Card Game Presentations

We had an excellent session last Wednesday (February 29). The game design teams had the opportunity to play their games with professional game developers, as well as game design instructors from Rutgers and Raritan Valley Community College. This was an exciting moment for the class, as it allowed the students to receive in-depth feedback on the card games they had developed during the first half of the semester.

All five of our games played admirably, but each game displayed some flaws that the teams worked to rectify between play rounds. By the end of the session, it was clear that the students had learned a lot and were inspired by their experiences with the visitors.

The visiting designers enjoyed their stay in our class, and most will be returning at the end of the semester to help evaluate our next project: the board games!

The Card Game projects have begun!

Our five game design teams have worked out the theme and core mechanics for their card games.

Here are links to the team blogs:

The Cold War Kids
http://thecoldwarkids.blogspot.com/

Auction Wars
http://auctionwar.blogspot.com/

On the Hunt
http://onthehuntgame.wordpress.com/

Bridges
http://bridgecardgame.blogspot.com/

Illuminations
http://illuminations32.blogspot.com/

It looks like we're off to a great start! I look forward to reading your blogs (and playing your games!) throughout the weeks ahead.

Welcome from Professor Parks

Hello, everyone.

I am the new instructor for the "Collaborative Writing Practices: Game Design" course, and I am honored that Prof. Goeller has invited me to teach the course and to continue his blog.

I am a professional designer of board games and card games. My game design studio, Quixotic Games, has developed 12 published games, and we are continuously working on more. I have worked for years with an amazing team of developers and they have taught me many lessons about artistic collaboration.

For more information about Quixotic Games and the games we have created, please visit our website at http://www.quixoticgames.com.

Our First Class

The Spring '12 class had our first meeting this past Wednesday, and we took the opportunity to discuss the world of game design and to enjoy two card games: Apples to Apples and Guillotine. Our initial development teams have been formed, and our first project will be an original card game. I look forward to hearing your game concepts this Wednesday!

Thanks,

Andrew Parks

Photoshop and Grids

There are a number of ways of making a grid board using Adobe Photoshop (or other tools), and almost as many tutorials as methods.  Ultimately, all of them return to the idea that you should begin by creating a square (or part-of-a-square) object to help you make a grid pattern.  I have annotated several links below.  You'll have to decide on the method that works best for you.

After the list of tutorials on making grids, I have listed some Web 2.0 alternatives to Photoshop that students might want to try out for generating images for their game designs -- especially if you are working from home with no access to Photoshop.

IMPORTANT: One word of advice: start by imagining how big you want the board and then calculating how big you want each square.  It will speed things up considerably and prevent you from having to do it over.  As carpenters always say: measure twice, cut once.

A good resource for building unusual grids -- such as hex grids -- is the incompetech site:
http://www.incompetech.com/graphpaper/

You can download one of their patterns and then use it to map onto whatever grid board design you are creating by importing it into Photoshop.  To slice up your image for printing in multiple sheets, you can use the slicing tool in Photoshop or try out the program Posterazor:
http://posterazor.sourceforge.net/

These are some tutorials from 2008 or so when I first started teaching this assignment.  You can find more updated ones by searching online for "photoshop grid tutorial" or words to that effect.

• Creating a Grid with a Custom Pattern in Photoshop
  http://www.oman3d.com/tutorials/photoshop/video_grid/
  I liked this tutorial best, not only because it is in video form (which is easier than reading) but because I think the method it shows is probably the quickest and most effective and teaches you some interesting Photoshop skills -- especially in the use of strokes.  It also shows you one way of decorating the squares.
  
  
• Grid Tutorial
  http://www.phong.com/tutorials/grid/
  This tutorial is focused on using a grid as a background for a header graphic (which might be useful to know for your box design), but the method it offers for making the grid is very simple.
  
  
• How to Create a Grid Quickly and Effectively in Photoshop
  http://www.partdigital.com/tutorials/grid
  This one also offers a rather painless method in very few words.  It also shows you how you can use a picture as the background of your board.
  
  
• Making Grid Masks in Photoshop
  http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/Tips/grid.html
  This might be a good method if you want to use a picture as the background.
  
  
• Photoshop Tutorials - Custom Grid
  http://www.cbtcafe.com/photoshop/newgrid/newgrid.html
  This is the method I discovered on my own for making a grid and it works.
  
  
• Wavey Grid
  http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/wavey%20grid/wavey_grid.htm
  I threw this one in just in case someone likes the idea.  A few years back someone used this tutorial to make a pizza-box grid game where the wavey grid matched well with the cheesy pizza design.
  

Alternatives to Photoshop

Students often ask how they can edit images at home if they don't have Photoshop. I usually have recommended GIMP, which I have used with success and find quite intuitive (and similar to Photoshop in many ways). I have also seen books on using GIMP and I like some of its features. But I saw a great post recently that links to "Free Online Tools for Images and Graphic Design," which seems like the inevitable next step.  Here are some useful Web 2.0 graphic editing tools freely available on the web:

• Phoenix
• Pixer
• Pixlr
• Splashup

Grid Game Blogs, Fall 2011

Here are links to all of the team blogs from the Fall 2011 section of our course:

Team 1: Game Design
Team 2: Walk in My Shoes
Team 3: Sorcerers
Team 4: Creepy
Team 5: R3dchip

Spring 2011 Games

Below are links to the games from Spring 2011:


Final Games
Fruitmania (blog)
Bad Detectives (blog)
Healthmania (blog)
Scarlet Treasure (blog)


First groups (grid games):


Gladiator: Fight for your freedom (blog)
Golden Goal (blog)
Rescue Mission (blog)
Arrr: Battle for the treasure (blog)
Hoops (blog)

Fall 2010 Game Links

The following games were developed in the Fall 2010 term:


Final Games:
Crime Alert Game (also see the blog)
The House of Horrors (blog)
Protagonists (blog)
Thirty Two (blog)
What's Your Story (blog)


Grid Games:
Army of One
Brain Boogie
Hex-a-Fours
King of the Hill
Stop Sign