Student Area

Revisions

The historians of your day have sent you back to investigate the explosion of the first ever hyperdrive-equipped starship. You’re sent to the space center shortly before its launch. Will you find out what happened, or try to change the past?

My interactive story “Respawn” is located at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/cshaffer/Respawn/

In “Respawn” you take on the role of a grizzled mercenary character in a multiplayer action shooter. What tactics will you use? What things will you do with your power?

These are things you choose, so I can’t really say what they will be. You must discover these yourself!

-Clyde

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/kpmcinto/faulty.html

Description: In Faulty, you play as a piece of security machinery whose threat-recognition software is malfunctioning. As a computer you cannot sense anything beyond what is placed in front of your scanner, you cannot ask for clarification, and you cannot make choices outside of those you were programmed to make. You can however attempt to use your limited sentience to correctly identify objects whose dimensions are scanned in, and try to avoid the scrap heap, or deliberately let in objects that could be threatening to cause havoc in the building.

Hello!

My completed game, “The Pointer”, is linked on the following page:

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jtumarki/project1.html

Description: You play a computer cursor who is a bit bored with their everyday life. One night, while ‘The Human’ is away, you decide to explore the depths of the file system. What kinds of documents and applications will you delve into? What sorts of characters will you encounter? There are many different options, so choose wisely!

Enjoy!

-Jessica

Hey all. I am Andrew Bueno, a junior in the Bachelor’s of Computer Science and Arts program. I think the first game I ever played was SkiFree on Windows 95. Needless to say, the mental trauma of a futile race to escape the jaws of a yeti affects me to this day.

I am proficient with most of the Adobe Creative Suite, C, C++, Java/Processing, Python, and SML (a language that is utterly irrelevant to game design).

This will be the first time I have made a serious effort towards making a game, and I think that I would like to include game creation in some degree in my post-college life. I think games have a powerful potential to express philosophical and political ideas, a potential that has not been explored as much as it should be.

^^ That’s me. I’m fairly passionate about Orientation, and I definitely took advantage of the opportunity this year to make a beard out of tape. My name is Andy Biar. I’m a junior BCSA major in Computer Science and Music Technology, and my skills are thus:

Programming: Java, Python, C, SML

Music Software: Pro Tools, Reason, GarageBand, SPEAR, Finale

I think games are probably awesome. I have actually had this internal struggle over whether I want to try to get into the industry, so maybe I can help sort that out this semester.

Reading this work reminds me of a video I watched once, a demonstration of one of the first computer mice ever created by computer engineers…in the late 1960s. It’s amazing just how much of the foundations of our use of personal computers today were based on prototypes or proposals decades before.

Nelson’s work is about as forward thinking as it could be for its time – we see elements of his Xanadu in today’s hyperlinks making up the World Wide Web and version control software like Git or Mercurial. Granted, a few of his ideas seem somewhat odd – I’m not sure Stretchtext as a delivery of information is entirely necessary – but for the most part, they are sound and eerily prescient. In fantics I see the ideal of today’s field of Human-Computer Interaction.

Furthermore, although it is not explored, the ideas behind fantics are just as useful and important when applied to games. Indeed, I would argue some of the best games are fantically sound in their intuitive control schemes and allowing the player to make gameplay choices without “condescension”.

I was disappointed that Computer Lib was not included in whole, though I understand that for me it would serve of diminished value, being an experienced user of the personal computer. Still, it would have allowed me to get into the mindset of those who were not born with computers already in their life.

Idea 1- A story about trying to get out of bed in the morning and how it can be extraordinarily difficult to do so, particularly on days when getting up is urgent and the story of the dream world calls you back to sleep.

“You carefully approach the corner in the hallway, bracing yourself to finally catch the Deep Freeze Killer. Suddenly, a loud buzzing fills your ears and drowns out all your other senses. You fall. The fall must have been swift because you’re aware that you’re prone before you’re able to realize you’re falling.

Before you appears the source of the buzzing, a small device with flashing red numbers. You vaguely recall something urgent.”

Choices: “Attempt to deactivate the buzzing device.” “Try to stand.”

Idea 2-

This second idea explores the idea of “respawning” in games. The story starts like a interactive novelization of a multiplayer shooter game such as Call of Duty, describing a battle scene and offering various courses of action. These courses of action ultimately lead to protagonist death, at which point the player is offered a choice in “character classes” to respawn as, all of which are full except for the “innocuous spider tying to build a web on some hummer wreckage in the middle of the battlefield” class.

Examples of choices offered at various separate points in the story:

• “Lob a grenade over the wall”
• “Add some thread to the web that goes to the left, and then some that goes to the right”
• “Continue spinning and orbiting the sun”