CS 108 - Game Study

I have been playing games since I was born. I learned how to play Chinese Chess at 3, video games at 6 and continue to discover new games around me. Game is an essential part that makes me who I am today. Therefore when I decided to choose one of the elective course, CS 108 - Game Study is my first choice, and the course even exceeds my expectation.

There are so much more purposes and types of games that I have never known before. For me, playing game is to have fun, challenge myself and earn the happiness of victory or the experience from defeat. After taking the course, I learn that some games are made so that we can understand each other, feel other people's feelings, have a environment that we can put ourselves into their position and then look at things in a different prospective.

Reading about games, watching videos about how game can benefit us help me understand more about the importance of game in our life. Then I learned about GameMaker, a software that can turn beautiful but simple ideas into a wonderful game easily. I enjoy spending my time to apply all the ideas I have had since I was a little kid to make my own games, played by my own rules.

Moreover, the final presentation helped to bring us together. I can learn what other people think about game, beautiful ideas my classmates have put into their games, and have a chance to show our game to the whole class. I feel proud making a game with my group, and the pride keeps growing when I presented it to the whole class, and take down comments, compliments, ideas I can add to. It is like creating my own world with piece by piece contributed by people around, and the feeling is wonderful.

Blog 8 - Dogfight

To do our final project, our group of four: Jeffrey Tran, Hoai Nguyen, Marlowe De Vera, and me Huy Nguyen work together to make an aircraft shooting game. Marlowe and Hoai are in charge of the art work, Jeffrey and I are in charge of programming and design. We came up with the ideas of different type of enemies and we have to do different mechanics for each one of them. For example for meteors, you cannot should down meteors, all you can do is to move out of their way. On another hand you cannot hide from heat-seeking missile as it always follows you, the only way to take down the missiles is to shoot them down before they reach you. I made the game so that if you cannot shoot all the missiles down then you are dead but Jeff thought it was too hard so he changed the gameplay: once you left the missiles behind, they never follow you.
We still need more work on the boss level and add several enemies to add the variety of mechanics to the game. One of the enemies I thought about is the shielded bomber. Its ability is to have shield on for several seconds and off for 1 second. If you shoot it while it is shielded, it will explode and kill the player, you have to time it right to shoot it right at the time the shield is down.
The boss should have all mechanics of meteors, missile and bomber. The boss' cannon will be shielded and we need to time to take it down, it the cannon is destroyed, it will be torn off and flying toward us. The boss also shoot random missiles at the player. Those are all the ideas and designs we have in mind, we will try to implement it and make the game better.