This week was a shorter week, since we don't have school on friday. That being said, I still got a bit done in terms of what I was supposed to be doing. I also feel like it was easier to not render since the material is so glossy. This week I was supposed to make crystal structures that would better act as wells, being more thick/wide, but still have jutting, polygonal features that make it seem natural. I think that they turned out pretty well. I probably am going to make more of them, but for now this is what I have. I think the biggest thing I had to do was get reacquainted with 3DS max. I know I've been using it for the past 2 or so weeks, but this is the first time I've really had to use it. I used the pro-boolean and edit poly features for pretty much everything. Id say the pink wall is what I'm most proud of and is what was the most important thing I did this week. Next week I'll probably continue to make walls and work on whatever new things are thrown at me. I hope it's nothing too complicated, but I know rigging is in my future, so I'll have to learn how to do that soon.
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Junior programmer has been a challenge for me. The first half wasn't so bad. The introduction to c# made it seem less scary than it was. We learned simple things like moving and locking a camera or allowing a player in to input controls. Following the tutorials was relatively straight forward, and the tasks they had you do were simple. I'm not going to say I learned nothing, but i will say that after a certain point retaining information became more and more difficult, as did what we were having to do.
The second half contained a lot more specific procedures. Assigning tags then referencing them, referencing code cross-documents, calling for spawns in areas with timers, and forcing objects to move on their own are some of the things we had to learn. I think I did okay to start of, but as we continued, things became harder and harder to fix and figure out. Knowing what class and variable an object should have is hard already. Trying to figure out what process will work best for whatever you're trying to do is incredibly hard for me, let alone remembering all of the options I have. Overall, I'd say that I still need to improve a bunch, but I haven't learned nothing. Unity is something that I have been looking forward to throughout this year. Although I am a total dunce when it comes to coding, I still was excited to learn a new 3D program that also had a lot of features. And oh boy, does it have a lot of features. That's probably the coolest thing about Unity. There is so much freedom to do whatever you want. Even doing the tutorials wasn't completely linear. For a program that has as many options as it does, it's very easy to navigate. The layout is very clean, and most things you can find from a main dropdown or a search bar. So far, navigation hasn't been the problem. My main problem, as I said before, is coding. I am not experienced with coding in the slightest. I have had some troubles already because even the slightest mistype can ensure everything you made doesn't work. This is the part of Unity that scared me, but so far it's not too frustrating. I'm sure in the future, it will become a large issue for me. Overall, though, I am really enjoying the program. The program is easy to use, and even when there are flaws, there is a team working on constantly updating the program. Working with it for a bit has made me like it a lot, and I'm hoping my opinion stays that way. For now, I'm having fun, and that's what matters.
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The past few months, just like for everyone else, have been very hard for me. I am someone who experiences extreme burnout very often and am often unmotivated to do anything. This ranges from work to playing games. In light of Olofmeister's (second attempt at) retirement from competitive CSGO, I thought it might be nice to just talk about it. Other major burnout cases in the pro CS scene earlier in the year was Glaive and Xyp9x of Astralis, which was a big talking point at the time. A lot of people were talking about tournament/event selection, practice times, and even starting to debate the possibility six-man rosters. Seeing two players who have been around since at least 2014, especially of the same team, was not something that happened often. Despite this, burnout is very common. It's weird that it's not common in pro eSports, but it is something that needs to be respected (and mostly is, as far as I know) by organizations. Seeing people who have worked so hard for so long lose out to motivation is very disheartening, but it gives you a sense of how determined they are for not having dropped out as long as they have been around. I get burned out very easily, and deal with a lot of motivational issues on a weekly basis. For someone like me to see people that I envy succumb to an issue I feel is both reassuring and disheartening at the same time. There are probably a lot more examples of this in other professional settings (i.e. sports, music, other eSports, etc.), let alone for people that work normal jobs. Burnout is just something that's always on my mind and talking about something like that can be relieving.
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Currently for GAD we are working on level design for the concepts we made and have been developing over the past few weeks. My concept was more of an open world/sandbox type idea that had linear elements but was mainly focused on doing whatever you wanted. Since we are on the level design stage of development, I am having to work with two things that weren't made to go together. I have managed to fit somethings into my flowchart but overall it would be the same for each level, just the words for the main objective would be different. Because of this, my motivation to work on this project has not really been that high. The world I created isn't that complicated but trying to map things out in such a way that should be intuitive and obvious in your head but ultra tedious to record has been not fun. There are some easy things to map out like "explore! :)" and such, but it always feels disingenuous and having to write it a bunch hurts my soul. Pure sandbox might be easier to map, like in Gmod. You just say "open menu", "place thing", "interact", and then edge in some repeat or alternate pathing or something like that. Overall I think I'm just not good enough at recording things efficiently to take on a sandbox game in level design, as the possibilities are endless, and sometimes even basic things or the way to access those endless possibilities are also complex
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Over the break, Payday 2 went on sale. I decided to buy it and immediately fell in love. Payday 2 is a heist/contract fps that lets you do missions however you want. You can go in loud, quiet, or a get in quiet and then cause a ruckus. You can do the bare minimum or you can overachieve. You get rewarded for exploring levels and doing more than you have to, like opening non-required safes getting out unnoticed. The gameplay is also dynamic; guard locations and routes change, item locations change, camera/security room locations change, even entire vault locations can change. There are also a multitude of different builds you can go for. There are perks (which eventually, if you play enough, you will get all of) that in the beginning, you can format to support a multitude of things like stealth, health, utility, guns, etc. There are also decks that give you special abilities. You can only use one of these decks at a time, so it's good to plan out what weapons and perks (if you don't have all the perks) to use around your deck. There is suck a large variety in how to play missions and how to equip yourself that I rarely ever find myself getting bored. The mechanics are so satisfying that even if there is an easier way to do something, I will continue to try and pull off whatever I was trying to go for before instead, just to say that I can do it that way. There is also a host of DLCs that aren't required but do add a lot like weapons, missions (if you are hosting them; you don't need DLCs to join DLC missions), cosmetics, characters, and perk decks. Overall, there is so much to do and so many ways to do it that this game never gets old and is a blast all the time.
The past few months have been very hard on me, especially with my poor school performance and overall demotivation. I am always looking for something to do to lift my spirits and help me to not feel so bad. One of those things is ArtBreeder. Over the past week I have been sinking so much time into messing around creating images. ArtBreeder is a website that uses AI to generate images, whether it be of fantasy landscapes or people that don't exist (and it's very realistic). Once you select images that you want to use from the site it uses AI to make "children" of your selected image(s). You have a variety of sliders to mess with for each type of image, though some have more than others. The amount of possibilities is endless. There is so much inspiration to be drawn from the images you can both find and make. You can also just try to make abominations or make something as realistic as possible. Sometimes the AI can be frustrating, when you want it to do something that you think is similar to what you already have, but it doesn't do exactly what you want. Another annoying thing is the base images that are used for some of the types and how lowering the chaos slider too much will make your image look too similar to said base image. Overall, though, I really enjoy messing around with it. I messed with the album covers section for a while and even touched one of them up a lot to try and make something that would genuinely look like an album cover (like adding real words and smoothing out a lot of the sort of stains and inconsistencies). It is nowhere near a waste of time and I fully recommend it if you are looking for inspiration.
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Our most recent GAD topic has been player interaction and game genres. The main difference being the genre is the content of the game/what the gameplay is generally like, while interaction is who/what a player is playing against. We have talked a lot about how to identify each type of both, but not really much on the side of how they intertwine. That has mainly been discovered through our own playtime and our recent project that asks us to compare games of different mediums. We compare genres and player interactions and how that creates an overall experience for whatever the game is, whether it be casual, cooperative, competitive, a puzzle, a shooter, or a sandbox. There are an infinite amount of combinations that can be effectively reached if they are pulled off correctly. The key to something being fun is pushing the baseline that matters for YOUR audience. That's why Mario Kart Wii worked so well. It made it so that it was less skill reliant so anyone could play, but still had techniques that would give you an advantage. The low stakes make it easy to play casually whether it be with friends, bots, or people all across the world. The same goes for most card games, with a little bit of barrier of entry. It can be hard to learn card games sometimes, especially if its more obscure. But once you've learned it, you can play it whenever, wherever, and with ever whom you please. It even allows for some rule bending and customization due to the word of mouth format most standard decks follow. There are few restrictions, but many ways to play with a deck of cards. Something like UNO is also very easy to learn and play. The major importance of card games is who your playing against. Solo card games are fine wherever, but other games won't work if you're on your own. This is a reason why solitaire is so popular, as it is easy to understand and is played alone. Overall, you can pair any interaction type with any genre and have it work if you know what you're doing
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For GAD recently, we have been looking at types of game mechanics, why games are fun, and other related thing to game design as a whole. To do this, we played board games of our choosing. Being online to di this obviously isn't preferable, but it's all we have. We are looking for things such as use of space, time, resources, interactions, actions, etc. and how they are used in conjunction with each other to create a whole and enjoyable experience. We would play the game out normally but take some screenshots here or there to convey what ideas we are presenting. The project portion will begin soon, so I have not started on organizing things quite yet. I still have gone over things like making clear goals and having difficulty go up with experience as the player continues to play. Other things included how to implement certain rules or options and when certain actions should be used, like progression and those sorts of conditions. There are so many different types of mechanics and ways each mechanic can be used. Using them in innovative ways while keeping something fun can be difficult, but it's not impossible. Overall, mechanics are very complex and deep, but are fundamental to decent understanding of game design.
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It has only been a few weeks, but the school year has already started and classes are rolling out assignments. What assignments has GAD wanted? So far, we haven't done much. We have mainly been learning about careers within the game industry. These jobs range from the people who create the inner workings of a game from the people who market and sell it. We had to make resumes and a graphic about the job position we selected. We also discussed an issue surrounding mature content ending up in the wrong hands and who is at fault. The little use of Photoshop to get back into the swing of graphic design was really in my opinion. Getting back into game design has been a little bit rough and I am sure that it will be a bit before we are fully back into the full rhythm of the class, but as of now it has been a little rocky to try and get used to online learning, especially for a class that's easier in person. I hope that this year will end more smoothly than it has started.
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