Blog 22: Independent Component 2

LITERAL

• I, Jessica Bui, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 44 hours of work.

• Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component.

I would not be here without the help of my mentors, Sean Bouchard, Elizabeth Swensen, and Tracy Fullerton. However, if I were to get into specifics, they helped me by playtesting my game as it was in progress and offered me very valuable feedback to improve the playability of it. For example, in regards to one of the puzzles I programmed, he had a lot of trouble trying to solve it without my frequent input. When he was first playing it, he thought the unknown symbols on the whiteboard were supposed to represent various times of the analog clock).

In addition, I had a phenomenal amount of help from a variety of admittedly faceless people on the RPG Maker forum website, which can be accessed here; http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/ It helped me learn and solve a variety of things to put into my game. It would be impossible to compile all the work I had relied on throughout my independent component, but some examples I have involve me unlocking doors and overlay mapping (a form of mapping in RPG Maker software).

• Update your Independent Component 2 Log (which should be under your Senior Project Hours link)

Swagger my dagger. Here it is.

• Explain what you completed.    

"Completed" is a stretch to describe the state of my IC #2, but I would confidently say that I did beyond the 30 hours I was required. My first IC was the game design/game plan to design a game in the RPG Maker, and my IC #2 was basically putting that plan into that motion. Using mostly RPG Maker VX Ace the game-making software, as well as Photoshop CS3 portable, I've been making a RPG 16-bit game that is set on I-Poly. The narrative of the story revolves around a protagonist who is suffering from depression, and goes through a journey in an alternate, darker version of I-Poly dubbed as "the Vale" where they must get back to their own world. Through their journey, they will meet several people and endure several puzzles that will eventually help strengthen them. A lot of the time spent on this revolves around editing the classrooms and programming the puzzles.

• Defend your work and explain the component's significance and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work. Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work.   

While I may not have finished the game entirely YET, the amount of time and effort I have expended in this project is without a doubt an enormous endeavor I have done this year. I hope that the fact that it has yet to be incomplete in no way detracts the value of it as an Independent Component that was supposed to be finished. I've spoken to Mr. Rivas if it would be alright for me to continue on it after the IC #2 deadline, considering I have indeed spent over 30 hours on it already. With that said, I would love to show the progress of my work!

- Before I even went off to the other puzzle, I edited the currently existing "Look-and-Say" Puzzle. Before, it looked like this (which I made in my IC #1):

This is very inaccurate, but at the time the boards in the actual game were chalkboards. However, I was able to invert the colors and make it seem just like a whiteboard. The next step was to actually make a picture with this. I decided to find a photo of a plain whiteboard on Google images, which is shown below.



Because this is a horror game, and will most definitely be set in a room that has dim lighting (for atmosphere), I decided to similarly dim the brightness of the image on Photoshop, and I drew the "riddle" again on the whiteboard. Now, it looks like it could even pass for a real photo.

The following are the freshman classes in the RPG Maker game. They are Estrada, Cancino, Pelligrini, and Strand's respectively.

In Estrada's class, here's how I coded the puzzle to work, as well as how I coded the filing cabinet


Though these lines don't appear to take long to code it takes an extremely a long amount of time to playtest them to get them to accurately do what they want. These don't even scratch the surface to the amount of coding it takes, considering there are several Conditional Switches and Branches that are involved and connected to other "events" in the video game.

I mention in my IC #2 log that I wanted the puzzle to involve... a surprise. The player needs to know that one of the clues to solving the puzzle is the number "10". However, unlike the other number clues which are obvious, the "10" clue is conveyed through a picture I drew on Photoshop. I tried my best to make it creepy, but I think I ended up making it too cliche.

I really needed a break from the programming, so I decided to finally focus on the artistic parts of the game, including the portraits. I wanted for the characters to interact Fire Emblem style, with busts as opposed to small portraits. Unfortunately, after spending much time on the bust, I realized that it was too time-consuming, and I've yet to get a grasp on panting on Photoshop. But here is how the bust would've looked like:

Again, I was like "Nah." So I decided to just go with the in-built 96x96 pixel portrait function in the RPG Maker. The following are a couple of phases of me drawing and coloring. 

 (I realized that the photo was too close to the face, obscuring even the chin. I edited it a little more so that it's properly spaced. The following is the final face portrait that will be in the final version of the game:)

• How did the component help you answer your EQ? Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped. 

In the USC game design program, it's a common saying that the game designer is an advocate for the player. What this means is that the game designer's priorities are always the experience of the people who are meant to play their product. In making this game, I was able to go through several steps of real game designers, including the iteration process and research. Though it may seem like just a horror game with a twist of real-life, this game is considered educational in that it's meant to help players better understand mental illness, particularly depression, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder. However, in order to get an accurate representation of how a person experiences the aforementioned mental illnesses, I not only did research on accounts of those who have them, but I also consulted others I know personally who have them.

In particular, this project had helped me answer my EQ by making me realize some facts that would eventually become my third EQ answer, which is that storytelling is an effective method for players to retain the information being conveyed in learning games in a meaningful way. We feel more in tune with the main character because we've connected with them, and therefore feel more closely with the things they experience. The player will therefore be more emotionally attached, especially because this character is literally a student of I-Poly (and the target audience for this video game are I-Poly attendees). They become more relatable.