Alan's Games

Physics Music Toy

2009-06-05T04:26:00.000-07:00

Created as part of the same 4th year project as Balloon Balloon, PhysicsMusicToy was an attempt to create a fun, relaxing musical toy for the X-Box and PC.

Ultimately, I feel I fell short of that goal. The final result was more cacophonic than relaxing. I put this down to an unbalanced authorship share - too much authorship is given to the user, so that - without a deep understanding of music and of the interface - it is impossible to produce anything close to a soothing sound. My lack of expertise in music contributed to this.

If you want to make up your own mind, you can grab the PC version here.

Balloon Balloon

2009-06-05T03:36:00.000-07:00

Undertaken as part of my 4th year Honours Project, Balloon Balloon is a game designed to create a sense of carefree childish fun; the sensation of floating through air on a balloon. It was a solo project, using XNA and Farseer Physics.

Currently only running on PC, the plan is to produce an X-Box version which will be published on X-Box Community Games.

You can dowload the latest PC version here.

Use the arrow keys to move left and right, and the space bar to jump.

The concept of Balloon Balloon differs to most of my game designs in that it came from a less scientific or reasoned standpoint. The idea came to me in something of a daydream, and rather than open up a word processor and begin furiously typing out all I could on the idea (as I normally would) I instead sat and drew a picture:

With this picture to inspire me, I began thinking more about the concept behind the game, and the sensations and feelings behind it. Finally opening my word processor, I began writing, but found myself still wrapped up a sort of childish whimsy, and thus didn't write a design straight away - in attempting to encapsulate the concept I was trying to put across, I ended up writing this:

Balloon, Balloon
Can you swing on the moon?
Can you soar with the clouds up on high?

Can you keep up the pace
in this vertical race?
Can you touch all the stars in the sky?

Finally, with this in place, I began to write the original draft of the design document (which you can read here). Unsurprisingly, this went through some changes during development (see the working document) but ultimately the end product was what I had imagined at the beginning - a feeling that words simply cannot describe. Looking onward, there is plenty to be added to the game, and I look forward to being able to replace this post with another detailing a more polished version of the game (see Balloon Ballon Future Document).

Kamikaze Pachinko

2009-05-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

A solo project, developed in 3 months for University.

To demonstrate my understanding of interactive design (for the class "Advanced Interaction"), I developed this prototype from the ragdoll example that came with the 3Impact engine. The Pachinko board is my own design, built in Maya 3D.

Unfortunately the game crashes quite often on resetting - this is due to a limitation of the 3Impact engine in handling the collisions in the ragdoll, of which I was unaware when I began the project.

It's still fun, though.

;)

PC Build

Harmony Jump

2009-05-28T13:51:00.000-07:00

Developed under the name "Ebullient Games", with the team of:

Myself - Co-Production, Coding
Jack Ward-Fincham - Co-Production, Art
Stuart Wilson - Audio

A 3 month production done as part of our University work, our aim was to produce a game that fulfilled the dual functions of being a music toy and also a puzzle game. It was intended that players could approach the game as a puzzle game, and attempt to progress through the levels, or simply use it to play with the sounds.

Ultimately, the game suffered many design flaws, but was nonetheless a succesfully finished prototype.

To play:

-Harvest Tonal Energy from planets
-Fill the valves at the bottom of the screen with Tonal Energy to open the Harmony Rift and jump to the next system.
-Tonal Energy escapes after leaving the planet

X-Box Creators Club Package