The Root Chakra: Character

Principles and characteristics of the Root Chakra:


Colour: Red

Element: Earth
Area of conciousness: Physical body
Key Words: stability, solidarity, 

survival

,unity and form.

Physical organ association: gonads, also the glomus coccygeum or coccygeal body, adrenal gland, the kidneys and the spinal column
Relationship: To the solid part of the body, especially the bones
Importance: location of the Kundalini
Attributes: athletic, cares about survival, sensuality, pleasure and power
Governs: Perception of the physical world, willpower, motivation and intent


Concepts integrated into Root Chakra:

• Use of bones
• Concept of survival/knowledge
• Earthly characteristics
•  Voudou man
• Connection to nature end environment

KIDROBOT

DIY MUNNY CHARACTER

DIY MUNNY CHARACTER

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My Characters

My Characters

After playing the games heavily advertised on Facebook and mainly produced by company Zynga. I was able to determine what I believe were successful, and unsuccessful design ideas to implement for my game. 

Although their popularity is unprecedented I found the graphics I was faced with on games FarmVille and FrontierVille very bland, repetitive and monotonous. Although there is the option to customise your playing character, the general set-up of the characters were so generic I found them all to look generally the same.

I found this in complete comparison to Vampire Wars and Mafia Wars which (although Mafia Wars is only stills) I feel has an incredible impact on the enjoyibility of game itself. I found that looking at ‘cute’ goggle-eyed characters featured in Farmville and FroniterVille irritating. This also led me to believe that the choices made behind the game's art design was in keeping with the genre of the game. So although FarmVille and FrontierVille are both similar to Mafia and Vampire Wars in their simplicity of the games mechanics, the two games (generally considered to be more popular to males) had more graphic detail and consideration than the former mentioned, which are more popular among the females.

Although I greatly preferred the Mafia Wars game I found that the start up time involved with the two,(Vampire Wars & Mafia Wars) was greatly increased in comparison to FrontierVille. Also with Vampire Wars I found that every time I attempted to play the game the screen would go black!.. I am not sure as to why this was, although this happened once with Mafia Wars also, and not with FarmVille or FrontierVille at all.

It is notable that when designing artwork for characters featuring in social games graphic detail must be taken into consideration. Not only regarding aesthetics but also how the game will run effectively.

I have decided to construct characters which shall sit comfortably between the artistic styles of both FarmVille and Vampire Wars.

As previously mentioned I intended the non-player characters which I design to be available as toy figurines, similar to the DIY Kidrobot toys.

Below are my preliminary sketches detailing possible non player characters for my Kundalini game. I have inserted pictures of the DIY Kidrobot toys as so that the general theme and direction of where I am going with character design can be ascertained.

Social gaming: Facebook

On Researching Social gaming I decided to play a handful of Facebook games.  Frontier Ville, Vampire Wars, FarmVille and Mafia Wars. Here is a brief Synopsis of how I found each game with accompanying screen shots.


1. Frontier Ville

I found this game to be a little monotonous and actually quite irritating. 

 So repetitive and seems like an aimlessly dull way to pass time. I do not understand it's mass appeal.

2. FarmVille

I find that this game is very similar to the FrontierVille, and as discussed it is very easy to pick up on it's similarity through the use of the same game engine. The interface is exactly the same, the customisation of characters is exactly the same, and the concept of the game is also.

3. Vampire Wars


I what I did not like initially about this game is that your clan is based upon how many people in your actual network play the game, which i think is  a disadvantage, and almost put me off playing the game completely. As I had only one person out of nearly 400 people that was playing this game. 


I also found that although the graphics contained within this game were much much detailed and artistically led, I found that this game did not run as fast as the previously played FarmVille, and Frontier Ville and actually crashed before I had a chance to play.

4. Mafia Wars

Again, more attention to graphics on the art work of the game which I feel was evident in the time it took to load compared to FarmVille, and FrontierVille. However, unlike Vampire wars this game did not crash...

I must admit, I was expecting a lot from Mafia Wars in terms of game mechanics, this most probably down to the fact that with the advancement with graphics I was expecting an advancement in game ply, however this was not the case.

This game was extremely simplistic in game play which led me to feel disappointed and almost viewed the improved graphics as a waste of time for this reason. The basic game-play consists of carrying out various illegal activities in order to raise funds, help other criminal friends and perpetuate illegal activity to which I found very distasteful.At one point, a message stating "DRUG DEALERS CARRY GUNS. YOU NEED CASH TO BUY YOUR OWN" Appeared on the screen. I was alarmed, not having played such games at how evidently today's society has become desensitised to such things. Personally, I found it inappropriate and did see it as glamorised a certain type of culture to which has reaffirmed the basis and concept of my own game.

Article: GAME ENGINES

List of Flash Gaming Engines

January 11th, 2010

Recently there has been a lot of buzz about creating Flash games, especially social ones. Flash makes you cash as proved by Zynga, Playfish, Playdom,WonderHill and others. Check their websites and portfolios to get a picture about Flash social gaming.

I’ve put together this list of libraries and engines to help you start building Flash games or to explore new possibilities.

·         2D Engines

·         ISO Engines

·         Physics Engines

·         3D Engines

·         Social Gaming Platforms

·         Useful AS3 Libs

We’ve also launched the Flash Platform Game Technology Center, which is definitely a great resource for every developer.

These are the libraries I personally consider highly useful for game development. Some of them are just for games - others are great complements. I am not going to write a lot about each of as they are mostly doing the same kinds of things, such as collision detection, physics, tilemaps, optimized rendering, levels, sounds/volume, game states, scores, and more. Some of them even offer multiplayer support. It’s better (and more fun) to try some demo games and see them in action.

2D engines

Flixel
Full featured game engine for 2D bitmap platform game development. Check out thefeature list here.
You probably know the legendary game Canabalt built with this engine.

FlashPunk
Another great and pretty fast engine for 2D bitmap games.

PushButton Engine
Another great engine with Box2D physics and multiplayer networking support. TryYouTopia on facebook.

ISO engines

AS3 ISO LIB
As3isolib includes utilities, primitives and views. As3isolib was developed with simplicity, speed and performance in mind so that developers can focus on actual implementations rather than having to learn a complex API.

TheoWorlds
“TheoSDK is a kit based on our original Theo Isometric Engine™ and it lets you create your own map-based games fast.”

Source: Isometric Game Engines

OpenSpace - ISO engine

Physics engines

Flave - verlet physics engine 2D JigLib - 3D physics engine Box2D - 2D physics APE (ActionScript Physics Engine) - 2D physics WOW Engine - 3D physics

*Particle Engine - Stardust

3D engines (related)

Alternativa3D, Away3D, Papervision3D, Five3D, Sandy 3D

TankiOnline - popular Flash 3D game in Alternativa3D

Publish Your Game: Social Gaming Platforms

Platogo
Build your games and publish to Platogo and earn money - social platform for games with ActionScript 3 API (Score, Levels, Ranking, Multiplayer, etc.)

Geewa.com
Develop games for this social site with multiplayer support. Get the SDK

Facebook
Surely facebook is great platform for your games. Get the Facebook ActionScript API. See how to develop Facebook apps in Flash at Devnet.http://www.adobe.com/devnet/facebook

Other Useful ActionScript Libraries

AS3 Data Structures For Game Developers (AS3DS) - lot of useful structures for general game development

BaseUI
Layouting like in Flex, but for Flash (pure AS3, no Flex).

vancura-AS3-libs
Set of pure ActionScript components with skinning and styling support. Scale9Bitmap support

BrowserCanvas
Easiest way to dynamically resize Flash

FreeSpin3D
Plug-in for Flash CS4 and CS3 enabling realtime interactivity, animation and coding right on stage of Flash Professional.

Now go ahead. Looking forward to your games!

Btw: try SmallWorlds

Note: If you know some other cool libs, just leave a comment and it will be added.