For the first time ever I will not be doing a game review this quarter, which has actually come as quite a surprise to me. Normally there is at least one game each quarter that I frequently play and write a review on, though recent releases just haven't lived up to the standards set by previous ones. I'm not sure if this is due to an actual drop in quality among games in recent years, or if my experience working with games has caused me to spot flaws and think too critically about them, or if I've simply lost interest in video games. Whatever the case may be it is clear to see that the popularity of gaming as a whole has dropped recently, and one would think the only thing that could save it would be a huge release, but that is exactly what Fortnite was yet the popularity is still on a downward spiral. With no great new releases I've been stuck playing the same old games and thus have nothing new to review, though I feel that this may be a good thing. Being able to see that recent releases haven't lived up to the quality of prior ones shows that I'm not spending money just to spend it, rather I'm thinking about whether or not my purchases are worth it. Even with the little experience I have with game creation I can already detect patterns with the new releases of games. It seems the primary issue is a lack of creativity and lust for money from AAA companies, which I suppose at this point is to be expected. Perhaps when I was younger I didn't understand that most games, especially sequels, were made just for the money. Though companies have definitely become much more blatant with cash grab tactics such as releasing the same content under a new name. From my work on Ennui it is clear to see that passion is a big factor for the outcome of a game, and many companies lack that passion. We may not have been the most zealous game developers, but we at least cared about the outcome of our game, causing us to create a more unique product. Even though many people disliked our project, it was solely for the reason that they did not understand how to play it, I'm sure that with a little work our game could be much more enjoyable than the garbage being fed to us today. Large companies on the other hand, knowing they already have a massive mindless audience that doesn't need to be impressed to buy their game, are able to release games such as Call of Duty, that can just be re-released and recycled each year with no repercussions.
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Recently in class we've been working on turning our game ideas into playable physical versions, and it has certainly taken longer than I though it would. Apart from having to throw my original idea out of the window in the interest of creating a concept we all fully understood in a shorter amount of time, we still had to translate our idea of Ennui to paper. We thought that we would be making Ennui for a mobile phone, so many of our mechanics were based on controls that could be simulated by a mobile phone but not the same way for a board game. We thought of mechanics such as health bars to track health values as instances of damage are done, a discovery-based generating map, and moving at your own pace to determine how much noise you make. Though we had to do a few workarounds, we were ultimately able to translate these ideas into a board game version, though they are much more rigid than we had planned for our mobile game. For example, health values must be tracked and calculated by the players, movement type is determined by movement cards, and the map is generated around the player by being split up into several sections placed and removed by the game director. We also had to implement a new role to control NPC actions and such to make up for what would be done automatically on the mobile device. Unfortunately due to all of the mechanics translated from mobile to physical version, our game got to be pretty hard to understand for new players. Being the creators of the game, my team and I hadn't noticed it until we were all testing each others' games and had to have rules describe how to play our game without being there to describe niche mechanics that the rules can't get across. Ultimately though we've learned a lot from having to transform our game into a playable physical version, which has immensely helped us to understand the true feeling of the game we're creating.
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Having so many days off we have been learning so much new material so quickly, but for the most part I've been able to understand all of it without any problems and finish my assignments. However, the most difficult skill to learn so far has been the curve editor. It didn't seem like it would be difficult at first, but I didn't understand much of the material. The very first assignment for the curve editor took me four of five days to complete due to poor planning. For the first two days I followed the tutorial then realized it didn't really get me anywhere, so I restarted having a better idea of what to do but not knowing how to make the ball turn around correctly. I got the wall to bounce off of the first wall easily, editing the curve to make it look smooth and natural, but the second bounce was extremely hard for some reason and took me two days to perfect. The ball lost so much energy to the point where I wasn't sure if it would make more sense for the ball to bounce or to just roll off the wall. I decided it should bounce, but the ball always moved slowly towards the wall and awkwardly to the ground afterwards. It seemed no matter what I did it would not cooperate and I was about to give up when I discovered that I could choose to only affect the start or end of a curve with an operation. I combined that with moving where on the timeline the bounce occurred and finally got the bounce I was looking for, afterwards the ball just rolled on the floor then bounced off of the sofa. Main Points
It's hard to believe that we're already halfway through the fourth quarter, especially knowing that EoC testing is coming up which will take away the last few weeks of normal school. Honestly I haven't looked at any of my grades in any class since near the end of the third quarter, but that is because I'm sure I'm passing all of them. My sleeping schedule is now fully back to normal, I start my homework at eleven and go to bed at one in the morning instead of starting at one and sleeping at three. Even though it is only a two hour difference, I sleep two less hours during class each day because of it. We've missed a ton of school days recently as well which has helped me to relax and get back on my normal sleep schedule. On the other hand school assignments have gotten out of hand, though I will still be able to complete them as normal. In this class most of my plans were ruined due to days I had put aside to render my projects and dates I had set for myself to finish each assignment being rescheduled or missed. In my other classes we have a bunch of homework to makeup for the days we missed and I had to take four tests in one day because there was no other day to take them. Overall though the quarter has been going well so far and I have been adapting to the schedule changes.
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This week we learned about how to use lights in 3ds Max as well as why certain lights are used for certain scenarios. The unit was pretty simple which is probably why we were only given a week to do all of the assignments. That said though, I didn't even finish all of the assignments within that week. I spent most of my time working on the first assignment which required images showing examples of lights being used in games as well as a paragraph describing each image. All of the assignments after that have been quick 15 minute assignments though so I should be done with the rest by Tuesday or Wednesday. Of all of the types of lights omni and spotlight are my favorite because they are the simplest to work with. Omni quickly lights an area with a nice decay which makes it look good while free and target spotlights are useful in just about any scenario. I'm not a fan of directional lights because their use is much more limited and generally lights up a smaller area than what other lights are capable of. In all of the assignments I have done so far I've only used spotlights because of how useful they are. All in all though I liked the lighting unit even though it was extremely quick which got me a little bit behind and I got a bad quiz grade. I'll have to make sure to review all of the material before the next quiz, not just what I'm using for the current assignment I'm working on.
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So far I have enjoyed UVW mapping much more than working with textures and shaders because it allows for much more realistic models of real life objects. Textures and shaders were nice, but they could take a while to render, whereas I haven't had any problems with UVW mapping so far. The most difficult part about working with them is actually applying the images to each material and showing each material in the viewport. It isn't really a difficult process, but it is tedious and used a lot of my time for the box assignment. Each time I wanted to add a new image to a side I would have to add a standard material then add a bitmap for that material and show it in the viewport as I backed out to the parent material. Of course because there are six sides to a box I had to do this six times, as well as readjust the image if it was rotated incorrectly each time. I was most surprised with how realistic the final result was when rendered because it is shown as quite blurry in the viewport, but the render sharpens the images. It was also interesting to use the composite material editor instead of the slate, but it wasn't hard to adjust to. The main difference was that the material previews were displayed on top and editing was done below. So all in all I didn't find the transition to UVW mapping all that difficult, besides the huge amount of time it has taken me to complete a single assignment.
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The first semester is coming to an end, which means we're already half way through the school year. As always winter weather has caused some confusion and thrown me slightly off track in terms of grades. However, due to my experience last year with snow days and long breaks, I was much better prepared this year for such inconveniences. For the most part my grades stayed solid while we were constantly going on and off of school, and I am proud of that. As for the rest of the weeks we've been in school they flew by. Just like last year nothing fun has happened yet and I still have only one friend, on the bright side though I did not lose my only friend. My workflow has been steady in all classes including this one, so I have nothing to complain about, and many of our recent assignments have been pretty easy to do. Working on the project has been fun, especially adding the extra effects such as fire for the explosions, but I don't know if I'll be able to render it on time. I spent all class today rendering my project and it only finished about 5% of the animation. Overall though it has been a pretty good semester so far in all of my classes and I hope the rest of the year does not get more stressful.
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Doom is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Bethesda. It is technically the fourth Doom, but since it was the first new major release since Doom 3 in 2004, it was just called Doom. Many people praise Doom for its heavy metal soundtrack that fits right into the gameplay and adapts to player actions. Personally I think it is more of a personal preference thing, but in my opinion the soundtrack was great. There is no ability to sprint in Doom, instead the player is naturally pretty fast but can move slower, making the gameplay free-flowing and action-packed. Most of the gameplay consisted of going room to room killing demons, which had enough variety to not be monotonous, and an additional boss fight every once in a while. As you progress you gather more weapons and upgrades for those weapons as well your character. There are many secret rooms to be found in Doom, including easter egg rooms with graphics resembling those of the first Doom. I don't normally 100% games so I only found a few of these secrets, but I appreciated the option to gain extra upgrades if I were to look for them. The two major problems I have with Doom are the length of the game and finisher executions. After hearing all of the great reviews of Doom I was hoping for an action-packed demon killing experience with crazy good music. Unfortunately though, this adventure only lasted for eight hours. I played Doom in just three sittings, in the first sitting I got used to the feel of Doom and obtained most of the weapons. In the second sitting I beat the first two bosses and figured I should only be about a tenth of the way through. In my third and final sitting I beat the final boss and was awestruck at how short of a campaign Doom had to offer. My amount of disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined, I thought that because Doom is mostly a single-player game that it would have a lot to offer, but it really came short of my expectations. As for the finisher executions, their animations were really good however playing the exact same note every single time I executed a demon got redundant and took away from the amazing soundtrack. Of course that is just a minor issue, but it still took away from the overall experience. I'm not even going to mention the multiplayer because I did not play it nor have high expectations for it. Therefore, overall I'd give Doom a 7/10 due to the extremely small amount of content for what could have been such a great game. As I said it was very disappointing to reach the end so quickly, and thus I can't give it the score it should have deserved.
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Recently we've been learning new techniques to make more complex 3D models and scenes. Many of these new techniques make models look or act much more realistic than they really are. For example, using mental ray caused our objects to look very realistic with textures and shading we had never used before. We've also learned how to use MassFX, which creates a realistic simulation of physics. In the next few months we will probably be making much more realistic 3D models and scenes now that we know how to do so. I hope to use MassFX more often in future assignments because it was fun to work with and never caused any problems for me. We also used it to make animations rather than scenes, which allow for much more creative work to be done. Whenever we make animations I like to add small extra details wherever I can just for the fun of it. Mental ray was interesting, but it was removed in the new version of 3DS Max and took a while to render a single image, so I don't think we'd be using it in animations anyways. The cloth modifier generally did not work for me so I hope we don't use it much in the future, it always found some way to mess up a perfectly normal simulation. Working on our current project has been fun so far because it includes most of the new modeling techniques we have learned about. Hopefully they all come together to make an interesting and active simulation, but it will take some time to make them do so. It would be interesting if other assignments in the future also included several modeling techniques, just as long as they aren't as complicated as this one.
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Recently we have started to work with creating simulations in 3ds Max, and so far it has been quite a volatile experience. I've only made it to the flag so far, but I haven't finished it because sometimes my simulation will work and other times it will cause my flag to explode, with no changes to the simulation. The most difficult part of making simulations has been attempting to keep my flag wave in the wind, it either falls straight down or goes directly backwards when the simulation starts before it actually waves in the wind. I was looking forward to enjoying watching a nation's flag wave in the wind, but even when I get my flag to work I can't see the material I applied to the flag unless the render preview is open. Another part I've been struggling with is the tablecloth, it seems the table always tears the cloth no matter how smooth I make it or how many times I chamfer it. I've tried a variety of materials for the cloth going over the table and a variety of different table shapes, but nothing has worked. So far I do not enjoy working with simulations because just about everything goes wrong and does not work on the first try, unlike everything else I've done in 3ds Max. I've reviewed the tutorial given with the assignment several times and attempted to research online how not to tear a cloth when it lands on a box, but only tutorials for how to tear something pop up. Hopefully I figure out how to fix my tablecloth and make my flags work soon, but as of right now it has been quite annoying to work with simulations.
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AuthorMy name is Andrew Prichard and the this is my first digital arts class, I look forward to a good year with lots of hard work. Archives
May 2021
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Last updated 5/14/21
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