The second week here at design works gaming looked pretty similar to the first in terms of the overall goal, but after watching how the programming of a few games was done, we began to really start writing some code ourselves. There actually is quite an extensive amount of use of excel in the entire process, which makes me wish I learned some of the “secret techniques” of excel beforehand to help make it all go just a bit faster and smoother. Learning them on the spot though is pretty cool, even though it may seem boring to most, and I found it pretty interesting how streamlined everything is and how much you can actually do when you know all the different commands and whatnot. The excel sheets contain most of the data that determines all the details within the final game, such as what symbols show up on the reels and how much you get paid for certain combinations. Similar to how the coding worked, we created an excel sheet for our game by starting with a base from a similar game and replacing the details with the ones from our game.
The coding itself is done in C#, which, while a bit different than Java, reminds me a lot of all the wonderful and not so wonderful memories from AP computer science, the main one being having absolutely no idea why anything and everything works but being grateful that it does. Luckily a majority of the coding was already done in other games and the main job was to simply find it and fit it into the new game, though there often occurred errors throughout this process, and scouting through the code to find the source was both satisfying and aggravating.
As far as the facebook slots games goes, we actually developed a much more organized method for playing and gathering the data. However, the monotonous process of pressing the spin button and waiting for the inevitable loss with the occasional bonus game every 10 to 20 spins grew quite boring. It’s a good thing this data is apparently extremely important to the company, or I would have lost motivation to do it a while ago. That said, I’m glad we’re actually having some sort of impact here, and I hope that as we continue on to harder and more complicated games that those games will actually be used in the online casino as well.
That is great that you are becoming so familiar with Excel as it is an incredibly useful tool in any field!
ReplyDeleteIs there a certain theme that you will be using for the new slot machine game?
When writing the code for these games, there are certain features that we want to implement in the game, for example a game with free spins, so we want to look at prior examples of games like that to compare and base the code.
DeleteDo you know why it's so important for you to play the games over and over? How does the company factor that data into designing their own games? I'd be curious to know if there's a certain point where people get discouraged by losses and how the makers of games avoid that.
ReplyDeleteI believe theyre using the data to figure out how they plan on advertising the games to reach new players specifically, as well as entice players to make purchases, as that is the key feature to how the games make money
DeleteVery interesting! Is there a specific reason why you are using excel to store your data, and not just incorporating it into the code itself?
ReplyDeleteExcel makes it much easier to organize and make any future changes to specific data files
DeleteThis is really cool. Where are you getting some of the code for the pre existing games from? Are they publically available or is it only with the people that you're working for?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure the code is private so only people inside the company can see/use it.
DeleteWhat is one of the new commands in excel that you wished you knew before you started the internship?
ReplyDeleteI think this is one of the most significant information for me.
ReplyDeleteAnd i’m glad reading your article.
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