Chibi knights is one of my all time favorite games to play on a computer. It is an open world, campaign style game and it is free! The basic plot is that you are a knight and your quest is to help different people with their needs as well as saving an entire village. There are three main monsters that you must take on to accomplish your mission of saving the village. Although it is a simple game it is very enjoyable for me to play and I used to play this game all of the time. The game was (and still is) very appealing to me because of the unique graphics style and fun gameplay. There isn't much of a menu (just a title and credit screen) the game in general is very user friendly. You learn how to play as well as key information from characters controlled by the computer (AI). You begin as a very basic knight and you can roam around on the main map. If you walk into a building or a person/monster then you cut into a 2D screen where you either fight the monsters or interact with a character. Your options for the controls are jumping and moving with the arrow keys, attacking with your sword by pressing A on the keyboard or using a spell by pressing S on the keyboard. Whenever you defeat a minor monster you gain XP (extra points that work as a kind of currency in the game) and sometimes they will drop you a heart icon (for a health bar recharge) or a potion icon (for spell XP). Once you get a certain amount of XP you can upgrade certain aspects of your knight: Attack (how much damage your sword does), Magic (how much damage your spells do) or Armor (how many hit points, health, you have). As you upgrade these items throughout the game you can see progression in their status. You begin with generic looking armor a rusty sword and an "ordinary" spell. These all become more and more advanced and it is very satisfying to upgrade your knight. This is similar to the making badges activity we did in class because both the badges and these items show clear progression to a higher status. The campaign is pretty creative although it is not very long or complicated I like the aspect that many things in it rely on each other. An example of this is that you can not fight the beasts in any random order you want. You must begin with the Land Beast once you defeat the Land Beast you unlock magical boots that allow you to walk on water. This grants you access to the Island Beast who can only be reached by walking across the water. Once you defeat the Island Beast you get the key to a labyrinth which leads to closer to defeating the final beast. I know what these items do because I have beat the game multiple times but the first time I played I had to figure it out through trial and error and remembering encounters with AI from earlier in the game. I have very little to complain about with this game I have experienced a few minor glitches but those deal less with the game and more with the website I was playing it on. The only thing I would improve if I could would be making the story/game longer. The game is very accessible all you have to do is look it up on Google and play with Adobe Flash. I would give this game a 4 out of 5 stars only for the length. From the exciting music to the amusing and challenging monsters this is an all around great game and I would recommend you play it.
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After working a little longer in Adobe Illustrator I have made new conclusions corresponding with the comparison of Adobe Photoshop to Adobe Illustrator in advertisement. I still like Adobe Illustrator better but there are some aspects of Photoshop that you can't beat. One of the biggest ones being the realistic aspect of the Photoshop graphics. Very recently we received an assignment that tasked us with making a realistic cheese burger in Adobe Illustrator (realistic within reason we are after all working in Adobe Illustrator). Although the burgers look realistic enough if you compare them to a burger in edited Photoshop you could easily see which one is real. Besides the fact that could easily tell the difference between a real food product and an Adobe Illustrator food product, you would definitely not want to advertise any food products using Adobe Illustrator (or at least not made by anyone at the level I am at right now) because they look unappetising and off color. If you were trying to advertise a food product in Photoshop you could simply take a nice photo of your food item of choice and then add different filters and lighting styles to make it look even more appealing. On the other side of that Adobe Illustrator would be much better for designing a company logo and putting it on merchandise. If you tried making a logo from scratch in Adobe Photoshop it wouldn't look as graphically appealing due to the realistic nature of it and how most logos are simple and cartoonish. As you can see there are ups and downs to aspects of both programs and you just have to figure out which one works best in your context.
I like vector graphics and think they can be useful in many different situations. There are lots of things you can do in photoshop with bitmap graphics but the thing I like the most about vector graphics is that you can create images completely from scratch without needing anything outside of the program. I also like that in Adobe Illustrator with vector graphics you can create something a little more practical than just a pretty photograph like you do in photoshop. I think that vector graphics are more useful for designing logos and non-realistic type graphics. They could be used by advertising agencies to make fancy advertisements or by designers to label their drawings or make certain points stand out. Even though we have only been working with vector graphics for a little bit I like using them more than bitmap graphics. I think that I can better express what I am trying to do with vector graphics and the Adobe Illustrator program than with photoshop and bitmap graphics. One big upside to the program is that you can work off to the side of the artboards. I really like this feature because it allows me to test things without having them overlap my artwork or interfere with what I am doing. A negative factor to using vector graphics is that there is a longer process to saving them even though they are usually smaller files than bitmap graphics. I like designing logos and seeing logos that other people design and the program/graphics that allow me to do more of this is Adobe Illustrator/Vector graphics.
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AuthorI am Giacomo Hardin and this is my blog. I will be reflecting on my time in Digital Design and Game Art class. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools Archives
May 2020
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