Game Puzzle Analysis

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker - Earth Temple Mirror Room

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker was a sucessful release in the Zelda series. Thanks to it's new sailing mechanic and cartoonish graphics, it also stood out as one of the most unique releases of the series.

Along with its new features, Wind Waker still held its theme of fighting through monster and puzzle filled dungeons. Out of these dungon puzzles, my favorite is the Mirror room of the Earth Temple.

The Earth temple gives player access to two unique mechanics. The Mirror Shield, which can be used to reflect and direct beams of light in order to active certain switches and stun enemies...

and Medli, a separately controllable character with a reflective harp that has the same abilities as the Mirror Shield.

With these mechanics, combined with the movable mirror statues in the temple, the player has to move and arrange the statues around the room in order to direct two light beams at two different switches, giving player access to the boss room.

One of my favorite aspects of this puzzle is how well introduced it is. As the final puzzle of the dungeon, the player must combine all the mechanics of the Earth Temple from using light beams to damange enimies to using Medli as another mirror to direct the beam light off. They do this via smaller "mini puzzles" which require only one of the new mechanics to complete at a time. This allows players to learn how to utilize the Mirror shield and Medli to tackle harder puzzles like the final room.

If i had to describe the puzzle using the Type Elements i'd say it contains elements of Unusual use of an object, "Building" puzzles, and Sequence puzzles. Unusual use comes from the fact that you're using a shield and a shiny harp as mirrors to direct beams of light. The building aspect comes from the mechanic of arranging the mirror statues in order to create a proper path for the light beams to follow. Finally, the sequence aspects arise when you have to first trigger certain switches in order before the rest of the puzzle can be completed, like moving a statue after triggering a switch so the light can continue on its path.

I believe this puzzle does a great job at making the player feel smart thanks to the difficulty ramp of the mini puzzles before it. It gives the main puzzle this feeling of a "Final Test" for the player to challenge, making its completion much more satisfying

Game Design: Mechanics In Action

 The first one is a gun that shoots clouds! Yellow ones are lightning, Red clouds are hard, blue clouds rise, and purple clouds are super soft! It can be used in so many ways

 The next one is a gun that creates two types of fields, one that slows time and one that speeds it up!

The final one shoots shapes! It can shoot squares, circles and triangles. (of various sizes). It can also cut holes of the same shapes into other objects

Back at it: Game Design ideas

For our next assignment, we're making a prop based off a game mechanic (like a jetpack or rocket boots). Here are some of the ideas I have:

• Gun that shoots two types of disc's that create a field around it that either slows or accelerates time. 
• Revolving "flame" thrower that can alternate between gasoline, acid, and liquid nitrogen.
• Shield that can revolve wrap around the arm to become a gauntlet.
• Cannon that shoots a single ball, attached to a chain (with a reel on the back for reloading).
• Giant longbow that can also be used as jet powered wings.
• Two sided hammer with a vac pump on one side and a pneumatic launcher on the other. (One end intakes, the other shoots it out really fast)
• Gauntlets with a massive spring loaded fist on each end. (can also be used to jump!)
• Gun that shoots mini force actors set to high values that stick to surfaces. (attach mini rockets to stuff)
• Gun that absorbs light from one end and fires it as a high powered laser from the other.
• Cloud launcher that shoots different types of clouds (Some rise, some fall, some are soft, some are thunder clouds, some are poison, etc?)
• Gun that shoots simple shapes (spheres, triangles, cubes), and can also cut holes of the same shapes into objects

Adventures in Game Design 2.0: FPS map analysis

Racing Game Trailer!

Adventures in programming: Time Pilot

For our final programming assignment, we get to recreate an arcade game, me and my partner (Trent Sivek) choose to do Time Pilot.

This is a rather large task as there are a lot of small things that are essential to the game, such as the specific movement paterns of the ship and AI, or the firing function of the ship. The list of tasks are as follows:
Player movement
Player shooting
AI movement (varies per enemy)
AI shooting
Pilot rescue
Boss Spawning
HUD system
Point system
Background

The visuals needed are singnificantly simpler as all the ships pretty much look the same and the background is just blue with clouds. The list of them are as follows:
Player ship
Enemy Ships (varies per level)
Boss ships
Pilots (to rescue)
Particles (like explosions)
HUD/Background

Im quite excited for this

Adventures in programming: Racing HUD

For programing we're now making a HUD for our racing level. 

I added some images of what that'll look like. 

I really love the more minimalistic view that this has, but because my racing level is in a temple and im driving an older car, odds are ill have to go for something more traditional, like the one below.

Heres the idea that i'm hoping to go for, it uses the same look and font as an actual 1969 camaro