A Journey Comes to an End

The final week of our card game building endeavor proved to be the most challenging but also the most rewarding week of our journey. After receiving helpful feedback from our peers last week, we decided to change our rule regarding our savings. We came to the conclusion that all players may have up to 8 gems that they can utilize for bidding and any additional gems they acquire during the game must be reserved in their savings until the end of the game. This solution also solved our dilemma of when two players tie during bidding. In the event of a tie, the two players can withdrawal gems from their savings in order to rebid. After those issues were resolved, it was time to assemble our game.

Our first meeting was held on Sunday where we spent time outlining our schedule in order to complete the project. We agreed that on Monday all of our customer cards must be created and ready to go and by Wednesday everything must be printed, laminated, and prepared for submission. When Monday came around, our Google Drive was successfully filled with all of our customer cards. On Wednesday, we ran into our first obstacle. Our dimensions were incorrect on our customer cards and they looked very blurry when we printed them. Without the ability to alter the size on our original design, we were forced to redo every single customer card from scratch. Wednesday wasn’t a total disaster as we were able to print, glue, and assemble our action cards.

Thursday we recreated all of our customer cards and printed them out to run into our second obstacle. The playing cards we were using to give them extra weight were showing through our cream colored playing card. We decided to place an extra piece of paper in between which solved the problem. After a little extra gluing, we were ready for assembly. Once the cards were glued and ready, we headed over to Staples to get our cards laminated. After an hour and a half and $30 later, our cards were laminated and looked great!

The last step of the operation was to cut out the laminated cards which led us to our final problem. After spending hours cutting out the cards, we noticed that the extra layer of paper we used on the customer cards weren’t glued enough to remain completely attached and the edges started to peal. A little bit of extra glue yet again sealed the deal.

The last week of our project involved hours of meticulous work but we are very happy with the outcome of our cards. When we originally came up with our game design 5 weeks ago, we never actually thought our concept would come to fruition and be printed and playable. Not only did we achieve our goal, we exceeded our expectations. It was a job well done by all!

FINAL PRODUCT!!!

I never thought the final to this project would come to an end. I think this week was probably the hardest week on us. Because we let a couple of weeks, of not working as hard as we should have go by, we were stuck with the hardest parts. There were so many problems in our game that needed to be solved and every time we thought we solved it, a new problem would evolve Our two biggest issues were trying to even out the cards so not one would over power the other. Also, trying to solve what would we do if two people bid the same amount, who would get what? To do so, we had to add a completely new aspect to the game. Now we have a choice in the beginning of the game to start a savings account and the money in the savings are the only gems that can be used to rebid and count towards your final score. A good part about this savings is, we've set it so that each player can only use up to a maximum of 8 gems. any more has to go into the savings and be used towards the final score. That really helped out to even the bidding process and the tie issue.

This week was the first week our group was able to all meet together and I think we did such a great job. When you have everyone in the group participating, the work load is surprisingly a lot less. The time not only moves quicker but so do our ideas and final product. This week is the most productive we have ever been. We finished all we could possibly do together and eventually assigned parts to do for each person because the day was coming to an end. There is still that fear that the game might not work so we want to set it up for some people to play and test it out before we hand in our final proposal. After that its just putting everything together and making it look nice. If we were able to get through the hard part together, I'm sure the presentation will not be such an obstacle for us.

Can We Run the Game? And Move Forward With It? (YES)

So, during our last class, we were able to play the game and figure out whether we can move forward, or come up with different ideas for the game. After playing the game for few turns, we were having a lot of fun, but at the same time facing several problems that needed immediate attention. One of these problems is the action cards and how they work. We first had people betting diamonds along with one action card, then each player gets to use his/her action card; however, we noticed that it doesn't make sense for each player to use his action card, because that will mess up the strategy of the game, and each card will over rider on the other ones. So we decided to come up with a new way to play those action cards.

Each player places an action card while betting on the customer then the winner of this bet gets to pick one of the action cards, placed on the floor, randomly. We also had to remove some rules and come up with new ones. We needed to removed some elements and replacing some with others. Some of these discussions were based on group agreement, and professor parks' opinions and ideas, with his long time experience, he was able to provide us with great ideas to support our game. He was also patient about what we did. He liked it and was supportive all the way. With his long time experience in card games, we were able to figure out what we need to work on during our next meeting.

During our group meeting, we were more concerned about the issues discussed during class, among ourselves, and also between ourselves and the professor, and figuring out solutions for those issues. One of these issues, which is the actual theme of the play, was touched on by professor Parks. With his help we were able to discover the issues that need to be addressed during our group meeting.Adding to these problems, one of the members was unable to make it to the meeting for the second time, due to an Exam, which was at the time of the meeting. However, that didn't stop us from figuring out solutions for our problems and even moving forward with creating new cards and coming up with new ideas. Before we got together, Rana had already prepared a Microsoft word with all the information needed to get things quickly.

The amount of cards needed for the game is 114 cards, which includes four reference cards, to help players keep up with the rules and the way to play the game. Out of the 114 cards, we will have 75 action cards, 39 customer cards and 4 reference cards to guide the players. During our meeting we were able to come up with the cards' names, how much diamonds are being given by the customers, and how many turns they will be present on the table. We were also able to come with the amount of experience points each card gives to the server. Hopefully, during our next class, we catch more mistakes and come up with better ideas to support our games. But till then, we will try to meet up one more time on Thursday to go over what we did on Tuesday, and figure out what we need to pay attention to during our next test play.

First prototype

Last week we worked on the very basic structure of our game. We had a basic idea of how the cards were gonna look like and how the game would go. So this week we wanted to have a more solid structure of the game. We wanted to turn the game from just an idea on paper to an actual playable game. Unfortunately one of our team members couldn’t make it to class. That member was the one that had the game proposal, so we weren’t really able to further work on the game during class. So we just decide to meet up during the week in order to have more time to work on the game as a group. Meanwhile in class we would work on how the cards are going to look like. At the end of the class we finished working on the design of the cards, we also figured out how many cards we are going to have and the different type of decks are going to have.

Mid-week we were able to meet up at the library where we made very good progress on finalizing the first prototype of the game. We had a very productive brainstorming meeting where we were able to finish the main structure of the game that makes the first prototype playable. After bringing all the parts together we had one part left to work on, which was what goes on the actual cards. For that we needed more time to think about. So we decided to make an online document that everyone has an access to and everyone can go anytime to add content to the cards. Using that document we were able to finish the cards in less than a day. Finally we added the content to the cards, got the tokens that we needed for the game and at that point we have successfully finished the prototype.

Now that we finished the first prototype we are all very excited to see our game come to life. This week in class we should play our game for the very first time. While it may not be fully developed, we are still very excited to finally get to play Labebe!

After finally agreeing on which game proposal we wanted to bring to fruition, we have spent the last week trying to build a solid framework for the game. It has proved to be quite the challenge for everyone to agree on which direction to take the game as there are many possibilities to choose from. We have had no shortage of input from anyone as everyone is excited to critique the game. We met at the library to further elaborate on our game design and made a lot of progress with formulating the structure and design of the game. We also researched where to find physical playing cards that we could customize and found that they are easily available on Amazon.com.

Other than working on our game, we spent the last class period playing the game San Juan. The game started off a bit intimidating as there were many rules and procedures that we had to discuss and understand in order to properly play the game. It seemed like this game was not going to be a fan favorite. After finally getting the hang of it, we actually had a lot of fun playing it and we are looking forward to playing the next round of it this week.

This week was our last "slow week" as we know that we are going to be very busy in the coming weeks in order to produce our prototype. While we sometimes disagree with the direction we want to take certain parts of the game, we are very confident and very happy with the progress we have and will continue to make. We are excited to see what the coming weeks will bring for our game design!

Team Leader

Coming up with a game proposal is not the easiest thought process. Also, only being given a week to come up with an idea sounds absurd because in reality, yes a game creator can come up with an idea in a week but it can be a good/bad idea. Since no one in our group has ever made a game before, it was challenging to come up with something however, we each did come up with an idea and brought it to class to share.

We had to start by picking a team leader at random. This did not work so well because some people did not want to be a leader and some thought they could do it better. But it is understandable because the leader has the ultimate choice and it may not seem as though, but it's nerve-racking. So we each somewhat helped the leader in leading the group, therefore, we worked pretty collaboratively I would say. We started with the team leader sharing his idea, and then we worked clockwise.

This, in my opinion was probably the most difficult because it was time for criticism. I know for a fact, people criticize all day everyday, sometimes without realizing it. However, when it comes to people you have just met, it can be awkward. It seems like you're only dissing their game but if you really think about it, you're dissing their creativity too and basically when you comment on the game and why you don't think its a good idea, the creator will think "wow, it actually took me a while to think about this and they hate it." so yeah, it is hard.

After criticizing the games. It was easy to narrow it down to 2 of the 4 games. The best part about these games is that, they are both based off of reality situations and the idea of the game gives it its uniqueness. It is not a game you would have really ever expected to be able to play as a card game. But these last two games was so hard to choose between. The reason behind that though is, everyone knew what they wanted to choose, but then again, the proposal not chosen can effect the producer because his/her card game was not chosen. One game had more of a way to play it versus the other one and that is the game our group went for.

At this point, I think we are all just really excited to start working on the project and make this game come to life.