Joy stick genreration

Last lesson we watch the last part of the documentary series games Britannia. Which was about the rise of the computer game and Britain's role within the development of the game industry. It also raises a few points about morality in games with games like GTA. Where the objective is to cause as much chaos while there is story attached to these games it doesn't limit what the player does.

Playing (more of a rant about ) a pervasive game

For this lesson are task was to play a pervasive game which could of gone better but I still had a good experience


So what type of pervasive game did we play? well it was some kind of treasure hunt that involved the use of QR codes (QR codes are those black and white images that you get on some promotional items) well I didn't have my phone or a QR reader (I'm not even sure my phone could read QR codes...) so that meant pairing up with someone who did (which was fine as it was a more efficient tactic in the long run ) . So what went wrong well we got loss although it was not like how those adventure books and film describe (probably it was all on the campus and not in some tropic jungle or  frigid mountain range )which I also found that it  kind of ruined the immersion of the game or at least the version I was playing.

What do I mean by that well if you think about it isn't going on a event-less journey around the campus and harbor front a bit boring so I decided to imagine my own scenario for it. This is were I started to lose interest not because of the getting lost bit or the location of it but rather the simplicity of the game.

This is because it essentially going around different locations following clues but I always imagine these games to have some sort of puzzle element or strategy to them just to make it a little more harder and more exciting where getting lost is a good possibility or where the game really begins to test the player's ability.

Oh well maybe I should try and start my own game probably without QR codes and more based on Knowledge....


Well Expect somethiNg  ASAP   prime elf month of winter's end

Merging games with reality

Today we learned about pervasive games these are games in which take place within the real world
for example Killer where players "kill" each other with fake weapons  this adds a whole lot on to what we think about games and maybe a new way to promote games and businesses.
You could use this way to promote games and products such as books and films. For example if you are releasing a mystery game or book you can set it up so that you have your own investigation where  people can solve puzzles and find clues.

tablut revised

So last week we got to test are iterations for the board for my iterations I feel that they worked well and need a little more balance added. so my iterations (although I won't go into detail ) were to add a king piece (this was the one that worked well) and a barbarian army (which needs tweaking).
this blog is going to be a short one

A break from work a trip to the British Museum

Last Thursday we went on a class trip to the British Museum which is located in London the purpose of this trip you ask well the trip was to look at the existing and used board games mainly Sennett and Ur however they did have various other game pieces. what was even more interesting is that we were guided around by Irving Finkel who is an Archaeologist   and assistant keeper of the middle east department of the museum. So after that whirlwind tour around the game pieces we were left to our own devices and wondered around the museum I spent most of my looking around the exhibits mainly the witchcraft and Japanese exhibits which were both quite interesting(however there were still so many exhibits that I wanted to have a look at but never got round though...) although this was the first time I had been to the British museum i found it lacking something (I think this mainly due to the fact that I have stronger interest in natural history and science.) overall it was a good trip and it reminded me that there is only so much you can get from reading  you  need to go out and preform your own reaserch take this as advice  to anyone who  has ( unluckily)  stumbled across this blog

escape sennet

Last Thursday we played a reiterated version of Sennett called escape Sennett. This  version was different as it introduced a new mechanic of a monster piece and what this did was changed the mechanic of Sennett from being a competitive game to being more of a cooperative game because instead of playing against your opponent you now play against the monster piece. So what does the monster piece do well the monster piece is very limited when it comes to movement moving 1 along the first row an then move half of what the die had rolled and can't get past the river square. the other pieces objectives is to get of the board this can be done individually so that one piece move each turn or it can be stacked on to an opponent's piece meaning both players can move that piece. also 3 pieces of the same color will prevent the opposite color piece from moving.

Tablut

On Thursday we played a game called Tablut.  The aim of this game( for the white pieces) is to get their king to the corner or edge squares (depending on rules although corners is the more accepted rule.) and the aim of the black pieces is to capture and wipe out all the white pieces and prevent the king from entering the corner squares. each piece moves any amount of spaces (as long it is not occupied or special squares) either left ,right,up or down. The board is set up as so 8 white pieces and king placed in the center with the king on the throne square and 16 black pieces placed along the outside in groups of 4 this game can be played with any amount  as long as there is twice the amount of black to white pieces. e.g 12 white 24 black


Capturing 
Capturing is when a piece is trapped between the two pieces(vertical or horizontal)  of the opposite color example two black pieces on either side of white piece counts as capture however if a piece intentionally move between two opposite colors it does not count as a capture. The king piece can only be captured if it is completely surrounded by the enemy pieces also edges are also useful for capturing the king as they act as boundaries.


Special squares
Konakis or throne square is the starting square for the king once the king has moved he can't return to that square any other piece can pass through but not land on this square.
corner squares are inaccessible to every piece except the king.
also the center squares can only be landed on twice by the white piece  before the white has to move away from it