My best score for Ping-Pong jump is 502 and I tried a few times before reaching this high score. It is a great game with simple control, though it is hard for me to control the ball movement. Sometimes it moved slow, but when I hit the wall or the obstacles coming down from the top, it suddenly became really fast and it will bounce forth and back very quickly and it is really hard for me to catch it.
The central uncertainty in this game for me is the ping pong ball movement when it hits the either the walls on the side of the screen or the black obstacle walls coming down. What I can do is to try my best preventing my ball from hitting the wall, and the tension comes from the fast bouncing and the helpless feeling that I cannot catch that with my reaction. The challenge that designer throws to players are the black walls coming down from the top. There are two patterns for the black rectangles, and players can pass them through the empty gap between two black walls. There is also an interesting point that when I hit the black walls from the bottom with the ping pong ball, it usually will move with a faster speed and it makes me harder to catch it and bounce it back to the air so that it will not fall off. I feel like that you can change the wall position every time when it comes down rather than fixing it into two patterns. For example, you can use the random function and give a range to the random so that it will not generate numbers that is not on the screen, and you can always leave a blank space for players to pass through their balls. Or you can make the black walls more intelligent by using the X positions of the balls when you generate the black walls and make it long enough that players need to get to either the right-most area or left-most area to find the gap.
The other interesting thing that I encounter is the time where I first played this game and I move my pad really quickly. Then the ping pong ball moves in a crazy speed where I cannot see it clearly in the screen and I only got several points in that few rounds.
A way that the designer can create more interplay is to change the pad that is controlled by the mouse into two pads that can be controlled by the keys on the keyboard, and there are two scores separately for each player to keep trach with. In this way, players can invite their friends to play with them and it will add more fun as things go. The designer can also add more randomly appeared objects or sprites on the screen, and it can add more points or multiply their points if one player hits those objects with his ping pong ball.
This game "ping-pong Jump" by Zoey Zhao is a light game that test the skill and patience of the player. The player controls the ping-pong bracket with mouse, and the player needs to constantly smash the ball up in a scroll that is moving downward. The longer the ball stays up (before falling to the bottom of the screen), the more point the player gets. The game also sets a ceiling barricade that has a moderately large hole in the middle for the ball to get through. Because the position of the hole is different every time, the player needs to get the ball through in a limited time.
There isn't much to say about the choice of interface or art design in this game, but maybe adding a sound effect when the bracket hits the ball or the ball hits the ceiling would be a great future improvement.
The gameplay of this game is indeed giving the player some challenge. The first few attempts might be difficult because the player isn't familiar with the force to hit and control the ball yet. This gives the gameplay much uncertainty at the beginning, because the player don't know how far the ball will be hit when they swing the bracket. The randomness of the ceiling hole also adds to the uncertainty. This gives the player pleasantly failure because the player will start to adjust to the force of the bracket and the randomness of the hole, and it feels like a process of learning. For myself, after several attempts, I start to feel easy to control the ball, and I found a relatively easy way to gain higher points. A point that adds difficulty into the game is that the player have to keep controlling the ball while looking for the next hole and try to beat it through. However, the ceiling can also serve as a ground in this game, so the ball is basically safe for a while after you let the ball through in a certain range of angles. Making use of the ceiling/ground to help me keep the ball safe, I can have way more time to reflex and plan how to hit the ball though the next hole. Using this technique, I scored over 500, and basically ended because I lost my patience. Allowing the player to use the environment to their use is also an interesting design.
Another design that is worth noticing is the collision box of the bracket. The collision box starts from the middle height of the bracket, not at the top, and not according to the shape of the bracket. This is a good design because it make the interaction look like the player is hitting the ball with the bracket's center, like what we did in real life. It also gives a perspective to the whole scene, almost like adding it to 3D.
The reason that I think the game tests player's patience more is that it takes too short of the player's time to fully master the skills, but the difficulty doesn't increase as the points got higher. If the scroll can move slightly faster in time, or the hole might move slowly, some further challenges can be added to this game.
Ping-pong Jump is a simple but intense game. I believe it is a harder version of the designer’s last p5.play game project. Compared with the older version of Ping-pong, Ping-pong Jump has more uncertainties. Not only the player has to balance the ball on the bat, but there are also boundaries now on each level as the game screen goes up. It adds a new uncertainty because the player does not know where the gap of the boundary is going to be next, and it is essential to pass the bat and the ball through that gap to continue the game. I was kind of struggling with my physical skill because the ball speeds up really fast while hitting the bat, left and right edges, and the boundaries. It gets harder to avoid the ball falling when it accelerates. There’s no clear strategy per se, but it is best to keep the bat as close as you can to the ball in my opinion. Therefore, the player’s reaction time could be reduced and makes it a little easier to adapt to the situation. However, once I accidentally strapped my ball below the boundary, it makes it harder to catch the ball. The tension of the gameplay increases. As the player goes through numerous levels, there’s no hint if the player will ever reach an end to the game other than failing the game. I got frustrated because I began to lose my attention and patients to catch the ball. I ended up having 193 as my best score. Randomness sources such as the speed of the ball, the location of the gap, and the never-ending board add more tension to the game experience. The designer used this tension to make the gameplay more unpredictable, and this uncertainty makes this simple game more complex.
There is a bug I experienced during my gameplay. Sometimes if the velocity of the ball is fast enough, it will go through the boundaries. I was surprised by seeing this bug, and I even took advantage of it in some of my gameplay. Interestingly, the bug makes it easier to play because the player doesn’t have to pay attention to the ball the whole time (by taking a few seconds to break while the ball bounces off the boundaries). A suggestion I would make is the designer could include other objects or checkpoints in the future. Objects that could represent extra points to collect or deduction points to avoid; checkpoints to make the game less stressful or a scene change into a harder level. However, I do agree with the fact that sometimes the simplicity of a game is making it more difficult but more fun to play with. The mechanics of bouncing the ball with the bat is easy to understand yet challenging to keep doing it in the game and in real life. Overall, I think this is a great advancement of the designer’s last game. I enjoyed how she take ideas from her last game and makes it into an even harder game.
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My best score for Ping-Pong jump is 502 and I tried a few times before reaching this high score. It is a great game with simple control, though it is hard for me to control the ball movement. Sometimes it moved slow, but when I hit the wall or the obstacles coming down from the top, it suddenly became really fast and it will bounce forth and back very quickly and it is really hard for me to catch it.
The central uncertainty in this game for me is the ping pong ball movement when it hits the either the walls on the side of the screen or the black obstacle walls coming down. What I can do is to try my best preventing my ball from hitting the wall, and the tension comes from the fast bouncing and the helpless feeling that I cannot catch that with my reaction. The challenge that designer throws to players are the black walls coming down from the top. There are two patterns for the black rectangles, and players can pass them through the empty gap between two black walls. There is also an interesting point that when I hit the black walls from the bottom with the ping pong ball, it usually will move with a faster speed and it makes me harder to catch it and bounce it back to the air so that it will not fall off. I feel like that you can change the wall position every time when it comes down rather than fixing it into two patterns. For example, you can use the random function and give a range to the random so that it will not generate numbers that is not on the screen, and you can always leave a blank space for players to pass through their balls. Or you can make the black walls more intelligent by using the X positions of the balls when you generate the black walls and make it long enough that players need to get to either the right-most area or left-most area to find the gap.
The other interesting thing that I encounter is the time where I first played this game and I move my pad really quickly. Then the ping pong ball moves in a crazy speed where I cannot see it clearly in the screen and I only got several points in that few rounds.
A way that the designer can create more interplay is to change the pad that is controlled by the mouse into two pads that can be controlled by the keys on the keyboard, and there are two scores separately for each player to keep trach with. In this way, players can invite their friends to play with them and it will add more fun as things go. The designer can also add more randomly appeared objects or sprites on the screen, and it can add more points or multiply their points if one player hits those objects with his ping pong ball.
This game "ping-pong Jump" by Zoey Zhao is a light game that test the skill and patience of the player. The player controls the ping-pong bracket with mouse, and the player needs to constantly smash the ball up in a scroll that is moving downward. The longer the ball stays up (before falling to the bottom of the screen), the more point the player gets. The game also sets a ceiling barricade that has a moderately large hole in the middle for the ball to get through. Because the position of the hole is different every time, the player needs to get the ball through in a limited time.
There isn't much to say about the choice of interface or art design in this game, but maybe adding a sound effect when the bracket hits the ball or the ball hits the ceiling would be a great future improvement.
The gameplay of this game is indeed giving the player some challenge. The first few attempts might be difficult because the player isn't familiar with the force to hit and control the ball yet. This gives the gameplay much uncertainty at the beginning, because the player don't know how far the ball will be hit when they swing the bracket. The randomness of the ceiling hole also adds to the uncertainty. This gives the player pleasantly failure because the player will start to adjust to the force of the bracket and the randomness of the hole, and it feels like a process of learning. For myself, after several attempts, I start to feel easy to control the ball, and I found a relatively easy way to gain higher points. A point that adds difficulty into the game is that the player have to keep controlling the ball while looking for the next hole and try to beat it through. However, the ceiling can also serve as a ground in this game, so the ball is basically safe for a while after you let the ball through in a certain range of angles. Making use of the ceiling/ground to help me keep the ball safe, I can have way more time to reflex and plan how to hit the ball though the next hole. Using this technique, I scored over 500, and basically ended because I lost my patience. Allowing the player to use the environment to their use is also an interesting design.
Another design that is worth noticing is the collision box of the bracket. The collision box starts from the middle height of the bracket, not at the top, and not according to the shape of the bracket. This is a good design because it make the interaction look like the player is hitting the ball with the bracket's center, like what we did in real life. It also gives a perspective to the whole scene, almost like adding it to 3D.
The reason that I think the game tests player's patience more is that it takes too short of the player's time to fully master the skills, but the difficulty doesn't increase as the points got higher. If the scroll can move slightly faster in time, or the hole might move slowly, some further challenges can be added to this game.
Ping-pong Jump is a simple but intense game. I believe it is a harder version of the designer’s last p5.play game project. Compared with the older version of Ping-pong, Ping-pong Jump has more uncertainties. Not only the player has to balance the ball on the bat, but there are also boundaries now on each level as the game screen goes up. It adds a new uncertainty because the player does not know where the gap of the boundary is going to be next, and it is essential to pass the bat and the ball through that gap to continue the game. I was kind of struggling with my physical skill because the ball speeds up really fast while hitting the bat, left and right edges, and the boundaries. It gets harder to avoid the ball falling when it accelerates. There’s no clear strategy per se, but it is best to keep the bat as close as you can to the ball in my opinion. Therefore, the player’s reaction time could be reduced and makes it a little easier to adapt to the situation. However, once I accidentally strapped my ball below the boundary, it makes it harder to catch the ball. The tension of the gameplay increases. As the player goes through numerous levels, there’s no hint if the player will ever reach an end to the game other than failing the game. I got frustrated because I began to lose my attention and patients to catch the ball. I ended up having 193 as my best score. Randomness sources such as the speed of the ball, the location of the gap, and the never-ending board add more tension to the game experience. The designer used this tension to make the gameplay more unpredictable, and this uncertainty makes this simple game more complex.
There is a bug I experienced during my gameplay. Sometimes if the velocity of the ball is fast enough, it will go through the boundaries. I was surprised by seeing this bug, and I even took advantage of it in some of my gameplay. Interestingly, the bug makes it easier to play because the player doesn’t have to pay attention to the ball the whole time (by taking a few seconds to break while the ball bounces off the boundaries). A suggestion I would make is the designer could include other objects or checkpoints in the future. Objects that could represent extra points to collect or deduction points to avoid; checkpoints to make the game less stressful or a scene change into a harder level. However, I do agree with the fact that sometimes the simplicity of a game is making it more difficult but more fun to play with. The mechanics of bouncing the ball with the bat is easy to understand yet challenging to keep doing it in the game and in real life. Overall, I think this is a great advancement of the designer’s last game. I enjoyed how she take ideas from her last game and makes it into an even harder game.