So... this is what i come up with in a week for the 534 class...
The plane in the game is constantly pulling down by the gravity and your job is to pull it up by making sound to the microphone. The higher the sound intensity the higher the plane goes. However, you must be careful not to hit anything within the game. The six sided spinning polygons are your enemies, you must peak the sound input in order for the plane to produce a bullet which will kill them off. Orange polygon will move while blue are stationary. IF THE PLANE IS PRODUCING A BULLET EVERY TIME YOU MAKE A SOUND, PLEASE LOWER THE MICROPHONE SENSITIVITY FOR PROPER GAME PLAY.
BTW... if you found this game too difficult... press space bar to cheat... :P
Enjoy~ (hopefully) :)
======= CLICK HERE FOR THE GAME =======
Dynamic Pong is a simple flash game which draws on similar logic as the game “Ink-Pen” in Window Vista. The game allows the user to change the rolling ball’s directions by ‘drawing’ dynamic barricades, meaning that the ball would bounce against the line drew by the player. Dynamic Pong essentially borrowed this idea to redesign the classic Pong game.
In the game, the user will first choose between a ‘free mode’ and a ‘game mode’, the ‘free mode’ is just a practicing playground for players to enjoy controlling a ball using self-drew lines. In the ‘game mode’, things get a little bit more interesting. The player must be able to keep the ball within the screen by blocking it with lines. However, only one continuous line can be drawn at a time and that it will self disappear within 3 seconds so that it is impossible to trap a ball by drawing a line around it. One new ball will be generated every 20 seconds to increase the difficulty of the game. The top and bottom borders would also move to left and right every 30 seconds.
BIGGER ~~~~~~~
Venturebeat has a story of where all those Facebook farming games originated from.
When I was in Tomo's class before graduating, we came up with a mechanic based on stealing for a mobile and social media game concept, so I found the following quote particularly encouraging.
Some fear that this new social farming revolution may not contribute to the positive development of society. A central feature of social farm games in China is stealing vegetables. Official state media People’s Daily reports that 70 percent of users on Kaixin001 cite it as their favorite feature, and it has even spawned the popular phrase “How many vegetables have you stolen today?” This key addictive feature has created news stories of business executives “obsessed” with stealing vegetables and broken relationships over vegetables stolen on the night shift. The game is so addictive — with players setting alarm clocks at all hours of the night to check crops — that it “destroys jobs and relationships.” Simplicity and stickiness are behind the global epidemic of farm games. Anyone can learn to grow crops within minutes and reap a reward for getting friends — or the entire office — addicted too,” said BloggerInsight Co-Founder Lucas Englehardt.
Another fun fact:
Season Xu, the co-founder of Five Minutes Inc. looks to be in the USC business School.
The assignment was to explore a space. This is my interpretation of the assignment. Unfortunately, I wrote the USC piece in AS3 and the Turtle one in AS2, and merging the two was not feasible. So I couldn't really create the integrated piece that I wanted too.
Anyways here are the flash apps :)
Click the green buttons, and after the short clip click the screen to go back to the menu. (This flash app is pretty big, so it might take a bit to load.)
Happy USC flash
Use the arrow keys to navigate and space to shoot. Avoid all cats! My girlfriend Casey helped me make this.
Turtle Fun
http://www.king.com/games/sponsored-games/darkness-the-cage/play/?language=en_US
Darkness: The Cage is a platformer using a similar mechanic to Unfinished Swan... it even acknowledges this in the beginning of the game.
Speaker: Gonzalo Frasca, Co-Founder and CCO, Powerful Robot Games
Time: Wednesday, October 28, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)
Title: Play like you mean it! Videogames & Rhetoric
Please join us for a talk by Gonzalo Frasca, who is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Powerful Robot Games. His talk will describe a framework for understanding how play and games convey ideas through the use of rhetoric rather than rules.
Gonzalo Frasca is a game developer, researcher and entrepreneur, who lives in Montevideo, Uruguay. He co-founded the studio, Powerful Robot Games, in 2002 to build both commercial and experimental games. Their game for Cartoon Network reached over 13 million player accounts. They described it as "our biggest gaming success in our history".
One of their most popular indie projects is Newsgaming.com, a project mixing journalism with videogames. It received the Knight Foundation News Games Lifetime Achievement Award at the Games for Change 2009 conference.
Warning. Nepotism ahead.
Muse Games is holding a contest to find a new, interesting game concept. The winner of the contest receives money and a publishing deal. Most of the stuff there is akin to "You're on a boat and you can go off sweet jumps." Now, that can be fun, but it ain't new. Vincent Diamante and I have an idea that is so sweet that it's sick. So nice that it's nasty.
You are an embedded photojournalist with the most powerful weapon of all: the truth. The pictures you take become resources that can be sold, used to blackmail your enemies, and curry favor in a world where everybody but you is trained to use a gun.
The most current build--a fully playable core mechanic demo--is living on the competition page. Please, so that I can finally be a real adult (Vince doesn't have this problem), go to the IMMUNITY competition website to play and vote for "War Photographer".
Regardless of the competition outcome, this will be an ongoing project. If you're interested in following its development, new iterations will be posted on my main blog roughly twice a month.
Wellness Partners is a collaborative research project about exercise habits and perceived wellness designed by the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Keck School of Medicine, and School of Social Work. The study is coordinated through a partnership with USC's Center for Work & Family Life.
You are invited to help us test a newly developed intervention by participating in very brief activities via the Internet and/or mobile phone over the period of 10 weeks. We will also be taking in-person physical measurements (height and weight) and asking you to answer questions online.
As a token of our appreciation, you may receive up to $45 for participating in the study.
Your participation is voluntary and any information collected during the study will be kept confidential.
Support for this study is provided by a grant from the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
If you have additional questions please read the
Frequently Asked Questions
If you are interested, please email:
WPSTUDY-L@USC.EDU
Phone: 310-933-6648
Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Visual Story TAs on Vimeo.
From Microsoft's Surface Blog:
"I don’t want to put any pressure on Michael and the team over at Carnegie Mellon University, but you guys should be getting an A for your class project this semester. Their Dungeons & Dragons experience called “Surfacescapes” on Microsoft Surface is amazing. This is the future of how computers will aid in board games. Remember, D&D playing aids like this are for serious role playing gamers who might normally use balsa cutouts and not just wimpy printed maps. The computer is has a technical role in the gameplay but the DM and the players are the storytellers. That’s why it doesn’t look exactly like a video game. Not that it isn’t seven shades of wonderful. This is crazy cool stuff for role players – unless your dream is a mashup of Project Natal and LARP. ;)"
This year's annual L.A. County Technology Week is featuring a panel discussion on the video game industry in L.A. The panel will be moderated by WIRED senior editor, Chris Baker, and will feature Kellee Santiago of thatgamecompany( and IMD alum), Alex Hastings of Insomniac Games, Amir Rahimi of EA (he worked with Steven Spielberg on their Boom Blox games), Chris Hewish of Dreamworks animation and a "yet to be named" panelist from Infinity Ward, makers of the "Call of Duty" series of games. There will also be an interactive exhibit area where attendees can play the games produced by our panelists' game studios.
They have given us a bunch of special student discount codes. Students who register online by the 17th using the code will be given a $70 discount on the $85 ticket price (need to show valid student I.D. when you arrive at the event and receive your passes). Tickets include attendance to all panel discussions, a buffet luncheon and our keynote speaker. I have cards with the details and the discount code - will hand out at seminar and leave rest at IMD front(back) desk.
(following Peter Brinson's example, I am shamelessly promoting my class)
Preliminary Syllabus Outline*
draft syllabus
CTIN492L - Experimental Game Topics (TTh 5-6.50pm - with serious coffee break...)
Instructor: Marientina Gotsis
Overview. This course will prepare students for designing interactive media-based health “interventions”, such as sensor-based games on mobile platforms. We will review priority health areas in the US health system, as well as emerging markets and technologies, key topics in public health, behavior, neuroscience and social networks. Students will be mentored through project case studies in focused areas (e.g., obesity, autism, cancer, rehabilitation). Students will be given the opportunity to generate ideas, design and playtest paper and digital prototypes in their area of interest, as well as randomly picked topics during lab exercises. Assignments will be individual and group-based.
Goal. The goal of the course is to increase student awareness of healthcare challenges from individuals to groups and communities, cultivate design empathy from multiple perspectives (consumer, patient, health professional, designer, engineer) and foster a spirit of understanding toward collaborative design. Whereas pure entertainment may focus more on the player experience rather than the message, health interactives require equal consideration to both user/player and message. Students will be challenged to think beyond pure entertainment and understand holistic issues of design that take into account the user/players’ overall mental and physical health, environmental factors, social networks, and scalability issues, as well as the economics that govern healthcare issues. Students will be required to communicate issues based on their diverse perspectives in order to help identify stakeholder interests in health interactives.
Structure. The class will spend the initial part of the semester understanding key concepts, reviewing current literature and evaluating prior art in this area. The class will also cover basic skills in prototyping, playtesting, study design and evaluation. The class will create a series of small prototype exercises from which to draw ideas and experience for individual and group projects. During the final half of the semester, the class will work together in groups to design, playtest, and produce, one or more class projects depending on class size and expertise.
NO PREREQUISITES REQUIRED.
BOTH GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATES ELIGIBLE FOR CREDIT.
* The course will be quite different from last year - focused more on hands on design and critique/discussion with an eclectic readings list reviewing special topics in design, health, behavior, technology, and interactive media including games (no book). Many thanks to the students who helped us pilot this class last semester. Suggestions very welcome so long as you're honest but nice :)
Two new classes for Spring 2010. They are listed in the Schedule of Classes. You can email me with questions:
CTIN 485 - Advanced Game Development - Experimental 3D Prototyping (Thurs 1-3pm)
During this 2 unit course, students will develop four to five 3D game prototypes using the development tool Unity 3D (http://unity3d.com).
As you may predict, we are doing a number of projects so that students will experiment with any an all aspects of 3D games. And we will endorse Tracy's attitude here: http://interactive.usc.edu/members/tfullerton/archives/010462.html
In CTIN 532 we've been using Unity and people have been quite happy. Unity makes executables for mac/pc, can be in a browser (like Flash), and make iPhone apps.
So I want to extend the experience to everyone who is interested.
CTIN 499 - Fundamentals of Procedural Media (Thurs 10-1pm)
I designed this 2 unit course for anyone who is interested in spending more time thinking and working with code (or is learning to program for the first time). We will be using Processing (http://www.processing.org).
Also, this fulfills the B.A. requirement for CS 101. So you can take CTIN 499 instead.
From the syllabus:
This course is an introduction the procedural nature of interactive media. What distinguishes interactive media from other expressive forms is based on the computer's unique ability to execute rules. This is the practice of the computer programmer - writing instructions to make complicated systems out of simple processes. The interactive artist writes code that creates meaning and representation, as opposed to the film director, the playwright, and the novelist, who author the representation itself. This course is not focused on learning a specific language, but to help the future game designer, 3D modeler, interactive writer, and, indeed, software engineer to become procedurally literate.
The idea of failure as a core part of the design process has come up a lot recently, and I was reminded by another blog post about the rant that I gave at GDC 2006 as part of the IGDA Academic Summit. I realized that I never posted this rant, so thought I would do so now since it seems to have become topical again. Enjoy!
The topic of my rant is ‘failure.’ Obviously, none of us likes to fail. Especially students. Students are terrified of failing. They are so afraid of failing that they often forget that university is the one place where they should fail. Where they are -- or should be -- in an environment that rewards the type of intellectual and artistic risk-taking that leads to failure 99 percent of the time. Because failure is an integral part of exploring new idea spaces.
Peanut Gallery is really proud to announce that Minor Battle, Andre Clark's thesis project, has won two big awards at Indiecade 2009 -- the Audience Choice Award and the Finalist Choice Award! These awards were selected by the audience and other Indiecade finalists by secret ballot, so winning these awards means a lot for Peanut Gallery... we're overwhelmed by the recognition from our peers in the independent games community and feel great about the positive reaction from people playing the game in Culver City.
In case you missed Jamie's earlier post about it or don't know us already, Peanut Gallery is a new independent studio founded by myself, Andre, Jamie, and John, all four of us graduates from the IMD MFA program in 2009. Come check us out at our new website: peanutgallerygames.com.
This Thursday in CTIN 532: Interactive Experience and World Design, Casey Alt and Patrick Jagoda of Duke University will be Skyping in for a guest presentation on their project (created with Tim Lenoir) Emergence. Still in the alpha stages, Emergence is a MMOG that invites players to rebuild a post-apocalyptic, BSG-esque world along axes of diplomatic, economic and social dynamics. All are welcome to join us for the remote presentation, Thursday 9/29 roughly 12:00-1:00 in the ZML.
We invite your child to help us test an innovative game and game controller designed for children ages 6-12.
Your child’s participation is requested for a play session that will last 30-60 minutes at USC’s Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab.
As a token of our appreciation, your family will receive a gift certificate for $15 from a major retailer. Parking can be made available at no cost.
Your participation is voluntary and any information collected during the study will be kept confidential.
The study is collaboration between USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and UCLA’s Center for Autism Research and Treatments.
If you are interested, please email:
mgotsis@cinema.usc.edu
I recently went to GDC Europe to speak on a panel with several other female game designers, including our own Kellee Santiago. In planning the panel, we all agreed we didn't want to do yet another typical women in games panel and brainstormed ways we could make it more interesting for ourselves and the audience.
One of the things we decided to do was give ourselves a mini design challenge, to explore whether we as designers really do approach process differently than our male colleagues. For example, would we make a war game with a different emphasis? So we tried it. At the panel, I presented an idea for a war game with a core mechanic of holding hands. Kellee presented ideas for a war game about the emotion of fear. The audience seemed to really enjoy the way we structured the panel, and here is a nice write up about it.
Our first trailer for the official XBLA version of The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom! Enjoy!
