My days left in high school are numbered, and as I head towards the end of my final year I've been thinking a lot about my high school experience as a whole. It wasn't exactly what I expected, especially not these past two years, but through all of my years in high school there has always been one class that has kept me sane and in order. In fact it is also the only class that I've taken for all four years under the same teacher too, and that right there is what has shaped my whole experience. Mr. Bourgeois has been a great teacher and a perfect fit for the game design pathway, especially due to his ability to level with his students and be perfectly clear with his expectations. Straight from day one he made sure we were aware of the amount of work we were getting into and that we wouldn't just be sitting around playing games on the computers in class. With each project we were reminded to read the rubric, at least until it was a given procedure that anyone who wanted full points would do. I also significantly improved my writing skills with this class, though I know my writing is still far from perfect. The format of this pathway was slightly disappointing at first, seeing as I signed up to make games and wouldn't be doing so until my senior year, but the skills we learned in each class leading up to AGAD have all been valuable and have helped to expand our interests. I never thought I would have enjoyed working with Premiere Pro or 3DS Max as much as I did, and now I do both 3D modeling and video editing in my spare time (so actually not much these days). Possibly one of my favorite aspects of this course is that it actually stays true to the DSA motto of "rigorous academics" unlike many other classes. I've pushed myself several times each year to complete projects that at first seemed impossible, even though some (like the train station) were primarily difficult due to render times. Likewise I've also fallen several times, but Mr. Bourgeois understands that as humans failure is inevitable, so small blunders here and there have not been the end of me. The only mistake that is inexcusable is to give up, it will bite you a lot harder in the future than you think it will, especially for this class. On the bright side difficult assignments often feel as though they are trophies themselves when completed, so there is never a reason to feel the need to give up. This year I particularly enjoyed the assignments to create a UI prototype and a GDD for a game we know, though I still feel that I put way too much effort into the GDD assignment. In years past I enjoyed the neighborhood and train station assignments, but sadly I've already forgotten many of the others that may have been fun. You're probably noticing by now that I've barely even touched on the actual skills we've learned related to software in this class, and that's because the experiences I've had in this pathway amount to much more than what someone looking at a course overview would be able to tell me about this class. Sure we learned how to use Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, 3DS Max, and Unity, but frankly anyone could teach you that. What's more important is the teaching process and how enjoyable the class can be even as a working environment. I can not thank Mr. B enough for the wonderful job he's done getting students invested in this pathway while preparing us with skills that will be useful in the real world. That being said I don't want to make this post any longer than it needs to be, especially if I end up repeating myself as I am about to do, so for the sake of brevity I'll just say thanks Mr. B, and I can't believe I'm already writing my final blog post (at least for this site).
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With just over two weeks left to work on our game it's hard to tell how much we'll have to scrap from our game idea while still aiming to create a finished game. Personally I feel that we should have had a lot more time available to us for making our games, especially since we formed teams very early on in the year only to dismiss them for pretty much an entire quarter. I also feel that the proportion of time spent on pre-production unnecessarily outweighed the time spent on production, primarily because it was hard to set realistic standards for how much we could do in a year without yet possessing the firsthand experience of creating the game. We've run into many problems that we'd have no way to account for in pre-production, even with the assumption that hitches would be inevitable we never thought they'd be lasting too. Despite these setbacks we've continued to work steadily on our game, though with the end in sight it feels like we'll have to have another group meeting to decide what our game is even going to look like. It almost feels like all of the time we spent on pre-production has amounted to nothing aside from a game concept that has only been chopped to pieces over the course of the year. Perhaps we may have inadequately prepared for the future with our pre-production, but it felt like we were doing everything right at the time. It's hard to locate the origin of this dilemma, though I'm sure this wacky year has certainly played a part in it. Coming so close to the end of the year all we can really do is appreciate the experience of working as a team to produce a game and finalize what we have.
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Now that we're working on our game again that means we need to plan what gets done and by when, which can only mean that our friend Trello is back to hold the team together. This time for real though, because now we've actually better communicated our ideas and all have our own work to do. For the first time now I've actually started to check off items on my to-do list on Trello, and it's such a good feeling to get things done before the deadline. I'm grateful that our team leader has organized our objectives well so that I can get an idea of how far collectively our team is with the creation of our game and contribute my own work accordingly. Prior to fully making use of Trello most of what we did was still up in the air, but having to solidify precisely what must be done and by when gets ideas down and things done. Even so we still need to work some on our communication as a group, which I'll admit has been better recently but could always use more work. I've certainly contributed to our problem with communication, though most of it comes from the fact that I'm not really sure what we want from our game. I'd like for our producer to lead the direction our game takes, because either way I'll make the models we need, so when questions about choices for the game are aimed towards me I'm not much help. I understand I make up a quarter of our team and my input may be just as valuable as anyone else's, but I truly do not mind which way our game goes, so with no creative input of my own to add I'd rather not derail the progress we're making by adding conflict to the creation of our game.
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We're finally actively working on our games with our groups again and even though I haven't done anything yet I am actually excited to get back to work on our game. I've been extremely lazy this quarter, between online school and being a senior I've been using my share of excuses, but when it comes to the success of a group I can not fall behind. That being said I've already failed to hold up my part for the group in planning a level so things aren't looking too well for me, but I promise my group and myself that I'll be on top of things as I crawl out of my sluggish third quarter. In fact, while I don't plan to turn in my level planning I am actually working on the 3D models for our game right now, that way we can actually replace the boxes in our levels with the real models. For the level I was supposed to make my plan right now is to just start from scratch using the actual models, since by the time I get around to it I'm sure I'll have already made all of the 3D models necessary for the level. It'll be like a more fun way of whiteboxing the level, because instead of using temporary geometry to hold for visuals I'll actually be able to see how everything interacts with each other, which will also help me to edit any models that may not align with each other well. I can't wait to continue working on our game and things can only continue uphill from here.
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Recently in class we've been learning about affordances and how they are used to help guide players through games. In my past I've encountered many affordances that have distinctly stuck out and made me appreciate the design of the game, though I only attributed them to "good game design" rather than a specific aspect of it. To name a few, I specifically remember the green lights on platforms that indicate where the player should jump to in the newer DOOM games, as well as checkpoint gates in Nioh that are only meant to be opened from one side (shown by a bar that must be lifted from the other side, which shows the player where they have to get to). Now that I understand what affordances are and can recall many of the times I've seen them in games I will better be able to create games that make sense and are fun to play. I'd like to also incorporate affordances into the game we are working on as a team this year, which should be pretty easy for me to do because I'm the 3D modeler so a lot of the visual environment will be my job to create. Unfortunately we'll be making a few levels individually, so I'm not quite sure how exactly things will pan out in terms of consistency, so we may have to communicate more before adding additional things to our game idea such as affordances. On the bright side though adding affordances should be easy for our type of game, as we can indicate areas for the players to explore and weaknesses of the monsters just through how they are visually designed.
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We've finally come back to our year-long project to make a game as a team, and honestly I can't wait to get started working on our game. So far I haven't been able to do much 3D modeling for our game, and I'm not sure how much I'll really be doing in terms of 3D modeling for our game because we plan for it to have 2D sprites with some 3D objects. I know I haven't been the greatest team member either, as I'm already a reserved person and on top of that I'm having trouble finding where I can be useful, but I hope as our plan finalizes I can really get to work on 3D models and backgrounds. Aside from my momentary lull in work, I'm sure making this game will be a fun experience that I'm looking forward to, but even so I hope our work will be equally distributed. Seeing as all of our characters are 2D a lot of work falls on our 2D artist, and we can't really do much to help or the artstyle between characters would be vastly different and ruin the continuity of the game. I feel like the amount of work we've set out to do is possible within the year, but I know it will require lots of work outside of class from all of us. Personally I wouldn't attempt making a game with lots of dialogue for my first official team game, but I'll still be willing to help seeing as this is quite an ambitious goal. Overall though we've got a pretty solid concept of a game, which will help tremendously knowing exactly what we want to do at the start, rather than trying to make a game with no guidance and conflict of ideas.
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Recently in class we've been discussing the role that user interface plays in games, and honestly it needs to get more recognition. In all of the games that I've played I've encountered many different kinds user interfaces, and even though I see them so much I rarely take the time to analyze how they've created my gameplay experience. For example, imagine a first-person shooter without an ammo indicator, it's instantly a completely different game, forcing the players to keep track of their ammo rather than just being a number in the display. User interface design choices such as this completely change the feel of a game, for that same example the game would instantly become a much more tactical and realistic experience, rather than a fun yet fantasized war simulation. Taking into account the information that could be provided to the player, alongside the information that the player's character could interact with, developers must make choices that have the power to make or break the user experience. Even some of the little details such as those of diegetic user interfaces in which the character sees what the player can see, create whole new levels of immersion. The inventory system from Fallout and the HUD from Halo being displayed on the Pip-Boy and in your helmet are probably the two most notable examples from games I've played that I've noticed and felt a little joy seeing the details developers put in games. Whenever I've thought about making a game I never thought so much detail could go into anything beyond the story or game world itself, though now with my new understanding of the effect that user interface can have on games I'll have to ensure any future games I make have a great one.
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This year I'm most excited about the fact that we will finally be making our own 3D games, prior to now I've only made a few 2D games (in software that did coding for me) and attempted creating one 3D game before I was even familiar with coding. Of course my first 3D game was never finished because I got frustrated by all of the errors in my code and could no longer bear watching tutorial after tutorial just to create my own game. However, now that I've become more familiar with coding as well as 3D modeling I have the resources to create my own 3D game. I'm rather certain that the creative aspect of our games will be driven by our own ideas so I'm excited to finally be able to apply all of my game development ideas that I've thought of either while playing games or in my free time. I know for sure that not all of my ideas will work out and some will definitely give me more trouble than others but I'm excited to at least try to incorporate all of the ideas I've come up with. Even if I can't use all of my ideas I'm still excited about the process of fully producing a 3D game anyways. Maybe for once this year I'll realize what it's actually like to be a game developer and why not all games are perfect due to limits placed on the developers. Above all though I hope that whether or not I consider the game I create to be a success that the process I go through to make it will help me to create more games in the future that I will run into less mistakes making and will certainly be better than this first game I will be making.
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It's hard to believe that it's already the third quarter of school, it feels like just yesterday was the first day but I suppose time flies sometimes. Now realizing that the year is already over halfway over, I figured it would be beneficial to see how far I've come and what I can do with what I've learned. Early this year we primarily focused on careers and the various aspects of games that come together to make them, though I still didn't expect us to get much experience actually making games for some reason. At that point, actually being able to design and create a game seemed like a far away goal I'd eventually achieve at some point in my life, but not this year. First quarter was also when this class was most different than the years prior. Instead of assigned blog posts as well as our own personal additions to our portfolios, we started to focus more on drawing assignments. If I have to be honest all of the drawing was somewhat grueling as it wasn't something I was necessarily used to, but I came to accept it as a way to improve my art on paper that I otherwise don't practice much with. I'm glad we changed up the process of turning in the drawing assignments though, as it made my life a lot less stressful. Often working on the drawing assignments was either a multi-day or several hours in one sitting kind of task, that even when I looked on the bright side, still burnt me out. Now with only having to turn in the final drawing I can focus more of my efforts on that drawing in particular, as the templates become repetitive rather quickly and whittle my brain away. I still find the provided resources extremely useful in understanding exactly what I should focus on, but the template work was always numbing. Aside from being relived of my stress regarding the drawing assignments, I'm glad that we are now able to move along at our own pace in the class. After second quarter I got a good understanding of the exact process used to create games and now with my knowledge of coding from this quarter I believe I can apply all of what I've learned to actually create a game. We don't always get to move at our own pace with learning, but I've always enjoyed it as I find it helps me to understand the content better when I can move quickly through things I have a deep understanding of, and take more time on things I find more difficult. Overall this year has been great so far and now looking back I'm starting to see all of the pieces coming together that will aid us in creating our games.
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Now that we have practiced with the fundamental mechanics that make game concepts feasible we are finally moving on to actual game development with code. I've always looked forward to coding, in fact the primary reason I'm in this pathway is because I wanted to learn how to code, and now we're finally doing it. We may just be following simple tutorials to teach us the basics of coding for now, but I'm fine with that, as long as I will someday be able to code on my own in order to achieve what I want to accomplish this course can take as much time as it needs. So far based on what I've been working with it looks like coding will be easy, it all follows a logical flow which all makes sense except for a few parts that I'm sure I'll understand the reason for later. Obviously, as I've only been coding for about a week now, I still don't really know what options I have if I were to code on my own, only what has been covered in the tutorials, but even with just that basic knowledge I could make the framework for a simple game. I hope to one day create my own game from scratch, as I often play games created by small development teams and have created a few of my own low quality games using software that works out the coding for me. Of course I never get a true sense of accomplishment from creating these games, as I don't even know how the code works that allows them to function, and knowing I didn't entirely create everything I'm seeing when I play the games I make causes them to feel like they're not mine. I hope to one day be able to understand not only the code that goes into the small games I've created but also how to create games so that I can have a project I can entirely call my own.
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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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