November 13, 2006

EL405: Extreme Progress... but still no title.

proj1_capture1.jpgOver the weekend, I made a tremendous amount of progress on my Project 1 Catholic Social Teaching Game. While I still must overcome many hurdles in getting this game to a finished state, the largest seems to be a title. I can't think of a good title for this thing, and it's killing me! How long must I refer to it by its slang nickname: CSTProj1?

I spent a good amount of time on Saturday actually drawing the locations and objects for the game. As I mentioned in a previous post, all of the environments and objects would be created in Adobe Illustrator and brought over to Flash. By doing so, I have greater control over how things look... it's also much easier, in my opinion, to work with vector lines in Illustrator, since it doesn't break up line segments like Flash does. The two environments in the game are "the coffee shop" (which is strangely modeled after my favorite coffee shop!) and "the apartment."

One of the things I have been working on tonight (after some help from Puff), was creating the invisible buttons for the environments. Both environments are filled with things to click on, and by doing so, various audio clues will be played helping the you learn about the guy you're investigating. Since a number of the objects were built into the background, invisible buttons had to be placed over them. Now, when you roll over an object that you can click on, it enlarges, making it painfully obvious that it is clickable. However, this pop-up technique is only used for the vital clues about CST... there will be some hidden Easter Egg buttons as well!

proj1_capture2.jpgIt's very easy for me to not give away too much... since the story is continually morphing as I develop the game. What was going to be a missing person's case on Friday now is looking more like a personal investigation. The objects and their CST relations are still the same, but the overarching story continues to change. Tomorrow afternoon I plan on doing a little recording studio action in my dorm room, and then implementing the sound with the rest of the game.

Posted by MikeRubino at November 13, 2006 12:28 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Mike, this looks awesome. I can't wait to see it in action.

Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at November 13, 2006 7:03 PM

I wish my game looked as cool as yours. I just can't draw. Well, I can draw puppies, but that's about it (no surprise there, either).

And that totally looks like Kolache. I freaked when I saw the picture (before I read your reference to it). :)

I'll be excited to see how your game works out once you get it uploaded. I am jealous that I can't do something to this caliber, since my talents do not lie in programming or drawing or game creation. (My talents are much more boring.) However, I'm glad to see you use your (way more exciting) talents.

Posted by: Karissa at November 14, 2006 9:08 PM

Though the class was noisy when I tested your game, I thought the design was excellent.

The game isn't really built for college students at the end of the term (because of all the listening), but it does have a message (and I'm drawing that conclusion based on the snippets I could hear over the class).

I'm not quite sure about your target audience. I think the college age group could benefit from your presentation, but I'm not sure if it reaches out to them with the interactivity level. The sound is great and it's funny, but the listening aspect, no offense, is a little lengthy.

I enjoyed the clicking and finding part of your Flash game immensely, and was inspired to do something similar in my game.

I'm not saying that the audio was bad (I like the voices), just rather long.

Posted by: Amanda at November 18, 2006 11:51 AM
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