ICS 699 – Sony PlayStation Game Programming Project -Matthew Sharritt

Overview What is LEARNU? Goals of the Project How the Project Started Game Design Principles My Final Project Demonstration Conclusion

What is LEARNU Lab of Edutainment Architectures for Revolutionary New Uses – LEARNU is a lab of the University of Hawaii, Department of Information and Computer Sciences that explores the advancement of computer and information sciences and education in modern game console platforms. Focus on ‘Edu-tainment’: Education & Entertainment Developer kits donated from SquareSoft- allowing us to develop PlayStation Applications Project of Instructor David Nickles

How the Project Started SquareSoft going out of business… – Donation of PSX development kits PlayStation is a widely-used and widely- available platform, which is easy to use by people of all ages, and is great for multimedia applications

What the Lab Looks Like...

Game Design Techniques were studied, from the book “Game Design, Theory and Practice” by Richard Rouse III Game Design principles were studied, and applied to our projects

Some ‘Good’ Game Design Principles Challenging Bragging Rights Good Graphics and Sounds Room for Fantasy / Immersion Consistency Accomplishable Tasks Humor Artificial Intelligence

A Challenging Game Steady increase in difficulty First level easy, later levels hard Makes the game appealing to gamers of different skill levels- beginners and experts

Bragging Rights I got the highest score! Pac-Man style of getting to the highest level possible and obtaining the highest score A good game will have people bragging to their friends about the score they achieved

Good Graphics / Sounds Many good games in the past, but they had much less powerful hardware Resulted in simpler games than today Still fun to play, but can’t compare with the latest games out today Good sounds and graphics add realism to the game

Fantasy / Immersion Good games absorb the person playing the game Gamers can fantasize that they are in the world that the game presents Gamer is unaware of the hours flying by

Consistency Gamers expect a consistent interface and game play Not following this convention will frustrate the game player Switching the game ‘rules’ mid-stream will leave gamers complaining about the game programmers

Accomplishable Tasks Tasks in the game should be something that is realistic for the gamer to accomplish Gamer shouldn’t get hopelessly stuck Gamers expect to fail, otherwise it wouldn’t be challenging

Humor Fun games can be funny I tried to do this with adding a South Park theme to my game Characters are funny- big head / little bodies, similar to South Park theme You might recognize some of the characters...

And Finally... AI Artificial Intelligence- needs to match the complexity of the game Often referred to as ‘Artificial Stupidity’ Can be simple, as long as the game play doesn’t get too predictable

My Final Project I worked on several projects over the year, and I will present my final project for this semester Is a shooter-style game- objective is to kill your opponent before he kills you There is a catch in the game- the orange figure in the snow-suit (Kenny) is your friend, and you cannot shoot him

My Final Project Game allows you to duck behind a wall Several different levels, with different enemies and settings Several difficulty levels Upon passing a difficulty level, you continue by restarting on a higher difficulty level

My Final Project Gun shot effects- such as seeing gun flashes, having different gun sounds for shooting or being shot at, and having a red flash on the screen when you are hit Characters in the game follow a random AI, through a state machine Game is played using the PlayStation light gun

Let’s See It! I’ll switch to a demo of my game...

Conclusion As a life-long gamer, I had a lot of fun studying what elements make a game fun Creating games from scratch, and doing all of the design yourself is very rewarding End product is a fun, playable game that can be shown to your friends I would recommend participation in the PlayStation lab to anyone with an interest in gaming and software design

References Rouse III, Richard. Game Design: Theory and Practice. Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing, 2001.