Digital Design

 Who boy, this has been an experience! 

I really thought the last assignment shook me, but thinking through the process of building a digital game has really had me re thinking the idea of games in general! 

I have enjoyed the process overall, but find my creative ideas far overpowering my practical experience. I really want to shoot for the moon in design, but just don't have the time or the knowledge yet to make it happen. If I had to do this project over, I think it would realize its "ok" to think small and accomplish a smaller project than try for the bigger, lofty ideas. 

Using Construct has been pretty easy to grasp. Being in a technology field as a profession, working with new software is pretty intuitive and I grasp the concepts pretty easily... the struggle really comes more from not knowing what all the software can do. In short, having limitations in the software, but not really knowing what those limitations are. Again, having lofty ideas... but not having the knowledge to execute them! 

My game is based off an earlier game idea which will be called "Dr. Ludlow and the Mega Computer." the game will consist of the player moving around the level collecting pieces that could then be used to help defeat the boss of the level. The learning objectives are teaching players about the basic hardware components of a computer. So as an example, one stage will be teaching about RAM in a computer. The player will collect pieces of RAM to then use to build platforms during the boss fight. The concept is that RAM allows users to have more content open when using a computer. So, the more RAM that has been collected, the more the player can build, gaining an advantage of fighting the boss.

Additionally, after each successful hit on the boss, the boss will "reset" the stage, thus erasing the built platforms by the player. This ideally reinforces the idea that, though RAM is memory and things are stored on it, it is temporary and is erased when the computer is shutdown/restarted. 

Overall, I have enjoyed this assignment. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

About me

Hello!  This is my about me page for my blog associated with my ISTL 7384 Designing Games for Learning, if you have made it this far... you are probably looking for some information "About me", so lets begin I guess.  I have played some form of games most of my life. Starting out with an Atari and moving all the way up to modern consoles with an Xbox One. I have dabbled in computer gaming, but always found more accessibility with console systems, so have always leaned more toward them. However, I have never limited myself to just digital gaming and often find myself at a table enjoying a board game with friends! (If I am speaking my truth, as I have aged, I have found board games to be more enjoyable to video games!!) Over the course of my gaming lifecycle, I have gone through phases of what I like. Starting with side scrolling adventure games, moving to RTS (Real time strategy) games, into FPS (First person shooting), and currently into Rouge like games. I will honestly play
Read more

Reflection

 What a semester it has been! Overall this class has been a massively enjoyable one and has really made me re-think how I enjoy and view games. Its one thing to be a fan of games and play them, but taking a class like this you really take a step back and look at them from a different perspective altogether.  I really enjoyed the moments in the projects that involved the back end part of building a game. I am a creative person, have grown up drawing and doing creative things. The moments in the design where we were brainstorming the concept was the most exciting parts for me.  I really enjoyed working with Construct 3, and would really like to continue that. The small snippet of the game I design, I showed to my daughter and she seemed really excited, I think it would be a really fun idea to maybe sit down with her and use some of the things I learned in this class and design a game with her!  The best part of the class was how my mentality changed toward games. Before, I only focused o
Read more

Game Design Process

 Woo boy... I made it though my first game design process!! Overall, I really enjoyed the process and learned some valuable things about the process and ultimately how I can make improvements for future projects.  I am a very visual person, so as I was working on this project, I found myself much more productive when I was working in Twine and could see the "flow" of the story being visualized out. I used word to write out my "Scenes" but it wasn't until I started to incorporate those scenes into Twine did I get into the process.  As I was doing that, I could visualize the encounters between player and the game, as well as mentally visualize the game taking shape. Though this was a text based game, with limited images, it became a visual process for me.  I understand that this may not always be the best process, or the fastest, but I find myself working much better and more efficiently if I can draw the content out. Or in this case, play a mental movie!
Read more