CS 1107 Assignment: Second Survey

Last night, after a fair amount of struggling, I came up with a second survey through Google Docs -- one that features subject matter equally relevant to this blog. It's about the prevalence of digital distribution in the realm of video games, and the opinions of those who use it. It can be found here, if anyone reading this would like to take it as well.

The results can be found here. Of the three people I've surveyed so far, all of them are deeply into video games; as such, their response to question 1 is unsurprising. The rest of the answers are fairly spread out, though; I personally find it interesting that none of the three participants could come to a consensus on the ideal price/content allowance of a download-only game. Such a survey would be useful, should a project of mine get off the ground-- until then, however, I'm content with this as a student project.

CS 1107 Lab Assignment - Survey Created with Google Docs

In class, we were assigned the task of creating a survey through Google Docs related to the topic of my blog. It is available here -- apologies if the answers are at all limited, as they were composed in the span of around 40 minutes. Even so, I'm rather proud of it; this has the potential to provide an interesting cross-section of my potential audience, should I ever decide to get into coding something one of these days. Additional note: If I actually receive any responses outside those mandated in class, I will be unbelievably surprised.

Located here are the results from the survey. If I know the Internet like I think I do, this will assuredly end in people from vicious web forums responding to the survey with names that are eerily similar to graphic expletives -- but only if they find it first.

CS 1107 Assignment: Website Related To Topic

This week's Intro to Computers assignment is to write about a web site that relates to the topic of my blog. With that in mind, I show you...


SelectButton, a home of fantastic and exciting game discussion.

At first glance, it may appear to be a run-of-the-mill enthusiast forum dedicated to discussing the minutiae of a given topic -- and in many threads, that is indeed the case! However, there is a strong undercurrent to their lowercase ramblings: in many cases, their discussion focuses on the how and why of game design, rather than fannish talk about the next big thing. New games are discussed frequently, but with a critical eye and an awareness of the games that have come before them. In an industry constantly focused on the next big thing, this is a surprisingly uncommon perspective to have!

Discussion often strays to talking about how a game "feels" -- how the atmosphere is represented, how the controls and animations are handled. This is also difficult to find elsewhere, and is one of the reasons why I read it every day. It even has a subforum where you can submit your own game designs and receive valuable feedback from people who are genuinely interested in helping you, which is particularly valuable for a budding artiste like myself.

CS 1107 Lab Assignment - Paint and Blurb

Star Guard, as viewed by someone on floating fuzzy psychadelics.


RunMan: Race Around The World -- the cruelest version available, where he must race around an infinitely escalating interior spiral.

The images above have been tweaked, twisted, and refracted through the marvelous program Paint.NET, which is totally free and strikes me as far more hospitable and functional than Paint for Windows (a shocker, I know).

This is a non-tweaked screenshot of the Blurb webpage, a self-publishing website that specializes in printing full-color photo books. What interests me about it is how easily it suits itself to the publication of comics (a field in which I have moderate levels of independent experience) -- and they apparently have no standards for visual fidelity, as is evidenced by the example on display.

CS 1107 Assignment: Spreadsheet Related to Topic

I spent the week racking my brain for possible implementations of my topic in a spreadsheet format, only coming up with the solution when the deadline was fast approaching. The end result is this, a summary of all the resources behind the games you can make with the aid of the Game Maker's Apprentice book.

A few chapter numbers are missing; this is because these chapters revolve around philosophies regarding level design and coding, the resources for which are used to tweak projects from previous chapters. Still, this is interesting; the ideal demonstration of a video/computer game, as created by the Game Maker's Apprentice, has 18 graphical assets (sprites, backgrounds, and icons) and around 6 sounds (mp3s, midis, and waveforms). With the development time of each game in the book looking to be close to 1 to 3 hours with prefabricated graphical assets, I can easily see creating a completely original working equivalent in a day or two, once I've grown experienced enough.

CS 1107 Assignment: Art Design in Independent Projects

Good evening! Set to non-stock jazz music this time, the above Animoto film is a video collage of still images from independently-constructed video games, and serves as a picture of how art and gameplay styles can vary in profound ways between projects of varying size and shape. Even in the realm of larger games (like World of Goo and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!), every example was made with a small team driven by their own internal passion to create, unsubsidized by corporate dollars. I don't like how the names of each game's creator(s) have been clipped off in processing, but it'll have to do now; a comprehensive link list will be coming later.

In other news regarding my personal development as a game creator, progress has been incredibly slow -- though only because I've been spending so much time studying for the three midterms which have passed! My manual is still here, waiting to be opened; all it's going to take is a little push.