ICS 699 Sony PlayStation Game Programming Project

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ICS 699 Sony PlayStation Game Programming
Project

• -Matthew Sharritt

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Overview

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

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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

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How the Project Started

• SquareSoft going out of businesswww.squareusa.co
  m
• 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

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What the Lab Looks Like...
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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

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Some Good Game Design Principles

• Challenging
• Bragging Rights
• Good Graphics and Sounds
• Room for Fantasy / Immersion
• Consistency
• Accomplishable Tasks
• Humor
• Artificial Intelligence

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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

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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

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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 cant compare with the
  latest games out today
• Good sounds and graphics add realism to the game

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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

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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

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Accomplishable Tasks

• Tasks in the game should be something that is
  realistic for the gamer to accomplish
• Gamer shouldnt get hopelessly stuck
• Gamers expect to fail, otherwise it wouldnt be
  challenging

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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...

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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 doesnt
  get too predictable

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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

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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

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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

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Lets See It!

• Ill switch to a demo of my game...

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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

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References

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