Summary: Run around the world taking pictures! You may take pictures anywhere you want to build your gallery, but to complete the game, take pictures at all of the ‘picture spots’ (represented by yellow star effects). (Warning: We didn’t actually add an ending…. so all you’ll really get from collecting all of the picture spots is a sense of satisfaction.) You can also take pictures of anything you think is interesting.
Controls: Movement: w, a, s, d or arrow keys to move, space bar to jump and double jump Camera: Go into picture mode with ‘c,’ use the spacebar to take photos, and and view your gallery with ‘g.’
Play a single player game by pressing ‘Start.’ You can also play multiplayer! (Doesn’t change gameplay, you just run around in the same world)
Multiplayer setup:
Create a server by pressing ‘Start’
Give your IP address to whoever else wants to play with you
(if you’re like me and you don’t know how to find your IP address – go to the cmd window and type ipconfig. The IPv4 number is your address)
Joining players should type the hosts IP address into the field on the start screen, and press ‘connect’
We’ve tested up to 7 players at once… I don’t know if there’s a limit.
Summary: Create
your own RPG hero and pit him or her against 3-6 of your friends in a contest
of strength and skill! Complete short missions to increase your character’s level,
build your score, and earn money. Use in-game and real-world money to buy items
to boost your own capabilities – or make things interesting by using items to
hinder the progress of your competitors! The hero with the highest score at the end of
the competition will be deemed the champion.
Platform: Mobile
devices!
Hook (as devs): Use real-world money as an offensive weapon against your friends!
***This is a rough idea I had and I would love feedback! Right now the shell of “RPG Hero” is pretty liquid – it could really be all sorts of things. The main concept is the idea of using real-world money as an offensive weapon against your friends. I thought this could be a new type of motivator to spend a little money.
Just imagine the possibilities – your friend is on a date, and you and the other competitors can spam him with $1 ‘urgent missions’. ***
Create Your Hero:
Choose a name and class (mage, thief, warrior)
Class determines offensive and defensive capabilities
Use the character creator to customize a look for your hero
Choose Your Opponents:
Choose 3-6 friends that you will be competing against
Set duration of contest (minimum of 1 day, maximum of 7 days)
In-game “coin toss” (or maybe rock, paper, scissors?) determines who will name
the country in which you are competing
The winner of the contest becomes the champion of this country, and has a badge
added to his or her in-game profile
Receive Your Quests: (more Quest concepts at bottom of doc)
The meat of the gameplay, you will receive quests to
complete during the duration of your competition.
They will be spaced out depending on the length of your competition. For
example:
If you are competing over 7 days, you will receive 2-3 quests a day by default
If you are competing over one day, you will receive 1 quest every 2-3 hours
Maybe you can specify times of day that are off limits? For example if you go
to school or your job doesn’t allow for short breaks. J
For the best possible score, complete the quest soon after you receive it! If
you wait too long, the quest will be considered a failure. (Negative repercussions?)
Quests are a variety of short bursts of gameplay (2-3min max). Examples:
Slay as many monsters as possible 2-3min
Find all of the treasure chests in 2-3 min
Find your way through a dungeon in 2-3 min
Battle for Supremacy!
All quests increase your level and give you money to buy
special items
Level:
Basic minimum offense/defense boost
Unlocks different abilities automatically
Maybe a branching skill trees allow you to build offensive or defensive power
in your own missions, or boost offensive or defensive power against your fellow
competitors (so your strategy totally depends on the play style of your
opponents)
Items:
There are several different types of items you may purchase with in-game money
or real money (see below) or find on missions:
Items which act on your hero:
Boost offensive power in game to help you on your missions
Boost defensive power in game to help you on your missions
Defend against attacks from your competitors
Give you advantages in specific types of quests. Examples:
HUD which leads you directly to the map in dungeon quests
An AOE attack which you can use a limited number of times in the enemy hordes
quests
Items which act on your competitors’ heroes:
Weaken the offensive power a select competitor for the duration of one mission
Weaken the defensive power of a select competitor for multiple missions
Add an extra mission for a competitor to complete
Decrease the time limit in which a competitor may complete a mission
Remove a select item from a competitor (only items which act on their own
offensive or defensive capabilities)
Knock a competitor down a level
Score & Rank:
At the end of the competition, the winner is determined by a score which is
made up of multiple factors:
How well you did on your individual quests
How much time passed before you completed each quest/if you let any quests fall
off
Badges
At the end of each competition, heroes will receive various badges for how they
did overall (a la Rock Band). Examples:
Monster Slayer: Most enemies defeated over the course of the contest
Treasure Hunter: Most treasure chests found over the course of the contest
All stats for all heroes will be on display throughout the course of the
contest
Boost your Odds
(Microtransactions)
Use real-world money to purchase additional items
Items which are available with in-game money will be naturally weighted towards
items which affect your own character
By using real-world money, you will be able to purchase more items which affect
your competitors – and yes, fight dirty.
Notifications
All adversarial games are best when you know what your
competitors are doing! Notifications will be sent to your phone:
Whenever a competing hero completes a quest or purchases an item
Whenever the ranking of heroes changes
Whenever a hero uses an item against another hero
Notifications will include images of your characters (funny!)
After the Contest is
Over…
You will lose your level and score
You may keep your customized hero and hero name, if you wish
You will keep any badges that you have earned, which will be displayed in your
user profile
There could even be an overall leaderboard for number of wins, or number of
different types of badges
The VV Game Jam was this Saturday!! We had 14 hours (soft deadline) to make a game. The theme was Upside-down.
Our team was my usual game jam team (Issam, Chad, Suresh), plus Tim Tillotson. We used Unity.
Knowing that we would be demoing the game in one of the meeting rooms that was recently updated with a giant flatscreen monitor, Suresh had an idea about having a game with components which ran on the monitor as well as our iphones/ipads. We brainstormed a number of ideas around this concept - a Star Trek concept (yes, another one) where different devices displayed different information (navigation, weapons, etc), a sort of AR scavenger hunt (using the Virtual VV I created a few months ago) where the leader (monitor) would send people through the office to neutralize ghosts or something using the phone's GPS to update his map.
We decided that it would be best to pursue a pretty standard, proven-out style of gameplay so that we could focus on the technical side of making the devices all work together - so we went with a 3 vs. 1 shooting game. For the subject matter we resurrected an old idea about whaling: the concept being that whales are actually trying to destroy the world, so the Japanese are justified in whaling (I had made a particularly distasteful joke after watching The Cove).
The gameplay is 3 fishermen vs. 1 whale. As a fisherman, you flip your device upside-down to sent out a radar signal to find the whale. (Where the theme comes into play)
The rest of the description is taken from Suresh's VV blog Post:
We created a single project that would run on all devices and the PC. When you load the game, you choose what you are, the TV, a fisherman, or the whale. The TV is the host, while the fisherman and whale are clients. Tim set up a matchmaking server, so technically they all connect to a game specified by name. Thanks to Unity we were able to deploy the same game to an iPhone 3GS, iPad1/2 and an Android Tablet without too much trouble, there were of course rendering discrepancies and performance problems on certain devices, but everything just seemed to work across the board!
The TV:
On the TV we show an overview of the ocean. We draw all the fisherman boats but not the whale. The idea is that the Fisherman have to hunt for the whale. They have the ability to send out a sonar ping, which will send a message to the TV to send a sonar signal from their current location. If a whale is in the nearby vicinity, the Whale’s last location will appear as a red blip.
The Fishermen
The Fisherman get a 3rd person view of their boat and their surroundings. We tried to make the view more occluded, by adding in fog, but we had trouble making it work on the mobile devices as well as it did on PC, so unfortunately you could see the whale from pretty far away. The Fisherman can move with the motion controls, tap to shoot projectiles, or turn the device upside down to send out the sonar ping.
The Whale
The Whale gets a top down view similar to the TV but zoomed in. The Whale can move and shoot like the Fisherman, but they have slightly more responsive motion controls. They also do more damage to the Fishermen than the Fishermen do to the Whale.
