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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Everyone says third quarter is usually when students achieve their lowest grades, and frankly I can already see it coming from miles away. Last quarter I completely skipped the creation of our third-person parkour level, as I would still end the quarter with an A even with a zero on the assignment (which is what happened) but now it is finally coming around to bite me. I should have considered the outcome of such an action, knowing fully well that this is a class that both loves to add on to old assignments as well use them for display on our portfolios, but I had a lot of other work to do at the time last quarter so I was only completing the bare minimum to maintain my A's. Luckily for me, earlier this quarter the option of reusing our parkour level for future assignments was tossed around and ultimately it was decided that we'd have quizzes and matching activities in place of using the parkour level, because apparently I may not have been the only student who had not turned it in yet. Unfortunately it seems this decision was completely forgotten because we now have assignments to complete using our parkour level anyways, and even worse I still don't plan to even get started on making my parkour level in the first place. Had I known we would have been actually using our parkour levels I would have gotten started on it after that fated class period, but now it is too late and too much work. It's not that I don't enjoy working with Unity, I just probably shouldn't have created such a workload from my other classes for myself that would cause me to enter scenarios such as this one. I don't expect any compensation for my mistakes because they were ultimately my fault for being lazy and thinking I could get away with one zero, but now I just have to accept that my grade will tank because of it even though it's an assignment from a completely different quarter. To end things on a positive note I'm sure there will be assignments in the future, especially fourth quarter, that I'll actually be able to complete in order to display my understanding of the content we will have learned.
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This year we've mainly focused on creating games as well as improving our art skills on paper to aid in the production process. Overall I can say that my artistic skill on paper has increased tremendously, and though not all of my drawings turn out great they are at least distinguishable and detailed at this point. As for the work we've done with coding I'm pretty sure I now have a pretty solid grasp of basic coding, at least enough knowledge to be able to build my own simple game. I may not have mastered it yet but I'm sure with time it will come, as long as I continue to practice my coding skills. As for the cancellation of school, I'm not too sure what we're supposed to be doing right now in any of my classes but at least for this class I can work from home with Unity. Luckily my experience with the tutorials has gone rather smoothly so far and I hope it continues to stay that way especially when working from home where there are no classmates or teacher to help me if I run into issues. I'm also trying to up to date with all of the deadlines for these assignments, I know I'm ahead of some of my classmates but even still I'm somewhat behind compared to the recommended due dates. I'm sure in the end all will be fine so long as I work and spend my freetime wisely in these coming weeks. I may even spend some of my freetime drawing on paper, though I won't start any of that until I'm sure I know what is going on with all of my classes.
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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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