A Colourful Week for WASD

This week, WASD has been talking over more ideas to add to our game, as well as doing some work towards our game. We have decided on using a theme of colour, actively changing the colours of the environment depending on the state of the game, and also using different colours to represent different things in our game. We are still hammering out the exact details of how we will use this theme, but we already have some ideas we're excited about.

Our lead artist, Sedona, has been drawing out some concepts for levels this week, and our whole group has been talking about how we will implement all the mechanics we have come up with, as well as which from our long list of ideas we will actually keep to add into our game. The programmers in the group (myself included) are also planning on reading up on WildMagic++ this week to get a head-start on programming using this engine.

I have started modeling the boss in Maya that I drew a concept for so I can get this done as soon as possible. All of the basic shapes are there by now, besides the hands, but almost no detail has been added so far, so that will be my next task.

The 3D model for my boss character, the Totem Guardian. His lower legs look extremely bulbous because I haven't added detail yet to make them look like they do in the original concept.

We will be finishing our commitment document for Game Development Workshop this week, so this will be our first group task besides planning. After we are done this, and after our programmers have a general feel for WildMagic++, hopefully we can get started on actually putting together a game.

It's a New Year, and WASD is Back!

It's a brand new year, and so we are now working on making a new game. Team WASD is still together, with four dedicated members: Dan Stepchenko, Dan Cortens, Sedona Parnham, and myself. This year, we plan to make a game entirely different from our previous creation, Raptor Racers.

So far, we have a concept, but many details have not yet been hammered out. Our concept focuses around the idea of attraction and repulsion, specifically in the context of magnetism, in a "tribal" themed world. The player will be able to navigate a world (likely in 3D platformer style), fight enemies, and manipulate the world and metallic objects within it using magnetic powers. The main goal will be to fight enemies and solve puzzles in order to make it to each next stage in the game, where the main character may then gain more power to use in further levels. We also have plans for a multi-player mode, though this would likely be implemented next semester. However, we recognize that this concept could potentially cause problems for us due to its relative complexity, so we are planning on taking this one step at a time, completing the more important aspects of the game first, and then seeing what we are able to finish.

We have plans for the main characters (there will likely be 2 to select from), a friendly NPC, and a couple of bosses. A number of these have been sketched out on character design sheets in three poses for our 3D modeling class. My sketch, shown below, is of one of the bosses in the game. The bosses will likely be guarding an artifact or a power that the player must collect to advance, and they will also likely all be robotic or at least have a similar feel in order to fit with our theme. This boss is a robotic being that also resembles a totem pole in order to fit with our tribal theme.

Besides this character work, we have been discussing a possible story behind the game, but have been avoiding going too far into this before we are given our potential "themes" at the Game Development Workshop. I have also started on a particle system over the weekend, for sparks when metal hits metal. This is about halfway done or more, but there are a few visual issues I need to fix in order to make it more appealing to look at, and a few methods I'd like to compare. For instance, I have one version of the particle system using spheres, and another using lines and varying transparency. I am planning on comparing a few different ways of doing this particle system before completing it. I will also possibly need to adapt my code to work with WildMagic++ and Havok rather than OpenGL. However, I at least know I have a basis for the particle system so far.

 

Sparks particle system using spheres. Right now, the spheres fall in a fountain-like pattern.

 Sparks particle system using lines. The lines also fall in a fountain-like pattern, but have a shorter lifespan than the spheres, and become more transparent as the particles age.

Altogether, we haven't done a whole lot of concrete work yet because we are waiting to learn about WildMagic++, Havok, and to be given our additional theme, but we do have a solid concept and characters, and so we are hoping that this is starting us off on the right track for this year.

Raptor Racers 2.0 In Progress

               This week that has just passed has been very hectic and full of work on our game. In just one week we’ve come across a number of pretty big problems, as well as finding solutions to existing problems. The biggest problem that we’ve come across is assessing the feasibility of using Mudbox at this point in creating the game. Our artist has edited a couple of models using Mudbox already, but now we are beginning to question whether we will be able to implement the results of Mudbox editing in the code of our game. If we are unable to figure this out soon, we may need to scrap the whole idea of using Mudbox, which would be a big disappointment to everyone. However, we’re going to try our hardest to figure everything out and get it working with our game.

              

               We have made a big improvement with sound recording this week, since the sound guy of our group has shown us a few sounds he has recorded, and we have recorded a few additional sounds as a group. However, these have not been edited or implemented yet, so we are hoping this group member will come through for us and get these sounds polished and into our game.

HUD pictured in the bottom left corner with timer and space for placing and power-up, but placing has not yet been implemented

               So far, we have had a good deal of progress on menus and a heads-up display. We have a couple of menus mostly made and implemented by now, and the HUD is implemented though not completely functional since we don’t have some required features in our game yet (placing and power-ups), which the HUD will show. However, a timer works in-game, and is implemented to show on the heads-up display. In addition to the main menu, we now have the beginning of a character selection menu, and our artist is currently working on designing more.

Character selection screen so far, missing a title and picture of chosen raptor

               A new level has been created which contains more curves and a longer track than the level in the trial version of our game, and we are still working on implementing obstacles, collision boxes, and all other aspects of the level onto the track. However, most of the collisions are done for this level, so we have made good progress with it. We are hoping to have multiple levels to choose from in our final game, but we are not entirely sure if we will have time to implement this.

               We have also had progress with shaders recently, since our group member working on those has figured out the solution to some issues we’ve been having. For one, the normals on the raptor models appeared to be very screwed up, but it turned out that somehow, our model had six normals for every vertex, though we had no idea how this happened. To cut down on time, we averaged all normals on a vertex to give us essentially one normal per vertex, and this appears to work fine visually, so we will stick with this for now in case we do not have time to fix this properly. Our cell shader doesn’t work perfectly in our game yet, but we’re getting closer to having it fully functional every day.

               There are still a couple of issues that we are having that we are eager to fix. For one, “alpha” in our game still does not work with our particle systems and I have been working on other things (mainly user interface implementation and other assignments) so I have not yet returned to trying to figure out this problem. However, we’re boggled because everything seems to be set up correctly in our code for it to work. We are also having issues with the AI of our opponent raptors, which are currently still following Dijkstra paths, though we may end up changing this and completely redo the AI. We have been having some minor problems with lighting that we are eager to fix, and we were worrying about bump mapping until we learned that it is no longer a requirement, which is a relief.

               This week, we’re planning to add some more focus to written elements such as game design and business, as well as graphics and sound reports, which I will be dedicating a lot of time to personally. However, we’re still going to work a great deal on improving our game, and are hoping to finish all requirements, as well as make our game look appealing, by the time it is due. Hopefully we’ll have luck on our side and finish everything we intended to do, including Mudbox, by working on this for the rest of this week.

WASD’s Time is Ticking

               We (WASD) have been working on our game as much as possible this week. We have each been doing our own thing, but are also becoming increasingly worried about completing everything we’d planned in time. However, we’ve still made some more progress this week as a whole.

               For one, I have completed implementation of the main menu of Raptor Racers. I am hoping to also implement all other menus for the game, but they have not been created by our artist yet, so that will have to wait. All buttons of the menu have working states (normal, hover, and clicked) and outcomes. I have also made sure that to skip the opening cut-scene, the player can press ANY button rather than a specific one.

Raptor Racers main menu, with "Options" selected

               Collisions have been constantly improved so that now that rather than the raptor bouncing backwards when hitting an obstacle, it will glance off at an appropriate angle and continue to move. A group member has also been working on shaders, so we are hoping to get some of those in the game soon. I have been experimenting with text in OpenGL and 2D objects over a 3D world to allow for a HUD, which has been mostly successful so far, except for the fact that I haven’t been able to have text work with a 3D environment yet (only 2D) and I haven’t been able to figure out the problem yet, but hopefully I can fix that soon.

               We are concerned about sound, since our new group member in charge of sounds has still shown us nothing. He has some files available for us, but we can’t listen to them since they are in the wrong format, and we haven’t heard from him since. This is worrisome for us, so we are planning on making back-up sounds as a group if he doesn’t come through any time soon.

               Hopefully we will make even greater progress this coming week, because we are planning to work hard in an attempt to make our game great. We are worried about how little time is left, but if all goes as planned, we’ll still be able to scrape through for the due date of our game.

And the Hardest Work Begins

               This week is the first week that WASD is beginning to put some serious work into our game. Since we finally have time to spare without too much other homework nipping at our heels, we can dedicate a huge chunk of our time to working on Raptor Racers. Because of this, we have a few more goals completed, and some others well on their way.

               The first goal accomplished, one that I am personally proud of, is a now-working loading screen. Now that a start menu has been made with different art than we began with (our artist has been working away at making this menu from scratch) I decided to make the loading screen from the image that was previously our start menu, last semester before the menu was fully functional. The loading bar I made to be a sausage link just like our finish line is supposed to be, once we try to implement that again (we had it working last semester but then something messed up while implementing it into the game, so we’d scrapped it). Every 10% of the 3D models that are loaded into the game, another sausage will appear, with a total of 10 sausages making a complete bar. This now works in-game for all 3D models except for the obstacles for some reason, which still cause the program to crash if I call for them to be loaded while the loading screen is running. I will still try to figure out why that is and hopefully fix that problem, but for now I have moved on to other tasks, such as the lighting requirements and fixing up problems with the particle systems I made last semester.

               The other members of WASD have been working on fixing up the game in numerous ways too. One group member has been working on fixing up the animation system, as well as adding in more animations for the raptors, and has made decent progress, though he has had problems along the way that have delayed him. However, he is dealing with these well, and hopefully his work will be complete soon. Our artist has been modifying the raptor model some more in Mudbox, and has made 2 custom raptors so far, with 4 more to go. She has also been working on menu images, including buttons in all states. Another group member has been working on fixing up the collision system so that collisions on an angle work better because getting stuck in obstacles or walls was an issue last semester. He has developed a new system where the program will check if two boxes are about to collide rather than if they are colliding, and so hopefully this system will work better. Our newest group member has been working on finding and making us some sounds for our game, though I haven’t heard an update from him for a while to know how that is going, so we’re just keeping our fingers crossed.

               We have been outsourcing music for our game that is being made specifically for Raptor Racers, but we’re blindly hoping that will work out (if it doesn’t, we’re prepared to find some back-up music instead). We’ve heard some bits and pieces so far from what our music guy has made, but my group is not convinced that the music will suit the game as much as they’d hoped. I am going to remain hopeful that our music gets fixed up so it fits with the game better than it does currently, since our music guy is working away at improving it.

               Altogether, we’re making progress, but we’re still a little more worried about the sound side of things. However, we will have a back-up plan if all else fails, but we currently have other things to focus on, so we have our fingers crossed. This coming week will be full of hard work, and hopefully success in improving our game some more.

WASD Update ... Again

               My group hasn’t made the greatest progress this week because we were studying and working on our game pitch assignment for business all week. However, we have a couple of things in production that we are working on to improve our game.

               For one, our artist has been working with our raptor model in Mudbox some more, and now our raptor actually has teeth – which was a thing that bugged some of us (but especially her) until now. After all, racing toothless raptors is a little odd. On top of that, she will still be messing around with the model to make several different versions soon – once the base raptor has been touched up enough.

               In addition, our lead programmer will be working on a level editor in a sense – just something that will enable us to create tracks more easily so that we can have multiple levels. Last semester we created our track mostly through trial and error, so I am hoping we can make something that will enable us to create levels simply (we’re thinking of something along the lines of that animation assignment last semester where you could click points and a spline would appear between those points ... if we could somehow turn that into a level editor). Hopefully he can work this out soon so we can know that we are able to have multiple levels for sure, so we can get to working on them.

As for myself, I’m planning on working on menu implementation soon. Our artist is designing the menus, and I will be doing the programming to implement them into our game. We are planning on working on the requirements for menus in the game design homework assignment first, and then putting whatever we do into our game.

Soon, we will have to think more about requirements such as lighting, more advanced texturing, shaders, and sound, as far as actually implementing them rather than just design. However, we’re not quite there yet.

Post-Milestone 2 and Post-Reading Week

               Both the second milestone and reading week have come and gone (well, almost) and WASD has achieved a little more since my last post, but progress is coming far slower than any of us would’ve liked this semester. We have been finding it difficult enough to juggle regular homework from our classes, so we haven’t been able to find a whole lot of time on top of that to work on our game, which we would really like to do by now. I am also ashamed as a gamer that I have not played any new video games in the longest time because of homework, and so I still don’t have a whole lot to blog about besides my group. Hopefully we’ll get enough of a break soon that we can get some real work done on our game, and maybe even take some breaks for ourselves too.

               Since my last post, we have mainly accomplished 2 things: making our pitch documents including sell sheets for our game (though I don’t know if that counts as progress on our game), and planning out more aspects of design. We have been brainstorming ideas for power-ups and special stats for our raptors, though we all have slightly different ideas of what we should end up with. We have made a list of sound effects that we want to make and ones we want to find, and we have given this list to the newest member of our group in the hopes that he will have sounds for our game after the reading week. We also have lists of shaders we are considering using (cellshading/toon style shaders, fog as a full screen shader, and using Mudbox to change raptor models), and what kinds of textures and lighting we’re thinking of using. Our only issue with lighting is finding a light we can use that moves with the camera, but we’re still working with ideas.

My sellsheet on Raptor Racers

               As for my loading screen, I’m becoming unsure as to whether I should scrap the idea. It was something the group originally wanted, but it is turning out to be more trouble than it’s worth to get it working. The program still crashes if I attempt to load in a specific 3 models, despite having worked before, and it still freezes until I click the window, and I can’t seem to resolve these issues. On top of that, a loading screen is more of a luxury, and I feel that my time would be better spent working on menus, so I may switch gears and try to program a menu system instead. Hopefully I can return to the loading screen in progress and fix it later, though I may just scrap the idea entirely by now.

               Altogether, our group is frustrated, tired, and just hoping for a chance to fix up our game a lot more than we already have. I’m just hoping that after midterms, things will slow down, and we will have a chance to go hardcore on our game and make it amazing like we want it to be.

WASD – Slowly Workin’ Away

               Another week has passed (where have the weeks gone?) and my game development group is slowly making some progress while trying to balance working on our game with our other piles of homework that we have to do. This week, I can’t say we’ve made a tremendous improvement, but we’ve certainly got the ball rolling a bit, since we’ve now been fixing up some of our old game code and even adding some new things.

               Personally, I have been working on developing a working loading screen for our game, though since our animator has been working on cutting down our raptor animations to far fewer frames than before, our loading times may decrease significantly and so there may be no need for a loading screen after all. For once, I’m hoping that our game will end up loading slower than expected just so that my work won’t be for nothing. However, I struggled for quite a while just trying to make our game render while loading in the first place, and even now that I’ve got that working, I’m still having some pretty strange issues. For one thing, the game stops after loading only 2 animations, and only resumes when you click or move the game window. That could be problematic. On top of that, a couple of 3D models are now causing the game to crash when they attempt to load, despite the fact that they worked fine before I tried implementing the loading screen. I’m still trying to solve these problems, but I’ve had to put this work on hold in order to tackle some other homework.

 Our artist's concept for the different raptor models

               Also, we have been collaborating to come up with some ideas for a menu visually. I may end up programming the menu myself once the graphics for it have been made, which our artist is currently up to. However, she is also tackling some concept art, including designs for additional raptors to be put in the game. Our animator has also been tweaking the animation system in programming, as well as organizing bits of code the best he can.

               Altogether, we’ve been working on a bit more than last week, and we’re quickly building a collection of concept art for our game, but it’s still nowhere near complete. Hopefully we can pick up the pace more with each week, until we have a polished game.

WASD Has Grown in Ranks

               Another week has gone by, and WASD has gone through some serious changes. Most importantly, we were given a new group member in our last Game Development Workshop. Because of this, we’ve had to step back this week and attempt to give him a place within our group, and things to do (so far, we’ve stuck him on sound), as well as showing him our game and explaining the concept. We’re a little frustrated to have had to make this change when our group was already solid and had things planned out, and this seems to have put us behind rather than propelled us forward, but we will continue to work from now on with our new group member.

               We all have tasks to complete for our game; but once again, other homework seems to be pulling us back from working on our game significantly. I have been thinking of ideas for menus in our game, and have been working on getting some music for our game once again, but I didn’t get very far in the actual making of the menus because of other homework that became my priority. Other group members have had the same issue.

               On the bright side, we’ve worked out some issues among group members regarding graphics. We went to see Derek Fullerton to inquire about using Mudbox to enhance our raptor models, and now we have a far better idea of what to do. He also gave us advice on shaders, which will come in handy once we start working with them. We now have access to additional programs that will aid us in aspects of our game’s development.

               In summation, our group has taken a step forward and a few steps back this week, but at least we’re getting clearer ideas of how to accomplish our goals. Right now, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a weekend where I have little other homework to do so I can go all out with working on this game.

New Game - Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

Title: Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

Genre: Action Role-Playing Game

Platform: PSP

Publisher: Square Enix

Developers: Square Enix

High Concept:

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep is an action role-playing game for the PSP, developed and published by Square Enix (but as a collaboration with Disney). Created as a prequel to all other Kingdom Hearts games, this game allows the player to see and take part in the events that started the Kingdom Hearts series.

The player can choose to play as one of three characters: Terra, Ventus, or Aqua – all friends, each with their own story, and each intertwining with the others at several points in the game. The three friends start out on individual journeys, hoping to prove themselves worthy to their teacher and one of the few true Keyblade Masters, Master Eraqus, but instead find themselves pulled into a crisis between other worlds and their own. The player must be quick and clever to solve problems and fight their way from one world to the next, complete their character’s story, and find their destiny.

Rules:

               The player starts this game by choosing one of three main characters to play as, and this choice will affect which story the player ends up playing through. The NPCs in the game range from enemies to fight with, called the Unversed, to side characters from Disney films who contribute to the story and gameplay, to characters created specifically for this game that are also important to the unfolding of the plot. Other characters can also affect gameplay by allowing the player to use some of their special moves in combat, creating a stronger link between characters.

Constitutive Rules

The constitutive rules of the game are similar to those of any role-playing game, most of which are obvious to the majority of gamers. Some of these rules include: the player’s health decreasing by a calculated amount when hit by an enemy, losing the game when the player character’s health reaches 0, the character’s power when fighting depends on his or her stats, characters level up according to experience points, characters lose focus points when they use magic and can only use magic when there are a certain number still left, weapons add attack or magic bonuses to the player character, etc. These rules don’t exactly set Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep apart from other games, but that’s fine because these are just the basics – the real differences are with higher level concepts.

Operational Rules

Since gameplay changes slightly depending on what is happening in the game, the easiest way to describe operational rules would be to follow rules of each mission in a world (for example, a mission to find all of a certain kind of item would mean you have to explore the area and possibly press X when you reach a needed item). The player can fight or flee from monsters, and fight bosses (no fleeing available) using a straightforward attack with X, or with special commands they can choose from a side menu in real time. The player gets through each world by completing all of its missions at the time, and then he or she can move on to the next one.

Implicit Rules

Many of the implicit rules of Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep are emergent in the game. For instance, the player does not automatically get “munny” or health from killing monsters. These items explode out of the monster, and you actually have to go and pick them up to get them. Another rule that emerges through playing the game is that you can only save at save points or while traveling between planets – meaning that you can’t randomly stop and save at any point. Also, you can’t travel to certain planets before there is a plot available there, and you can’t arbitrarily attack good NPCs (only random enemies or bosses).

Core Mechanic of the Game

A typical level of this game is composed of linear missions to complete that portion of the story (the plot per each world is linear, but you can go to the worlds in a different order). Missions include finding hidden things in the world (often through solving puzzles), fighting, exploring to find secret treasure chests (optional), and more, though these are the main elements. The player advances by completing a series of missions in their current world, which advances the plot until they are able to leave that world and move on to the next one. This game is very plot-based, so you would advance the story in order to advance the game.

The game is for a single player, and there are 3 playable characters: Terra (the physical powerhouse), Ventus (the quick fighter), and Aqua (the mage). The player’s choice of character determines the plot they will access, as well as their fighting style because each character has their own skills.

Breakdown of information types:

               There are a handful of important information types in this game, each with a different purpose. Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep appears to have a greater number of information types than similar games due to the creators making a more complex battle system, but they don’t take long to get used to. These information types include:

-         “Munny” – Currency the player can collect to allow them to buy skills and other items.

-        Command Cards – Skills that the player can buy, sell, or find, each with a different effect. These are divided into battle commands, action commands, finish commands, and a shotlock command. All of these are only needed for battle except for action commands, which include commands such as jumping.

-        Healing items – Used to recover the player character’s health or focus gauge.

-        Keyblades – The weapons used in battle. They can vary in strength, reach, magic, etc, and give these as a boost to the player character while fighting.

-        Items – Things you collect, each with a different purpose within the game. These can include a wide variety of things, from quest items to useless items.

-        Abilities – Give the player certain advantages in battle. For instance, the ability “scan” allows the player to see the enemy’s health bar, which makes the fight a lot easier.

-        Command Styles – Affect how your character fights in battle, and what kind of bonus moves they could get. You gain these through the attacks and other commands you choose to use in a fight.

-        Stats – The different values that show the power of your character in different areas. These include level, exp, hp, strength, magic, defence, fire resistance, thunder resistance, blizzard resistance, and dark resistance.

-        D-Links – Keep track of which characters you can “Dimension-Link” with, meaning you can use their abilities for a period of time.

This information is valuable to the player for a couple of reasons. Munny is valuable information to track because the amount of munny the player has determines what kind of items they can buy. If they didn’t have this information, shops couldn’t exist in the game. All the rest of the information is heavily related to the battle system and ultimately, health. If the player did not have access to this information, there would be virtually no working battle system (or at least, it would be frustrating to the player who would never know how well they are doing in a fight), and the player character would die far too easily and without warning. Some of this information is just a bonus, to make the battle system more interesting, but it is still necessary to make this game as enjoyable as it is.

Some information that is kept hidden for the player includes enemy stats (besides health, which shows up when you have the “scan” ability), and how close you are to releasing a powerful attack (this seems to happen once you’ve been attacking normally for quite a while). However, in general, most information is shown, especially if it involves the player character.

Play:

               Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep is a single-player game based heavily on story and fighting. The player must develop different fighting strategies by using different skill line-ups, giving diverse outcomes. Players could also have an emotional connection to the story due to its heavier elements as the game progresses.

GUI

               Some different elements of the Graphical User Interface of the game are:

-        Command Deck: A list of available skills to use that you can scroll between and select. This menu is visible in the bottom left corner of the screen during regular gameplay and fights.

-        Command Gauge: A yellow bar above Command Deck; fills when you attack enemies, but drains if you don’t attack for too long. Once it fills up, you can use a powerful finishing move.

-        D-Link Bar: “Dimension Link”, allows you to borrow other characters’ powers in the game; when the bar runs out, the link is broken. This bar wraps in a semi-circle around the health bar.

-        Health Bar: A green bar wrapping in a circle directly around a picture of the character’s head. The bar shortens as your character takes damage.

-        Focus Gauge: A straight yellow/orange bar beside the health and d-link bars. Focus drains as you use “Shotlock” attacks that hit multiple enemies at once, or when you use magic. When it’s empty, you can’t use these attacks until it recharges.

Controls

               There are 4 distinct game modes in which controls differ: the field, combat, menus, and space travel. For each mode, the buttons on the PSP do different things.

Field:

-        X = attack or action key

-        L & R (shoulder buttons) = turn camera

-        analog stick = walk/run

-        start = pause/menu

-        select = switch to first-person view

-        O = jump

-        up/down arrow keys = select special moves from the Command Deck to use

-        triangle = use special move selected

Combat:

-        X = attack closest (or targeted) enemy

-        L & R (shoulder buttons) = when used individually, they turn the camera

-        L & R (shoulder buttons) = when used simultaneously, you will lock on to a target

-        square = if still, defend; if in motion, slide

-        All other controls are the same as in the field.

Menus:

-        arrow keys OR analog stick = move cursor to adjacent button

-        X = select highlighted option

-        O = cancel/go back

-        triangle = remove command from list (when choosing skill commands to add/remove)

-        shoulder buttons = toggle through similar menus

Space Travel:

-        start = pause

-        x = dash

-        analog stick = move

-        triangle = land on selected planet

Input Devices

The input device, being the PSP itself, maps fairly well to the game mechanics. Every button makes sense with what it does logically, with the camera being controlled by the shoulder buttons, attacking and selecting with x, running or walking with the analog stick depending on pressure applied, and scrolling through the commands menu with the arrow key pad. I felt that all the controls made sense, and I caught on very quickly without reading the manual. The most interesting part of the concept of input to game mechanics was that you could run, move the camera, and scroll through the commands menu all at the same time, which was very handy.

Audio, Music, Sound effects

At the beginning of the game, I was feeling a little iffy about the game’s music. The same upbeat music played through a sequence of very different events, from searching for a meteor shower to engaging in battle for the first time, to serious moments in the plot. However, this wasn’t a huge deal, because this was essentially the tutorial level, and levels afterward had a greater variety in music for different situations. The majority of the game’s music seems to be bubbly and fast-paced, which wasn’t the greatest to have all the time at first, but eventually it just starts to feel like the signature of the game. Fight music is also not very dark or dramatic like it often is in other games, but is instead fast-paced and somewhat electronic sounding, which is interesting in its way, but I am hoping that the music will grow more intense as the game progresses.

The background music in the Disney-themed worlds is also inspired by the same Disney movie as that world, but also has a feel that matches the rest of the game. This music tends to have a mellow yet still somewhat cheery and bouncy feeling. It really does feel like background music in the sense that it’s light and you don’t really notice it after a while. This does mostly fit the intended mood of the game.

This game actually has very satisfying sound effects. It makes appropriate noises for picking up different types of items, and even makes different sounds depending on where you hit an enemy – if you hit a monster’s metal backside, you hear a metallic noise, but if you hit its flesh, you hear more of a thump sound. Sounds are useful since you can tell what items you picked up by the noise, as well as whether you hit a monster for damage or if you hit it when it was blocking or turned the wrong way. This is very useful, since you have to rely on your eyes far less.

Special Features

There are a few special features in this game that differentiate it from other similar games in the same genre. For one thing, there is a different structure for the story than other games tend to have. Since there are 3 characters, each with a different story you can follow, this is a very different approach to play the same game from 3 completely different perspectives, giving a new experience each time, making it essentially 3 different games in one.

Another special feature that Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep has is its unique battle system. There are so many different elements beyond attacks, magic, and defending – there’s a command deck to choose from with its own levelling up system, a special move called “Shotlock” that attacks all the enemies you can lock onto within a short amount of time, and Dimension Links, which allow you to use skills from other characters in combat. This unique access to multiple characters’ skills at once through one character gives you an interesting move line-up.

One negative difference between Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep and other games of the same genre is that many JRPGs tend to have beautiful, rich backgrounds, whereas this game has somewhat dull, boring, and uninspired backgrounds. Some backgrounds in this game are dull dirt walls stretching into the distance with nothing else there. I would’ve liked it if the creators of Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep put as much effort into their setting as they did with their plot and characters.

Intended Audience

The audience that this game was created for was first and foremost, fans of the Kingdom Hearts series who have played and enjoyed the previous games. However, the Kingdom Hearts series as a whole was created for both Disney enthusiasts and Final Fantasy gamers, or even more generally, for males and females, ranging from adolescents to young adults, who enjoy action and especially role-playing games.

Story

The story has a huge role in this game, considering that the game itself is extremely story-based. In order to progress in the game, you have to progress the story, and in order to leave a world you need to finish the chunk of plot for that world through various missions. As a role-playing game crossover, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep also has a very deep, well-developed plot, and this in itself should keep an RPG fan playing the game.

The playable characters each also have their own story, and since you choose one character to play as, plot also gives the player reason to replay the game to experience each character’s story differently.

What is essential and non-essential to the game:

               The most essential elements to the game are the characters, story, and fighting system, because these are its strongest points. However, other aspects of the game are non-essential in the sense that they could easily be replaced with something else and it wouldn’t make a big difference to the game. One non-essential element is the specific worlds in the game. Since all the worlds are based on Disney movie settings and don’t tend to have a direct correlation to the main plot, the specific worlds in the game are easily interchangeable with other possible Disney worlds they could’ve used. Another non-essential component would be the individual mini-quests for each world. These are definitely needed in the game in some form, but the mini-games are not particularly memorable, so if they were replaced with something else, it wouldn’t make a huge difference, and wouldn’t even effect the plot a whole lot.

If I had to pick one element that could be sacrificed from the game without affecting gameplay, it would be the Command Board. The Command Board is a board game-style mini game the player can choose to do many times in the game, in order to level up or gain bonuses. However, this is not required at all to level up or for the actual game – it’s just a mini-game that’s completely unrelated to the normal gameplay, and feels somewhat out of place. Because of this, and also because of the fact that I played the game without even really touching this, I feel that losing this would not negatively affect gameplay.

What should be changed/added to the game:

One thing that could be added to the game would be better backgrounds with more to them rather than really plain settings that look like they had very little thought put into them. The settings of the game were supposed to have a magical Disney feel, but ended up feeling dry and dead, and I feel like the game would have felt richer if this were fixed. A change that would benefit the game would be improving the camera, since for most of the time, it works decently, but there were quite a few times when it would get stuck or just wouldn’t turn the way I tried to make it turn. Sometimes, I even had issues with trying to keep it still because it would keep automatically turning in a direction I didn’t want it to go in. Another change I’d make would be a better end to each individual world’s plot before the character leaves to the next world. Right now, it sometimes feels incomplete with the character leaving the world with no explanation as to why, since a plot event will end and then the character will just appear in space.

Learning Curve

The tutorial level at the beginning was very easy, but informative, and didn’t stretch on for too long. Every time the player is given access to something new in the game, an explanation pops up as to how it works. It felt like it went fairly quickly from easy tutorials to actual difficult bosses that I struggled with. Then again, I’d chosen to play on “Proud Mode” which is essentially hard, so I’m not complaining. While pointers are often given for fights, puzzles are completely up to you to solve, and certain aspects you have to figure out on your own. However, they’re definitely solvable if you pay enough attention to your surroundings.

Altogether, there was a decent learning curve, starting out easy and then progressing fairly quickly to challenging. This isn’t so bad since this way, you learn what you need to at the beginning, but you aren’t getting bored as you’re bogged down with numerous tutorials and easy levels to help you get going.

Artificial Intelligence (NPCs)

My first thought about the AI was that monsters seemed to be intelligent in battle, since they were actually a challenge much of the time. Sometimes, however, enemies would seem to attack half-blindly, but this didn’t necessarily work against the game, since there’d be so many enemies at once at times, so this just made the fights more possible to win. I did end up seeing one case of poor artificial intelligence though. At one point, an enemy fell off a ledge, and even though the fall was too far for it to climb back up, it kept trying and trying to get back onto the ledge, and the battle music continued as if I were being pursued, even though the enemy had no way of reaching my character. This means the enemy was essentially running into walls stupidly – meaning that the AI could use some improvement. However, I didn’t encounter any problems besides this with the AI in the game.

Culture:

               Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep was made as a prequel to the first Kingdom Hearts game. It’s one of a handful of Kingdom Hearts games created as Square Enix avoided making a sequel to Kingdom Hearts 2, possibly just to milk the series. The game was first released in Japan on January 9, 2010, then in North America on September 7, 2010, and then in Europe on September 10, 2010. An alternate version, Final Mix, was later released in Japan on January 20, 2011.

               This game can be seen as a “clash of cultures” since the games in the Kingdom Hearts series are a mix between Square Enix, most well known for creating Japanese-style role-playing games, and Disney, known for producing American animation. This means that this game is, in a way, a cross between the Japanese and American cultures.

Developers

               Square Enix, the creator of Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, was formed in 2003 as a union of Squaresoft and Enix, two of the biggest and greatest RPG publishers and developers of all time. Squaresoft is most famous for creating the Final Fantasy series, whereas Enix is famous for the Dragon Quest series, each having sold 63 million and 40 million units worldwide respectively.

               Square Enix has developed and published over 300 games including sequels, spin-offs, and special editions, all for a variety of platforms. They have created games for the iPad, iPhone, Nintendo DS, 3DS, and DSi, PC, Playstation 1 through 3, Playstation Portable, Wii, and Xbox 360. Of all these games, however, they are most well-known for their role-playing games, including Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep. The Kingdom Hearts series is actually one of their most popular series of games, though it still falls below the fame of Final Fantasy. By December 2006, the first 3 games in the Kingdom Hearts series had shipped over 10 million units worldwide. The first game, Kingdom Hearts, was released on September 1^st, 2002, followed by Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories on December 7^th, 2004, then finally Kingdom Hearts 2 on March 28^th, 2006. Lately, however, Square Enix has had far more mixed reviews on their games, such as the newer Kingdom Hearts and the newer Final Fantasy games. The company’s profits plummeted by about 36% in 2010 despite a rise in 2009, but it’s their major titles that kept them going, such as Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Dragon Quest. If the loss in profit continues, Square Enix could be in a heap of trouble, but with such a great track record, they certainly have a chance at pulling themselves out of this rut.

History

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep was actually influenced the most by previous games in the series, as well as other games made by Square Enix and creations by Disney in the past. The original Kingdom Hearts was the first game that Square Enix and Disney collaborated on, and so it was very obviously influenced by Final Fantasy games and Disney movies. The game itself (and games later in the series) contained many characters and settings taken almost directly from Final Fantasy and Disney, since Kingdom Hearts was meant to be almost a direct combination of them both.

Cultural Impact

               If you step back and view the cultural impact of the elements put into Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep rather than just looking at the game itself, you will see a huge cultural impact, most notably in North America and Japan. Square Enix’s Final Fantasy series is the most well-known JRPG series of all time and revolutionized the genre, and Disney films are the most well-known of all animated films, and have had a huge impact on generations who grew up with their movies, not to mention having a huge impact on animation as a field. The Kingdom Hearts series can’t compete with this success, but instead it combines the successes of both companies to create a series with impact of its own.

               One easy way to see the cultural impact from the Kingdom Hearts series is to go look at some Cosplay, and notice that Kingdom Hearts in a common theme. However, this is a stronger influence on the Japanese culture than anywhere else, although Cosplay does exist around the world.

               However, one of the biggest impacts that Kingdom Hearts has had was pulling Disney into the hardcore video game industry. Before Kingdom Hearts, most gamers would automatically jump to the conclusion that a Disney game would be lame, childish, and not at all up to the standards of a real gamer. However, Square Enix helped Disney along by creating the game with elements of Disney in it rather than making a pure Disney game – and it was a huge success. Now, gamers are more open to the idea of Disney making games, and Disney is more confident that they can create high-quality games, as we can see with the release of Epic Mickey. In fact, the Head of Disney’s gaming division himself admitted that Kingdom Hearts “paved the way for another Disney game” (kotaku.com). In other words, Kingdom Hearts laid the groundwork for what could turn out to be multiple Disney games, and possibly even other games inspired by these Disney games.

Sources:

"Thank Kingdom Hearts For Epic Mickey." Kotaku. 17 Feb. 2010. Web. 1 Feb. 2011. http://kotaku.com/5474368/thank-kingdom-hearts-for-epic-mickey.

Gifford, Kevin. "Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Gets Final Mix Treatment." 1up.com. 14 Sept. 2010. Web. 1 Feb. 2011. http://www.1up.com/news/kingdom-hearts-birth-sleep-final.

"KINGDOM HEARTS Birth by Sleep." Square Enix. 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2011. http://na.square-enix.com/khbbs/.

"Square Enix." IGN. IGN Entertainment, 2011. Web. 31 Jan. 2011. http://games.ign.com/objects/546/546688.html.

"Kingdom Hearts Series Ships over 10 Million Worldwide." Gamespot. CBS Interactive Inc., 5 Feb. 2007. Web. 31 Jan. 2011. http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/kingdomhearts/news.html?sid=6165399.

Ransom-Wiley, James. "..Square Enix profits down, but not out as familiar franchises keep sales alive." joystiq. AOL Inc., 5 Nov. 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2011. http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/05/square-enix-profits-down-but-not-out-as-familiar-franchises-kee/.