Tag Archive for college

PANDAmonium!

PANDAmonium!

PANDAmonium is the 5th game I created in Intro to Game Design. It’s about three cute little pandas who are lost in a bamboo forest. The pandas must work together to escape! This is a single-player game in which the player controls three pandas simultaneously to figure out how to help all three panda’s escape without dying or getting trapped. I made this game back in October.

You can download it from YoYo Games for free here:

YoYoGames

Pandamonium1

PANDAmonium
Added: 13 December 2013
By: Nybiru

This game was created using the Koala-Br8 tutorial in The Game Maker’s Apprentice by Jacob Habgood and Mark Overmars. The graphics were all created by me. The music is from jewelbeat.com.

Ningyo hime: Mermaid Princess

Ningyo hime: Mermaid Princess

I just finished finals for this semester, and now I finally have time to upload the rest of the games I made this semester. Ningyo hime: Mermaid Princess is the fourth game I made for Intro to Game Design this past semester using GameMaker 8.1. It is a breakout clone based on the classic fairy tale, The Little Mermaid. I made this game back in October.

The Mermaid Princess has heard tales of mermaids before her time leaving the ocean kingdom to marry princes on the surface. Tired of her life in the sea and wishing more than anything to meet a prince to call her very own, she has stolen a potion from the evil sea witch that will turn her tail into legs if she breathes the surface air.

I went with a sort-of anime-style feel for this game. It can be downloaded from YoYo Games here:

YoYoGames

Mermaid_screen_1

Ningyo hime: Mermaid Princess
Added: 13 December 2013
By: Nybiru

I will be posting the rest of the games I made for Intro to Game Design over the next few days, in order of when they were created. I have five more to go!

Cheese Catastrophe

Cheese Catastrophe

I just published my second game design project to YoYo Games. It’s called Cheese Catastrophe. Here’s the description I wrote for this game:

You are a mouse alien from the Mouse Galaxy, and you must use your mouse starship to mine the cheese moons for fresh cheese to sustain your dying civilization.

You see, the inhabitants of the Mouse Galaxy have long ago mined all of the cheese from their own cheese moons, and must now venture to the far reaches of the universe to mine for cheese on far away moons to sustain their civilization. Your people are currently mining cheese moons in the cat galaxy. The cat aliens don’t like what you are doing, as destroying their moons will disrupt the tidal forces on their planets, flooding their cities. The cat aliens hate getting wet, and have sent evil catsteroids to destroy your mouse starship, before you can destroy all of their cheese moons.

YoYoGames

Screen_cap_1

Cheese Catastrophe
Added: 30 September 2013
By: Nybiru

I drew the sprites using crayons and scanned them in. I thought it would be cute to make a game that looked like something a child drew by hand. This game was based on the Galactic Mail tutorial in The Game Maker’s Apprentice.

Stay tuned. Next I will upload my third game, Crushing Candies, which is a lot more in depth than my first two games. I’m also working on my fourth Into to Game Design lab project and another project I’m making on my own that will hopefully be finished in time to show at Family Fest at my college.

Evil Ottilia Goes Berserk

Evil Ottilia Goes Berserk by Jen Ný

I have just uploaded the first game I made in Game Maker Studio 8 for my game design class. It’s called Evil Ottilia Goes Berserk. In the game, you play as a mother dragon who must rescue her babies from Evil Ottilia.

It is a very simple game. There is only one room, where you shoot demons and save baby dragons to accumulate points. When you get hit by a demon or evil baby dragon, the game ends and your high score is recorded. I was trying to go for an old-school Atari-ish feel with the graphics (if you couldn’t already tell by the reference to Evil Otto from Berzerk.) Evil Otto was the most evil thing I could think of, and Evil Ottilia is a reference to him.

I created all of the sprites and the background image with PyxelEdit. For the sound effects, I used audacity (my own voice with the pitch changed). The background music is from StageLight.

YoYoGames

Evilottilia

Evil Ottilia Goes Berserk
Added: 19 September 2013
By: Nybiru

Evil Ottilia was created in less than one week during my first week of class, based on the Evil Clutches tutorial from The Game Maker’s Apprentice. I may eventually go back and add more levels and features to this game to make it more exciting.

I do have another game ready that I will share in my next post. I am also currently working on my third game project, as well as in the planning stages of another game that I hope to have ready to show off during Family Fest at Lorain County Community College in October.

I will be posting all of the games I create with Game Maker Studio for school to YoYo Games for free download.

First Week of School!

I’ve just finished my first week of classes. It’s still early, but I’m already enjoying school a lot more than I did when I was working on my first degree. The Intro to Game Design class is pretty awesome.

I’ve already made one (extremely simple) game. I just want to make some new art assets and sound effects before submitting the project. I will be posting my finished game projects on this blog under the “Freebies” category until I get my game studio website up and running.

Aside from making games, we are also required to play games in the class. One assignment this week was to choose a AAA title to play from a list of games chosen by my professor. I’m going to get college credit for playing Bioshock! My college is also pretty cool in that students who don’t have their own Xbox 360 or PS3 are able to check out a console from the school library.

Well that’s about it for now. I have to get back to working on my game and finishing up a cosplay costume. Expect to see some photos of my Dragon’s Crown cosplay once it is finished (assuming I get it done in time for Midoricon, which starts Friday!).

I’m Approved for Financial Aid

Elf Dragon's Crown

I was able to get my Pell Grant and subsidized loan. I had to file an appeal and set up an “academic plan” before my financial aid could be released since I already have a degree. I’ve never qualified for federal aid before (I’m turning 24 this year), so I didn’t know how any of this stuff worked. I guess they put people who already have a lot of credits through the same appeal process as people who fail classes, as though knowing too much is just as much a punishable offense as knowing too little.

The grant covers tuition for the next two semesters and I will set aside the loan money as an emergency fund in case anything happens or if I don’t qualify for federal financial aid next year. I’ll also look for scholarships for next year.

It was a difficult decision, but I’ve decided to resign from my current part time job so that I’ll have more time to dedicate to school, starting my game studio, and freelance work. I’ve offered to help find a replacement since I could only give two weeks notice (I know two weeks is standard, but I didn’t know if they could find someone and have them start by then). I should be able to make enough freelancing to cover my bills. Freelancing hours are much more flexible, and depending on the project, I can make more per hour than I could at my regular job.

I hope I’m making the right decision. What are your thoughts on working while going to school? Does a regular job vs freelancing make a difference? What about starting a company while you’re still in college? Comment below.

(Picture is unrelated and is a preview of my cosplay for Midoricon. Check back soon if you’re only looking at my blog for the cosplay stuff!)

Looseleaf Textbooks: The Latest in College Student Scamming Technology

I enjoy minimizing the amount of money that I’m ripped off each semester from purchasing college textbooks. That’s why I get a list of required textbooks early, before the college bookstore even starts selling books for the semester and compare prices on Amazon, eBay, and Half.com. This also allows me to avoid the insanely long lines in the college bookstore.

I guess in the couple years since I completed my first degree, things have changed and colleges are starting to move more towards looseleaf “textbooks.” Either that, or my college just likes to rip students off more than most.

For those that are fortunate enough to not know what a looseleaf textbook is, it’s basically a ream of computer paper, but instead of being blank, and therefore serving the functional purpose of allowing you to print your own documents, it has the kinds of things that you would normally find inside a textbook (information, stock photos, unfunny comic strips, etc.) printed on each sheet. They also come with nifty little holes on the edge of each page so that you get to spend another $5 on a 3-ring binder on top of the $100+ you already spent on the fancy ream of paper. How cool is that?

Publishers like to say that looseleaf books are more convenient, since you can just take the chapters you need each time you go to class, or that they save you money. What they hope you won’t notice is that they still cost over $100, and you’re unlikely to be able to sell them back to the bookstore (which is already a ripoff. Textbook buyback days are essentially the Gamestop trade-in events of the academic world) or to other textbook buyback websites, since book-buyers are worried that you may have lost some of the pages. If you’re lucky, you may be able to sell them to another eBay member if your price is low enough.

I had one once when I was working on my last degree that I bound with string as soon as I got it and was able to resell on eBay. Now, for Fall 2013, two of my four classes required looseleaf textbooks, both of which the college bookstore expected me to pay over $100. I ended up getting a previous edition of the Intro to Theater book, which was an actual book, for $8 shipped. (Yes, $8. That wasn’t a typo.) I also got the international edition of the Entrepreneurship book for $34 shipped (always look for the international edition. Publishers say they’re only for sale outside the US, but they’re perfectly legal to import).

At least my game design class has a normal “learn on your own” non-textbook type book. My C# book still cost a small fortune, even though Amazon has similar books for learning C# for under $30. All-in-all I saved a lot of money compared to what the college bookstore was going to charge me.

It’s pretty obvious that looseleaf textbooks are simply a way for publishers to curb used book sales and drive up their own profits. They don’t care about the poor college students who can barely afford Cup Noodles. It’s almost as if Microsoft has teamed up with the textbook companies to find new ways of extracting money while screwing over their customer base.

TL:DR version: Avoid giving in to textbook scams like looseleaf textbooks. Instead, buy international editions and/or previous versions when you can. And when you’re done, sell them directly to other students on eBay or in person instead of getting ripped off by your college bookstore’s Gamestop-esque trade-in policies.

(Don’t worry. The photo isn’t my desk. It’s from Morguefile.)

Going Back to School and Starting an Indie Game Company… At the Same Time

Grunt Birthday Party

As I briefly mentioned in a previous blog post, I will be going back to school at the end of August for Computer Game and Simulation Design, which is my college’s fancy way of saying “video game development.” It doesn’t look like I’ll be getting financial aid this semester because of the fact that I already earned an Associate of Arts (before I knew what I wanted to do with my life), but I should be able to afford at least this semester with what I have saved up. I have an appointment to speak with a guidance counselor in a couple weeks (which is the earliest appointment they had available).

I am also in the process of starting my own independent game company. I’ve always dreamed of starting my own business, and this will give me a lot of extra industry experience by time I finish my degree in game design. It might be crazy to be starting my own company while still in school, but plenty of other people have done it, and I’m just crazy enough to give it a shot. My plan is to start out small and offer my first few releases for free (supported by ads on the download pages) to generate buzz around my company while I gain more game making experience before actually trying to sell anything.

I’ve just started a new social media project on an independent contractor basis, so I’ll have some money coming in. I haven’t yet figured out what I’m going to do about my regular job. I don’t think I’ll be able to work 40 hours a week between the two jobs, plus work on getting my own company up and running, plus going to school full time. I don’t want my school work to suffer from lack of time that I’m able to spend on homework and studying.

Aside from applying for tons of scholarships for next semester and beyond, I’m brainstorming other ways to fund my education, such as crowd-funding. Have you tried crowd-funding to pay for your college tuition? Please post in the comments of this post what your experiences have been, both positive and negative.

Also, I’d like to hear from anyone else who has majored in game design or started their own indie game studio. How did you like your classes? If you already graduated, what are you doing now? If you own an indie game studio, how successful have you been thus far?

I’d really like to hear from anyone who’s on a similar career path. In this modern internet age, networking with like-minded individuals is probably one of the most important things you can do to become successful in your career.

I’ll keep this blog updated with my progress in school and in my indie game business.

(I don’t have an appropriate picture for this post, so I’ll just use a random Grunt enjoying his Grunt Birthday Party that I took on my phone many months ago.)