#realtime multimedia

These are some slides and other images for a presentation of my Realtime Multimedia major project, currently called "Tri Age".

Influencing Mechanics(Age of Empires II):

resource incentive

randomly generated map based on variables

resources generate around base or in centre of the map depending on game mode

scalable map based on number of players

Additional Game Mechanics:

turn based

simple interaction

changing and interesting gameplay

Initial Research(Bloons):

Very simple one-touch interaction (easy for mobile devices)

Implementation

The object of the game is to gain more resources, allowing you to grow faster and stronger than your opponent/s. The game itself is a map with resources. Gameplay will depend on the number of players, the size of the map and the distribution and quantity of resources. 

Fortify:

  Expand:

  Below is a time consuming prototype, I skipped a lot of the turns but they're all expanding, not fortifying and the resources didn't do anything (the final screen score is red 2, blue 1).

Start(w/ helpful grid):

First Points:

Red went first but Blue has won because although it's Red's turn, Blue's triangle is going to be much larger on the next turn, taking the resources in the middle. Red expanded in the wrong direction during the first few turns, running out of room because the triangle was going in the wrong direction.

I expect the game will have very quick initial gameplay where people can get in a quick rhythm of turns whilst developing and gaining resources. Then, as the areas get very large at the end, the turns will probably take longer, as the consequences are going to be greater. Hopefully this will create a very exciting end to each game.

Technical:

http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/nature/steering/

Using the flocking example within Daniel Shiffman's steering resources I altered a flock of triangles so that they would seek one of two points depending on which flock they were a part of.

By clicking the mouse, multiple birds can be added at once, alternating between the red and blue flock each click.

I was able to borrow my housemate's projector this weekend and decided to have a play using the PBox2d library (https://github.com/shiffman/PBox2D) and some coasters I have on my wall. The plan was to use some code I had from an old assignment to project falling balls that would bounce when they hit the coasters.

Projector

Coasters

I also imported the fullscreen API so I didn't have the windows bars: (http://www.superduper.org/processing/fullscreen_api/).

I cheated a bit by setting up an easy grid and moving the coasters on the wall to fit, rather than position them exactly in processing. I then removed the black rectangles and positioned the ball spawn points above the canvas. There were 15 holes in three rows 100-300 pixels above producing about 6 balls a second. The balls get removed once they leave the bottom border of the screen.

It worked pretty well, although the rectangles were too aligned and exact to really simulate the coasters in processing.

Next step would be to find a better boundary class or change this one so I could set up ellipses and rounded rectangles for the different types of costers. I could also changed the boundaries so they slope to avoid balls gathering and set limits on how many balls can be produced. After that, expand..

Brief: Play some games, find an example of physical/natural simulation in a game to present.

BLOONS (url: http://ninjakiwi.com/Games/Bloons-Games/)

video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY_jUn2lhlc

Many levels and versions of a physics puzzle game made by Ninja Kiwi.

The aim is to pop a number of balloons by launching a restricted number of darts at a certain angle (mouse height), and at a certain speed (length of mousepress, release to launch).

There are a variety of specials balloons, darts and obstructions placed in different configurations for each of the levels. There's an increase in difficulty as the game goes by, requiring more creativity using gravity, specials blocks, rebounds etc.