As this year is coming to an end I thought I would do a reflection of Advanced Game Art and Design as a whole. This year has been completely remote so that is taken into account but I think I have learned a lot anyway. Firstly I think that while all of my classes were online this year, this class was the easiest to adapt to as we are always using technology even when we are in school. Because of this, most of my classmates and I already had the programs installed and we were able to use all of the same things that we usually do. I enjoyed this year and I think that it was very helpful that before we started making our game we went back to 3DS Max and Unity to refresh ourselves with the programs. This allowed us to both learn more about them and also become better at the skills we had previously learned. This also benefited our final project as we were able to make models and create the game a lot faster than we would have otherwise. Another benefit from this year was that we focused a lot on the pre-production for our games and this allowed us to go through the production stage fairly quickly as we knew exactly what we were looking for. Being able to create a game design document for our game as well as mapping out what choices the player would have allowed us to not have to think about these things and focus solely on the actual creation aspects. If there are any aspiring game designers out there, I recommend doing as much pre-production as possible as it will help a lot later. Moving past this, when it came to making our game I thought that as a whole our team did well. We communicated well and often and I think that our game as a whole turned out good. I think it could have definitely been better but for us being seniors about to graduate, I think we did a great job. Overall I think that this year went as well as it could have given the circumstances and I am very happy with how it all turned out. As this is my final year of this class this will be my last blog post and I have to say that I will not miss having to write these all the time.
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As I am still stuck at home and playing a lot of videogames, I have been watching and thinking about the state of esports. Throughout the pandemic, the esports and competitive gaming scene has grown immensely as fewer other sports are going on. This has brought increased traction to websites like Twitch and competitive esports have even been shown on platforms like ESPN. With this new growth, I began to think about what will happen in the future. If anyone has seen the movie Ready Player One, I feel like we could be going in that direction. With E-sports, everything can become online and there is no need to have a maximum capacity for watching events in person. Not only is esports more accessible, but because there are new games always coming out and new strategies that form so often, the game becomes more dynamic, just like other sporting events. While there is so much good happening in the industry, I think it will hit a cap, just like in other sports. Only a certain amount of people are willing to watch, and while that is very high, many groups do not find it very interesting. This is where games like Rocket League come into play. Games like Rocket League are based on other sports and are therefore easier to follow and enjoy for the casual sports fan. Instead of learning what every champion in League of Legends does, all they need to know is the basic elements of soccer and the philosophies of the game. Games like this help bridge the gap between esports and other industries that is necessary for esports to become as big as the NBA or NFL. While this can and probably will happen, it may take longer than expected as the recent increase has been primarily caused by the pandemic and isolation. Overall, I think that esports will continue to grow and as long as there is an audience, they will be able to play due to how easy it is to play and watch.
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As you may have heard, for the past semester we have been doing online learning from our homes. While this has been a struggle for most (including me) during the school day, I have found that it has allowed me to remember and play older games from my childhood. Playing games like Wii Sports and Super Mario Brothers on the Wii have brought back memories that I would not have remembered if not stuck in my house all day. As I have been playing these games I remember why they are so nostalgic and why I feel they can be played many times. Playing these games on the Wii with sub-par controls has helped me realize the main difference between newer games. Right now, it seems like every game is trying to have the best graphics or new controls instead of focusing more on people replaying and experiencing the game again. Going back to Super Mario Brothers and having the same feelings that I did years ago is why it is such a good game. Being able to enjoy playing the same levels means that the game was created properly. Looking at games nowadays, if there is a story, I very rarely go back and play it again to remember. Games like Destiny 2 have lost this factor and after you are done playing new content, it starts to feel dull and a boring grind to stay at the highest level. I do however feel like some games have mastered this in the newer era. Games like Red Dead Redemption II and Zelda: Breath of the Wild which are open-world have a great ability to keep the user engaged and immersed for long periods of time. This along with the fact that the world is unique and introduces new concepts allows for players to play over and over again and still have fun. I feel like these games, like Super Mario brothers, will too bring back the same nostalgia because of their replayability. Overall, playing older games has made me realize what makes a game great, and what gets me coming back time and time again to play.
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Over the winter holiday and the weeks before our class once again started to work in Unity and create our own games. Our project was to create a 3rd person parkour game that allowed the player to jump over and on different obstacles. This project was something that I had never coded before. Learning once again how to set up a player controller script was very helpful as it reminded me of some of the other processes and helped me get back to coding games. The one thing I really struggled with however was working with animations. Because this was a parkour game, the player had to have a jump and walk animation at the very least and this meant that I needed to learn how everything worked in Unity. This was a struggle that took multiple hours to figure out. From making sure all the code was right in my player controller script to setting up an animation controller, I finally remembered what a struggle Unity can be. After long hours, when I finally figured it out, I got a great sense of enjoyment that I remember from creating games last year. For creating my first game in half a year, I would say it turned out pretty good and it helped get me back into the groove of coding. The gameplay is featured on my selected works if you would like to check it out. Along with this class, I am also taking AP Computer Science Principles and I am learning Python which does help me when coding in C#. I have found that they are very similar even though they use different keywords and I think this will help for design later in the year. In Python, we have been learning much more about loops and functions and that will hopefully correlate to our future projects. I hope to keep improving and is I think that because of this refresher, I will be able to contribute much more to the game design process for our full game later in the year.
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For almost a week and a half now we have been out of school and are having assignments online. This has been a very interesting transition as I have never done anything like this before. While it has been interesting, I find online school to be a lot easier and a lot less stimulating for most of my classes. This class however is about the same as it was when we were in school. While there are definitely downsides like we are unable to work in-person with our classmates, most of our work is already online and fairly easy to do at home. This means that this class doesn't really change and it has kept me very involved and also because most of the class is online already, it allows me to get information quicker than my other classes and we can use better technology. This brings a huge benefit to the class as it allows us to stay on schedule and we don't fall behind like in other classes. While this class has been very easy to keep track of, Durham Public Schools has released very little information to students about the situation and that is one of the key reasons I get confused during online school. While working in Unity is no different, deadlines become very hard to keep track of because of all the missed school due to our spring break being moved. While all these things are true, as more and more information is released, online school becomes less stressful to worry about. Finally, while I believe online school to be easier, I do want to go back to school because it is a very different environment when you cannot see the people you spend so much time with throughout the year.
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AuthorHi, my name is Nick Bayer and I will be posting blogs about every 1-2 weeks in the 2020-21 school year. I am doing this for my Advanced Game Design class at Durham School of the Arts(DSA). The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools. Categories
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