I said I’d keep up with this journal, then I never posted anything. Bad me. -.-

Although, I have a feeling since the class is over not a soul is reading this right now…. : )

Right well, anyway…
The above art is something I had drawn for DeviantArt, but thought it might be something I could post here as well. *shrugs*

If you don’t get the joke it’s because it’s not funny, I know. Shush. XD

Let’s see… as far as personal updates…
I’m still looking for a job. Or rather, I’m still looking for a place to apply for a job. (I have no idea what I’m suppose to do with my “talents”. Right now I’m keeping my head above water with odd jobs and commissions.
So far my degree has proven worthless. School has failed me, ohnoes!

Speaking of which, just the other day I found out from Elizabeth that this class (VA 306 or whatever it was called) got cancelled because of a lack of interest. Seriously?! It was one of my favorite classes in my entire four years there!
And not just because the majority of the class was getting to play games (although that was definitely a plus), but because it was a creative way to challenge yourself, especially from an art POV. Plus the teacher was really awesome — the kind of teacher that actually wants to help his students. He was helpful to me at least, one of my top three favorite professors there.

Okay this is turning into a mini rant, so I’ll stop there… but seriously, those kids who didn’t sign up have no idea what they’re missing out on…

In other news…

I finally got flash! Yayness! *happy dance*

Only, I totally can’t figure it out. Not so yayness.

If I ever do, and make any games/animations or whatever, I’ll post them here.

That’s it…

Take care all you internet lurkers out there!

-Desirae

The games I have chosen to present in my portfolio were my Digital game Digital game my realm hopping (with an additional, alternative way of playing it where board pieces are extracted from play after a capture) and the elemental checkers game

Some of my decision was based off what the best feedback I got from my group was (like the Realm Hopping game), and some of it was based off the article I read for the game portfolio…

Anyway, In addition to that, I’m posting all the pictures the professor took from my games that were tested in the semester, and some recent pictures taken by Stephanie.

Maybe I’ll give you a prize if you can spot the two that look like I’m punching an invisible baby. ^_^

Anyway, I know this class is over now, but I might still keep up with this blog. Especially now that I’ve ordered the adobe suite and if that all goes well, I’ll have flash soon. (Meaning, if I can figure out flash, maybe I can make some games with it. ^_^)

Anyone that wants to keep in touch, my new email is artist_desirae@yahoo.com.
Maybe later I’ll post my screen name, if/when I get one to talk to Kalia

Take care,
-Desirae

So many posts lately. XD Last one of the day, I promise…

Anyway, Daniel Benmergui makes these really cool games (found here) and his latest one was no disappointment. I was inspired, so while diligently studying for my finals ( *cough*) I worked on this… I guess you’d call it a sort of fan art.

Sorry about the watermark, it’s become procedure of mine so people will stop stealing my stuff.
_{and ignore the website, it’s not there yet, but I plan to catch up over the summer… hopefully….}

Soooo …. If you haven’t checked out his recent game Today I Die you should go play it now.

I had to do my body of work presentation in one of my classes recently, and after words I was talking with my professor for this game design class and he gave me some great artists to research. I thought I’d do a write up on a few of them in my blog (hence what this is…..)

Andrew Jones
Click here for his website

Look through his gallery, it’s pretty awesome. ^_^
He’s got an amazing understanding of how to incorporate both organic and geometric shape into his work. He also has some pretty interesting body painting works.

Actually, just the interface of his webpage is… well, freaking awesome.
I’m not really sure how to describe it, but it’s cool.

Ayami Kojima (OMG Girl? According to Wikipedia! Sweetness )
I couldn’t really find an official website for her… but this one seemed to have a lot of her works: (I think)

Clicky Here

She’s got a really interesting style, very ascetic and fantasy-like, but at the same time she’s not too afraid to depict some horror-like stuff too. (Man, check out my awesomely bad articulation abilities….)

Frank Frazetta
His website

Got some cool fantasy works. A lot of naked women lol, but not in overtly sexual positions. ^_^ Plus, he has some half naked guys so… meh.
He has an interesting style that reminds me some of a realistic DC comic book style… (Does that make sense?)

Well anyways, thanks again to my professor! ^_^

Latest addiction…

I’m not quite sure why, but I’m totally addicted to this wooden path game on free yahoo games.

It’s a puzzle game – kind of like that old game that you tried to get the car out of traffic by moving all the other cars around… At least that’s what it reminds me of.

It’s one of those games where I keep getting frustrated, yet something draws me back to it. Maybe my since of stubbornness?

Anyway, it’s gotten my attention lately. Except now I’m stuck on A-21 of the adventure map D:

Anyway, check it out if you want:
Wooden Path

_{Hopefully that link will work… if it’s the same coding as D.A (O_O)}

All the free yahoo games are such time sucks. (Which is why I love them *hugs*)

By following the instructions on the blog, this should make my game downloadable now

The challenge was to create a digital game for two players with the software of your choosing. I opted for Scratch, since it was made for children. (And I still had problems, what does that say about my intelligence…. -.- )

No, but really it was interesting to learn on a basic level how scripts and such work. It wasn’t that the software was particularly hard to use, I just couldn’t always figure out how to do what I wanted it to do. (But luckily I had an awesomely smart teacher to help. And great support from my Zombie kitty buddies. ^_^)

Anyways, I’m just blathering since I’m tired, so…… How do you upload games? I’ma find out monday so I can put it up on this blog…

In the mean time, the rules of the game are for player one and player two (each with their respective ‘fairy’ sprites’) to chase around this magical black dot thingy that changes their colors and gives them a point. The first person to gain 10 points wins. After deciding this was probably the most shamefully girly game (not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind) I just felt I’d add a touch of…. ungirliness to it. So the loser bursts into  flames.

Monday’s (4/20) testing went pretty well. The original glitches didn’t seem to be present during testing, so the testers were able to play to the finish. Something that I observed from them (and a lot of other people while playing digital games) is the faces people get as they desperately button mash. It’s kind of funny.  

For Wednesday I had added a little sound to my game (all of the music loops coming from GarageBand). Unfortunately, the game was acting buggy again, but as I said earlier they were worked out…

I guess that’s it for this blog, I’ll post the character pictures below and that’ll be about it. I had originally made the characters in a semi-scratch style, but then it pixelated them in their gif form so it didn’t really matter.

I dunno why the guy ended up so scantily clothed, it wasn’t intentional. (O_O)

Yay, my internet is finally back up! *shakes fist at comcast*

Annnywhoo… Here is the post I had wanted to post from last week, the assignment was to do an upgrade on a previous game. I chose to tweak my Dream Maker game – making more cards as was suggested the last time it was tested. The rules are the same, but here they again:

Goal: Crush your opponents dreams while keeping yours alive. To win the game, you must collect all 10 kinds of the Dream Maker cards:

experience

motivation

networking

money

confidence

vision

strength

knowledge

support

passion

How to play the game:  Each player starts out with 10 cards. Players take turns playing one card at a time. Collect a complete set of Dream Maker cards while taking other player’s using Reality Check Cards. Each Dream card has a corresponding Reality Check, and only the specific match can successfully take the Dream card away.

If a player successfully takes another’s Dream Maker card with their Reality Check, then the Reality card goes back into the discard pile. If the attempt fails, they can hold onto it and draw a new card.

If on a player’s turn they do not have a Reality check card, they can draw until they get one to play.

Other Cards:

Friend Cards - Can be sacrificed to counter any Reality Check card – give that card in place of a Dream Maker card. If a sacrifice is made, all Karma cards in hand must also be handed over. The Reality Check card in play is still placed in the discarded card pile.

* Note: Three friends cards can stand in for one Dream Maker card of the player’s choosing.

Karma Cards- Can be traded with any card the player wants from the discarded card pile.

Stroke of Luck Cards- Can be used to counter any reality check card. The card goes into the discard pile when used, and the asker gets to draw another card.

The testing went a little less smoothy this time than the first time. I think some of it might have been because we didn’t get to the testing until close to the end of class, so people seemed pretty burned out. Although, I did think that might have meant I need to think about ways of speeding up game play.

One solution might be to take away some of the power that the new Karma cards have. The rule they could be swapped and that card could be played immediately was a bit too much, and it delayed the game because people would just go after the stroke of luck cards….

Observations of my April fools game:

From the start I compared this game to the card game “BS”, and I think when it came down to it, the players played my game in a similar manor. I found that some people were better at getting by with lying about what hand they were placing down, while others not so much. Kaila actually came up with a strategy to BS everything until the last pair played, which worked out for her and she ended up winning the game. 

It was interesting to see that strategies were attempted, I guess I never really thought there would be much room for strategizing, but that’s probably not an assumption anyone should have about a game…

Anyway, I’m still going to try and get a picture edited into this post later (of the cards)… But that’s it for now.

I don’t have an offical title for this game yet, I just call the Female Path game…. 

But anyway, the class challenge was to create a ’social awareness’ game that was a commentary on something (political, etc) that one might feel passionate about. My original thoughts were perhaps making an anti-corporate game because hating multinational corporations is kind of my quirky thing… But I really couldn’t come up with anything good.

So, since I had taken a few Women’s study class at school, I moved onto feminism…

My though process about the game was to explore the idea of the stereo types and such that women face today. Even though some people think women are completely equal with men *cough cough Kaila cough*, I find that they aren’t, especially when it comes to careers, expectations, even the way we’re targeted by ad companies. 

So well, I guess that’s it…

Right so, here are the rules of the game:

RULES:

Players take turns moving across the board, collecting and subtracting Intelligence and Societal Expectation points – everyone starts out with 200 points in each category. Depending on which square the players land on, they will chose from that pile of cards.

When a player reaches the “pause” square, they must add up their points in each category. If they have more Societal Expectation points, players must go down the Trophy wife path and ignore all intelligence points for the remainder of the game. If they have more Intelligence points, they go down the career woman path and ignore all Societal Expectation points.

Winning the game: Whoever has the most of their respective points at the end, wins.

——

Observations:

I found that everyone in my group (being female) seemed fairly comfortable with the game. Because we were all girls, I believe it made it more easier to joke about the conceptual ideas (lots of trophy wife jokes.) I’m not sure if a man would have had that same confront level to comment on things (like the societal expectation points), or if he would have been too self conscious about being offensive? 

The professor of the class had made another observation, during game play when a player could not reach a stack of cards I would hand them the whole stack in order for them to chose their cards. I guess a more guy thing would have been to throw one at them?

Anyway, there was some confusion on what to do at the “pause” space, I think I need to simplify that, or just write more clearly in the rules. I really didn’t care what players did there, though, so maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut and seen what they thought was best…. 

Also, people felt the movements were unfair. There was a desire for a small dice (like a four sided one) in order to have a bit more even movement across the board. I’m not actually sure if this would have made that much of a difference, however, if you drew every single card, because they added and subtracted the same point value, in the end you would come out the same…. (if that makes any since.)

Right, well I think I’ve blathered on enough. ^_^

-Desirae