Let me demonstrate this method using an example. Let’s develop the popular “Snake” game. The Snake game became popular due to early generations of cell phones with text based user interfaces. See the image below…

Classic “Snake” Game

Initially a small sized snake appears on the screen which keeps running for the rest of the game like endless runner. Player can change the direction only. Speed of the snake increases with time. Length of the snake also increases after eating randomly appearing food. Increasing length and speed of the snake adds difficulty to the game over time.

We can use Storyboard technique to graphically represent our idea.

According to Wikipedia: “Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence.”

Here is our Storyboard:

Snake Game’s Storyboard

For your convenience I am adding the description of each Storyboard screen:

Screen 1: Snake (square) waiting for a key-press to start moving. Circle is Shown as food item.
Screen 2: After eating (hitting) food item the snake’s length increases and food item appears at another random location.
Screen 3: Snake can re-enter the playing area from the opposite edge after leaving it from an edge.
Screen 4: Snake dies after biting itself

Here, UML Statechart diagram may also help to understand different “states” of the snake during a game.

According to Wikipedia: “A state diagram is a type of diagram used in computer science and related fields to describe the behavior of systems. State diagrams require that the system described is composed of a finite number of states; sometimes, this is indeed the case, while at other times this is a reasonable abstraction. Many forms of state diagrams exist, which differ slightly and have different semantics.”

Here is our Statechart diagram: Click to enlarge…

Snake Game’s Statechart Diagram

In the diagram, edges represent the actions and the ovals represent the states a snake is in after the specific action. Game starts with an idle snake. You can move snake in all four directions using arrow keys. While moving in any direction when a key is pressed, the snake goes to “Deciding” state to determine which key was pressed and then again goes to the respective direction. Snake eats food when encountered while moving. There is also a “dead” state if snake hits itself while moving.

You may also want to add more state diagrams for prominent objects to clarify. There are other UML diagrams which may help you describe your game project. These diagrams are not only helpful for yourself but also helps if you are working in a team making team communication easy and unambiguous.

So far, we dealt with “What” we want to develop. In later parts of this tutorial I shall describe how to develop Snake game using HTML5 canvas and KineticJS.

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We all know that Disney is a game publisher as well, so game development was not a new business for Disney. While Disney winds up LucasArts as a game development studio, its own game development department plans to release Disney Infinity this summer.

There was no lack of technical abilities among higher cadres, as mentioned by GameInformer…

“The company seemed to have a revolving door of management. In 2004, LucasArts president Jim Ward led a massive restructuring of the company, laying off many development staffers in the process. Ward left in 2008, to be replaced by EA’s Darrell Rodriguez, who lasted only two years at the head of the company. Rodriguez’s position was ultimately filled by Epic Games’ Paul Meegan, who then stepped down in 2012. The company was co-led by Kevin Parker and Gio Corsi until it was acquired by Disney.”

From above mentioned article, we can conclude that probably there was a cultural issue with LucasArts which could not be set in the right direction right from the beginning. Higher order talent was leaving one after another, people who had successful history with other companies could not stay for longer periods of time.

It is also evident from the facts if we look at the quality of games being produced by LucasArts. GameInformer says…

“In some ways, the news is not a surprise. LucasArts had seemed directionless in recent years. The company’s core business of games based on the Star Wars license have been largely disappointing in both quality and sales. While the company had some success with games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the Battlefront series, both of those franchises seemed to have died on the vine. The cancellation of Star Wars Battlefront III was particularly ugly, which led to nasty public fingerpointing between LucasArts and developer Free Radical. The BioWare developed MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic (which was co-published with EA) won strong reviews but failed to maintain subscribers, and was eventually forced into instituting a free-to-play business model.”

The closing of LucasArts was expected anyway, as mentioned by Bob Iger (Chairman and CEO of Disney) during investor call to discuss the deal. GameInformer mentioned…Iger said Disney will likely focus on mobile and social games rather than console. “We’ll look opportunistically at console, most likely at licensing rather than publishing. But we think given the nature of these characters and how well known they are, they lend themselves quite nicely to the other platforms.”

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“After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.”

GameInformer revealed this news today.

The news came as a surprise because Disney acquired Lucasfilm not so long ago, in late 2012, in a stock and cash transaction worth $4.05 billion. As part of the announcement, Star Wars Episode 7 is targeted for release in 2015.

Here is another article analysing the closing of LucasArts.

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Boy: Hey babe I miss you.

Girl: Your Xbox broke, didn’t it?

Boy: Yep…

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So long Douglas, thanks for all the books.

Here is an excerpt taken from Wikipedia about the contributions of Douglas Noel Adams to computer games and other computer projects:

“Douglas Adams created an interactive fiction version of HHGG with Steve Meretzky from Infocom in 1984. In 1986 he participated in a week-long brainstorming session with the Lucasfilm Gamesteam for the game Labyrinth. Later he was also involved in creating Bureaucracy (also by Infocom, but not based on any book; Adams wrote it as a parody of events in his own life). Adams was also responsible for the computer game Starship Titanic, which was published in 1998 by Simon and Schuster. Terry Jones wrote the accompanying book, entitled Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic, since Adams was too busy with the computer game to do both. In April 1999, Adams initiated the h2g2 collaborative writing project, an experimental attempt at making The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a reality, and at harnessing the collective brainpower of the internet community.

In 1990 Adams wrote and presented a television documentary programme Hyperland^[28] which featured Tom Baker as a “software agent” (similar to the Assistant pictured in Apples Knowledge Navigator video of future concepts from 1987), and interviews with Ted Nelson, the co-inventor of hypertext and the person who coined the term. Although Adams did not invent hypertext, he was an early adopter and advocate of it. This was the same year that Tim Berners-Lee used the idea of hypertext in his HTML.”

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Recently, British Army used VBS2 to create virtual battlefield to test various variables during war exercises. British Army named their system Urban Warrior 5.

There were inevitably comparisons with Activision’s Call of Duty series, but Urban Warrior 5 was not a game, said Dr Nigel Paling, science advisor with the UK government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.

“We have tailored commercially available software, but we’re pushing the edges of realism and scale,” he told the BBC.

“In Call of Duty buildings don’t ‘rubble-ise’. We have recreated actual weapon effects.” Unlike real life however, soldiers in the game are able to regenerate if killed.

I found another interesting game reported to be released by US military. Virtual Battle Space 2 (VBS2) US Army Lite  is an official military first person tactical training game for download by anyone who wants a copy of this game.

The VBS2 US Army Lite training game is similar in many ways to the full version of VBS2 which was deployed to over 53 Army installations worldwide. As the name implies it is a “lite” version containing many, but not all, of the capabilities of the full version of VBS2. Reported by this website.

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Final top eight teams would share the prize money of a million dollar. First prize is $400,00 and 8th prize is $25,000.

Follow this link to get yourself registered and for other details.

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GameStick team lead by Jasper Smith presented their project on KickStarter for funding and they have successfully raised $647,658. It is much more than what they pledged of…just $100,000.

GameStick Team

According to their schedule, March 13 is the date of first commercial production run and customers would be able to enjoy by April 13.

Gaming consoles are costly and so their games. That is the reason for not using TV for gaming by a large number of TV viewers. GameStick is covering that gap by making the most affordable, open and portable TV games console. Now you can enjoy games on your TV for $79.

GameStick

Now, any game written for Android platform can be played on TV or Smart TV using GameStick, giving consumers the benefit of choosing from 700,000+ Android games.

“So far we have identified 200 titles that will be great to play on GameStick but we are working with our network of over 250 developers including great studios such as Madfinger, Hutch, Disney and others to bring you the best line-up.”—Mentioned as the value proposition in their elevator pitch.

Market is huge. According to PlayJam, the company behind GameStick, around 1.5 billion Smart TV devices expected to roll out by 2015. And “PlayJam is evolving beyond its core Pay TV games business into Connected TV…” mentioned on crunchbase.

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