[Donny] Introduction

Hi, my name is Donny Huang, a recent graduate of Williams College, and soon to be computer science grad student. I love games! Some of the games I like include Chrono Trigger, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Beyond Good & Evil, Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect 2, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Magic: the Gathering. I'm also happy to learn and play anything. I'll be trying to go hardcore! Someone join in?

Working Title: Programming Game Engine
Gameplay: AI Challenge (i.e., Darwin for people who've taken CS136) meets Final Fantasy XII
Mechanics: Program your army, then lead them into battle!
Idea/Inspiration:
Watching people play Legos, Minecraft, Magic: the Gathering, or Dominion, it becomes clearly evident that everyone has what it takes to build something amazing. Even complete newcomers to those games can quickly find their inner creativity, and create cool and exciting new designs/worlds/strategies. As a result, I would like to try to create the programming equivalent of Legos, Minecraft, Magic: the Gathering, or Dominion!
The game I'll be trying to implement for this game jam is based off ideas that I came up with Alex Wheelock '13. Basically, players will construct armies made up of units that they program. Then, in battle, players will need to react to how the battle is playing out, and switch up tactics (i.e., alter which programs their units are running) on the fly. The inspirations for this game include Google's AI challenge (http://aichallenge.org), and the combat system in Final Fantaxy XII.

Screenshot from Google's AI Challenge:

Screenshot of the "Gambit System" (i.e., the programming system) in Final Fantaxy XII:
















The key to making this game fun and approachable is a good single-player campaign, and well-balanced units, strategies, and gameplay -- which I unfortunately won't be working on for this game jam. Instead, I will be working on some of the technical stuff: I'll be making the User Programming Interface and the combat system.

Technology: Unity (Not going to worry about art for this game jam)

Goals: Hopefully, by the end of the game jam, a player can program several units, run them in a combat simulation, and switch their tactics on the fly during the simulation.