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The Fire Hydrant project was one of the first big focused 3d modeling assignments that I’ve been given this year, and I was able to finally dust off my wings to have a go again at 3d modeling. Although I was slow to get back into it, I found it an enjoyable experience to recreate an object and have a clear reference of what I want. I was able to create the fire hydrant similar to the reference image and felt satisfied at the end of it, reigniting my fun with 3d modeling. I was unable to make a good uv texture for the hydrant and just ended up using a metallic red on it, because although actually putting it together is easy for me, I always struggled with laying out the map and editing an image to fit into it, making it look seamless and good on the eyes. UV modeling is one of my weakest points when it comes to 3d art. I will however, try harder to attain some form of fluency in creating good uv maps later in the year for our game, as it’s something I truly want to get good at.
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Unity Mission 2 was by far the most interesting of the topics I’ve learned within this class. Coding, albeit one of the most annoying, is my favorite topic in game design since it has such a range of possibilities you could do with it. With seemingly very basic code, you could create your own player controller, any way you want, without any limitations, you could create your very own game just by coding at home. I found the coding for the final assignment in Mission 2 extremely fun, I wanted to go all out until I realized that the 3 lines of code I added to a random script promptly had broken about 20 different regions of the game, whether it was the actual models or another script, it always found ways to break itself. Although I found it fun, it certainly is difficult remembering every function and every term, and I know I’ll have to continuously study that over the summer if I want any literacy with this new language. Even without school in the next coming weeks, I’ll probably be bettering myself with Unity to see if coding could be a possible next hobby for me, a fun and certainly productive one.
While learning the ropes for Unity, we had to become familiar with coding in C#. Taking a linkedin course for coding was very helpful in learning the basics of how it works, however it was during the lessons I realized how tedious coding could be at times; with it relying heavily on exactly how you type things out, a stray capital letter or colon instead of a semicolon could ruin the entire code. Not to mention, the lessons were for a different version of Unity in which not all was entirely transferable from the lesson, which made it increasingly difficult to code the things I needed. Fortunately we were later given a different Unity course that helped better understand the concepts of how coding works instead of what to copy and paste. The new coding course was extremely advantageous, with clear and easy instructions that let me know what each individual line or phrase did; a crucial step to letting me become more proficient in the area of coding. Another difference between lessons is the former often made me feel less inclined to code, since I was still left confused throughout the lessons, but the newer official lessons make coding seem fun - almost like a puzzle game - that I could make great things with. So far, due to delays and being ill the past few weeks I haven’t been able to progress very far into the lesson, but I’ve gotten to the point where I can move the car given in the exercise forward. One thing I greatly appreciate about the new lesson as well, is that the teacher adds notes within the code that lets us know what it does, also giving us alternative coding lines for greater clarification. Once I am able to progress further into the lesson I feel like I could truly come to enjoy coding as well as understanding it clearly, and I have high hopes I could do a good job with it.
For the first time I’ve created a real video game on my own, however it wasn’t as easy and simple as I had thought it would be.
Given a simple idea of making an exploration game, I had a lot of ambition when creating an idea, but once I started creating the map I realized there were some core issues. I didn’t know how to code enemies or weapons, so automatically was unable to do that. I also couldn’t create the type of movement I wanted, but the high speed and maneuverability was sufficient. These realizations weren’t all that bad though, I came up with an alternative idea of parkour instead of enemies being the main challenge of the game. It also made me be more aware of what I’m capable of at the moment, and what to improve on in the future, which brings me to what I improved on while working on the game. Textures and paths were complicated at first, it didn’t want to comply initially with what I wanted it to do. If I put a rock texture on a small path it would stretch it beyond recognition, that’s where I learned how to work the tiling feature which was a lifesaver when it came to texturing the various objects in the game. Pathing, instead of being a bunch of copy pasted planes were now cubes that could stretch to conform to whatever path I wanted (and the hitboxes didn’t glitch out either.) I also worked with the Terrain too, which was a very interesting and reliable one to use as it allowed me to create mountains or small hills that could make the environment less monotonous or boring. Along with creating objects in Unity with tools like ProBuilder, for the end goal I modeled a small collection of squares which I rotated around to make it look interesting, which I then imported into Unity. It was as easy as I expected, all I had to do was drag it in and it was there, and even had its own hierarchy for the individual shapes. Although not a copious amount of practical skills were learned creating this game that I hadn’t already known, it was my first taste of creating an actual game and provided me with a lot of wisdom to help me on my future projects. After being given a prompt of making an idea for a game taking place in a fantasy world, I was tasked with creating a paper to sketch my notes down. Although I made these notes not too long ago since I’ve started writing this, I’ve thought through many of the ideas and crossed them off. I’ll start with the worst (or, least best) ideas and progressively go up in what I prefer, rank 10-1. Ranking 10th would be making the game take place in medieval times. I could never come up with concepts that don’t have a pinch of sci-fi or at least modernity. The curse of playing/watching too much sci-fi material (looking at you, Halo). 9th rank carries over from the 10th, which is having a limited variety of weapons like bows and swords. Although each are cool, if I was limited to using a weapon with the stat-wise “muzzle velocity” of a snail or a weapon I’d only be able to rush people with, I’d instantly uninstall the game. 7th Idea would be having bosses/dungeons. Although they’re cool the first time you play through a game, say like Warframe, eventually you’ll have to grind the same character with the same fight with the same lines and overall makes what should’ve been a cool experience a boring, repetitive sequence of events. Bosses should only exist to fight once and either recur later on with a different quirk, or die once and for all and drop their special loot on the spot. 6th idea is horde enemies, not necessarily because it’s unpreferred, but because it’s too broad. Initially I thought Warframe-type enemies would be fun to fight, like 20 weak, low damage bad guys in a room that can shred you if you stand still but’ll fall over if you dare walk near them. However the only way to make that fun personally would be to make a copy of Warframe, which isn’t the plan. Horde enemies were supposed to be a bit more like Halo, where you fight big groups of bad guys but each individual one is almost on par with you (if you’re bad at the game), and you have to focus on target acquisition and prioritization. It’s more fun to fight enemies that could beat you down in a single punch than see the same copy and paste of a generic soldier 300 times that you could wipe down with the press of B. 5th idea is having it be open-world. Open world games used to be such a fascination to me, I marveled at Fallout 4’s map and my ability to wander the whole thing on foot, or, at the Plains of Eidolon with the towering Teralysts that could be heard across the 5-kilometer sized map. These were fascinating until open worlds simply got too popular and well, boring. Most large AAA open world titles now follow the same formula of “base liberation, base liberation, base liberation”, and designing a game that’s replayable and doesn’t fall into that hole is simply too complicated (especially for a student). 4th top idea would be having randomly generated exploration worlds like No Man’s Sky or Minecraft. Although it breeds creativity with (usually coexisting) base building and the possibility of some really funky formations, with the design style we’re tasked, and I personally want, it’d be nearly impossible to create one that works without turning the average computer into a thermo-nuclear bomb (and y’know, amount of coding skill it would take)
Now with my top 3 ideas, which are up here not only because I personally adore games with these styles but also because it’s within the realm of reality that I could create, with help of course, a game like this. Number 3 would be having the game take place in post-apocalyptic space, whether in some distant galaxy or close to home (like Mars or the Solar System), it could allow a lot of creative freedom with how to work on maps or add lore to the game. Post apocalyptic games are always interesting to me, regardless of the lack of lore some may have (like DayZ), and for it to take place in space could add an extra layer of mystery. Number 2 would be the integration of PvP. Although PvE is fun, it can get stale and predictable, also involves creating AI that doesn't think the wall on the opposite side of the room is you. PvP is almost always fun, with the endless interactions you can have between not only with your team but with the enemy, fun experiences can be created. Along with PvP would be customization of your character, so there isn’t really a “main character” besides you, and who you want to be. Lastly, number 1 would be what type of game. Movement shooters are one of my favorite genres of games. Although I’ve had limited experience with them, I notice the influence of them creeping into many popular arena shooters and PvP games, for example the grapple hook from TitanFall (or before that) now in Halo, Battlefield, and other movement shooters like DOOM or ULTRAKILL. Most movement shooters are PvE. In DOOM, it’s you vs demons, in ULTRAKILL, its you also vs demons, but I’ve always wanted to fight a real challenge that’s never predictable. I feel like an extremely fast paced pvp shooter with the magic of fantasy added could work perfectly together to make a unique game that stands out from the rest. In order to know what I’m doing when I use Unity, I had to take an online course on LinkedIn to become familiar with the tools and features I had at my disposal. This course helped carry me through the process in which game creators are able to craft their games in the most simple way, so as to not overwhelm me with too much information. Although basic, it provided me with a lot of interesting techniques I could use to my advantage. One feature I grew very fond of was Probuilder, which allowed me to create my own unique geometry, whether to create part of the map, or to make small props around the area. Probuilder was also very similar to 3ds Max’s modeling, which added another layer of familiarity, and, in some places, I actually prefer probuilder’s modeling to 3ds Max’s.
On the Topic of 3ds Max, the interface was extremely familiar and easy to adjust to. For a time I debated if they were created by the same people. The ability to alter the interface was also very appreciated, as I can put floating windows into smaller, organized tabs (like what I do with probuilder) in any sector of the screen, and split the displays of the actual game itself. It’s evident a lot of time was taken to improve the quality of life of the creator when developing this UI. Of course, this new software couldn’t come without problems. Most of the issues I struggled with weren’t mentioned in the course, however they also weren’t significant enough to halt my progress for long. Most issues I had were graphical, and they were all involving the textures which either wouldn’t work or wouldn’t appear at all. I learned that for the Tree9 Pack I downloaded, I had to manually apply the textures to each individual tree, which was a small inconvenience until I realized I could just copy and paste each tree. Another texture issue was it not looping or scaling correctly, evident in the planes I used as pathways in the first part of the game. Poking around in the settings, I changed the tiling value to .2 for it to loop seamlessly on all the planes, and, when the texture I had didn’t seem to work at all, I simply looked for one that did. A stone texture for one of the caves didn’t work, and thanks to the Tree9 pack it came with various natural textures, stone being one of them, that I applied to every in-cave path and worked seamlessly. The biggest issue was involving adding guns to the player character to fight off AI in the cave that would hurt you. I had no knowledge of how to code the guns and enemy behavior, so I simply left that alone. A simple solution could’ve been building the game within the microgame, however I had worked too long on my original project before finding that out, so I stuck on improving my current work. Sub Terra is a tabletop horror-adventure game where your objective is to escape the cave before your flashlights run out or you succumb to the various hazards littered around the system. The experience was a confusing albeit an enjoyable one as well. Most of the confusion arises from the fact that My group and I didn't play many tabletop games and we had to learn the mechanics on the spot during the gameplay. Once we familiarized ourselves with the mechanics we had a little fun losing to terribly timed hazard cards and having our spawn be immediately surrounded by horrors. The game was easy to understand for a mostly video game playing audience which was great, however I still was confused with whether we were playing it correctly since we lost so often.
The game's core mechanics were easy to identify in this not-so-complicated game. You work alone or with 3 others against the game to escape the cave. The space took place on the board, where all the cave tiles and resources were present. Those resources being items like action points or health tiles to allow our characters to proceed to move about the board and do the objective, essentially allowing us to carry out the procedures while following the rules of the game. You moved in turns as tabletop game usually worked, meaning the game operated in discrete time and it didn't matter how long you took to play in the real world. Meaning you could play for 24 hours straight and still win, or lose your flashlight battery in the matter of a few minutes. Preserving the battery depended not only on skill, but also on the chances and what randomly selected hazards were chosen. It takes mental skill to know where to go and when to do so, when to risk health and action points and when to stay back. However even the best of players could be stumped by the hazard cards being activated at the worst times or being imminently entombed with 4 horrors around the cave entrance. Flow is a state of mind in which a person is completely immersed in whatever they’re doing. For this assignment it applies to players and their enjoyment of the video game they’re playing. It’s important on the part of game developers to catch their fanbase in a state of flow so they can retain players that will either buy more into their games or attract more attention to it. While on the other hand, for players it’s more about having fun and then being pulled into a state of flow by the game, meaning they’re really enjoying it. Reaching a state of flow is a great indication that you’re enjoying the game, if I were to be constantly checking my phone or being drawn to other, more interesting things midway through a game it’s a clear sign I’m not having fun.
Ultrakill is a game that’s really caught my attention recently. The indie fast paced platformer is a perfect mix of new and classic games, sporting the style of early 90s games but with the ultrafast advanced mobility of Titanfall and Doom. Personally, when it comes to video games I am a very stubborn individual, if someone/something beats me in a game I’ll throw myself at them until I beat them or get bored of them. This game scratches that itch perfectly, throwing increasingly difficult boss fights every layer that make me feel I’m just there. Cerberus, one of the first truly challenging bosses had me frustrated at first, I was almost thinking I had wasted money on buying the game. It was until after countless tries as an inexperienced player the joy of seeing the stone statues crumble reminded me as to why I find these challenging games fun; The sensation of pride after winning a challenge not everyone is willing to start. Victory is not the only fun this game provides, the sheer satisfaction of watching the point menu tick as you destroy hordes of demons is just as gratifying. Completionism is a given when it comes to indie games and Ultrakill is no exception (though I doubt I’d ever 100% this game). Arsi “Hakita” Patala, the sole developer of Ultrakill, succeeded in making players like me achieve a state of flow. I often find myself playing the same level “just one more time”, multiple times, in trying to P-Rank (or Perfect) the level. Human-Game interactions are vital to achieving flow. Once you get used to the rhythm of the game and know the many meta moves, your hand will dance across the keyboard while playing the game, following the rhythm without needing to stop and disrupt the flow. The simplistic UI also gives players a greater view of the area, yet also provides important information for completionists, who will also be pulled into a state of flow trying to get full S ranks on the level stats. The flow chart for Ultrakill provides some of the most notable moments in-game. Half of them are boss fights which taught me different skills in how to play. Swordsmachine, a self-upgrading robot with, as the name implies, a sword, taught me that I have to keep my distance and be constantly aware of incoming damage. V2 taught me to play aggressively and not hold back when it comes to certain engagement. V2 was an especially difficult boss for me, taking 2 days for me to beat while not even getting a good score when I finished, I was still extremely satisfied with beating him. Unlocking the full arsenal allowed me to compete in the Cyber Grind, an endless wave mode that caught me glued to trying to beat my high score. Not to mention the absolutely glorious soundtrack kept me hyped up for the next round. Finally Gabriel and V2’s rematch were some of the most difficult fights in the game, however frustrating they were, I was still glued to the screen positive I could beat them. Ultrakill is a great game that mastered the art of flow. |
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My name is Mario, and am currently studying Digital Design and Game Art in DSA. This is my class blog Archives
January 2023
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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.
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