Game design

This week we had an interesting lesson with game design were i like to talk about. With game design we talk about game concepts. Our teacher brought two lego games a week ago and we build the stages and all. This week we tested the games. One is called Robo Champ and the other board game is Ramsus Pyramid.

The whole class was split up in two groups, our team first tested Robo Champ this was really simple to play when everything is set up already. You can almost start immediately it is really simple, you have three players and there are three robots; blue, red and green. Every robot has 5 limbs head, arms and legs. The base of the robot is the torso. The first player that collects all the parts of the same collour wins. You use the dice to grab a part each turn. You have the three collours on the dice and a white, (free pick) black, (steel from other player) and you have the four collours on one part and that includes; blue, red, green and white and that stands for the trade mark you can trade with other players. Realy simple and they even give you the oprotunity to make your own rules and also give you a few examples of it.

Ramsus Pyramid
We tested this game not very long so i can`t tell much about it. One thing i do know and that is very important it sais it is payable for childeren of 8+. Our group had a lot of dificulties of building it up again after the other group. What i think is that childeren of 8+ don`t really read the manual so that is already a problem. After 10 minutes we starded playing with four people. We never realy finished it beceause we ran out of time. The setting is Accient Egypt with the big pyramid in the middle. That is your objective get your color of crystals to clear your path and reach ramsus as fast as you can. With the dice you can move the mummies on top of the pyramid and use them as obstakels. Also you can use the dice to move your avatar and move the pyramid as wel.

This was my review about these two games.  

Quick update Playstation Move

I bought the Playstation Move my self now and had a chance to test it a bit more. What i noticed is that you need a lot of space for certain games or else it won't work or work correctly. So you need a lot of space in front of the television. The games are realy fun to play  but to optimize certain games you realy need two move controllers with a light bulb to feel the real experience of wielding a bow in your hand or a sword with a shield and yes these are all minigames of sport champions. The realism is really high compared to the WII in one mini game you have different stages like frisbee in a cave it is not normal but original and that is really good.   

Playstation move

Last week one of the students of our class decided or came up with the idea to bring the move to school that week. I was pretty excided about it I always played on the WII a couple of years and I didn’t even used the move or I heard already some good roomers about the move. Especially when I heard that the move is much more precise and in this message I am going to write an whole story about it. I also thought it was really nice opportunity to test the move first and then I am going to buy it when it is has a good test result of course.


When you see the two controllers of the WII and the Playstation Move you don’t see much different between the two except for the big light bulb on the top of the Move. More or less that is not the only different between the two. The first time I had the move in my hand it felt already better then the WII remote it fits better in your hand so no more bricks in your hand and it is also has a lot less weight. I only tested the controller with the big light on top of it and not the one on the left of it yet so I cant tell you more about that. And no caution about the light bulb its made out of rubber so it can not break on top of it.

Then we got the density and the precision of the Move. Already to start with you can buy the move different ways you only buy the controller and you can also buy the Eye move with the controller why? Ill explain. You can use the move without having the Eye to register everything every one knows the Playstation 3 uses the sixaxis. But to optimalize the density of your move and precision you use the Eye Move to calibrate before you start a game when you are used to it then it takes about 10 seconds to do a small work out before starting a game. 

When you buy the whole pack with the move and the Eye move you also get a demo disc with games coming this year for the move. So I only played with the demos so far and it was a lot of fun. I already have the WII and have enough experiences with it to compare with others. The first thing about the WII is you don’t have to stand to do certain moves. You just sit down and relaxed move your hand a little and you are playing the WII. With the move well you always start experimenting so I was standing there with the move in my hand and we started ping-pong. The first thing I noticed is you cant stand right in frond of it you actually have to stand with your shoulder to the cam. And then still as a WII user I am used to the short move from the wrist (THAT DOESN’T WORK!) if you do the same as with the WII he just doesn’t reach the ping pong ball.
You can also do really creepy things with your hand when you have to serve that’s not naturally but its another thing that the move is really accurate. The light bulb of course is one of the sources that the move is really accurate the cam registers the bright light from the move controller.

Our teachers asked us later to split up in groups and start working on some game concepts original for the Playstation Move. Our group came up with the following ideas; Snake, fruit ninja, cooking, fishing and a few more to safe for later.

Thanks for reading this feel free to comment or add something you like just post what ever you want thank you. (And a special thanks to Ruben Elshof for the demo about the move.)

Unity

With our new project for my college this year we are going to make an whole game. This time we use Unity for Level Design. It is my first time with Unity and its realy fun to work with. I have made a small floor plan in Unity and the highest detail are the stairs.

Level design

This was my first experience with level design and UDK and i have made this during my college.

Gamedesign

This is a blog about me "Tristan Stoelwinder" and I am going to post as much as I can every week. I live in the Netherlands and go to school at the ROC Friese Poort. Posts could be creations I have made during my college and spare time. Other then that could be discussions about several games or other programs like Maya or UDK. Of course I am posting the progress of projects during my college as much as possible.

Feel free to ask questions or give some tips or reactions on my posts

Thank you and have fun!