In my last post, I talked about how our Interactive (ART 306) students had begun making games in GameSalad, along with graphics in Photoshop. Today I wanted to share an update on our progress.
At this point, everyone has designed their own graphics for their games. Each person has been free to conceptualize their own content, and it’s been really exciting to see the variety of ideas. Some games are sweet and adorable, like Brooke Dominguez’s Cookie Madness, in which a milk carton is thrown at chocolate chip cookies. Other games are funny and outlandish, like Victoria Wyss’ game where Nic Cage eats pizza in space.
The process of making graphics has required gains in technical knowledge as well. Each image must be in PNG format, with a transparent background. The borders of that background may be invisible, but it’s important to understand that they also define the collision effects in the game – for example, if the PNG for an image of a ball is 40×40 pixels, the ball will bounce at that 40×40 edge, regardless of how small the ball is depicted within that frame. Meanwhile, each PNG must have dimensions that are divisible by four in terms of both height and width – this is in order to optimize the game for mobile platforms, as these numbers are easier for devices to process. There can be quite a bit of strategy that goes into designing for these parameters.
Take a look at the game screens and graphics below. With any luck, we’ll be publishing these games online within the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
-Professor Steve Nyktas
