and clinton using game maker. Can be found in my iLearn dropbox, here’s the address in case you have access…

https://ilearn.marist.edu/access/content/user/10074938@marist.edu/gregmastocom317.gmk

if there’s a problem I can e-mail you my k account.

Press F1 for instructions:
WARNING: The .mid I used for the game is very loud, just giving you a heads up in case “America the Beautiful” catches you by suprise here. Instructions are parody like, but my housemates found it very enjoyable. So it does have some “deep play” to it.

COM 317—Ian Bogost—Airport Security

Ian Bogost is a professor at Georgia Tech University and a founding partner at Persuasive Games. Unlike most video games, he centers them around several issues like airport security or corruption in businesses. There is even a first date simulator where your quickness and what you say is tested. All of his works deal with issues as there is a much larger picture that needs to be addressed as opposed to games with an objective of killing someone/something or completing other tasks. While they deal with these issues, the games are very addicting as they are quick to pick up and play. The instructions are also very simple as the majority only involve point and click buttons. This is key in that anyone can go onto the website and play these games.

The piece to be looked at is one of the games from the Persuasive Games Company. The game, “Airport Security” is a very interesting game as you actually control airport security. The art itself is simple for today, it is not the state-of-the-art engine that you see in today’s console games. However this is expected of games that can be played for free. The passenger characters scroll through and have the features of a less-quality “Mii” character from the Nintendo Wii. Mii’s generally looked like Lego people as these passengers have mild happy or sad expressions while their clothing is normally of one shade of color.

As passengers pass through the detector there is a message of what the airport deems as a “security alert.” In the example above the security has deemed hats to be a “threat.” In that case, the player must click on the hat to get rid of it and if there is a hat in their suitcase. However time is important, as the game progresses more items become illegal. For example that toothpaste in the above picture could suddenly become illegal. Players must pay close attention to the upper-right as the hat could remain. There are even alerts where items could be cleared and passengers may continue with them. With the example before, an alert could appear where the toothpaste is no longer a security threat. This is important because the player cannot simply strip the passenger of everything. Passengers in line will begin to grow impatient and the current passenger will feel threatened in the case of where a player will lose points or even get a game over where they will have to start the process all over again. Despite having this power over the passengers it’s important to note that these CPU passengers have rights. Should these rights be violated by the player then they will fail at the task. 

The items are also very clear so it is easy for the player to distinguish what items are which. The game constantly tests your quickness as time is your biggest enemy in this game. In a rather comedy way of scoring points, the player can receive bonus points for getting people safely through the security gate while also ridding them of the illegal items. It seems very odd but also humorous that the player can be rewarded for being exceptionally good at airport security where in the real world this may go un-noticed.

STARTING REPORTS FOR COM317

Everything below is from previous class, Concepts in Video Gaming.

The Holiday is here!

So now I can pick up Call of Duty 4? Not that I’m mad, the game looks amazing. Graphics, gameplay, online play, all I’ve heard for even the PS3 version has been nothing short of perfection. But where are the big titles for the PS3? Stores are rarely carrying the Guitar Hero III version for the system while there are plenty of Playstation 2 and Xbox 360 ones lying around and going by the numbers. By the way, the PS2 guitar controllers are not compatable with the PS3…slight problem there. Where’s THE game to get, where’s the exclusive. So far I’ve seen none. Call of Duty 4 looks amazing and will probably sell, however it will also sell for PC and 360. The Wii doesn’t have to be too worried as Super Mario Galaxy got tremendous reviews and Mario’s first big hit to the Wii will be this years holiday grab for the Nintendo fan boys. Xbox 360 can still even go on the Halo 3 craze as I’m sure it hasn’t hit every Xbox household (I know for a fact my house mate doesnt’ have it…yet). It just seems a disappointment. We’ve herad reports of the PS3 picking up but I just can’t help but wonder if that’s the fact everyone else has a Wii or 360 and now look at 400 dollars as being not that bad.

At least last year PS3’s big exclusive hit was Resistance, a game still popular today. Call of Duty might have something to say about that now but PS3’s exclusvie has now been out for over a year and we are still left with no Metal Gear Solid 4 for the holidays. No fighter >coughcough

Game Rules

Greg Masto, Tom DeKeyser, Jeff Ollendorf

Title: Super Intern

Short Description: Super Intern: College students always look for an edge to “get their foot in the door.” To get their name out there as quickly as possible to have a career when they graduate. One way to do this: get an internship. However, that may not always be enough. There could be times when one is asked to do something they do not. On one hand it’s risky but it could reward them to automatically filling in a spot for a job. On the other hand, one could keep to their morals, but in the eyes of higher ups, not taking this risk could result in being a “game over.” Super Intern places you in different situations for different internships. There are several goals whether it’s, sneaking into another company and stealing ideas or going to an opposing team and stealing play calls. The choice is yours, even if the right choice might be the wrong.

Game Objects: There are several objects in this game. Being a “platformer,” objects are developed for the main character, “The Intern.” While other objects will be used as football players in one levels case or opposing people from other businesses. Other objects being used are the blocks to act as “platforms” for the character to move around if jumping cannot get them to certain areas. Points will be rewarded for collecting the necessary items or even quick “power-ups” that can help you complete your objective.

Sounds: Many sounds will also be used. When the intern is hurt we will need a sound indicating damage as well as a “success” alert to let the player know they’ve achieved the necessary goals. There will also be a “jump” sound that comes on anytime the character is jumping to a platform and/or avoiding the enemy.

Controls: The player can move around with the arrow keys with the up arrow allowing the intern to jump. The spacebar is brought in if the character can get items like cameras or guns to “shoot” certain objects.

Game Flow: The players score will start at 0 but will go up by a certain number of points depending on what evidence is collected. There are also points given out if the intern can “bribe” one of the enemies away or even takes them out to complete their goal. There will be a high score but that comes with taking more risks and getting more information.

Levels: There are three levels. One level will place the intern at a game company but your boss wants you to find out some information from a rival company. The more information you can get on these new games: the better. Another level pits you with a football team however the Coach “Big Bill” demands you to sneak onto the rivals’ side and steal some play calls and signals. Finally there is another level that demands you dig up any dirt that another head CEO can use to bring the president of its rival company down. The difficulty will depend on you the player. To be successful, more risks need to be taken. Get caught: and your player faces jail time. Come back empty: and you lose your internship.

DewMocracy Ad

An ad was just shown to us hyping the fact that any one person can go online to “dewmocracy.com” and customize a version of Mountain Dew. Maybe, there’s will be chosen. The ad itself was very interesting, it had a blade runner like feel to it. This so called future with these dark poor cities around it gave off some of the scenes.

Mountain Dew wants to keep their customers interested. What’s the biggest draw nowadays? Video games, what’s a key aspect that’s so popular? Customization. They encourage their customers to come up with their own version and treat their ad with “Out of the digital world, into the real world.” Here you create something online and have a chance for it to exist and be created in the real world.

It’s a very interesting take and I feel the ad and project will be very succesful. Everyone wants to create something, they want their name out there knowing that there’s an object or something that people are using because of them. For people who aspire to be game designers like myself, this gives an opportunity to almost get your foot in the door. It can help show your creativity as a company looks to choose out of the thousands on what version of new mountain dew should be released.

Challenges with Machinima

With the many difficulties of Half Life-2 and steam, we as a group had to chagne to a different game in order for this scene to coem out a little better. Where multiplayer failed and it almost looked like we were taking stills, we turned to Team Fortress 2 to help the flow of animation and it had another plus: set terms for the players to speak. However while it did come with a lot of help, there were many other problems we faced with this project.

Team Fortress 2 was no problem to play online, however now we had to incoporate another member to the team. We had Tom on camera as a spectator, myself using the demo-man to represent Jackson and Jeff as a scout to represent Brad. The first problem was immediate: it wasn’t that the characters were a little over the top for said roles, but they could not sit, only kneel.

We didn’t have the freedom with objects like tables or chairs as we did in Half-Life, but we made due with the surronding area. We also needed to get teh shots we needed quickly or just move around because we noticed if Jeff and I stood still for a given amount of time we would enter spectator nmode with Tom and we would have to re-spawn and find the area again.

Finally the problem came with my character: the demo-man. This was a problem we worked around and overall gave a sort of parody feel to the scene from Pulp Fiction. The demo-man has three weapons: A grenade launcher, a sticky-grenade launcher, and a broken beer bottle, all of which obviously don’t give off the same effect as a pistol. Making due however, we launched a grenade at Jeff’s character “Brad” and while he exploded rather than falling after a pistol shot, it did offer a sort of comedy to the scene and we felt the rest came out great. The commands could easily be edited to fit the dialogue between the two and the camera was a lot easier to use with more people working as opposed to the limits we experienced in single player for Half-Life 2.

Pulp Fiction-“”Hamburgers”

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PE9Qm8mShik

 This scene right here is the scene my group and I are currently remaking for machinima. The scene itself is about a minute long from the 3:45-4:45 marks.