This blog and portfolio was first assigned in Q1 of freshmen year of the GAD course, where we put images of primitive adobe pizza and 3D pencil models the crazy lady "taught" us how to make. My first blog post was made with the title box and was about how I threw up on a camping trip, and I never thought it would be graded throughout high school in our course, let alone actually have it actually be a part of myself open on the internet for people to see, or at least I think they see. Freshmen Year It's really weird to remember that first cover image I had for the site. Unfortunately I didn't keep the image of my "self portrait" and it's now lost to time, probably for the better. This was around when we were learning about Adobe and 3DS Max, which are legit really useful since pretty much any editing software is similar to that line. This was also the time I made pixel art, really really subpar pixel art, masked by the fact it was super deformed. Guess it followed me to now, people still call it chibi. Wow, this is messier than I remember. Probably because I got my layers mixed up a lot, the colors were over three random layers. Sophomore Year This is where things really took off, unfortunately this was all 3D work, which was pretty boring since it's all technical and was a slog with how many tutorials we had. But, this was the opportunity to really express myself with what I consider to be an awakening of my capabilities. Because of a certain little android. Also I did actual drawing, with the occasional batch of pixel art which I strayed a bit away from. This really was the time when I took pride in selected works, since you get to put in 3D models from class as freebies for the selected works requirement. Junior Year Now this is what I remember fondly, not only was it when we were let of school for quarantine, but it was also the time I took more time to really flesh out my creations, I even put SHO and the Machine Girl concept in a GDD, well sorta since I didn't have enough time (or effort) to finish and still got an 80% for it. I legit found my own style this year oddly enough, things really do work out like that huh? This image actually came from Sophomore year, but I still think it deserves to be here because I drew it to be a game cover. Senior Year This year was... interesting to say the least. In the very last quarter up to testing, I did not feel like working in school anymore until university. But that's a part of growing up, knowing when to stop caring too much. This year is personally just one to reflect on everything up to this point, how I really did grow as an artist and even learned a lot about digital everything. Personally it's not that good, the lines are scraggly and the proportions are weird once you look closely. But it has improved since I could do so much more in senior year. Overall, I am very thankful I took a CTE course. This doesn't even bring up the unexpected parts of the GAD course, like how we had senior friends due to the classes, the unexpected software not working so we got off free, and of course the fact we could be exempt since it's still in pilot status a lot. There was also lots of funny stuff that went down, from the photoshop edits, to the dumb jokes, and even how we screwed with the computers (the overstuffed desktop comes to mind). I am very thankful to be a part of the school that was as strange as could be. Here is To Doing More Stuff and Things!
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Now that we have finally finished our assignments on affordance and signifiers, we can finally do a bit more work on our game. It's pretty much all going to be game work from this point on until the end of the year, so we're kicking it into high gear when it comes to organizing everything. But in order to start the process we need a formal schedule to work on, which is what we have organized in Trello, now everyone has their own tasks to do with each of us checking on what we got so far. I give them instructions and fill in the blanks for whatever roles we don't have done, for instance, I have to complete the first level so we can start working in it. Everyone else isn't twiddling their thumbs, since we have a whole laundry list of game chores to do. But we do have deadlines, but as per request by Mr. B I put them towards the end of the week, and as a little bonus it's technically due when we get back. So we have everything we need and hopefully I can post about our progress next quarter, see you then. Our Schedule For Making The First Level
You know those games that take a lot of time to really get anything out of? The ones where you're building up 2/3 of the time you play? That's Elona, a Japanese developed open source open ended roguelike RPG where literally anything can happen, factoring in the stats of course, that's been in development from 2006 to 2010, but has multiple fan made expansions that are still developed today. Elona is, like any good open source JRPG, based on character sheets and die rolls. Attributes are your characters characteristics that allow you to do basic actions, skills govern the possibility of actions working, and the things you get from both are essentially how you progress. Skills and attributes grow from potential, a percentage that is used up to affect how much stat gain get from certain actions (i.e. casting spells grows your casting skills), so you also have to go to trainers to train your stat skill from platinum coins, which you get from quests which coordinate to certain stats. Simple right? The main goal of the game is to save the world from an ancient evil usurping the world blah blah blah preventing a mad experiment from ruling the world with zombie soldiers blah blah blah preventing ANOTHER ancient evil usurping the world, it kinda sucks that the story is only in Japanese and the English version doesn't translate all of the lines. These later game content are gradually unlocked through the story dungeons, really just a big dungeon with a boss on some floors, and have higher level scaling. Still with me? I'm about to get to the interesting stuff. But other than the story, the game really depends on what you want to do, you can become a golem and focus solely on big melee hits (or just use potential growth to grow your other stats and become OP), become a cargo trader with a large estate with all gold everything, become a thief who can steal the weapons and leave everyone defenseless, raise the charisma stat and command an army of catgirls, it's really up to you. Scaling in games is far from new, especially RPGs, but Elona has ALL of its skills useful with obscurity making them fun to use, particularly ones that specialize in character growth rather than direct work like combat or magic. A good example is gardening, the ability to grow plants sounds quite plain, until you realize that you can use the cooking skill to make skill food out of your +9 crops (or sell it for lots of money), grow artifact seeds for some easy enchanted weapons, or some magic seeds for spell books and rods essential for a wizard, to become a really well stocked character. That's only one skill, jeweler can make precious gemstones out of ore to sell for a lot of money, carpentry can make a lot of cargo to sell for money, alchemy can make potions in a jiffy compared to the limited stock of low invest merchants, it really is up to what you want to focus on. But a stat that allows rapid scaling for your skills and attributes is very valuable. The fun also comes from dungeoneering (dungeons are called Nefia in-game) which is the more exciting part of the game, you'll encounter weapons of legendary value, weird and funny looking creatures that will kill you in one hit, and of course the cooking supplies and spell books to keep your skills going! Dungeons and enemies are level locked, the best part is the monster balls (poke-balls) that recruit any hostile monster to your team. But that's the most fun, seeing the different bosses and monsters and defeating them, along with the modifiable sprite sheets, so you can put any anime character or moe-ize any monster you want (*ゝω・). Overall if the point wasn't made clear, you really get what you want from the game by just exploring at first, then maybe making a new character that will focus one one thing, it really depends on you. That's all I can say, just don't pick a dumb class like fairy (gear limitations and easy to die early game) and go for any stat boosters. So go young one, explore... But seriously what do I do?
Obligatory Score: *single roll of (8d10+11) that modifies hit bonus by 8 and damage bonus by 5 with two hand modifier and character scaling*/10 Disclaimer: I'm using ElonaPlus 2.01 with some visual modifications, Elona base or OOMSEST are considerable too
So for the first unit in Advanced Game Art and Design, we are tasked with making an asset in 3DS Max for one unit, on our personal computers. This is quite the predicament since I have some personal issues with my computer, but it does seem quite detrimental for game development.
The reasoning is that the game we will probably make is most likely going to be made 3D, not 2D as I planned. Since we're starting out and we only have less than a school year, not enough to make a couple detailed sprites and interfaces. 3D allows us to make a more finished looking game, since we can use unity assets and just placing them for the time being. So unfortunately it is a necessary evil to go on. But, if it does turn out to become just studying for the unit 1 test, then the should be enough, as knowing the information to assist my team in their endeavors (since they 3DS Max working properly) then we'll still be golden. Being quarantined at home is a very different experience, with so much time to do anything else at home, or time to slack off on work, then a lot can be gained from what has happened. Ever since we have been quarantined, it has given me a lot of time to do just about anything, it kinda sucks at first but it quickly becomes a worthwhile experience in such a trying time. Right now, it's mostly video games, my cousin coming over more (he's even considering moving in), cooking since my parents are out a lot (they're nurses), along with learning another language, it's a lot. I'm waiting for the school year to be over, since I can do so much more now that summer's come, it's really going going to show what you want other than school, hanging out and what you'd do in whatever future home you live in. So, since this is an assigned sketch that requires a blog post, i made an image of a certain someone living at home. It's quiet, peaceful, and shows something that I barely realize while still going to school every week, the room. Chores have also become much more "enjoyable" with so much time it really helps to slow down and just do these correctly. A small room in house does make me feel so natural. I would've done just the room itself and put more into it, but making it a quiet Japanese neighborhood adds to the nice atmosphere. Very, very quiet next couple of months... A small room for a small person doing laundry
So spending time indoors due to our current situation gives you a lot of time to not do graded schoolwork. But, also a lot of time to not only play different games I never bothered to play and take a crack at, specifically ones my friends always told me to play but never got around to. This is (an excuse for) valuable information to someone that takes game design and understands flow and mechanics in video games.
A good example would be GTA: San Andreas, loaned to me by my older cousin on PS2. A perfect example of an homage to 90s gangsta era films (which is the theme for this game in the series), and is what many would say is the best Grand Theft Auto game in the series. The strongest part of the game is it's simple objective, which has always been the same from the first game (as it says in the original GDD for the game), to steal cars. But with so much other objectives to do like different missions to do from different people, different abilities to train and improve your character, and the resources like guns and money being limited enough to matter but not hinder progress. It's is a stellar example on how to make an open-world sandbox game with character. But there's also other types of games, from tabletop games to ACTUAL sports, there are so many other examples to take from. Sports especially, ever since my dad made me play him in basketball, it is easier to really see the intricacies in rules and expectations, like how you must dribble in order to move, keeping the flow of the game since you need your arms at all times, and so people could steal the ball from you at anytime. having many roots that also connect to game design. Which comes back to the title, when you have an activity that is just so you can challenge something, 9/10 times you can apply game design principles to whatever you are doing. For the past couple weeks, we have been learning how to use the Unity Engine, not over winter break fortunately. Unity is a game-making engine, which lends itself to being dependent on what you are making. In class, we're using the tutorial on Unity Learn, which is to say, kinda slooooooooooooow.
Mini-review for the videos, they are meant for people that's first time coding is with this program. With previous experience in script AND tutorial watching, the videos feel so drawn-out and obvious. Many steps can be condensed into one video, without losing cohesion, and I just do not enjoy them. The only important part is the information we need, and slow videos are good for understanding. The only part that felt like coding was the challenge, which was the only part we were really graded on, so that's fair. The software itself is very similar to 3DS Max, with it's 3D controls and axis based transformations, the only difference is the camera and modifiers, which are still similar. Now you can attach a camera to an object, instead of hook up points like 3DS Max animation, and assign keys for movement. The main difference between making a scene and a game is the coding, scripts are an integral part of making anything do something, more so than modelling. Almost everything is made because of it, making it the main focus of what we do in Unity. The software we use for coding is the default, Visual Studio. It gets the job done, it has each line and has text, it's not detrimental for coding to have the basics, especially with the average project being three scripts for one or two commands. So, starting out in already familiar territory helps in using Unity, while the tutorials are useful for people that either kinda know what coding should be or don't know any aspect of it at all. Altogether it is pretty fun so far. 7For the past couple weeks, we have been finalizing our game for play. The long awaited step to making a game, or making an example of our gaming making potential. Which also means it's the one step that is not fully decided by us, but by people around us. This means that this is the first time we find out if our rules make sense with no explanation. This is the most difficult part to fully explain to people, as we made different mechanics that suited more to a video game, not a board game. This made it hard to really execute any game play, which I don't want to admit in the post-mortem, but we never had enough time or resources to remake certain parts, or make more than we realized. This is were we could've added a grid to the board and decide with how many moves we can make through what setting you had for the character. There could've been more pieces, especially for the boss and companion characters, but due to experimentation and unknowns as to whether we would use these pieces or not prevented us from making more, also I don't want Mr. B filling his schedule for pieces. We never had a way to show how much health was taken, given, or overall shown, it was just a number you felt. So may factors were made without explanation to ourselves for the most part. Not a good base for our game. Which would've meant, back to the drawing board, literally. If we were making a real game then this would've been the first draft, we work rework the whole combat system altogether, along with more use of the die in movement and a grid. The style we used was not what we planned for at all, since most of it was place holders, along with making multiple boards for different levels, along with different pieces, characters/cards, and different items. Not to mention the feedback we got for what we thought were good ideas, like the pieces (apparently one of them broke), the visuals which some saw and some didn't, and *sniff* the tiny weapons being unnecessary. But, that's the way of game design, people not liking it is good, since we know what is better, way better than having a good idea that means mediocre enjoyment. Our overall survey results, many were negative
After making a Game Design Document, you can now start building a piece of your game to show how the rest of the game will resemble. This is an extension of what a prototype is, since we are actually making one these last weeks until winter break.
This piece is a prototype, the first true incarnation of your game. It is a essentially board, with pieces to represent items and figures. This is very similar to an actual board game, although it may have rules that aren't bound to a board, like free movement, it's purpose is to represent a concept before any actual "work" is put into what will be the final game. This prototype will be very, very simple, since if you've already had a very clear idea planned out in detail that you know will work, then why make the prototype? But, such a thing doesn't exist, this is the where you can go back to really iron out issues you may or may not have know you have. Simplicity is key to fixing your game's foundation, with a strong foundation you can build anything out of it. The board and pieces aren't too fancy either, basic shapes that represent environments, along with figures (which we 3D model ourselves) that should be simple and to the point, to keep a very clear idea and to prevent it from taking literal days to print out. These pieces are very fun to play with, which is the point (cause it's a game). Next, the concept should be just as simple, not even the length of a full level (or whatever segments gameplay is split into). This helps to give an example of what your figures would do on the board, reinforcing the strong foundation. In the end, it's a landmark in development to have a concept that could work in this stage of pre-development, it's practically development at this point. This is what separates your game from a passing concept to a real project, very fine achievement. After you make a storyboard, you have a basic idea of the game. But, you can't start developing the game just yet, you have to resolve some discrepancies and inconsistencies with your ideal game. This is where the Game Design Document, or GDD, comes into play. The GDD tells anybody, developers or anybody not associated with the game, what the (initial) idea is for the game, in full detail. The full detail is very important, everything from what type of mechanics and features are in the game, to demographics and specific releases, it is the "hard and fast rules" when it comes to designing games. There are two types of GDDs, full 500 page bricks of paper that go into very fine detail of what the game will become, or one page visual pieces that are easier to follow. These are important since you need a game to be focused, to avoid any unnecessary or really out of place features. It's just as Mr. Bourgeois says, "if it isn't in the GDD, it probably won't make it into the game." After you make the Game Design Document, you need a prototype, a pen and paper example of how your game is truly going to play out. It's sorta like a storyboard, but you can physically go out and "play" it. The level is drawn on paper, and important mechanics are represented by some type of piece, it could be anything small enough to associate with in game items or characters. This is really important, as it can make sure you resolve any problems you could have with player interactions, since you have a guinea pig to test whether players will act well with the idea. These are the last steps until the game goes into development, after the Post Mortem, a reflection on what worked or what didn't work in your process. The Game Design Document Made From The previous Steps
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JamesHe aspires to be a game designer, let's just hope he gets there. He also happens to goes to DSA. Categories
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