education « Arcade Berg

16May/100

PowerPoint Games

Posted by Arcade

I helped my girlfriend with using PowerPoint earlier and while screwing around with the animations and triggers it hit me that you can make for some decent kiddie-games in PowerPoint. And since then, I can't stop thinking about it. I tried going to sleep but I just lied there making plans for an adventure game that would be possible to do using nothing but PowerPoint. It's awesome!

It has support for graphics, sound effects, triggers, mouse clicks, timing and text as output well as input. With all those tools, you should really be able to do something!

So I just got up again, it's the middle of the night and I've been googling. There are actually quite a few educational PowerPoint games out there but they all seem to... Suck. Hard. Big time. That's too bad really. But one could ask, why make a "game" in PowerPoint when there's Flash, etc. My answer is; because of the fun of it and because it's possible.

I'm gonna prototype!

Update: 45 minutes later and I got a prototype "up and running". It's just a proof of concept, but it does what it's supposed to. You can click on the door, the lock, the key and the window with the ladder. You can climb out, get the key and unlock the door. Feel free to try it. Nothing fancy. I'm happy, maybe I can finally get some sleep.

Download The Castle Game

http://arcadeberg.com/files/2010/05/The-Castle-Game.pptx (16/5/2010)

Actual in-game screenshot. No post processing!

Tagged as: education, game design, Game specific, kid, powerpoint No Comments

8Dec/080

The University is using my Bach Degree Project

Posted by Arcade

I got word from a friend back the University in Skövde, where I got my bachelor degree, that they're using my "Bach Degree Project in Media Arts: Computer Game Development C" as example when informing students who are about to get starting on their bachelor degree projects on how to do it.

I'm very happy to hear that!

Unfortunately, it's in Swedish but if you want to see it, it's available (8/12-08) here:

http://www.diva-portal.org/his/abstract.xsql?dbid=1085

Author:	Berg, Kenneth Arcade
Title:	Inger iterativ arbetsstruktur fler fördelar än nackdelar inom level design till Unreal Tournament 3?: Reflektioner kring arbetsprocessen bakom "DM-Theatre"
Department:	University of Skövde, School of Humanities and Informatics
URI:	urn:nbn:se:his:diva-1085
Publication type:	Undergraduate thesis C-level 20 p. (Media Studies)
Language:	Swedish [sv]
Keywords:	level design iterativ arbetsprocess unreal tournament 3 unreal editor unrealed bandesign dataspel datorspel
Abstract [sv] :	Rapporten är en reflekterande text som behandlar arbetsprocessen och omkringliggande mål för ett examensarbete inom medier som bedrivits mot Högskolan Skövde. Syftet med examensarbetet har varit att analysera huruvida en iterativ arbetsform inger fler fördelar än nackdelar vid level design till Unreal Tournament 3. Rapporten tar i diskussionsform upp delar ur hela produktionen för att redovisa utmaningar, framsteg och lösningar författaren bemött. En inblick ges för hur en iterativ level design-produktion kan utföras och för- respektive nackdelar gällande olika delar av denna specifika process. Slutsatsen som dras hävdar att det för med sig många fördelar att lägga upp arbetet iterativt. Detta diskuteras med vissa restriktioner då inget annat jämförbart arbete med annan arbetsprocess bedrivits av författaren som denne kan jämföra med.