This is it. The final class. It has been a hard but interesting travel. I have learned the basis of programming which I never thought I could actually understand. I must say this wasn't my favorite class but one of the most challenging. I liked Lerpz Tutorial because was intuitive and dynamic at the same time. Making the game, on the other hand, It wasn't so nice. In any case, here we are, James has some kind of beta working... somehow. I spent the last hours trying to find a way to move the background in a loop to make the sensation of movement. I did it! somehow. Unfortunately, we never could import it to the final game because when we attached to it the whole program crashed for some reason. No even Michael could find the way to fix it. So we end with a beta which didn't see too good... On Friday morning we had our Demo Day presentation. I feel so frustrated because I had an incident and could arrive on time. Fortunately, James was there (the only one) and explained our misery through the whole process. I hope Michael didn't care too much about it. The only thing left is the peer review. I am prepared but no so satisfied.
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After 2 classes struggling against the start menu scene in Unity (which James told me was the only issue he needed help) I finally made it. I started following the Lerpz tutorial and then making appropriate changes to our design. This technique works until I tried to link our "start" and "quit" buttons with Lerpz coding. That "solution" simply didn't work out. So I had to ask Michael and he sent me a button example. Which it and a little researching I finally found the way to edit the coding to actually works (but not without a little help from James too). So yeah programming is very difficult to me but this time I made it!
After finished the game document I didn't know exactly how to keep helping the team as a gamer design. So I asked our leader James and he told me that he actually needed some assistance with programming. That's how I ended trying to do it the Main Menu and High Scores menu of the game. I little against my will I must say because don't really like programming even if I can understand it. Even so, don't take me long accomplish those two screens. Although I am still waiting for a background art (Julia said she will do it) to put in High Scores and the background music (Cara said she will search for it) too. By the way, Luis dropped the class last week. I think he knew it because he never shows any kind of interest in the project and as he never did anything it wasn't an important loss to be completely honest. On the other hand, Angelica also dropped the class this week. Anybody seems that coming was a surprise to everyone. She said she just realized that gaming industry it wasn't for her. I think that's fair that happens and everybody is so young around here anyway. I will continue helping as much as I can. I haven been working on the game design document for the last 2 weeks. Discussing with Mei and Cara I was able to determine more general details about our game concept. First, I expanded and completed the introduction of the document. Then I wrote down a few enemies and other characters the game should have. Before this, I asked Carley and Xavier about what kind of fish they had been working on. Later I moved on to the environment, we will only have one basic screen with some climates changes on it. I had the idea to put icebergs in the middle of the way as obstacles to avoid. As the group was agreed Cara started working on the iceberg design. About Gameplay, we decided to keep it simple: only 4 buttons to move in basics directions (up, right, left and down) and the space bar to eat each eatable fish we may see. After this, I described which backgrounds sounds and FDX effects we should be using. Cara did a great work searching and uploading to our drive themes and giggles suitable to our aquatic design. Finally, I wrote about the Interfaces, we only going to have 3 screens: start menu, high scores, and the game screen. The pause button will be on the game screen and won't show any additional window it will just stop the game immediately. It won't be game over screen either because we want a quick game that just restarts after show your high score for a few seconds.
It is always hard to coordinate a group of people. After meeting each other nobody knows exactly what to do or how to start. I suppose this confusing situation is normal because this is our first semester and my classmates are too young. Anyway, as I like to write I started to work on game design document to fill out all gaps James had left. In order to do that, I needed to know more about what kind of game we were building. So I asked Mai a lot of questions because she was only that seems disposed to talk about the game. We discussed issues like gameplay, controls, characters or environments.
Although I was able to almost finish the entire game description (I wouldn't say the whole document because I know It needs far more develop) I still feel we should be doing more. It is true that Mai, Angelica, and Carly were working on characters design and James was trying to do some programming (not without a lot of distraction, by the way). I would like to take the leadership from here but I still need more speaking skills. So this is the situation right know, I am indeed learning how to make a game design document and basis concerning different part any game should have but I am still worried about our general performance. I reached the end of the tutorial last week. Although it was pretty illuminating experience related Unity 5 basis and controls. I wasn´t completely satisfied with the end result. I would like more time to add more structures or change the old ones. Furthermore, I wanted to modify the laser beams to push the player back but it was more difficult than it seems. Even so, I manage to at least complete the minimum requirements of the tutorial. Then, we were arranged in teams to do a game. Which is awesome if I actually could communicate a little better. However, this time (because in the other classes I also have a team) I get along with my teammates and I believe we would do a proper game. Carly, for example, has impressive drawing skills, Mai is so proactive and Cara seems worried about the team organization. Although, I don't like James as the leader, Luis never say a word and Angela seems distracted we were just meeting each other. I believe we will eventually work together as a team. Unity is the perfect program to star designing video games. In a couple of weeks, I feel I already have a general idea how to use it. I have learned the differences between the menus: hierarchy panel (shows all active components of your game), the project panel (let you navigate through scripts, objects, sounds, images or any file related to the project), and the inspector (show all available options for a single object). I also understood, how to copy an object and place it on the level. In this case, Prefab item are very useful because we only have to edit it once to see the changes in all related objects. On the other hand, editing scripts could be a challenge. Not because is hard to do it (just double click on the script to open the code) but because I don't like programming so confront that bunch of code isn't fun to me. Although I already finished the tutorial and everything seems just fine. I had hard times struggling against the main menu and game over screen these were the only ones I couldn't do by myself. I had to ask assistance to the professor and sadly never understand what my mistake was. Anyway, for this last class I only have to fix a couple of minor errors, improve the jet pack and proved my learning adding original creations. I must admit: my first contact with Unity 5 was at least shocking. I hadn't had any programming experience so was a huge challenge overcome this first impression. However, when you get used to its display I have to say that Unity is actually a pretty good kickstart to this new world. At the beginning is crucial learn the difference between editing and playing the game and its corresponding interface. Navigating in the level, the character, controlling the point of view and other elements could be kind of tricky (at least was for me). You have to press the keyboard narrow and roll the scroll on the mouse at the same time. But the tutorial is easy to follow, friendly to see and very organized. So it is up to you. In the second approach, I tried to remember names and learn the ubication of every menu. That was more difficult that it looks. An intuitive use of all these tools (scripts, objects, images, etc) will come only from practicing. On the other hand, I realized the importance of programming to edit or fix any complex problem you could have. The best way to use Unity is with a solid base of programming knowledge but this would be an exception. After another couple hours struggling with my ignorance I could advance in the tutorial. It felt fantastic when you can see how the game changes following your commands. It is incomparable.
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AuthorI want to study Video Games in a theoretical way. Archivos
May 2018
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