Game Design Class

If you're looking for more information about the game class I'm teaching, please email me at ben@littlebuddyent.info. I'll post more here when I have everything finalized, but it is happening, and soon.

3 posts in and I'm already slacking on the blog...

The title brings up an interesting question. If you start a sentence with a number, you don't have to capitalize the first actual word, right? Should you even be using a number to start a sentence? Is that bad? I'll look it up later.

Anyway, it's been a couple weeks with no posts. I need to rectify that.

Update on the game: I'm done!
Okay, well, not done done.
Actually there's a long way to go, but the main functionality is done. I'm pretty excited about that.

So what does that mean? Well, the powerups are all in and work. You get scores. You can lose. You can win. You can play the game, because it is actually a game, basically.

What isn't done? A couple things.

Lots of tweaks to controls, speed, scores, various gameplay elements.
No sounds at all yet.
Graphics need to be added and/or tweaked in a lot of places.
Menu system needs to be made final.
Instructions need to be added.
Game over and next level screens need to be made pretty. "Made pretty" is a technical term, by the way.
Oh, and there is one level that is basically some bricks I threw on the screen for testing. Need a few more of those.

So still a lot to do. I'm shooting for a November launch. Using the "When I have the time" method of making games is not good for deadlines. It's always hard to work for 15 minutes here, an hour there. It's especially hard to think that, if I could work full time and had a programmer and an artist, I could be pumping out games on a monthly basis. Frustrating, but those are some big ifs to deal with.

Getting there...

So here's the format that I'm planning for this blog thingy, that I will probably immediately break. The plan is that there will be at least one update each week that is just random game design type stuff, or my opinions on it, at least, and then another one near the end of the week that is an update on what work I've done. This last one may slip to less often, depending on how busy I am with other things going on in my life. Like living it.

So, this week I worked on Polarity. Got quite a bit done, for once. It's hard to work on the side and expect to make regular progress, but I feel like it's actually coming along. I'm almost at the point of making a version I can send out to people for early playtesting. That is exciting. It's at the point where it's actually fun. I love that point in making a game. Where you actually can play it and want to keep playing, just for the sake of playing and not for testing.
So what have I done so far, and what do I have left to do? I like to work off of a to-do list style design, at least when I'm doing it all myself. It helps keep things organized, while not having to write out a full design doc. Since it's all coming out of my head, I don't really have to wonder what I meant by "Make it move like the one in that other game", cause I know what I meant by "it" and "that other game". No need for anything more. So, that's what you're going to see here. Actually, it's going to be even worse than that. Just a brief breakdown of the overall goals of the project. Here's what I have so far, with the completed things crossed off.


Make two paddles on the screen that move with the keyboard.
Make them move by tilting phone. 
Make a ball start in a random direction from just above the bottom paddle.
Make the ball bounce off walls, bricks and paddle.
When the ball bounces off paddle, the direction is determined by where it hits the paddle.
Bricks should break when the ball hits them.
Bricks should sometimes drop items that move in the direction (up or down) that the ball came from.
Paddles are different color, representing different charge (positive or negative).
Items will also have different charge.
Make items have easy way to see different charge, but more interesting than just changing color.
Make paddles look more interesting than just different color bars.
Items:
Electron/Positron - If it hits the opposite color, paddles switch polarity. If it hits same, lose points.
Length - Makes paddle longer or shorter.
Multiball - Makes extra or lose balls. Only lose if enough left. Doesn't kill you.
Extra life - Gives life or kills you.
Can't remember the rest right now.
UI:
Reset button in level (only for testing)
Play menu.
Pause Menu.
End of level screen
Game over screen
Use phone's buttons in menus correctly.

That's it for now. There's more that I'll add later, but I need to go. This should give a pretty good idea of what I've done and how much more there is. Obviously some of these lines involve more than others.
About half of that crossed out stuff was this week. Also got some work done developing a curriculum for a class I'm going to start teaching soon. That will be fun. Can't wait to get it started.

Storytelling vs. Mobile Gaming

So I got into games because I love the idea of interactive storytelling. I've been saying that to people for years now. Now I'm making mobile games. With no story. At all. I feel like I have to address that.

First, let's discuss why mobile games don't have much story, if any. There are, as usual for situations like this, many reasons, but it really breaks down to two. First, it's simpler, quicker, and cheaper for the devs. Second, and most important, players don't want it.
That's right. You, the player, do not want a story in a mobile game. Okay, so maybe you think you want story in a mobile game, but you really don't. Not all of them anyway. Oh, and by mobile game, we're talking iPhone/Android/Cell Phone, not PSP or DS.
So why don't I think you want story? Well, when was the last time you played a mobile game for long periods of time? You might do it every now and then, but, usually, most most people tend to play for short periods of time on their phones, whether it's iPhone, Android, Nokia, whatever. 5-15 minutes, are the numbers I've seen. Obviously, this is an average. Not everyone does this. Some people play for a long time. They're weird, and should be doing better things with their time, like playing the Xbox. (Please note, because my wife will get mad at me if I don't include this, I'm meaning this humorously. I don't actually think you're weird, even if you are.) The point is, people don't want to have to wait through four minutes of story to get one minute of gameplay before their dentist appointment. They want five minutes of pure gameplay. Same goes with tutorials. If the tutorial isn't made out of fun gameplay itself, you'd be better off making a simpler game with less complicated controls, because most people won't take the time to learn your controls.
On iPhone this isn't too big of a deal. If they bought your game, they bought it. It just means they'll probably think twice before buying another game from your company. On Android, you have to be more careful. There is a 24 hour grace period. If they decide they don't want to keep the app or game within that time, they can get a refund. It makes things tough for small developers, like myself. We have to be really careful to simplify, but keep things fun. That's why you end up with a lot of games with barely there stories and simple mechanics like Abduction! or Angry Birds.

First Post!

Hey everyone. Welcome to Little Buddy Entertainment. Sorry about the lack of an actual website. I'll get around to doing something with that one of these days, when I have something to do with it.
For now, I just want to talk a little about Little Buddy Entertainment and what the plans are around here.

So, Little Buddy Entertainment is founded and owned by Ben Higginbotham. And run. And... everything right now. It's a bit of a one man show, but hopefully that will change in the future. At this point, the company is in the process of making games for the Android platform, with the hope of extending that to iPhone and other platforms in the future. The plan is to use Unity for all development, so games can easily be made for multiple systems when the time is right. For now, the games will all be Android, basically until I break down my anti-Apple bigotry and finally buy a Mac, since you have to have on to develop for iPhone. Ugh.

Anyway, about the games. There are two in current development.
The first is Space Race 3000. The basic concept is a slalom race in spaceships. Try to make it through the flag gates to score the best time. It's fun, simple, and has pretty graphics. Which I like.
The second is Polarity, a Breakout style game with a few twists. First, there are two paddles, one at the bottom of the screen, and one at the top. Each paddle is either positive or negative, and will switch at certain times in the game. The power-ups are also positive or negative. Opposites attract right? Don't forget that, because in this game if you match the right polarity power-up with the right polarity paddle, you get a good effect, but do it wrong and you get the opposite effect.

I don't really like talking about my games, so that's all you're getting right now. I feel like I have to try to slip in "marketing speak", which just isn't me. I'll talk about them more as they get closer to being finished. That way I can include pictures and videos and those kinds of things. Be a little more exciting.