CAGD ePortfolio

     Making a late-game type level is incredibly difficult. I had my idea of making the player climb up, but I wasn’t really able to implement that. I couldn’t really think of a layout for a room that wasn’t having the player zigzag up the room. Although, according to my playtesters, what was in the level was pretty good. At least I was able to avoid the “no clear way to the exit” problem I had with my tutorial level. It was a simple “gather the keys to unlock the exit” type level, and unlike my tutorial level, there was actually a point to it.      Players generally praised the way I set up my keys, as you need two keys to unlock the exit, but there are 3 in total. You can get the first key through an easy or hard route, and then you have to get the second key by passing through some enemies. When getting the second key, I put in a weapon deleter that takes out the Nado so you have to jump through a bunch of enemies to get to the top of the room. There’s a...

     During this playtest, it seems that I have done a lot better than last time (even though I didn’t really do much). I took into consideration what my playtesters said last time, and so I changed up a route in the middle of the map that would force people to take one path or the other. That would be my bottleneck, and I think that room was what made a bunch of people lost previously. Last time, it was just a really long ladder. Other than that, I changed around a few enemies, and made sure that it was obvious where you could and couldn’t go. One thing that I made sure of for this version (but was technically not noticeable) is that you can fall and not die. For example, in the very first room, you can fall to the left and be in another room. Previously the other room also had a ledge where you could fall off of, but that would mean death, so this time I blocked it off. Playtesters generally liked the level, but technically had less to say since it was just pretty good ...

 Mega Man Maker Level v1 Feedback      Playtesters generally praised the level, liking the variety of enemies and structure of the level. They also liked my use of the background and tiles to fit the Western theme. Finding a background was easy, but I do feel like I reused the Guts Man tiles way too much. I did not expect so many people to find that a limitation though. Since the level was more of an exploratory-type level instead of strictly linear, people also liked the openness of it. Compared to everyone else’s levels, I thought mine was too easy and short, but luckily that seemed to be alright.           Of course, since this is the first version, there were quite a few problems that got past me that the playtesters noticed. The first thing is the openness of the level. Technically, it is pretty good, but one crucial thing I forgot was to show the player where to go. The main route is going down and up in a horseshoe-like path, but ...

  Players: Owen as Ranger Enrique as Rogue      I would say that the players went through the map decently well, even if they didn’t really go towards the route I was intending they use. The players were able to kill the slimes just fine and reach the checkpoint alright, which is good. Players praised the layout of the map, as there were many open options of where to go and what to do. (They only went through one path though.) The flow of the map was a lot slower than I was expecting, since the timer already ran out shortly after the players reached the checkpoint and were about to face a boss. Although, the players didn’t get any items which would’ve probably made them lose immediately. The good thing about the game was that I was able to make people laugh with the sprites I used, which is always an external goal of mine when it comes to anything in life.      When the Ranger joined the Rogue that was attacking the slime in front of the door with the ...

Players: Owen G. as Rogue, Enrique C. as Warrior      The playtest this time went much better this time around. As I was able to put more brain power into devising the new version of the map, the map was much more fleshed out. I am actually kind of proud of this one. For this map, I decided to split the players into different sides. They would have to defeat two easy enemies, avoid the Blue Eyes White Dragon, collect the keys on the other side, and defeat Big Boss. I figured the easy enemies would be easy challenges (I didn’t use them both to attack the players at once) so the real challenge would be to avoid or attack Blue Eyes White Dragon. The area is big enough for at least one chance of getting hit. I didn’t want it to be too much of a challenge, so I decided to roll for whether the dragon noticed you and attacked. I also wrote in text how the map worked, but I ended up having to explain it out anyway.      Pretty much everything went alright, minus th...

  Group Number: 11 Summary: You and your opponent compete for the throne by going through a dungeon. You travel through the dungeon (the game) in a visual novel style. Your opponent has the map to your player route, and you must rely on them to help you (or hinder you). Audience: Can be for all ages, but mainly teens and young adults would play it Player Interaction Pattern: Player vs. Player For the most part, we didn’t really have any problems that affected gameplay. We wanted playtesters to suggest anything else we could add, but no one really said anything. The hardest part was merely thinking up the content that would make up the events in the game. This idea was a combination of our pitch ideas, but mostly my partner’s. My pitch idea was used as the premise, and my partner’s was the main gameplay. Unfortunately, she didn’t really think up any content so we had to rack our brains on that part. It was difficult thinking up anything. The game ended up being pretty short because ...

 Playtest Post Games Played: Plant Potter Start-Up! Hacking Mayhem Variation of Battleship Game Analyzing: Plant Potter Formal Elements: Players: 2 (You and your opponent.) Objective: Obtain 20 VP before your opponent does by planting plants and sabotaging your opponent’s garden. (Pretty much a race.) Procedures: Distribute 10 cards on to the playing field. Pick 4 cards out of the 10 on the playing field. Flip a coin to determine order. Play the cards (only 3 per turn!) Keep track of how many plants you have, how many days it’s grown, and how many points you have by writing it down. In the End of Day phase, calculate the amount of points you’ve earned (if any). Redistribute cards onto the playing cards until there are 10 of them again, to start the next round. Rules: Plan your moves accordingly so that you get more points than your opponent. Players start with a medium plant already planted (not grown, so you still have to wait for it to do so). Flip over the 10 cards on the playin...