Video Game Design and Development | JM Mahoney
Pixel Privateers is a retro styled, 16-bit, side scrolling adventure gaming set in space. Having traveled through an intergalactic wormhole, you are tasked with finding a way to return home. The means to get home, restore the relics and stabilize the wormhole, is set in stone, but how you get to the goal is broad and varied. [Read more…]
Stevie Longlegs has remained mostly unchanged from the original concept. As stated in the initial pitch, the game will be an infinite side-scrolling runner with obstacles to avoid and holes to jump over. A high score will be obtained by playing for the longest time with the game’s best high score being recorded.
A few changes from the original idea are being worked out. The first is the character sprite being used for testing. The original large green character had only one walking/running animation. In order to keep moving ahead with game mechanics, a robot sprite is temporarily being used because of its pre-designed running and jumping animation. No decisions have been made as to whether the little green hero will definitely remake his reappearance but the speculation is that the game would not be true to its nature without him.
Another change from the initial design is how the health of the character will be displayed. Initially, there was plans for a health bar that would fill and empty based on time from last powerup and obstacles hit. The current version does not have a health bar but rather the character slowly moves further to the left of the screen as the health decreases. This will eventually culminate in a large monster fixed on the left side of the screen devouring the character if his health degrades too far. Power ups will restore the runners health and help him get back to the center of the screen.
Upon entering the world of gaming, you quickly come to realize that there are seemingly as many genres as there are stars in the sky. In typical fashion, a game will come along that defines one of these genre, and Diablo 2 is just one such game.
Released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2000, Diablo 2 set the mark for the ARPG, or action role playing game, genre. With revolutionary 8 axis movement, fast paced combat, and multiple difficulty settings to provide an ever increasing difficulty for the players, the bar was set very high.
The Diablo universe is set in an apocalyptic world where Angels and Demons are at war, and the battle ground for that fight is on Earth, the greatest enemy of all being the Lord of Terror, Diablo. As a wandering warrior, you are faced with conquering everything from unspeakable abominations to hordes of the undead in your question to defeat Diablo and capture him inside “The Dark Soulstone.” It is your eventual failure to do so that leads to the story of Diablo 3.
The play style of the Diablo series, at it’s core, has remained mostly untouched. Choose your hero, battle through massive numbers of enemies, collect ever more powerful items to equip your hero with, rinse and repeat. It is in how that goal is accomplished where the differences really shine.
In Diablo 2, players focused on beating each subsequent difficulty to move onto the next harder, which increased the levels of enemies, the experience they grant, and the quality of items that they drop. Once the final difficulty is reached, the only way to progress is by doing “boss runs”, or starting a game, and killing your way to the final boss, and then resetting the game to do it all over again.
