Beginning my time in this pathway, I had expected to jump into the programming and design straight away, however, having taken my AGAD class for 3 years now, I can say that I am glad that that was not the case. Down below I have provided a simple graphic outlining the basics of my time, and admittedly while illustration is my strong side not graphic design, I'm sure it will suffice for an overview. Overall, the content ranges from dealing with real world careers and overseas markets, and how to work with a team of peers, to things like 3D design, A/V production, and then actual game design and coding in Unity. The most important takeaway is that no matter what, you never truly know enough to really get into game design, because game design itself is so much more than programming and asset creation. In all honesty I feel that every single unit has helped to contribute to my skills now, no matter how well versed I may have been beforehand. It's a lot of bulky topics and rushed deadlines, but between the seemingly arbitrary vocabulary and the nail bitingly frustrating difficulty of various assignments, you tend to notice how much it all pays off. In my opinion, no other class will better prepare you for what it feels like to stick to your own created schedule, how to manage your time and keep up with deadlines, and how to crank your brain for creativity. In a way it almost feels like you're halfway there to the real world. As terrifying as it seems, it certainly helped to realize my potential by leading me on with assignments where I'd perform excellently at tasks I'd never thought I'd be good with or consider to do. For example, my experience with the 2D world helps me to understand the 3D one, such as setting up bones and rigs, animation, and creating textures for objects after painstakingly arranging polygon faces piece by piece. Thus, I've come out a jack of all trades in a sense, operating on all levels of what could be considered game design, as it's proven to be so much more than coding and animating. I'm almost certain that my skills with handling my time, as well as my applicable knowledge of audio and video handling, 3D design, concept creation and planning, and my experience with Unity will pay off exponentially if I manage to stick to it all, and I'm certain I will. Being exposed to this sort of wide variety of topics and materials has certainly opened me up to so many possibilities that I hadn't even previously considered. Not only that but I feel well prepared in the sense that I could continue on in nearly any direction I wanted to, and with my skills and some good old fashioned dedication, I could progress onward into an industry of my choosing.
0 Comments
As I struggle to type these words out, I have come to the staggering realization that with less than 24 available hours left, with still no clear end in sight, I am struggling to complete a project that in the end won't even turn out. After struggling for hours on multiple critical failures, I have realized just how out of time I really am. I had begun writing this post on Wednesday night, and I am only now sitting down able to finish it now. I'm not even sure why I'm still writing this, especially with a timeframe so short. Maybe it's because I just want to desperately give up and I won't let myself, maybe it's because I already have. In any event, I have nearly cried forfeit. My critical failures refuse to be solved. This experience has rocked my to my core, and I am uncertain if I can get back up in time. Even now as I type with shaking fingers and red eyes I still consider throwing in the towel, and yet I know that despite it all I will continue to at least attempt to single out my problems and confront them head on. Is it determination and perseverance? Perhaps, but it's most likely apathy and defeat that fuel me the most at this point. I have given up on giving up, so I guess pushing foreword at this point is my only option. I cannot describe my current setback, as with every fix comes another problem that is left for me to solve, and I am running out of the strength to solve problems. I will be left with what I can conjure up in this limited time, and the thought of leaving this all behind is my only solace.
In order to hopefully further myself in my endeavors, I have begun the process of reaching out to other popular content creators on the web, most notably ones whom I've seen are open to collaboration. I'm starting off small since I'm currently bogged down with my end of year projects, but hopefully I can build some relations over the summer and begin extensive collaboration. I am also looking foreword to the possibility of taking commissions once I get a payment system in place, and I hope working in this way can prepare me for the possibility of working freelance part time. Working in this manner may also help me with time management and meeting deadlines since I'm currently struggling with these issues now, however this is mostly caused by the volume of the work I have on my hands, not the content, and with the ability to control my workflow I believe I would have a better handle on my progress than I do now. So far I have only gotten responses from a small few, most notably those who associate themselves more within the digital art community. However, I am confident that work like this may help to boost my standing within online creator communities, and I presume this would reflect well in my portfolio. I have also considered tapping into graphic design for items such as stickers, buttons and clothing, as it seems like a fun and worthwhile opportunity to consider, especially with sites like redbubble becoming more common. In any event, becoming more recognized in the digital marketplace is a must if one seeks to make their endeavors profitable, and I may have to get into the habit of advertising myself on more platforms, as recently with my spike of work I have fallen out of it.
To put things into perspective, I have been solidly working on developing and programming my end of year game project since the beginning of April, and I am only about 20% done with the coding and that's being generous. That is coding alone, not even accounting for individual art assets and 3D models, nor any sort of particle effects or camera animations. Even if I were to work an extra 2-3 hours every night and during my AGAD period, not accounting for issues in code and other projects in different subjects I have been assigned, nor studying for both upcoming tests and finals, it is still very likely that I will not finish this project in its entirety. Adding insult to injury, to complete the majority of my work assigned starting from the second half of third quarter, I have had to sacrifice most of my free time and related activities, or to put it bluntly, my work schedule has reduced my ability to digitally draw and paint freely to the point where I have not produced nor finished a new piece in its entirety since January. To ask that I now create in detail fully colored and customized UI and sprite assets for this project is simply asking the impossible given the time I need produce said assets and my current time frame. It is disappointing to see all the plans for this project I had started with, as it now seems impossible to bring even the most rudimentary foundation to fruition. If I could describe my current state, I would refer to myself as desperate, either for more time or a way to escape it all. I am going through the crunch before I should have to.
So in my firsthand, personal opinion, working with 2D is much, much easier, as you typically only have to concern yourself with two planes of direction rather than three. On top of that, I much prefer the creation of simple 2D art assets as opposed to having to 3D model everything. (Though that very likely will change once I can have a spare minute to fugue out Z Brush.) And call me old fashioned, but anyone who knows me is likely to realize that RPGs are my favorite genre of games, and I much prefer them with pixelized, 2D graphics as opposed to their more modern 'Dazzling' 3D versions. (Sprite art just has way more versatility in my mind.) Besides their artistic merits, working with 2D unity programming is a bit simplified, at least when it comes to your Vector 3s and your coordinate mapping, since for me, having to think of rigid bodies, triggers, and hit boxes in three dimensions tends to... complicate things a bit. There's also my preference of tile mapping over environment molding, as tile mapping is more akin to painting on individual 'squares' of artistic assets, unlike environment molding which is more similar to digitally sculpting clay. (However it certainly seems far more appealing over character modeling) As for camera and scene views, well, I much prefer only having to map out and see how everything looks from one angle, rather than all of them, as 2D scene mapping typically only needs the user to analyze everything on a single 2D plane. For instance, one of your colliders is causing your character to clip off the environment, and the collider you need to change needed to be moved up slightly but you couldn't see that due to your current camera angle.
Well to summarize the last quarter or so, I like to use the simple anagram UVW- also known in my mind as "Unwavering Vigorous Work". It's exactly what it sounds like, and in my experience it's been tedious, cumbersome, even frustrating at times, and yet somehow completely worth it and invigoratingly fun. Despite 3Ds Max's chronic tenancy to crash on me given the slightest amount of complexity needed for a given project, most of the projects went rather smoothly, most of them that is. Meanwhile I'm still trying to figure out why my temple is such a mess that the lazy UVW program cannot unwrap it properly. nor can I understand why this seems to be the only project thus far that has't gone along without a hitch. It is bothersome, but I feel as if I'm only going to get into more trouble with our coming unit, as I have barely touched any of Unity's 3D programming capabilities and have solely been doing work in its 2D functions. All that aside however, I truly do appreciate working with shaders, materials, and textures, definitely more than I do UVWs that is. Out of the three listed, materials have to be my favorite, as working with physical materials is just so oddly satisfying, especially when everything comes together and looks all nice, clean, neat, and shiny. It's probably because I just have a thing for materials and lighting effects in general, but I digress, it feels nice when it all comes together and looks pretty, what else can I say? All in all, I did like this section a lot, more than the previous portions of topics/units where we actually modeled stuff probably because this solely focused on the visual aspects of 3D models, which if you know me, I've always been a 2D artist at heart.
An example of a textured cube
Well I have just decided to venture into the world of animation, beyond that of which I have currently been doing, which has been short animatics and storyboards in Flipnote Studio 3D. Besides not being able to have the time to work on it in school, it's somewhat difficult to learn at home, or rather just tedious. I've always been a slow detailed oriented sketcher, and an even slower line artist, just in general my process does not tend to be the fastest. When working in programs like FireAlpaca, it seems almost impossible attempting to work at the 24fps industry standard. Just 5 sketched frames alone took me approximately two hours, and that was the sketch itself, no outline or anything more complicated than a simple sketch. (I'm not even going to detail the soreness of my wrist and hand.) While I'd love actually animating something of length, no amount of copying and pasting will help me reach my goal as quickly as I want to, especially considering the multitude of unfinished digital pieces I still currently have in development. I know lots about key framing, inbetweens, body movement, onion skinning, the whole nine yards, don't get me wrong! I just need to practice more on my delivery and output times, as I feel that's my true handicap, especially considering I only have about 4-6 hours of energy left after any given school day before I completely collapse in exhaustion. Unfortunately, it almost feels as If my progress is stagnating, and that before long I'll cease improvement all together. I just wish I had more time to develop my skills further than what I'm already doing. The good news is, I've already been following some extremely popular animators within the digital art community, and while it's no college course, watching animation development streams and given tutorials has already begun to help me immensely. I'm tempted to try my hand at keyframing animations, as it seems more and more online creators are shifting to automatic animation rather than frame by frame, but it's still pretty mixed as is and I should aim to learn both methods just so I can have some versatility at my disposal.
On Friday, me and the rest of my game design class partook in a playtesting activity where we critiqued two in development educational games based on economics and finance. The first, "Shady Sam's" which was a game where the main goal was to con people by various means to make them pay the greatest loans possible. The second game was a tabletop game prototype to be made digitally later based on credit scores and paying off debts. Both were legitimately enjoyable, and I walked away with what I presume to be a more economically aware perspective. It's important to playtest with your target audience because no matter what, a room of adults will never be able to see completely into the minds of teenagers, so getting their input is more than necessary. As for the games themselves, I honestly see little to no problems at all with Shady Sam's, if anything I wished it could last longer! (Though then again this is coming from a person who can regularly clock in 100+ hours into most RPGs, so don't exactly trust me on this one) As for the prototype however, I feel like if there was a better explanation at the start, that would have eased me into things a bit quicker, and having an actual counter for the number of turns left, rather than a painted die, would work out much better. As for the gameplay itself, there definitely needs to be a bit of balancing done, specifically if you get a bad start, there's not much you can do as long as your opponent plays it safe. After all, if they never take expensive risks, they're almost guaranteed to win, especially if most of the chance cards only affect the individual, not the whole board or just your opponent.
I first came across this game during Nintendo's seasonal sales advert. Usually I'm not too keen on browsing digital catalogs, but this time around I figured I have some spare cash, why not take a look? I'm about 5 pages down, looking through page after page of discounted games that all seemed to have the same premise, color pallet, or the same 3 anime characters posing in the same 4 stances each and every time. Then, I spotted this one, instantly drawn in by the psychedelic color schemes and the dazzling visuals, and the short demo videos provided clips of interesting gameplay and a unique visual style. Now let's dive into this review and see if it lives up to it's dazzling name. Gameplay and ControlsThe game starts off simple enough, giving the user a basic tutorial and instructing them to chose their preferred play style, i.e. would they rather play as a carnivore (tighter controls, faster base speed), a herbivore (slower less responsive play style, but faster eating) or an omnivore, a mix of both. As you play around and explore the levels in a fashion similar to Spore's cellular stage, you advance and level up by consuming materials of a certain type, red for carnivore, green for herbivore, and blue for omnivore. Simple enough right? The goal of each level is to simply devour all materials of a type and end up consuming more so than the CPU. The controls play very well, and do in fact feel like you're navigating a creature underwater in the sense that you're not steering the whole body, rather just the head and the rest of the creature follows. There's also an interesting little mechanic where you can delve beneath the different layers of the void/the waters, to explore new previously invisible scenery. There also is a nice touch where flashes of red green or blue will alert you to unclaimed collectible materials so that you're not just aimlessly wandering around the landscape. Overall the game is fairly simple, not too challenging, and makes for a great leisurely way to kill time without getting super invested in any extensive story or complex side quest. There's also a decent amount of levels packed in too, not too many but nothing to scoff at either, all in all making for at the very least a solid 5-6 hours of game play. It also provides you with a multitude of save states as well, allowing you to replay the game pretty much as many times as you'd like. Visual Style and AtmosphereThe visual style is extremely unique, the bright flashy colors against sometimes colorful and cheery other times dark and foreboding backgrounds feels like something I'd see in a dream about mathematical equations. It's strangely biological, yet oddly mechanical, and all so very captivating. I especially love the creature designs, and it's fun to see and point out which deep sea creatures inspired which designs, as someone who's always been a fan of deep sea marine biology that is. The player characters are also eye catching, almost hypnotic in the way they move, each suiting the feel for their respective game play styles. From the carnivore build, a sleek, sea serpent with sheering mandibles, the almost grasshopper or locust like fish design of the herbivore, and the geometric eel build of the omnivore. The music too is also very fitting for the game, soft piano overlaid upon a baseline of harmonious synths, creating almost a randomized, dreamlike yet calming melody that compliments the game play very well, definitely enriching the general atmosphere of the overall game. It creates a near seamless immersive experience that draws you in deeper without a doubt. The levels are also nicely designed and usually have a unique spin to each one, especially during the later stages. CriticismsNow while in my mind this is a good game, it is by no means a perfect game and there are most definitely a few hang ups and bang ups that in my mind keep it from being a great game. For starters, at the beginning, it felt like that great decision of finding your play style was something great and important that you could never change later, and I was disappointed to find that you can actually change you play style quite easily by simply collecting enough of a separate material, killing some potential replayability. A part of me in this way wishes that you could choose your base species, and by collecting different materials you could make it so that you could end up with different types of your base build (e.g. a more tanky carnivore vs a lightweight minmax one) instead of only switching between carnivore, herbivore, and omnivore throughout your entire journey. Another issue is that the omnivore and herbivore play styles are only marginally different, you're still defeating the same prey the same way just with different colors, which is fine I suppose but it's still a bit of a letdown that there wasn't anything more to it. There's also a few enemies that appear far too commonly or not often enough at all which isn't anything major but it would be nice to see some more variety. There are a few boss fight stages here and there that while visually impressive, didn't add much to the overall experience, usually consisting of "wait your turn then widdle away" style game play that without anything to spice it up just drags on and on. The CPU at times can be a little too easy to beat and despite being able to take damage, I'm not sure if you can game over from excessive damage so it seems a little pointless to include. There's also a few visual and audio issues, such as slightly jerky camera movement in a few levels, issues with being able to properly see color flashes depending on the background, and audio occasionally restarting but without a solid loop so the extension is very audible, however these are minimal concerns. Final thoughts: Is it worth it?Well, for a $2.50 pick I got off of the Nintendo E shop after some Christmas bliss, I'd say it's well worth it, however it will only really be a satisfying play if you're like me in the sense that you either love interesting creature design, have a thing for games with similar mechanics to spore, or have an eye for colorful almost psychedelic artwork. Otherwise, I'm not so sure you'd take to it, particularly if you're a fan of fast paced and more exiting game play, since this is a casual and leisurely game that basically works as a beautiful time killer. However, if fantastical art styles and slow building game play is something you particularly enjoy, then this might turn out to be one of your new favorites. Game play and mechanics: 3/5 Visuals and Atmosphere: 4.5/5 Replayability: 2.5/5 Overall Score: 3.5/5 Reflecting on my current hyperfixiation of the week, I've become obsessed with a film "Annihilation" and what makes it such a good example of turning an impossible narrative into a film. What I've come to find is that most video game to film adaptations fall short because they try to rely too heavily on the source material, creating a fixed story line of a game where no matter how linear the game play is, there is still player choice to be accounted for, and film takes that away which is arguably one of the most important aspects of video games as a whole; interactivity. Why mention Annihilation? Well simple, the director knew that it would be impossible to make a film revolving around characters whose names are never mentioned, and where 80% of any description takes place in the character's mind, or in a journal reflection. As such, instead of trying to keep the film loyal to the source, he instead tried to capture the feeling of the novel itself, by only reading it once, and writing the entire script based off of what he remembered and the emotions it brought forth. As such, the film feels very dreamlike, fitting for it's Lovecraftian and eldritch undertones. I feel like with the sudden surge of video game to film adaptations as of late, they can learn a thing or two from director Alex Garland, and instead of trying to capture the entirety of your source line by line, create a narrative that is unique yet stands for everything in your source material. That way, instead of providing a line by line retelling of a particular game, ergo locking our your audience by taking away the interactivity, instead try to play on the sense of nostalgia and the base feelings you recall your first time experiencing the subject. The only issue with this technique in my mind is the inevitable backlash you'll receive by diehard fans who are upset that you didn't follow the lore of the original to an exact T. (But being fair, any video game to movie adaptation will receive backlash, as is the unfortunate nature of them.)
|
Creator InfoThis is a blog for a Game Art Design class. Future programmer and currently an artist and writer. Archives
June 2019
Categories
All
|