Month: March 2016

“Support” Draft – Project 4

I want to make a game using Twine that puts the player in the position of trying to talk to and comfort a loved one going through depression/anxiety. I will give them multiple options of what to say or do and let them try and handle the situation as best they can.

Inspiration for this comes from mainly Depression Quest, in how it put someone in the position of having Depression and showing them all their “options” even though the player couldn’t choose them all. I also liked a sentence I read that “avant-garde is no longer in art, it is in genetics”, which I am taking literally.

Artwork #4: Rebuild- 1st Iteration

Afterthought

Introduction/Backstory: Country Z has been embroiled in a devastating civil war for many years. However, the two sides have just signed a historic peace treaty. It is time to rebuild. You have been tasked with rebuilding City Z, the capital of the country, to its former glory.

Goal: To rebuild City Z from its ruins.

The concept behind my game is war and its aftermath. Whenever there is talk of war people always seem to forget the destruction that results from it. Which is why I am calling my game Afterthought. People don’t think about it until after it is done. The point of the game is to illustrate to people that it’s far harder to build than destroy.

Project 4 Pitch: Express Room

For my project, I want to build a 3D first-person game about expressing emotions.  The player will navigate a series of small white rooms, using the buttons on their controller to “paint” each room with colors corresponding to the four core emotions of happiness, anger, sadness, and confusion.  There are also four objects that the player can change based on the emotion that they express at it.  Once they have changed all four objects, the game ends.

Assignment 4 – Pitch for “Limited”

Resources are for the most part limited, and as a species we are faced with a few issues concerning available resources and whether we will be able to switch to appropriate renewable resources before it is too late.

I want to design the game so the player nearly always ends up at the point of no return through their choices.

I currently have two methods of execution I am considering for the game.

The first is localized and involves the resources exploitation of an area until the other resources of the area are contaminated and the living populations are dead or forced to move.

The second involves our planet as a whole, and the choices of exploiting the resources of the planet as a whole. Do we use all the resources and spend them on items that will not help the survival of our species or do we put them to use in furthering ourselves as a species.

I will be programming the game using Unity3D and C#.
It will be from a 2D top down perspective in the first case and 2D side view for the 2nd case.

Final Project- Experience: Draft 1

Coping

The piece I want to do, is about my father’s death. He died from cancer at the beginning of this year, and I have a project in mind that I think can relay my feelings to people as well as help me work through it. The game is a very personal experience, but hopefully will come across tastefully and not over-bearing.

I want to make a small RPG adventure that is in a way representative of the situation and the feelings.

The game will be made in RPG Maker VX Ace

An example of what it will look like is:

OhCitrus

The game play will be a somewhat regular RPG,  but will be story heavy and hopefully less traditional and more experiential, and will follow two characters, a boy and a girl.

The game/piece will consist of 4 acts, and will have 4 different “Bosses” that represent different aspects. I am not sure at the moment what all four will be, but one will definitely be a representation of cancer, and the fight will represent my family’s take on the situation.

The 1st Act will be the journey to adulthood, the 2nd will be dealing with leaving home, and also the beginning of the sickness, the 3rd Act will be the Cancer Boss level, and the final 4th Act will be the after affects and “coping” stage.

The game itself will be quite linear and battles will be relatively scripted. All in all it will be more like a story in the guise of a game more than a free-roam RPG.

NPC’s will be representative of the people in my life.

Enemies will be hardships, or obstacles.

For example:

  • Sphinx as enemy would represent tests, or hard classes
  • Goblins, Ogres, and brutes will be physical representations of people and feelings that have slowed me down or negatively affected me.
  • Some NPC’s can be representatives of Nurses, friends, family that ended support, such as Innkeepers, healers, knights and etc.

The gameworld setting is going to be in a fantasy world, and also in a more present regular days setting with schools, cars, and buildings.
I think that this is a good way to explore how I feel about everything through an interesting and safe environment. Games are a really good way to explore loss, and I am inspired by games like That Dragon Cancer, and Dys4ia. I feel like this is also in a way an appropriation, where I take known mechanics, and maybe even known worlds, and I’m building my own narrative through them, while trying to make the experience accessible to others.  As Schrank talked about in his book Avant-garde Video Games: Playing with Technoculture  where games can be on a wide spectrum and be formal or radical and loaded with “political” feeling. I think my game sits somewhere in between where the story is charged and opinionated but in a formal setting. And also, it maybe is somewhat influenced by Yoko Ono’s work and how she brings the audience into her work and has them became participants, in the sense of her artwork and scores. I think it is also in a way reminiscent of Cynthia Carr’s retelling of an interactive piece where she was just thrown into a day in someone’s life and there was drama with relationships and just a very interesting way to experience being in someone else’s shoes. I want people to know and feel my story, but also play through it in a way that I think is enjoyable.

Hula Battle (Final)

Materials: 

  1. Two Hula Hoops
  2. Two People

Approach random people asking if they will hula-hoop with you. Hope that they say yes and will hula-hoop with you.

OR

Find a position in the commons and start Hula-hooping. Hope that people see your sign and join in.

Attempt Number One: 

This occurred at the commons on March 21st, 2016. It was a quiet Monday night and it was a little late, about 7:00 pm.  I was with a friend and we prepared to have a night of pure fun and hula-hooping.

This a collection of the most interesting results.  There were about double the encounters but the rest were not memorable, usually people just looked, said no, and walked on their way.

Stranger One and One and a Half: Two people were walking together when approached with the question. Neither people responded and both continued walking and one turned to the other to say: “That is probably what Bernie Sanders’ fans look like”

Stranger Two: One person approached and was genuinely interested with what I was doing. Thought I was doing something having to do with slut shaming. Did not want to hula-hoop with me.

Stranger Three: One man was approached and politely said no. He proceeded to tell me he reminded me of his daughter.

Stranger Four: Looked  like he really wanted to hula-hoop with me but said he was late for a friend’s party. He proceeded to leave.

Though there was no hula-hooping involved, this act really did interrupt the space and cause for some conversation (which is what I wanted to achieve anyways). I still wanted to see if anyone would hula-hoop with me if it was in the daylight so I tried again.

Attempt Number Two:

This time I was prepared. It was a nice breezy Sunday. It was nice outside and people were walking around. Tourists were everywhere. A perfect situation to talk to people.

I set out a sign, it read HULA HOOP WITH ME. I had another hula-hoop sitting around. I started with having my friend record people but I got no one to hula-hoop with me. Just a bunch of people staring at me hula-hooping.  When I asked her to stop recording a couple of people joined in.

This encounter will be recorded through writing for those reasons. It was probably for the best considering many children were the ones to hula-hoop while their parents watched from close-by. It was Easter Sunday and they were all in their little dresses and dress slacks. One parent joined in and I allowed him to hula-hoop with his son.

Overall:

I was really glad to see people participating. It really does help that it wasn’t on a late Monday night. More people were friendly and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Artists Statement

I wanted to start a conversation with people, I wanted them to stop what they were doing and live in the present with me. In this aspect I set out to achieve what I wanted to during the first run through.

I was inspired greatly by the videos shown in class about the  Yes Men and some of the readings and artwork by Yoko Ono. Yes Men inspired me because they are all about creating conversation and leaving things up to interpretation. Yoko Ono inspired me because her art is very much about the process and not the end product. I wanted my piece to be about the moment, taking people out of their heads and into the present with me.

Documentation was difficult and overall I am happy that I chose to write rather than photograph. Taking photographs would take away from the moment I was hoping to establish with the participants (also many of the participants were children and it is really weird to ask parents if you can take pictures of their child).

Diablo 4 (Final)

Diablo 4 is a Single Player Action Role Play game (ARPG) that has post-century graphics and contains highly in depth gameplays.  It takes the process of players leveling up their stats to fight stronger monsters and gain more rewards in mainstream process-based games like Diablo 3, and intervene it by implementing the best graphics in the world and extract out the mechanics.

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The game interface consists of two parts: Player stats and Enemy stats.

Both of the characters have three main Attributes, which is extracted from Diablo 3. The core gameplay in Diablo 3 is totally based on these three attributes, and all the stats of players can be concentrated and simplified into manipulating them.

  • Toughness: Indicates how much damage the character could totally stand.
  • Recovery: Indicates how much Toughness is recovered each turn.
  • Damage: Indicates how much damage thecharacter produces to its opponent per turn.

There’s a Health which indicates how much damage the character could take before considered dead. It’s restored to full each turn and cannot exceeds Toughness. The combat systems is just around those numbers, and if anyone dead, the combat is ended.

There’s a button in the middle which controls the entire game play. If there’s a combat going on, clicking it proceeds the combat to the next turn. If the enemy is dead, clicking it claims the reward experience points which could level player up. If the reward is claimed, clicking it spawns a new enemy of a chosen level. If the player is dead, clicking it respawns the player and also spawns a new enemy of a chosen level.

Formulas:

(L = Level, Random(x, y) = random number between x and y)

  • Player Toughness =  200 * (1.08 ^ L)
  • Player Recovery = 10 * (1.08 ^ L)
  • Player Damage = 40 * (1.08 ^ L)
  • Required Exp to next level = 50 + 25 * L + 25 * L^2
  • Enemy Toughness =  100 * (1.1 ^ L) * Random(0.9, 1.1)
  • Enemy Recovery = 6 * (1.1 ^ L) * Random(0.9, 1.1)
  • Enemy Damage = 25 * (1.1 ^ L) * Random(0.9, 1.1)
  • Enemy XP Reward = 24 + 5 * L + L^2
  • If the player’s level is significantly higher than enemy’s, player will get less XP (More complicated Math formula involved).

Documentation:

DocumentationofInterveneFinal (1)

Game Download(Windows):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxqXJ4fmYWF-NlRzWWdTeGFqSHc

 

Crapateria

Artist Statement

A while back a few of my friends and I came to the common agreement that the food served in the Northeastern dining halls was not necessarily the best food ever. Most of the time when we did get food sometimes we would not finish it and food would be left over. And since we thought that our leftover food would be thrown away anyway, we decided to take our it and create a new dish that would look appealing from afar, but is actually disgusting up close since it would be created from what we decided to not finish.  In a way, this idea can be linked to the Dada idea of the creation of art from anything as we took left over food and reshaped it into a presentable dish.

Materials

  • Leftover food
  • A clean plate

Rules

  • Food used in creating the new dish must be leftover food; the food cannot be taken with the intention of making the new dish.
    • Place the leftover food in a aesthetically pleasing manner on the clean plate.

Documentation

Final Iteration – Artwork 3 – Friendly Fitness!

Friendly Fitness!

 

Materials:

A copy of The Division

 

Rules:

Participants must encourage fitness and friendliness under all circumstances in the PVP zone of the game The Division.

Participants must never harm another player.

Participants must perform jumping jacks and encourage other players to join in, either through voice or text chat.

Participants must encourage fitness until they are either killed by the players or the players escape.

 

Artist Statement:

So after discovering that you can use emotes to interact with players in The Division, I realized that there are things I’d much rather do in this 3rd person shooter than shoot bullet sponges.  I wanted to encourage players to stop shooting for even just a moment to do something stupid with some other players instead of fighting the bland and boring NPCs.  I, with the assistance of my friend David Yue (Australian Dude) and Colton Brooks (MattiasNilsson5), took to the PVP zone of the game where we would relentlessly pursue players and encourage them to do jumping jacks with us. My inspiration came from Dadaism and it’s mockery of war. Myself and my participants accepted the futility of fighting and tried to instill that on others, by never giving up in our pursuit of physical fitness. Even when being shot at by NPCs and other players we would continue our efforts.

 

Documentation:

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While trying to secure some gear he found, I found him and approached him. He did the emote for “surrender” and waited patiently until I stopped doing jumping jacks.

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While being as obtrusive as possible, players simply ignored us and went about their business.

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Chasing after the group of players from earlier.

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In the middle of a warzone I danced next to this person while asking them to join in. They didn’t.

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The same group, still doing their best to ignore us. One of them noticed my username and started giggling.

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We found a straggler and cornered him while doing jumping jacks. He joined in after a few seconds.

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What it looks like to be hit with a flashbang mid-jumping jack.

One moment.

In a class presentation, instead of actually presenting your piece, just sit down and don’t say a word. Like Yoko Ono’s Cutpiece, this piece involves sacrifice and absolute trust that the audience will understand your work. It also means that even the professor cannot know or expect this piece. The piece is best done when you have multiple vantage points, as I will have Manning record the class from the back of the room while I record the front.

I think if I were to do this piece again, I would be more obvious in recording the audience, in order to make the space feel more intervened and make them feel like they can’t ignore it. I would also stand to seem more assertive. Not only that, it would make sure the camera actually records the audience, as in my perspective, I had inadvertently tilted the camera upright too much.

Documentation:

My Perspective:

https://www.tumblr.com/video/cupcakeofcyanide/141560688616/700/