Brian Teng Has An Idea!

“Mind Game” Postmortem: Lessons Learned From My First Public Project

For the past few months my classmates and I were working on a project in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University CyLab. This project aims to create a game interface that wraps around picoCTF, an international cybersecurity competition for middle/high school students. We worked to provide an alternate means of participating in the event that would appeal to the more general public (i.e. people who have some interest in the topic but little to no prior knowledge).

“Devotion” to Puzzle Design and Indirect Control

If you haven’t played the game and are planning to do so, I suggest you to look away. Spoilers beyond this point.

Image result for omg cat — What? Have you not played yet?!

I’m going to post this nice picture here to avoid innocent souls being spoiled.

Bakery Rivalry: A Game Concept Aimed To Simulate Real-World Trading Scenarios

I started playing RuneScape in 2005, shortly after it’s second version just launched. My experience with MMORPG was very little, and the only other MMORPG I played was Maple Story (when online games are deemed “useless, harmful and cost unnecessary cash” by my mother, which are all painfully true). After completing all the free missions and countless hours of grinding I made myself a “considerable” fortune; the problem was that this fortune was barely usable, since at that time the only ways to spend that money were either purchasing items from NPCs or trading with random players, who will probably only accept the request if you offer ridiculously more than expected.

Then in 2007, a new feature was implemented in to the game — the Grand Exchange. Essentially it collects all the needs and offers across all servers, and let’s players to purchase items through a price decided by the market. This allows players to get what they want for a reasonable price, and also allows sellers who want really wanted to sell items an easier way to find the correct customers instead of wandering around in the world inefficiently.

MMORPGs nowadays all have similar trading systems. For example, Blade and Souls has the exactly same market system that allows players to put their items on sale for the entire community.

“Can We Not Grow Up?”: A Thought On Progression in Meaningful Game Design

Before I begin, I want to take a brief moment to share my insights on life itself first.

You’ve probably asked yourself this question as well: why can’t we grow backwards and be the younger self?

Growing up is actually not bad. As time goes by, you grow physically stronger, and mentally more mature. You get to learn a lot of stuff, understand things in different ways, and most importantly, from all the things that you’ve taken and absorbed from the world, you form your own identity. That’s something no-one’s going to take away from you.

An Unsung War: The Missing Of China and Japan In Modern WWII Games

After taking a gigantic leap back to the First Great War, the Battlefield franchise finally returns to where the series actually started – World War II. While many criticized the game of its unoriginal online gameplay compared to its predecessor Battlefield I, I am much more disappointed, and therefore curious, of the absence of the Sino-Japanese War.

In 1937, soon after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Japanese Forces launched a full-scale invasion on China, and quickly they’ve captured major cities such as Shanghai and Nanjing. The Chinese Forces did not see its counterattack until 1939, and since then the conflict remained stalemate until the Attack on Pearl Harbor, which led the US to officially join the great war.

It is not difficult to understand why World War II gets a lot of attention, even after three decades: it is a gigantic collection of tragedies, heroism and legends of blood and tears. This makes it even more bizarre to see the Asian Theater under-represented in public media, especially in the market. What happened? Why did no-one make a video game on this theme?

“Unto The Horizon” Postmortem – Week 2

Hello! You’re at the week 2 postmortem for “Unto the Horizon”, an ETC BVW Round 4 project at Carnegie Mellon University. Here’s a quick glance of what we did for week 1:

Round 4 is a story-telling round.
We’re using the Cave Autonomous Virtual Environment (CAVE) room. It is a room with 3 big screens and a moving floor.
We’re telling a story about launching a rocket. We aim to invoke emotions of accomplishment and the joy that comes with it.
It’s an asymmetrical experience: One team will be in the CAVE as pilots, and the other team in another space as Mission Control. Plays like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.
Feedback: Lack of story, no interest curve, not intense enough.

You’re always welcome to go back to the previous blog post to know more about this project! Without further or due, let’s begin our week 2 development!

“Unto The Horizon” Postmortem – Week 1

Hello, commander! You have arrived at the postmortem blog for “Unto the Horizon”, an ETC BVW Round 4 project. BVW, acronym for Building Virtual Worlds, is a class taught at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), where students go through 5 rounds of distinctly themed projects and learn game development fundamentals and soft skills such as cooperation and communication.

“Hero, RUN!” Postmortem

Hi! And welcome to the postmortem of “Hero, RUN!”. This project is a 8-week long school project, and I’d like to give a big shout out to Ian Chang and Marvin Yang: without them this project would never be possible.

To begin with, we started out with nothing but one requirement: make a VR / AR game. For us, there wasn’t really a debate on whether we should go with VR or AR; we were lucky to have TWO HTC Vives, so it really wasn’t some sort of a hard decision.

“The Poorly-lit Exploration Project” Postmortem: 3

Welcome back to another postmortem post for TPEP……this name is too long to input, I’ll change a name next time. Last time we talked about audio and subtitles. They helped building the story of the game, and added color and liveliness to the whole environment.

In this final post, we’ll go into some other features in the game, including the items to be picked, the terrain and some optimization.

“The Poorly-lit Exploration Project” Postmortem: 2

Last time, we mentioned…

What this project is: This is an independent project to push my skills further. The goal is to pickup 20 items, invoke particle systems and tell a simple story.
Setting Up: I’ve decided that the story should take place in the remains of a deserted village, and the protagonist is revealed with her past, and her destiny as she explores the ruins.
Character: How I approached the mechanism to control our character.

So, without further ado, let’s continue.