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[year2college]

Procedural Structure in Games:

No Man's Sky is a vast, open world game based around space and the galaxy, where the main idea is too land on new planets and discover new things like wildlife, plants, caves, minerals and other types of items special to certain planets.

However, No Man's Sky is procedurally generated, this includes the solar systems, the planets, weather systems, the flora and fauna on planets, the behaviors of different animals on different planets and the artificial structures of buildings and the spaceships the player can obtain.

Don't Starve:

Don't Starve is an action-adventure game in which the map, when spawned in, is a randomly generated open world survival game.

Don't Starve uses Procedural Generation to, while having a random world, also keeps some aspects constant in different runs of the game.

Dwarf Fortress:

Dwarf Fortress is a 2D game where the player controls a large amount of dwarves, the main aim of the game is to attempt to build your group and to construct a successful and wealthy fortress.

As with the other games, Dwarf Fortress also includes Procedural Construction but also uses a PRNG (Pseudo Random Number Generator) algorithm, this PRNG algorithm collects a large amount of supposedly random numbers but are all numerically the same as when the seed is built.

[year2college]

Procedural Structure

The Procedural Structure, or the Procedural Programming Paradigm, is where a program code is divided up into procedures, these procedures are discrete blocks of code which carry out a task.

The procedures, which are also known as subroutines or functions, contain a series of computational steps which are to be carried out in an order specified by the programmer.

[year2college]

Dice Roll Games:

One of the most well known dice rolling games is

Mario Party:

These dice are the main mechanic of most Mario party games, it's used pretty much everywhere and is how the game plays out.

You use the dice to spin for: • Moving forwards to get closer to a Power Star • Rolling to see who go first in mini games • See who get's to go first in mini games

As you can see, rolling dice is a heavy part of Mario Party and the main mechanic.

Blood Bowl:

Blood Bowl is a game based around American Football with a hectic twist, it involves Orcs, Dwarves and pretty much any fantasy creature you can think of, which ends up resulting in a ridiculously funny and amusing game.

However, as the title of this blog shows, the game is played out using a dice, the dice is used to make your character do moves and use items which adds to the already intensely hectic game play.

Slice And Dice:

Slice And Dice is a classical fantasy type game where there a multitude of different class like a Fighter or a Mage, like the common fantasy game, it consists of the player fighting through a wave of heroes and to slay the Dragon, however the special thing about this game is the dice rolling mechanic, unlike other Dice Rolling games, Slice and Dice has a set type of die for each class which results in definitely trying out each type of class at least one so see which one is the best idea for you.

[year2college]

Data Tables in Games

Data Tables are very useful mechanic created to hold an extended amount of data in one place which can be distributed at any time if used.

For example, World of Warcraft use Data Tables to show the stats of the character, consisting mainly of: • The HP • The Damage • The Defense • DPS

and other types of data shown about the character.

As you can see, it show's a multitude of information of which would most likely be inside a Data Table to show the details.

Another game that involves Data Tables is Pokemon, This data table is way more simpler then World of Warcraft's but still shows the basic and important statistics, not to mention it also shows the EXP until the next level and how much EXP the Pokemon has racked up.

League of Legend's statistics are fare more easier to read and consist on a bar of 1-100%, not to mention that it's shown for every character so you could check every character before going into the match.

Undertale's Data Table is by far the easiest one on this list, it is a very simple box showing all the necessary data the player needs to see and what defense and attack they have.

Finally, we have a Data Table for Dragon Ball Legends, specifically the character Goku Black, you can see all the necessary stats lined up from Health down the Equipment Slots and also stat boosters.

[year2college]

Is using premade assets considered "cheating"?

I believe that, while it can be a short and quick way to avoid having to make your own type of asset, in general, it ends up being a very useful mechanic to a developers disposal.

I myself do not consider using premade assets as a type of cheating as it's a free access provided by other developers, and not to mention that it was essentially created to assist newer developers to make their own type of game for themselves.

While I believe some other people could consider it as cheating since the developer would not be putting absolutely 100% of their mind into creating their game, it can't be helped since if you are only starting, creating a rock for example could be quite difficult and it would be a stepping stone which could also be used as a very useful teaching moment to possible help them discover how to make their own assets for the future.

So in conclusion, it could be seen as both cheating and helping, as I said previously I don't consider it cheating but more as a very useful mechanic developers of all types can use to make their game.

[year2college]

Quixel Bridge and Megascan

Quixel Bridge:

Quixel Bridge is a built in mechanic for the massively known games designer Unreal Engine, it's main focus is to be able to connect the Epic Games Store and Unreal so that you can further enhance your games design with premade assets.

These assets consist between:

• Environments • World Materials • Metahumans

Quixel Bridge has been used on Unreal by a multitude of people because of its usefulness and great assistance, and a decent amount of it is free, of course, like most things there are some things you can pay for but that's only if you specifically need something outside of the already useful assets provided to you.

Megascan:

Megascan is another mechanic created by Quixel which serves as a massive online scan library which works as a constant high-resolution, consistent PBR (Physically Based Rendering) calibrated surface, vegetation and also 3D scans.

Megascan also includes a desktop application which is used for managing, mixing and exporting your downloaded scan data. Megascan is the result of a 5 year scan which is in collaboration with the top games and film studios worldwide.

Quixel Bridge is also built of Megascan which allows for the assets provided by Bridge to further enhance a developer's creation of their game, in turn this helps to make a nicer and more refined map because of the intense and well manufactured Megascan.

[year2college]

Cutscenes In Games: The Evolution of Cutscenes and How They Have Impacted Games

Cutscenes in games, since PAC-MAN, which was released in 1980, have always been an amazing addition, it is an amazing way to show the player what game they are playing and how they get from one level to the next.

For example: at the beginning of game cutscenes, there were small snip-bits in PAC-MAN that showed a short story between Pac Man and the Ghosts.

Later on, a game called Snatcher, released in 1988, showed a massive improvement on cutscenes and made the game seem different and impressive compared to other games released from that year.

As evident by the images, it is very clear that since PAC-MAN, the cutscenes have massively improved, there's built in text, you can see the characters more up close and it feels as if the character is talking to the player.

Later, in 1998, the first Metal Gear Solid was released, it's very clear that cutscenes have been MASSIVELY improved, you can see that, since 3D games have been made a massive part of what makes a game, the cutscenes obviously evolved with them, at this point it was very evident that voices for the characters present were added which also improved the game as a whole in general.

Finally, in 2022, Sonic Frontiers was released, which is a massive time-skip since 1998 in terms of games, but you can see the absolutely ginormous evolution between Metal Gear and Sonic Frontiers, it shows that despite the fact video games are forever evolving, the cutscenes in the games will only evolve with them too.

[year2college]

Two good points from the video "Ten Principles for Good Level Design"

"Good level design is fun to navigate" Like the quote says, a good level design will incline the player to want to explore the vastness of the map, and be able to show them what the developer can really do and be able to create a nice and fun level.

"Good level design is driven by mechanics" I personally agree with this, I believe that every well designed level is very much driven by the mechanics that the developer choses to add to their game, it really adds a lot to the game and defines what it's about.

[year2college]

Endless Runners

Endless Runners are an interesting genre of games, as it states, its an endless game where the only objective is to run for as long as you can.

There are such a large amount of endless runners spanning from Jetpack Joyride to Subway Surfers. Every type of Endless Runner tends to have their own special twist on the game to make theirs more unique and fun.

Subway Surfers:

For example: In Subway Surfers, as the name states there are surfboards which the player can use to speed up and get away from the police officer chasing them, not to mention that different types of boards have abilities which make them unique to each other, this way it makes the game fun and repetitive the way an endless game should be.

Jetpack Joyride:

Another example is Jetpack Joyride, instead of the common 3D endless runner you see, this one is a 2D game, where the task is to still endless run as far as you can, however as the name states you have a type of Jetpack which shoots out bullets fast enough to propel the player into the air. Since the game can allow the player to fly the game is mainly focused around avoiding electric beams and rockets coming from anywhere in the room.

As well as Subway Surfers, Jetpack Joyride also has customizable Jetpacks which can help the player get further and better.

Most Endless Runners also tend to include special items which can help the player for a small amount of time. For example in Subway Surfers, the main item you will find is the Coin Magnet, which lasts an average of about 6 seconds but can be upgraded to last longer.

In Jetpack Joyride, ever so often during your run you will come across a rainbow special gadget gem

This Gem can lead to the player getting a selection of special strong items that, while they have the item, will save them from dying for the cost of losing the item early.

Ever so often, you can also collect threes letters that spell out SAM, which stands for Strong Arm Machine, this is by far the most strongest item you can get as it can take a total of 3 hits before it is destroyed and can also deflect rockets if you successfully hit them.

Endless Runners are a very interesting type of video game, they are their own class of game and recently it's popularity spiked in 2021, even though these games are somewhat old and have come out years ago, they are also a fun little game to play if bored and will always be liked by people that know of their existence.

[year2college]

Corridor Map Creations

The first corridor is the most basic and simple corridor there is, its simply 2 doors, the door you entered through and the door you are to leave through, there are also two little lights which dimly illuminate the rooms.

The second corridor features a door to the left side, I thought a simple change for the first altered corridor I made would be a simple yet accepting child actor to create.

The third corridor, as you can see, features a window on the left side of the corridor, I decided this would make walking into different rooms feel fresh and more realistic. As you can also see there is a door on the right side instead of the left side to further make things more realistic and nice looking.

[year2college]

Randominess in Games: Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle

DBZ Dokkan Battle is a free to play mobile game with a large amount of things to do within the game.

In terms of randomness there are many things that make the game have that type of aspect to it. One example is the amount of damage the player can do with a character, there are normally 12 "ki" bars which will determine a "set" amount of damage but most of the time whatever the number says is close but never correct as its a random number set within a specific area. For example if the player's damage is displayed as 5 million, there's a chance the character will do either 5 Million exactly or even higher like 7 million. However there are special types of characters which have an 18 "ki" bar, which tends to be way stronger and mainly one of the best units in the game. If a character has an 18 "ki" bar the chances of doing 7 million damage as a base thing is very high, obviously, as said before, the chance it will be EXACTLY 7 million is extremely low since it spans from a minimum of 7 million to 20 million+, there is no true way to tell.

Another example of randomness is Dokkan Battle is the character summoning side of the game. Summoning characters is a large part of what this game is about, its how you are able to obtain stronger and better characters from a set "character banner" that comes out ever so often. Summons within Dokkan Battle tend to cost 5 "dragon stones" (this is the in game currency) for a single summon, however if you want a higher chance at getting smth better and want more then 1 character every summon there are multi summons for 50 "dragon stones".

When the player summons for these characters there are a multiude to "summon animations" that goes along to define if the player will get something good or bad. The main character during the summon, Goku, will fly in and can transform from a selection of 4-5 transformations with other special summon animations: Base - Chances of getting something good is very low

Super Sayian - Chances are very slightly higher but you can get another special "summon animation"

Super Sayian 2 - Has been proven to be the worst animation in game but can also lead into the same "summon animation" as Super Sayian

Super Sayian 3 - This animation is 3 garunateed SSR (good unit) characters or a featured unit

Super Sayian God/Blue - This animation either rewards 3 SSR characters or possibly one LR Applicable SSR unit (LR are the best type of character in game).

Base/Super Sayian Vegito - Guarenteed "Featured" SSR unit.

Super Sayian Blue Vegito - Guarenteed one LR Applicable SSR unit.

Goku Black's Rift - Garunteed Featured LR Applicable SSR unit.

Double Zenos - Garunteed Featured LR Applicable SSR unit.

Whis turning back time /Trunk's Time machine - Will garuntee to turn back time to the start of the summon which will lead into Goku fusing with Vegeta into Super Sayian Blue Vegito for a garunteed LR Applicable SSR unit.

There are other types of animations but there are to many to name.

While summoning for these characters there is absolutely NO garuntee you will even get these characters as its all purely down to RNG.

[year2college]

More Landscape Testing :)

[year2college]

Endless Runner Games: Sonic Dash

Sonic Dash is probably one of the biggest mobile endless runners made by Sega in 2013, originally the game was paid for a single month after its release but after was made permanently free on the App Store.

Obviously as the game states, you play as Sonic characters in an endless runner which progressively gets harder, however, unlike most Endless Runners, Sonic Dash, after a while, has a boss fight consisting of either Eggman & Zazz, however in the expanded Sonic Dash+ you can also fight Bash from Pac-Man.

There are a large amount of characters to pick from, these characters are: Sonic the Hedgehog Amy Rose Tails Miles Prowler Knuckles the Echidna Charmy Bee Vector the Crocodile Jet the Hawk Cream the Rabbit Blaze the Cat Shadow the Hedgehog Silver the Hedgehog Espio the Chameleon Big the Cat Classic Sonic Rouge the Bat My Melody (Hello Kitty) Chococat (Hello Kitty) Badtz-Maru (Hello Kitty) Hello Kitty (Hello Kitty) Pac-Man (PAC-MAN (Sonic Dash+)) Ms. Pac Man (PAC-MAN (Sonic Dash+)) Red (Angry Birds) Chuck (Angry Birds) Bomb (Angry Birds) Andronic (Sonic Dash Android Version Special) Metal Sonic Vampire Shadow (Halloween Sonic Dash special) Witch Rouge (Halloween Sonic Dash special) Santa Big the Cat (Christmas Sonic Dash special) Elf Classic Sonic (Christmas Sonic Dash special) Teen Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog Movie) Baby Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog Movie) Longclaw (Sonic the Hedgehog Movie) Slugger Sonic (Sonic Dash special) All-Star Amy (Sonic Dash special) Whisper (Sonic the Hedgehog comic series character) Tangle the Lemur (Sonic the Hedgehog comic series character) Treasure Hunter Knuckles (Sonic Dash special) Elite Agent Rouge (Sonic Dash special) Jingle Belle Amy (Christmas Sonic Dash special) Excalibur Sonic (Sonic and the Black Knight)

All of these characters can either be instantly obtained due to buying them with real money or by playing the game and obtaining a set amount of special tokens to unlock the character.

[year2college]

Randomized Rewards in games: Borderlands (Series)

Borderlands is a first person shooter where the player goes through an area full of enemies and rewarded with items/weapons to further strengthen the player to make the game to wrestle with the further increasing difficulties that the game has.

Like Fortnite and pretty much any other game that has an in-game box with rewards, Borderlands item-pool is also randomized from a box.

From the randomly selected weapons, all the weapons also have a large selection of rarities spanning from: Common - White Uncommon - Green Rare - Blue E-Tech - Magenta Seraph - Pink Legendary - Orange Pearlescent - Cyan Effervescent - Rainbow

All of these are in rising order and all of them are rarer then the other with a high to low chance of gaining from the item boxes. Obviously due to the randomness of the game there is a chance you could get an Effervescent in a random box and then an Uncommon the next, but the chances are you'll probably get the latter more then the first.

The randomness of Borderlands item boxes is a large part of the constant grind in the game which is why I've decided to write about the randomized rewards within Borderlands.

[year2college]

Randomized Rewards in games: Fortnite (Series)

Randomized Rewards in games is a very cool concept where winning games or looting boxes will reward the player with a random item which can help the player continue in the game.

Fortnite Battle Royale is also one of these games, the randomized rewards within Fortnite is a VERY big part of the game. Opening chests/ammo boxes/freezers will reward the player with a random item: For example; an Assault Rifle, a fish or a specific type of ammo There are also 7 types of rarities for types of items which goes by: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Exotic and Mythic

Most of the time you are mainly guaranteed to get a Common-Rare item but if you are lucky you can get an item from Epic-Mythic (besides Exotics) which adds to the randomized loot-pool.

There are also Loot Boxes that a player can come across which require a key, there are normally 3 boxes which can be from Epic-Legendary and sometimes an Exotic item, obviously the items are also randomized.

Searching for items in Fortnite is massively down to randomized chance and makes up the foundations of a Battle Royale which Fortnite goes by a lot.

[year2college]

Random Elements in Games: Minecraft (Series)

Minecraft as a series has a lot of random elements in games spanning from the Game Seed before you even start the game in the original Minecraft and also receiving items spanning from common or rare types in Minecraft Dungeons.

Before the games starts in Minecraft, you can customize and change settings in the game that will change and alter the original game, however, the game will always give you a randomized game seed for every new world, when you spawn in with the seed the game will spawn you in a random spot in a random area in a randomly generated world for every different seed. You could spawn right next to a village, right next to lava, right next to mountain, on top of a mountain, the randomness of the spawns are turned to the max.

In Minecraft Dungeons the type of randomness is down to the randomly generated rewards from winning or killing specific mobs to gain a random reward. There are 3 types of rarity on weapons/items which go by Common, Rare and Unique, most of the time you will most likely only get Common and Rare based on % but sometimes you will get a Unique item if RNG is on your side.

Minecraft as a whole series has a lot of randomness which makes Minecraft an interesting game to multiple different people whether its the original Minecraft or the dungeon crawler spin off Minecraft Dungeons.

[year2college]

Random Elements in Games: Pokémon (Series)

Every Pokémon game spanning from the first ever release of Pokémon Red/Green to Pokémon GO has always had a large amount of randomness in them.

If that means encountering a random type of Pokémon in the grass in the DS/Switch games or receiving a different amount of items from spinning a Pokestop, it all has a random element to it.

Since the first ever Pokémon game Pokémon Red/Green there was also an element of randomness, and due to the large amount of it, replay-ability was HUGE, encountering a different type of wild Pokémon every-time you entered the long grass was such an interesting mechanic in Pokémon that just left people wanting to replay or redo things to see the different types they could catch.

Even in Pokémon GO, the randomness remains with spinning Pokestops and encountering wild Pokémon. Pokémon GO made it even more random because there was no set place for certain Pokémon to spawn, which meant you have a chance to catch ANYTHING, spanning from a simple Charmander all the way to fully evolved Charizard, it is entirely possible.

The randomness continues with Pokémon GO's most noticeable mechanic: Pokestops. Pokestops are a point of interest in the real world turned into a spin-able wheel which will reward the player with a different amount of items and also a random quantity of the items as well. For example you could receive 5 normal Pokeballs or you could receive 3 Ultra Balls and 2 Potions.

The randomness in Pokémon is a MASSIVE part of the game, its what defines the game as a fun, replay-able and addictive game, the randomness gives the player the rush of receiving a different type of Pokémon every time they encounter or spin a Pokestop, its always random but always rewarding.