This year has been pretty okay. Not only is it my last year in high school, but it's also my last year of Game Design. In the beginning, I had a pretty basic grasp of the industry and the things that went into it, but I didn't really know much about the various careers associated with it, or the legal aspects tied to said careers. This all changed over the first quarter because of the units associated with both topics, and through those I learned a lot. The lesson that had the biggest impact on me as a game design student was the personal project unit. This is because it was entirely unstructured and left it up to you to utilize your skills and bring them together to create your own game. I liked this unit a lot because I feel it's indicative of working in not only the games industry, but industries such as graphic design and video editing. As much as I learned from the career practices unit, if I had to pick one to be removed from the course as a whole, that's the one I would choose. I feel like getting right into coding, modeling, and Unity would be extremely beneficial, especially for students (like me) who hadn't actually done any over the summer so they could get their muscle memory back on those programs, instead of letting their knowledge of them deteriorate with time. In order to better prepare students for a future in the game industry, the course can be improved in stressing the independent project more, and maybe even making it something that's started much earlier in the year. Having something big like that to work towards does something to a student's motivation, and as mentioned earlier it gives them experience with working with deadlines in the industry. Since I'm not going to be here for Advanced Studies, this year has helped me prepare mostly for college. From my "reliable" sources, I've been told that college is similar to how things work in here, more or less. You're given an assignment, as well as a deadline, and you're basically told to go wild. There's none of the hand-holding that's been so prevalent throughout high school. Instead, everything is left up to you. If you get something done great, and if you don't, oh well. Also, the fact that there's no powerlunch associated with this class helps to drive this point further. You don't really have anyone else to blame but yourself (and Unity) for the grade that you get in the class, which I think goes a long way in preparing students for the real world. Course Map for the Year
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Now that I'm almost done with the final project, I can say that it's actually been surprisingly straightforward. Originally, I planned to make a 3D endless runner game like Temple Run, but I soon realized that that would be too beyond the scope of my abilities, so instead, I decided to make a simple multiplayer checkers game instead. (I didn't go with chess only because I don't actually know how to play.) I've had a lot of tutorials that I've been following along with to help me in the process, while at the same time making sure not to just copy everything straight from them. Making original 3D assets is really, really difficult, so instead I decided to just use free bear pieces and checkerboard models that I found online. I'm about 90% done with it at this point, all I need to do is add some touches to make sure it doesn't crash after a certain number of moves.
I think I've narrowed down what kind of game I'm going to make for the final project. I think that I'll make a simple 3d endless runner similar to Temple Run, where the goal is to survive as long as possible and collect points while avoiding obstacles. I haven't decided on a particular theme or aesthetic yet, but I might do something futuristic, with the player character running across rooftops of an endless city, avoiding robots and other hazards. Due to my limited coding experience, I doubt that the game will end up being that complicated or have much variation in mechanics and scenery, but it'll probably still be of the same quality of something thrown onto the app store by a tiny one-person team. Tons of best sellers on the app store are exactly that, after all, so if I manage to finish the game, there's always the possibility of making it free to play with a ton of ads and putting it up there for anyone to download.
Some Potentially Useful Videos: Endless runner tutorial playlist Making infinite terrain Additional tutorial I can already tell that making my own game from scratch is going to be a pain. Even when I completely follow the tutorials, there's no guarantee that everything will actually work properly (as demonstrated by the space shooter and tank games not working even when I try and use the completed files), so I'm not sure how good my 3d game will actually be. If I actually manage to finish it, the game will probably be something extremely simple like 3d pac-man or q-bert or something similar, because anything more complicated than that is way beyond my abilities. I'm going to have to try and finish the rest of the tutorials at home, and hope that everything actually works on my computer even though it hasn't been on the school ones. Maybe there's some update that I don't know about that's preventing everything from working properly. I'll have to figure that out when I get to it.
Useful things UI Text Invisible Objects Rigidbody Help My short story, Storm of Stone, is finally in print and available on Amazon for both kindle and physical. It's been a long, long process, but in the end I think it was all worth it. I'm really fortunate to have found my artist friend and be able to commision them to do the art. The formatting in Adobe Indesign took a while because I hadn't used that program since freshman year, but I picked it up fairly quickly, and was able to do things that I didn't even know were possible in the program. Probably the hardest part though, was actually getting it on Amazon, not because the process of doing so is actually difficult, but mostly because I didn't actually know what I was doing. The kindle version was especially hard to figure out, because you can't just upload the PDF file straight to the site for some reason, so I had to try and copy and paste the entire book into a word document. When that didn't work, I eventually figured out that Amazon made this program called Kindle Kids Book Creator, which even though it's primarily designed to create picture books, it can also turn your fully formatted PDF files into ebooks that look the exact same. I've sent a lot of copies out to family, friends, teachers, and even several of the LGBT centers in the state due to the subject matter and the characters in the book being who they are. I'm currently writing the full-length SKINWALKER novel, which naturally takes place before Storm of Stone. SoS was 19.3k words in total when I finished it, and SKINWALKER is already larger than that in half the time because SoS allowed me to grow so much as a writer.
Some things that helped me out Kindle Kid's Book Creator How to use Kindle Direct Publishing CreateSpace Formatting Working with Unity is a lot easier than I thought it would be. The coding part isn't even that difficult anymore thanks to the tutorials, and the only problems come from the version of unity that I'm using being different from the version used in the tutorials. At this rate I'd still say that there's only a 50% chance of me actually getting to the creating my own game, and an even smaller chance of that game actually being functional. Following along with tutorials is fine, but making something from scratch is a different thing entirely. This isn't like graphic design or writing where I would be totally comfortable with doing that, but I'll still try and get to that point regardless. Not having set deadlines for the assignments is probably the best thing to happen to me all year in this class. Now even if I have technical issues that prevent me from turning something in, I actually have time now to sort them out.
Useful Unity Things: How to use getcomponent Rigidbody properties for 2D UI Text Surprisingly, Unity is a lot easier to use than I remember it being. Maybe it's because of the new update, or maybe I was a lot better at using it than I remember, but it was surprisingly simple to just jump right back into it from where I left off almost half a year ago. Even coding, which I thought would be a massive pain, was really simple when I figured out how to use the GetComponent command for depreciated items. Something that I've found really helpful is that C Sharp seems to automatically map your movement buttons to WASD and the arrow keys without you having to manually set that up yourself, which I remember being difficult when I first tried to do it. There's always the possibility of course, that the feature was always in the program and I'm just remembering it wrong, which now that I think about it, is probably the case. The hardest thing for me right now would probably be trying to get my game physics to work properly, which is surprisingly a lot harder than it sounds. The tutorials have been really helpful when it comes to getting the basics back down, and I actually feel somewhat confident that I'll be able to make my own game after I complete all of them. The game isn't going to be overly complex of course, the last group project proved that doing something like that is beyond my capabilities as of right now, but at least it'll be functional. Hopefully. Maybe.
Some Useful Tutorials That Helped Me Out: C Sharp Coding MORE C Sharp Coding Because I Needed It Some New Features In Unity That Will Probably Be Useful At Some Point After almost three months and several delays, the project that I've been working on is finally almost fully complete. My part of it has been done for a while now, but the person I've been collaborating with has been having problems. First with their internet, then with their computer itself, and I'd be lying if I tried to say that I haven't been frustrated. I only need one more thing from them, and if everything goes right, the project should be done by the end of the week. I'm extremely proud of it to be completely honest, and it's actually given me confidence to continue in the field that I want to pursue. I refuse to spoil what the project is until it's actually done, because I've learned in the past that promising people that you're going to make something and hyping it up only leads to them constantly pestering you about whether or not it's done, and I haven't been in the mood for that kind of badgering for months. Getting this project finished will be a life-changing experience for me, especially once I start marketing and spreading it around. Even if it doesn't reach huge amounts of success, it'll still be enough to reaffirm the idea to myself and anyone who may have doubted me that this path is actually right for me, and that's something that I think is incredibly important.
Some things that helped me do research on my project Flaws to make a character realistic Bad writing index Formatting tutorial Ok, so I haven't used 3dsmax since god knows when, and coming back to it in the beginning of the third quarter was a nightmare for a few minutes until I started remembering what things actually do. I'm not that good at 3d modeling or modeling in general but rigging and animating is easy enough (when it doesn't crash). I only really needed to look at one tutorial video to get back into the swing of things. After becoming reacquainted with the program, I've really come to appreciate how much of a help the different perspective modes are when trying to apply bones to something, and figuring out that I can activate a layers panel like in Photoshop also made the program a lot easier to use than I remember. Adobe Fuse makes creating characters to model incredibly simple, even if the clothes you can add to your created characters makes it more difficult to properly rig the bones. Things started out pretty easy, but I know that it's pretty much guaranteed to get more difficult with each assignment. That's how it always is when it comes to 3dsmax.
On another note, Adobe Fuse is pretty interesting. It seems that they keep pumping out more and more experimental software, but since this one helps with modeling I can't really complain too much. I'm especially impressed with the level of customization on offer there, and it kind of reminds me of some of the best elements of character creation menus from different video games. You can make something either completely normal or a complete abomination thanks to all of the settings you can change. I tended to stick to something more normal, as trying to rig someone with giant hands, feet, and other odd proportions is a lot more time consuming than it's actually worth. Videos that helped me get back into 3dsmax: Rigging a character Animating Exporting an animaton So, I commissioned my friend to draw the art for the big project I'm working on, and it's been an eye-opening experience. The first and most important thing that I think I've learned so far, is to set deadlines way in advance. This will save both you and the artist from a lot of headache. The second thing I've learned is to figure out your artist's schedule, so that way you can actually set reasonable deadlines around it. The art is coming along pretty nicely now that the most complicated pieces are done, so it shouldn't be too long until all the rest is finished too. You should always be extremely specific with your artist on what you want them to draw you, and provide them with appropriate references to make things easier on them. For example, if you want your artist to draw a unique monster that's never been seen in any other visual form, you should provide them with multiple images of characters with different aspects of that creature that you want them to mix together. For example, I sent my artist Japanese manga and American comic book artwork so that they'd know how I want them to draw a big, buff character with four arms. It also helps if you're friends with the artist beforehand, because then that person will have an easier time knowing what you want, and won't be afraid to constantly keep contact with you in order to see if what they drew is up to your specifications.
Some Videos I Watched to Learn Commission Etiquette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5k7KWZo00U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVyArmfx4Xo |
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