Blog Post 9: Course Reflection

I actually learned some cool things in CS108 that I fully intend to take with me after I graduate. One of the biggest things was being able to classify games based on the MDA framework of the game. To me, this was the absolute biggest thing. I loved playing board games. I'm naturally a competitive guy by nature and always look for ways to dominate my friends in. Sports and video games come to mind when I seek a competitive outlet, but often times my peers would just refuse to play because they knew about the large skill or athletic discrepancies. Board games, however, were the best battleground because often times it starts on even ground and was really a battle of minds. The gloating was still the same though. With the newfound knowledge of MDA frameworks, I could quickly identify what would be great games and what could be mediocre games. To me, the dynamics was the most important aspect of the game. I loved the depth. Aesthetics can come and go but a game rich in dynamics was what I enjoyed.

This thought process is what segued towards my board game. In retrospect, it really was a board game that might have been a bit too simple. Perhaps if I revisit the board game I would introduce more complexities, but I remember the simplicity of the board game is what created the most dynamism.

Were it not for Morgan's class on Game Studies I don't think I would have been able to make many of the associations in both video games and board games. Throughout the class, I really enjoyed playing games the most. I had a really fun time showing off my old school gamer skills and beat Wizard Wizard in front of the class. Reading and designing to me actually wasn't that appealing but overall, this was a kickass class.

Old school games were and are the best

Blog Post 8: Final Project

So my team has finally assembled. It includes Borum C., Jason S., Tri N., and myself. We have chosen to implement my original idea for the board game prototypes. I think we have decided after a few test runs that we will keep the board exactly the same, but may have to adjust a few rules in the game to make the board game a bit more decisive rather than a war of attrition towards the end.

Some thoughts came to mind:

• Find a way to make a 2v1 fight more rewarding for the side that has 2.
• Should we include killing opponent pieces or a more severe penalty for losing a battle? I think this would be too gamebreaking.
• I thought maybe a 2v1 would give a roll bonus for a battle, but that means the two involved would be frozen after the battle. I felt like this would be the best way to improve the decisiveness of gameplay. People can of course choose to take it as two separate 1v1s or choose to lock down and do a 2v1. However, this may lead to destroying the harmony of having that 1 annoying piece on positive territory.

We've decided to perhaps as our final prototype, use Adobe Illustrator to create a print-out of the board and then laminate it. We can maybe put it on a foam board. For game pieces I will just go to a board game shop and purchase the necessary materials. We still have to work out some of the finer details of the rules, but we will get some play-testing done on Wednesday to hopefully finalize the board game.

Play-testing resulted in wars of attrition

Blog Post 7: GPS Game

I literally have the worst luck when it came to experiencing Pokemon Go. When the game came out, I was busy taking 21 units. I promised myself to not start something I know I wouldn't be able to finish. I wasn't quite sure what the game would entail, but I knew that once I was done with the nightmarish semester I would get Pokemon Go, and be the best pokemon master amongst all my friends.

When the semester finished I was prepared to install Pokemon Go. I installed it, on my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 from 2012. From 2012. The hardware was not prepared to handle Pokemon Go and would result in either many, MANY skipped frames playing the game, or resulting in the phone freezing and/or crashing.

Even worse, when this assignment started, I took some pictures of people playing Pokemon Go after class on Wednesday. Alas, the luck of my phone struck again and my phone became a brick on Thursday. I've sinced bought a phone on eBay (to grandfather my very old data plan and its low cost) that can hopefully handle Pokemon Go, but it seems as the fad has already run out.

Here are a few pictures, unfortunately unrelated to our class playing Pokemon Go due to my phone bricking. I've since discovered some of the mechanics for the game and I've decided I don't like Pokemon Go. These mechanics are more or less spending the necessary time to just be at places and just doing some tapping on your phone. There really wasn't much skillfulness involved. As an old school gamer, these are the sorts of games I detest. I enjoy games that can exemplify my skill without the need to spend more hours than other people. I really dislike games where if you are the best, you are only the best because you spent the most time playing and not being clever, witty, or skillful playing the game.

A game I probably have already lost the window to play at

Blog Post 4: Video Game Lab

I am a gamer of old. I am a bit older than my average peer at SJSU. I'm 29. Long story short I decided to go back to school and get a degree in CS after doing a lot of stuff after dropping out of UCSD. Anyway. My cloth as a gamer is made of the times when games were hard and to declare you beat a game revered respect and honor from your peers. Games were not linear and level designs were intricate puzzles (Water Temple in Ocarina of Time doesn't even come close).

So when I came across This Is The Only Level, no sweats were dropped. Solving puzzles isn't anything compared to coming up with efficient algorithms. This was quick and easy. The design layout for each level was exactly the same but the mechanics were constantly switched up. Most games ease the user into the mechanics but this game's mechanics were so simple. The only challenge was it never stayed the same.

Finished!

Now the real challenge was Wizard Wizard. This was like the old days of Mario where you had to beat the game in on sitting. You can't save in the middle of the level. The mechanics were simple. Move left or right, jump, double jump. Easy enough? Well the levels got incredibly difficult and I could audibly hear the whines of my peers of how they hated this game. In my head I rolled my eyes at how quickly this generation quits stuff. I go at it and quickly shoot to level 20 before realizing I had only a few minutes left to play a few more games. I could hear my partner exclaiming that I was a pro at the game as he was still stuck on the early levels. Maybe I should have been a video game tester. I asked Professor Morgan if he would give me extra credit if I beat the game. He told me he would but only if I play tested in front of the class. Sweet.

Timing was crucial on level 22

I got through all the levels at home. Some like level 22 were simple. You knew how to beat the level from the beginning (the puzzle wasn't hard) but the execution was extremely difficult. I stuck through it without whining but definitely muttered a few "s" and "c" words I shouldn't say on the blog. (I have a British friend and that's where I picked up the "c" word.) I finally beat the game and picked up the gun to shoot the boss. I had forgotten the original purpose of the journey but I didn't care I beat the game.

Boss Battle was a letdown. Pick up the gun. Shoot. Win.

It only took 236 deaths. #worth

The mechanics were simple. A lot like the first game. But in the first game they kept altering the simple mechanics around. Here the mechanics stayed but the level designs became more and more intricate and challenging.

I watched my buddy Richard play and it was frustrating. I wanted to take over for him. Back in the day, you would ask your friend to beat the game for you because you couldn't. Now, there's cheat codes, walkthroughs, and a bunch of babies who whine about how hard the games are. Wusses.

I really loved Wizard Wizard. It was a throwback to those 8-bit games that challenged the hell out of you. The background of the game had a very clean feel to it and I liked that very much. It was very aesthetically pleasing to me.

I played a few more games like the Jurassic Heart dating sim which I found boring and incredibly linear. I also played Don't Shit Yourself which was a basic command line interface and you have to correctly guess the right commands before time runs out.

Mommy wow! I'm a big kid now!

I also played good old QWOP which is an incredibly funny and challenging time for users to figure out a way to make the mechanics work in their favor. Mine usually ended up humping the ground and slowly inching forward. It's always an envy to see good players get into a rhythm to make their guy run.

Oregon Trail brought back memories from elementary school. My oxen always drowned in elementary school because I had no idea what I was doing. I beat the game this time even though it took like two hours.

Felt like I completed my childhood

What a fun lab.

Blog Post 3: Play Logs and Session Reports of "Pirates and Ninjas Do Not Get Along"

One of my favorite past-times was to play chess. I loved the strategy and the tactics behind it. Along the way some of my friends ventured out and played an extremely simple but extremely deep Chinese game known as Go (Baduk in Korean, Weiqi in chinese). Through the simplicity of the gameplay, I learned that there was endless strategies and combinations. In chess you could have the best computer controlled engine play on par or even best the players in the world. In Baduk this would merely result in the computer becoming broken. The combinations are endless and even patterns would be nigh impossible for a computer to break down.

Recently, in our Intro to Game Studies class (taught by Morgan) we were invited to create our very own board game. We partnered up with someone who was not our own major. I ran into Benn who was a Digital Design major and we came to brain storming some ideas. For some reason I was fixated on making it a treasure hunt of some sort but still maintaining some simplicity to the mechanics to keep the game open strategically. He also liked the idea of keeping it simple as to possibly use it as a drinking game.

Our very first idea was terrible. We decided it could be 2 vs 1 NPC entity. We thought of ninjas trying to steal money from miners. We couldn't decide on a good map layout and had too many variables. It was getting too complex and we kept coming up with strange scenario rules. We decided to scrap it and move onto something else. Alas, we took no pictures of our shit idea.

Pirates vs Ninjas in it's rawest form

You can see here the board was 9x12 and treasures were randomly placed. We thought of trying to keep it random in the placement. We started with 5 ninjas and 5 pirates all starting on their side of the boards. We rolled one dice to give movement but allowed the value to be divided among the pieces. We wrote down the rules on the piece of butcher paper we had and you can see how we crossed out certain rules as we played because it didn't seem to work too well. I came up with the idea of pieces not dying, but when they came into battle they would push the other piece away.

• One rule we were able to agree on, to get a treasure, you needed two of your pieces on the treasure square. We started off with needing multiple turns (like we had to mine the treasure) but we had no way to keep track how many turns it was. We knew we had to scrap that but didn't come up with a solid solution.
• Another rule we had was battles were decided by rolls. I wasn't too fond of the randomness behind the game but it kept it kind of tense and fun. We ultimately decided to keep that rule. We also made it so the winner got to move the loser's piece by how much they lost by. I altered that rule in a later iteration.
• We also had boss pieces that had +1 to their rolls but we felt it was too imbalanced and took it out. All pieces were made equally.
• Another rule that we definitely decided to scrap was battles were on the same square. So two pieces of different colors were on one square. I don't know what we were thinking. I made a key change her in a later form.

We began to play a bit more and found out that there was some strategy involved with the two to take a treasure rule. We liked how it wasn't just a race to grab a piece of treasure but about working all of your pieces as a team. Unfortunately we ran out of time but Benn was winning in this pathetic raw form.

Our second play test resulted in Benn being away from class (he also had the board so I had to make a new one). He unfortunately had to tend to his ill grandmother (hope she's doing alright). I was unable to play test with him in class and helped my friend Richard play test his game. All was not lost as I stole one of his game mechanics. His game involved a race to get more castles than the opponent but landing on a castle meant you had to move your piece back to the start. I borrowed the idea of not necessarily starting over but not being able to go through. This fell perfectly in line with the idea of simplicity and strategy.

I did a second play test in the library with my friend Arjun, who happened to be one who I played Splendor with in the library. On the board I decided to make it odd lengthwise at 9x15. I taught him the basic rules and though we didn't finish, I got to try out a few different mechanics.

• I decided to implement a new method of counting out the moves. I felt sixes were too common and almost game-breaking. I wanted to find a way where 6's were less than 1/6. I decided to implement the idea of the difference of two dies. (5 & 2 was 3). Doubles meant you got the average. So (4 & 4 was 4). This dropped the amount of 6's to 1/36. Perfect. The full data was rolling a 1 was 31%, 2 was 25%, 3 was 19%, 4 was 14%, 5 was 8%, and 6 was 3%. This slowed down the game the right amount. I felt the halving rule slowed the game down far too much.

The difference rule slowed down the game just the right amount. Here 5-2 = 3

Doubles meant you got the average. Here you get 3 moves.

My final game test I was able to put in some cool features that improved strategy and gameplay. These ended up being the final rules that allowed for about a 20-30 minute play time with both simplicity and strategy involved. I introduced terrain! Pirates like water so they would get a +1 when they're on water. Ninjas like hiding so they would get +1 in the forests. This became an interesting feature that allowed for strategic movement of pieces. I took care to allow for evenness of the board and created a 15x11 board.

Terrain was introduced in the third iteration.
Pirates get +1 in battles when fighting from water.
Ninjas get +1 in battles when fighting from forests.

Territory battles: Ninja on neutral territory with treasure and pirate on water with bonus.
This was a memorable flank battle.

Rules for Play (A Turn)

1.  Collect any treasures if you have 2 pieces on one piece of treasure.

2.  Roll, calculate the difference (6-2 = 4), doubles count as the face value of a die shown (2 & 2 = 2), and you can divvy up the moves amongst your pieces. Pieces cannot go through other pieces. Pieces that have moved can move again (for you indecisive people).

3.  Pieces that are touching (adjacent) to an enemy piece may choose to fight. Take turns rolling two dice. Remember to calculate difference when fighting. Roll again if tied. Winner gets to move enemy piece 1 square (if they won by 3 or less) or 2 squares (if they won by 4 or more). Winner may take a vacant square left by a lost enemy.

Special Rules

•        Two of your pieces are needed to collect a treasure. If you start a turn and there are still two on a treasure, you may collect the treasure.
•        Pieces cannot go through enemy pieces, if an enemy piece occupies a square you have to go around or fight your way through.
•        You cannot go diagonally
•        You must finish divvying up your roll before starting the fight stage.
•        Ninjas get +1 on their fights when in the forest, pirates get +1 on their fights when in the water
•        1vx fights are done as 1v1 fights. If the 1 wins, he fights another 1v1.

Strategy

• Teamwork makes the dream work.
• Use territory to your advantage, the +1s may come in handy.
• Sometimes blocking your opponent may be better than reaching the treasure first.
• One piece with a roll bonus can be a nuisance

I was extremely satisfied with the way the board game turned out. Eager to playtest some more. Some of the game mechanics were:

Game Mechanics

• Turn-based
• Dice Rolling
• Area Movement, Area Control
• Grid Movement

Blog Post 2: Splendor Session Report

"This game is going places." Instagram: @pakjunho

Taken at Philz Coffee on Paseo de San Antonio an hour before class.

For my Intro to Game Studies class, we were recommended to bring a board game that wouldn't take relatively too long to play. Of the numerous board games I owned, Splendor was by far one of the simplest to teach and had one of the shortest round times. If we were to play two full rounds of the game, I couldn't fathom bringing something like Agricola that would take several hours to explain all the quirky rules before even starting. Splendor is a lot like chess, it's simple and easy to teach, but there is a surprising amount of depth to it. My friend from church borrowed and after teaching her parents, who speak zero English, were playing every night.

Right before, I was hankering for some good Indian food and decided to hit up Punjab Cafe on Santa Clara with two friends before class. One was in CS108 with me and another took the class last semester. We talked about association football (soccer for us Americans, though I insist on calling it football). We barely had time to eat our food and we raced to class and got in about 5 minutes late. Alas, all the good spots were taken. No worries, we were able to squeeze ourselves somewhere and I ended up standing for the majority of the time. That's okay, I'll burn more calories standing. I needed to lose some of the jiggle I accumulated in my time as a CS major.

We sat down and I began to explain the rules of the game. I started with the objective: You are a merchant and you want to get 15 points.

I worked backwards and told them the cards that have a white number on the top left will give you points. Like one of the jewel cards or the "noble" cards below:




The purchase prices for the jewel cards were the coins and their respective colors, so the black jewel card would cost 3 white, 3 blue, 5 green, and 3 red coins. The noble cards could only be purchased with cards and not coins. Something my friends kept forgetting. Without peppering them with too much strategy I let them know that the noble cards would be more of a long-term strategy.

The obvious segue to this information is, how do I get coins? So I moved to the next item was what they could do on their turns. First, if they have sufficient cards, they may purchase a noble. Second they have a number of choices:

• Grab 3 different coins
• Grab 2 of the same coin IF there is 4 or more in the pile
• Reserve a card and take the wildcard coin.
• Make a purchase of a card, either a reserved card or a card available to everyone in the front

Splendor Coins (White, Red, Green, Blue, Black, and WILDCARD

I reminded them that they are merchants trying to prove their worth as the most savvy and cunning of them all. Accumulate wealth and buying power and you will win favor with the nobles. They have a market of jewels available to them but once you purchase a card, you can reuse that card as increased buying power. If you accumulate enough cards, some purchases may actually be free. Often times young merchants get carried away with purchasing free or cheap jewels that they forget that they are trying to impress the nobles.

The first round started and I was unafraid to claim the initiative. I quickly eyed some low cost jewels and deduced which coins to grab in order to purchase it first. My fellow merchants saw my move and attempted to emulate it. Perhaps they eyed the same card that I did, maybe not.

The second round came and I grabbed a few more coins. First I made sure I had the necessary 2 green and 1 red coin to purchase the jewel card I wanted, then I made sure to have a little bit of diversity in my coins.

The third turn came around and I made my first purchase. My fellow merchants had failed to come up with a contingent plan and was left wasting precious class time wondering what their next move was to be. Both of them settled for grabbing more coins.

I had surmised from glancing at the nobles that the nobles tended to value merchants who accumulated many white jewels and blue jewels. I made it my mission to quickly purchase the inexpensive white and blue jewels whenever possible. Alas my fellow merchants hadn't quite understood the endgame but they had certainly picked up on the idea of owning jewel cards made more purchases cheaper. Unfortunately one of the merchants fell into the trap of saving coins and buying a very expensive card at the beginning. I wanted to say something, but a mistake learned from is better so I held my tongue.

Before long I had 3 blue jewel cards and 2 white jewel cards. I had also accumulated 4 black jewel cards, 3 red jewel cards, and 2 green jewel cards. My fellow merchants were starting to realize that they did not have nowhere near enough blue cards to impress the nobles. They saw that the only way to block my success was to purchase white cards as soon as they could. However, fortune favored this merchant and I had amassed the necessary jewels to impress the nobles. Before long, I had acquired 4 nobles before my fellow merchants and had shown my cunning as a merchant.

The nobles saw my cunning for white and blue gems and awarded me

My fellow merchants, envious of my victory declared that it was a fun time and would be willing to challenge me again in the future. For now, this merchant decided to play a quick game of chess with his friend Richard before heading off to his next class.

Tournament chess set with weighed pieces for blitz

This game started off with a King's Indian that transposed to a Catalan Opening. Gibberish to the layman but a deep positional game to the avid chess player. Alas, my opponent bested me in the middle-game and I had to admit defeat. You win some you lose some.

Catalan Opening

Blog Post 1: Internet Arcade Adoption

For my Intro to Game Studies class at San Jose State University, our first assignment was to adopt a classic arcade game and play it in a browser. I decided to choose the name with the most intriguing name; Berzerk.

Fortunately for me, archive.org provides a nice little background to the game. Rather than just delve into the game I decided to read a little bit about the game itself. A few interesting Google searches led me to find out that this game was one of the first to use speech synthesis that featured talking robots. The makers of the game spared no expense with a vocabulary of about 30 different words with an estimate cost of $1000 per word. Learning this little factoid helps keep me grounded when it comes to the amazing audio we have today. As an avid Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player, I often find myself complaining about the audio implementations. Talk about taking things for granted.

My first time through the game, I had yet to figure out how to make my stick figure shoot at the robots. I got a measly 300 points. I quickly checked what the high score was. Incredulously, it was over 300,000. My how the early generation gamers took to perfecting their gameplay. When I wonder what it was like for the people playing this game in the arcades, I marvel at how excited they must have been at the innovations that were implemented into the game. I'm playing on an emulator without any sound but they got the full package! They got to hear synthetic robot voices probably for the first time in their lives in a video game. They probably bragged to their friends about their high scores and how amazing the graphics and the sounds were. The original hardware most likely was cutting edge and the amount of pixels that were visible is amazingly low to today's perspective but to them it must have been the smoothest graphics in the world.

My overall experience of getting a taste of playing a game from 1980 makes me appreciate how far games have come today. I also lament at how the complexity of today's games have forced a very low depth of skill that can be displayed.