May 2010
1 post
Design Docs
Our game started on this page with the words “get” and “belong”. After kicking around the words for a while, we decided we wanted to access the emotion of belonging to a group — originally using owls as the PC that was going to try to belong.
We thought, “How can one belong to a group? What means can you utilize to get a group to accept you?” Disguises...
March 2010
1 post
another blog
My long-term boyfriend, Bill, and I have started a blog just to post some images of the work we do and write about whatever. Bill is an amazing photographer and excellent writer. I write less and try to post mostly images. Check it!
www.creaturegods.com
February 2010
1 post
Feelies
Right now I’m looking at the Infocom Gallery full of box art and feelies. Feelies are the extra content that used to come with interactive fiction games. They served as copy protection or just as sort of extras to make buying the game more interesting as well as create some of that “culture of the game.”
Some of the feelies are essential to solving the game. I’m seeing...
January 2010
3 posts
A Mind Forever Voyaging
When I began to play A Mind Forever Voyaging, I thought it was going to be like other regular IFs. It wasn’t. I started out with a list of rooms I could enter, so I went to the first one on the list. After I had done whatever I could in that room, I realized I couldn’t remember the names or abbreviations of any other rooms and also couldn’t summon up the list. I was trapped...
Blog 3 - "Today I Die"
paintballer:
When first playing Today I Die, I looked at it as another simple game, easy to beat. Not going to lie, I did have to use the help page. It is more then just a simple game, it is a challenging interactive piece that makes you think. There are goals in this game, which is to get to the next level. To get to these next levels there are different tasks that have to be performed. It...
hello.
Hello new people from my game design class that I just started following!
December 2009
3 posts
oh my heart is aflutter at this gingerbread house.
via creative room
i love flickr: the commons.
5 tags
just thought you guys might like a little reminder...
click on my little user icon to watch
1 tag
The Modern Prometheus
When I started thinking about a Frankenstein game based on the book itself rather than pop culture’s representation of “Frankenstein”, I first started with some differences between the two. In pop culture, the monster is evil from the get-go, and is completely unintelligible and inhuman. Dr. Frankenstein is a crazy mad scientist, who is highly intelligent but insolent. The focus...
November 2009
13 posts
pixelate environment
My favorite episode was the one in which they talked about how the player relates to the character. I agree that the more vague characters help the player connect to the character they are controlling. The example helped immensely; they had you tell bob which way to go, then they had you control bob with arrow keys. Telling Bob where to go does not make you “Bob”, but moving him with...
Watchsome weird video i made in my early college years…
Knitted Science (click this) →
This is sooo rad. I need to improve my crocheting skills exponentially.
My IF- "Minimum Wage"
ukla:
I got started. Read the handbook. And started working with the editor. Yikes. Its really not that intuative. I did get it to accept one or two senareos but its logic- the way it would take one thing and not understand another was a bit frustrating. I got a bedroom up- it wouldnt let me add a bathroom. I got the bedroom put inside a house, and put the house on a street, that was in a city....
My IF
I am really struggling with the ideas for my IF. I just have a ton of unrelated, free-floating ideas in my head, and I’m reluctant to fully develop any of them because I don’t want to have to re-do a whole lot of things in the interest of time. That said, the IF you may see this evening may or may not be at all related to however my final game turns out. All I know is it would be...
Photopia
cheney232:
It is becoming quite clear that I do not have the patience for IF games. Photopia was definitely interesting, but getting through these games is extremely frustrating for me. It took me twenty minutes just to figure out what the game wanted and what kind of commands I was supposed to give. Had this not been an assignment, I would have given up very early and been much happier with...
Photopia
*spoilers may be present in the following blog entry*
I really enjoyed Photopia! The writing in this game is superior to any other game I have played, and I was able to get a clear visual image in my head of what the different settings were like. It also helped me identify emotionally with the many different characters involved. I will admit I was really confused when it first started. The...
why don’t they make a new zelda for wii? none of this DS bologna again.
p.s.
anyone have Last.fm? add me! click
fahrenheit 451
apparently there is a text adventure (IF) game based upon Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451!! Anyone have any idea what it is called and where I can get it (Alex)?
Postmortem
When Brad and I were first handed that Donald Trump box full of bits of other board games, I was quite overwhelmed. There were way too many components, and we weren’t sure how to make them all work together. We had three parts of two different boards, trivia questions, dino pieces, pieces from mouse trap, Trump dollars… I immediately wanted to simplify our supplies. Somehow we got a...
October 2009
3 posts
Art 3160 - IF
ashowkati:
This week I played The games Dead Like Ants and For A Change.
Enjoying these games would be a huge stretch. But if i had to choose one, i suppose it would have to be Dead Like Ants, simply because i completed it… accidentally. Both game experiences were grueling and immensely frustrating. It probably doesn’t help they they were my first attempts at Interactive Fiction. To be honest,...
interactive fiction
I enjoyed Dead Like Ants a lot more than For A Change. It seemed simpler and more engaging, and the language appealed to me more. For A Change had a language style that would be interesting in a book but was, in my opinion, somewhat cumbersome.
What I thought was most interesting about Dead Like Ants was the fact that dying in the game was not necessarily bad. In fact, you want to die. I...
house of leaves
Who has read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski? I highly recommend it. It is crazy and really amazing. It has a main story based on a ton of papers that some guy finds in an apartment he moved into that used to belong to a blind old man who was recently deceased. Then the footnotes contain their own story about the guy who finds the papers. It also contains several other little...
September 2009
12 posts
player structure
Our game supports 2-4 players right now but could possibly support more if we got more game pieces. Players generally can’t enter or leave during the game unless they decided to quit. It would be interesting to have an enter or leave option, like in the werewolf game where some players are “lynched” or “eaten by werewolves.” If it was a last man standing game, the...
Today I Die (the game, not that this is really...
I loved this game! I spent forever on the first screen because I really didn’t want to use the cheats. It took me a while to figure out how to switch out the words and everything, but once I realized what I was supposed to do, each level played off the same idea. At first it seemed really depressing and made me have a weird feeling. I am incredibly glad that as the game progresses, the...
runway
So the Omaha Fashion Week runway show is finally over! Alexia Thiele and I worked two 16 hour days in a row sewing and fitting and sewing and making mistakes because we were so sleep deprived. But I am so proud to be part of autopilot.
our models were WAY cooler than all the other models. we used friends and family and it was super fun. we make one-of-a-kind garments with used...
ashowkati:
Made a quick stop to Target for a quick cold kit, juice, drops, ginger tea, and soup. Gotta love it. At least I’m busy editing all evening.
oops did I give you my illness?
Game Designer vs Artist
Hideki Kamiya (game designer) vs. Amy Stein (contemporary artist/photographer)
The game designer I chose is a Hideki Kamiya, a video game designer who worked for both Capcom and Clover Studio. He is responsible for both Viewtiful Joe and Devil May Cry, but I will be focusing on his design in the game Okami for this comparison. In Okami, the player is a wolf that saves human lives using a...
Art 3160 Assignment #1 - What is a Game
ashowkati:
Ian Schrieber has some interesting points on what is and isn’t a game. In his list of definitions of what a game actually is, Roger Callois states that a game is “Unproductive, in the sense of creating neither goods nor wealth.” Thats depends on one’s assumptions of what constitutes wealth. A game is an escape from reality. Whatever hardships one might be enduring on their day to day...
Reading Discussion #1
ukla:
Does anyone know if they ever created a Simpson’s Monopoly game?
Post
regular and treehouse of horrors.
what is carmine?
check out your ingredient labels for any processed foods or makeup that have any red tones! if it has carmine or red dye 4, you are eating or drinking ground up bugs. no lie. FDA approved.
fact:
“obecalp,” a sugar pill manufactured to FDA standards, is marketed as a treatment for children’s mild complaints. (read the name backwards)
-Discover magazine
what is a game?
The general similarities between the various definitions Schrieber presents seem to be that a game is a form of play that is voluntary, doesn’t effect real life, is make believe, has rules which create conflict, has an end goal, and has players who make decisions.
Some of the definitions seemed to be lacking specifics, while not being totally “wrong.” Clark C Abt’s...
August 2009
1 post
don't stop 'til you get enough
Day one. art 3160