Testons NtN

Bonjour tout le monde,

Je viens tout juste de terminé mon prototype de maîtrise, il s'appel NtN. Si vous êtes intéressé à tester le jeu vous pouvez.

TESTONS LE JEU

Si vous êtes du genre à vouloir comprendre le jeu vous pouvez lire le tutoriel. Et vous pouvez visionner un vidéo tutoriel aussi qui explique en profondeur le jeu.

LISONS LE TUTORIEL

SUPER VIDÉO QUI EXPLIQUE EN PROFONDEUR

Et maintenant, si vous êtes vraiment gentils, vous pourriez remplir un petit questionnaire sur le jeu afin de m'aider dans à terminer ma maîtrise.

QUESTIONNAIRE VRAIMENT TROP GENTILS

Merci encore

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Hello everyone.

I just finished my little prototype for my master's, it's called NtN and if you would like to test it you are more than welcome.

LET'S TRY THE GAME

There is a little tutorial to learn more about the game.

LET'S READ IT

Since, you are really nice and you want to help with my research, you could complete a little survey about the game.

LITTLE SURVEY

Thank you

Summer break is over now!

Hello,

After spending a month in Nice France and an other month coming back to Canada. I am ready to continue my work on the sequel of Number to Number Combat. So far I like to use the code name NtN as Number to Number. It is kind of lame name but well it is a code name. Since I have been back, I worked on a new article for a journal, it is half done. I find it really hard to focus on the work when you can go outside and play in the sun. Although, this new article is about my new approach to Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA), as discussed in the last post, my last approach did not work the way I was expecting in Number to Number Combat. So I have been thinking about a new cheap (as easy) way to approach the problem of DDA. I saw a lot of model that were really complicated to implement and design. I want something easy enough to be design on any kind of games.

So how can I achieved that? well I think I found a good approach, but I still have to work on the algorithms to control some variables. So I will introduce the model in a couple weeks.

Meanwhile, I was going to implement NtN using GameMaker, but I changed my mind recently. As a sequel I think I have to use Flash again, more for the game's result than for the platform. I am designing NtN based on the comment I got on Newgrounds for Number to Numer Combat. My DDA system is important for my research at the university, so I have to make sure the result of the sequel are from the same kind of player. So that is the first reason why I changed my development from game maker to as3.

Number to Number Combat was implemented using Flash and FlashDevelop, I really liked to worked with actionScript 3 but not really when it is embedded with Flash. The only strong side I can see working with flash and flashdevelop is when you are more an artist than a developer. It is really easy to modify your art and see the result in the game. But it is a pain in the a.. to program, because you always have to come back to flash for all the little thing existing in the game. For example, if I want to had a little text in the top corner to see the value of a certain variable. Well I have to go to flash add a little piece of text, put it dynamic, give it a variable name that I can program and link it to a class. That little class is actually an empty class, so at the end of your project you have a million of empty classes that you need in order to control your game. I did like that approach, so I decided to keep working with ac3 but I changed the platform a little bit, I am now using Flex, which is open source and free. So far, it is really good, it is code-oriented and easier to debug than using Flash.

So far I finished a little tutorial that is really good : Tutorial. It was really interesting and easy to follow, I really like that the guy is using advance programming structure to implement the game. By the end you have more than just a little program, you will have a structure that cool be used with any kind of games. So if you are looking to learn ac3, you should check it out.

Hopefully you all having a wonderful summer.

John

The making of Number to Number Combat

I just got back from a conference in Valencia and it gave me plenty of ideas. I did a presentation about adaptive game mechanics, specifically on my adaptive model in Number to number combat. During my research last semester I got to learn about different adaptive models. I really appreciate the Dynamic Dyfficulty Adjustment (DDA) mixed with the flow design approach model from Jenova Chen.

I was really inspired by DDA back in 2009, so when I made Number to Number combat, I thought it will be great if the game had DDA, it would be more playable. So I was looking for a model that will always give a good challenge to the player. For example, if the player is strong, the AI will be stronger and if he is weak, the AI will be weaker. I wanted to combine the player experience with a great challenge.

The model uses the player's health after a combat, based on the level, the next NPC will have a certain level of difficulty : Low -> Easy : Normal -> Normal : High -> Hard (Health level - difficulty). In general the experience should always be interesting for the player.


So if you have played the game you can tell that the model fails monumentally at it's job. The game is not harder or easier for the player, the challenge is always about the same level and the player gets pretty bored after 10 or 15 combats. So what is the problem here? How can we fix it?

In general there are some mistakes with the DDA system and design issues. The DDA system does not use enough player data. For example, the system should use the time spent on a combat, number of good/bad answers, time spent answering, etc. By using more data it is possible to have a better knowledge of the type of player we are dealing with.

On the design side, the game has good basic game mechanics, but really poor decision making and narration. For any kind of proper game, these are essential for longer lasting fun. In light of this argument, Number to Number combat is not a proper game it is more of a prototype.

For the next few months I will work on a remake of Number to Number combat using classic adventure game mechanics and basic RPG systems. I will post more information about my design process soon.

No game for this month

Hello,

This month is been really crazy, me and my girlfriend spent 2 weeks in England, it was awesome. England is so much cooler (and more fun) than I thought it would be. We went up to the Giant's causeway, it was amazing, the roman baths are so cool, the national gallery is so amazing, there is so much you can do.

Meanwhile, I learned that I earned a bunch of money from school, why? Hum good question.it is a scholarship. So I decided to spend a little bit of that money on a nice reflex camera, Nikon D40x.

It made me think about artistic expression. Games, for me, are a way to express myself in an artistic way. Art could be seen as a way to express yourself, express your ideas, express your feelings, express who you are, etc. Expression is the key word here. In my last video game DeForest, I expressed the feeling I had when I saw forest vanished in order to build human constructions. I think by playing the game, you get a good idea of that feeling. Expressing something is part of what makes me want to continue in the video game industry. In a lot of my games I tried to express something.

So in the last year, I expressed myself using video games as a medium. Lately, I rediscovered self expression with an other medium, photography. Photography is a powerful medium, you can express a lot of ideas in images that you cannot express in other media. As they say, picture is worth a thousand words. So how do I make my pictures express thousands of words? What should I express, how should I express myself? So far, I am still using my camera to make "pretty" pictures, so I guess I am trying to express beauty... I am thinking about making a photo album about movement with inanimate objects.

Here is an example to express my point. The shadow and the contrast int this picture help to visualize a sort of movement from the left to the right. The curve on the stone makes our eyes roll over the picture. There is one guy standing out a little more than the others, it 's like he is going to pass them. You have the impression that you are looking at a sort of carousel.

If you would like to see some of my work you can check out my Picasa Web Album. I added a widget on the side too.

All I have been able to think about this month was photography, but I had an idea for this month's experimental gameplay project. The theme was 10 seconds, I had in mind a kid's game, you know those games where you have to put the form in their place. Like the picture on the top of this post. So it is pretty easy to do, you just click on the form and move it to the right place. So you have 10 seconds to replace the objects into their places. The challenge arises when, clouds, earthquakes, tremors (mouse shaking) and more get into the game. And we think playing baby games is to0 easy, maybe that how it is for them? What is the life of a baby really like?

Cradboard Animation for Phono Alliance

Check this out, its an animation video from Phono Alliance's artist : Jade

DeForest

Be the first one to dominate the nature of this world. Be the mankind's best architect.

PLAY HERE

DeForest is a sim city like, where you are the new Architect of the town. You have to fill up the whole map with man's constructions in less years as possible. Its pretty simple you left click to choose a construction, right click to cancel. At first, the game is pretty slow, make sure you have enough money to put 2 houses and 1 industry. Otherwise you will go in the red, when you are there, there is no coming back.

Here the constructions : House (H), Industry (I), Mall (M), Hospital (O), Mine (N), Fuel Pump (P), Tractor Industry (T) and Farm (F). Reset (R)

I made this game in a couple of days, like 5 days. It is my first game using GameMaker v 8.0. It was a real treat to use. At first I got really confused with the drag drop, but when I found I could use code inside the drag and drop, everything started to be easier. Well I recommend GameMaker to everyone that would like to make a game and have it pretty easy. I really like that I spend as much time designing as coding the game. Usually I spend a lot more time coding then designing the game.

This game is not met to be hard, but to be joyful while you are dominating the environment and putting your houses/industries down. The mechanics of the game are based on expending the human world over the fragile nature. The game represents the euphoria that human have when they start to be in control of a situation and have a lot of gain. In other words, at first the game is slow, you have to wait to earn money, but you stay patient. When you have enough industries, the flow of the game accelerates to a paste where it is hard for you to keep up with the constructions compare to the income. Then you get really into the power you have over the environment, you are in control...

For the music, I had a super idea for a song with a guitar, but I do not have any guitar with me in Paris. So I choose this song : Son House - How to Treat a Man. The effect is lovely; the music has a super effect while you are playing. The music express a sort of melancholic pain, like you really want something, but it is really hard to reach it. That is how the song speaks to me. Then I needed a vision for the graphics, I wanted something as primitive as the song is. While I was at Orsay's museum in Paris, I had the opportunity to see a couple of painting from Van Gogh, I really enjoy how his paintings are simple and complex at the same time. It's like a 10 year old's painting but not at the same time, I do not know there is something so special about his work. So I wanted something like that for my game, I think I achieved the part where it's like a 10 year old's graphics, I am still looking for complexity... Well that how I created my game, I hope you enjoy it.

J Tremblay

Live from Paris

Hello everyone,

It's been a crazy month, I just moved to Paris for the semester. I spend a lot more time in finding a place to live than I originally planned (took us 1 week and half). After that I had to start school. So I was not able to make a game for this month theme on experimental gameplay project.

I had a good idea and I will probably do it next month. It is my goal. I was thinking about a sort of mix of simcity meet a beautiful forest. The background is from my week in Toronto, I was in richmond hill. I was talking with my girlfriend's mum, she was saying how everything here and there used to be beautiful forest and now its full of townhouses. I am not use to that, where I am from the development is so little, that the forest is still everywhere. I was concern about the lost of the forest, well i like the forest. So I though that would be a good idea for a game, you start with 100 squares of forest, the goal is to fill up all the forests' square with human constructions. For now I will go play with blender/python a little.



PS life in Paris is crazy as hell, super cold and super crownded.
PSS I am from Canada, but cold is so different here.

An Apple a Day... Doctor - Explained

An Apple a Day... Doctor is an art game, well it's trying to be an art game. In other words, the game is trying to vehicle a message by his mechanics or some people might say gameplay. I wont used gameplay because of the lack of cohesion in the definition. A couple of games can be mentions as such art game (pretty classic) : Passage, Braid, Marriage, etc. These games vehicle a message from their game mechanics. And An Apple a Day tries to vehicle a message from his mechanics too.

In An Apple a Day, you play as the Doctor, you role is to be the doctor that you want. So as a player you explore the possibilities of the mechanics and you discover different meaning too your actions. A way to play An Apple a Day is to find the more "ending" possible. I would say the way to play this game is by trying to understand your action as a doctor and understanding the effect of your choices.

You can consider the game finish when you found four "ending" but I can tell you that there is still a little more to find. The game is all about choices, it is normal to feel a little confused about the actions you make at first. The actions all make sense after a few play.

You can play the Game :

HERE

READ THIS PART AFTER PLAYING

Is there any message? By looking at the game and the title you can figure out that the theme is : An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Well at first I though that will be could to avoid the doctor as an "human" and by eating apple the doctor will just go away. The idea sounds pretty straight forward, but the problem was the game will turn out into a sort of avoiding game with a theme. I wanted to play the theme, not to add a theme to some mechanics. So I turned out the game, what would happen if the player was the doctor. I first I was going to make the inverse of an avoider game, like running after everything green in the screen, but after playing I wish I were the moon Daniel Benmergui. I was looking for something smooth and relax. I took a little bit of the structure of finding different "ending" according to the choices of the player.

This allowed me to really explore the meaning of choices. If the player eat all the apples in the games, there is no way the npc could heal them self other then the doctor bringing them the hospital. So the player just fill up the hospital. If the player play again and decide to wait a little bit, the NPC will heal them self and just one will stay there, sick. So the player will go help him, because there is no way he could get an apple. In that case, the player really understood what the game is about, it is about acting when it is the right time, when people need you. So the player knows his role. After that, by exploring the rest of the possibilities, by thinking, you can understand what everything means. I am not going to spoiled the rest of the game... you will have to find yourself.

Thank you to Frank, Max and Simon for helping testing.

Number to Number Combat on Math Nook

Hello Everyone,

Great new Number to Number Combat just joined Math Nook.

Math Nook is a website full of Math Games, I hope the game will do great there. Teachers use the website as a teaching tool.

You can play Number to Number Combat here.

Number to Number Combat

Hello,

This month is been a super busy week, master study are a little more work than I thought it will be. Here my first game using flash.

PLAY HERE

The game is quite simple, by finding the right answer to the equation you hit your opponent, he does the same thing. You level up after each level. This game is made for the theme for October at experimental gameplay project. The game is not really hard, you learn the mechanics and master them in about three fights. The challenge was for me, it is my first game using flash, I was a good experience, except for the preloader. Otherwise, flash is really well made to design and change the content easily.

I hope your enjoy the game as much as I enjoyed making it.

Enigma Machine

Hello everyone,

Recently I have been working for the university as a spoke men for computer science. So I decided for the cause to program the Enigma Machine used by the German during WWII. It was used for encryption and decryption of messages.

I know this is not a game but I thought the thing was pretty cool. So I put here to share it with the world wide web.

DOWNLOAD HERE

If anyone is interested in seeing the code, it build using XNA/C#, I will be more than willing to send it to you.

Failure on Clubic

Well, I was so excited when I found out that Clubic.com (a French website about everything touching computers) post my little game on their website with a super review. That is pretty amazing and I am really happy about it. The game is going way farther than I though it will go.

CHECK THIS LINK

Merci beaucoup à tout le monde qui a téléchargé et joué à mon jeu.

Well I am so excited to make other games. On the website they found a little trick so you can get more points. That would explain why the scores are so high - last time I checked it was 73. I made the game and my best performance is 28, so I suck at my own game now. Well I never though that I would said that, but that is cool to suck at your own game!

Failure (Minimalist)

Hey everyone,

After talking with one of my old art teacher, I decided to change my concept a little bit. The changes are to make this game like a minimalist work. I haded some music from Alva Noto, change the graphics based on minimalist work (full black on white) and I change the sounds. I think the changes made the game looks even better, but its more a matter of taste. Actually the game would be presented in about a month at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (Oeuvre de l'autre).

DOWNLOAD HERE

Music from : Alva Noto

Failure : Experimental Gameplay

Well, this month is been a lot more busy than I thought it would be. First I just started my master, I am working on an other game for the Xbox (Indie Games) and I just joined the university's badminton team too.

This month theme was really hard for me, I just could not find any good idea. As French my first language, failure sounds really alike "Faille", well actually just the beginning match. I came up with a concept of a game, where the player, by rotating some rectangles pieces, have to make them pass the sort of a "Faille" in English breach. After a couple of research about the word failure, I discover that you could said that a breach is like a failure, some discussion could be done here.


I think the game is just a little prototype for some base mechanics. I was thinking that some special blocks would add a lot to the game, like red that makes the breach bigger, yellow would slow down the blocks, blue would give more points, etc. It took me three days to make the game.

Controls : Rotate with left or right keys or A n D.
Make the form going faster with Space.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Game Idea : J Tremblay
Music by : MMANNYY

A look back on Strip The Forest Bare

I learned a lot from reading comments, playing and making Strip the Forest Bare. Here some of my observations.

What went Good :

• The game is working great, there is no apparent bug (As one of my first games that is something that matters).
• The drawing is cute.
• The online Highscore is working good too (It was my first time programming online connection).
• I had good comments about the poem at the end.
  
• In general the game is OK.
  

What went Wrong :

• The game is not fun enough. The challenge increase but not the fun. If I was Valve I would had cancel my project and start it all over again. Since I am not and I was doing the one week challenge, well I just could not do it all again.
• The controls are a little off, it took a little bit of adaptation to understand how to cut the trees perfectly.
• There is nothing special about it, so why the player would play the game. The game is just a little dull, the player is always doing the same thing, the game doesn't reinvent itself after a while, so I think that is where the game starts to be dull.

In general I am trying to learn from my mistakes, by imposing myself to keep everything as minimum as possible, I made the mistake to not listen to the game itself, but only to my base idea. I think that were all the problems came from.

Here my super algorithm about games:

Exprimental Gameplay : Strip the Forest Bare

Strip the Forest Bare is a little game where you play Thiery a lumberjack. Thiery likes to make money by cutting down trees, but the bears are not happy about it and will try to stop him. In other words you play a lumberjack, in order to make money you have to avoid bears and cut trees down.

You can download the game here.

This game is an entry to the Experimental Gameplay Project for the month of august, the theme was "Bare Minimum". I tried to think about something with pixels and 8-bit sounds to keep the game as minimum as possible. In the mean time I could not stop thinking about the kid poem's :

Fuzzy Wuzzy
Was a Bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy
Had no Hair...

So I decided to include bears in my game cause of the rhyme, I came up with a game where the player is making money by destroying the bears' home. I am not really an environmental activist, I thought that the metaphor of destroying someone's home to make money was just something that could make people think, myself included. So in regards to the minimum of the theme, I tried to keep all the controls as minimum as possible; walking and cutting. The same applied to the bears' AI, when you are close enough they will chase you otherwise they wander around. As for the bare part of the theme well, try to strip the forest bare.

Thanks Hades for the music.

I hope you enjoy the game as I enjoy making it.

Phono Alliance on Co-Optimus

That is amazing we got an article on the Co-optimus website.

Here the link

Phono Alliance in the Dream Build Play contest

Phono Alliance is now an official entry in the Dream Build Play contest. You can check it out here. You can also view all the other entries in the game gallery.

Gameplay Video : Phono Alliance

There is the video for Phono Alliance, it will be used as our entry for the Dream Build Play challenge.We hope the game will be well received by the XBOX community.


Music by Cyrerin.

Annoucement : Phono Alliance on XBOX

Phono Alliance is the first title of Soft Hope to come out on XBOX. It's a procedural music based platformer, single and mutiplayer game.

The player will have to prove to the village that he can be usefull, especially to the Butcher. The Butcher is the player’s first and last foe. The player will have to venture into an exotic dinosaur infested land, an oversized baby playroom, a port full of pirates and a quiet village. In every level, there will be something different to do like protecting the oversized baby from the oversized teddy bears, growing a dinosaur’s egg, protect the pot of gold from the pirates and etc. For more experienced players, the game provides an intense mode with more precise beats, more enemies and more things to do.

In other words the game can be resume as a sort of a Patapon meets Mario type game. It is a free moving plateformer, but for every action of the player (defence, speed, attack) the players have to push the buttons at the right tempo in a 4/4 structure. Well it seems hard to understand, but it works real nice. The game is coop game too, I think that where the game is a it's best.