School is tough, that is not a surprise to anyone who's been to any school. Whether it be the work, the classmates, the tests, the teachers, everyone has had an element of school beat them down, for me personally it's the work. Just about everyday I have to do and turn in something and it can feel like I can't catch a break. It's like I'm juggling rubber balls, each day someone throws me a new one, now sometimes I'll drop one and if I lean down to grab it, I'll drop the others and now I have to pick them up too. Late work is hard to really get done when you have more and more work from 6 other classes due soon, I can normally get it done the same day it was due if I'm not too busy with it but there are times where it's been a while to the point where I feel it's not worth it. I mean turn in your work sure but you don't want late work to pile up, again if I'm juggling and I drop just one rubber ball I don't want to risk dropping more. Having a lot of work or projects that I haven't done wil pile up and make a difference but I feel like I need to keep working on what's due rather than what was due. The lesson has to keep going for everyone, no one's going to stop and wait for you to finish. The jump to online school hasn't been the smoothest, for Game Design it's not too much different but for pretty much every other class it's been hard. I've had to adopt this mentality of just keep going, so I hopefully don't fail every single class. School is like juggling rubber balls, each day someone throws you a new one, sometimes you'll drop one and if you lean down to grab it, you'll drop the others and now you have to pick them up too, your best option is to just keep going.
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In the preproduction stage, Programmers aren't really needed in the brainstorm "what if this would be in the game" stage, but Programmers are important in seeing if that idea can work in the game. Programmers are the glue to put all the pieces together in a (hopefully) functioning package, the artists, modulars, and producers rely on the programmer to make the finished product of the game. That's a lot of pressure, which is why it's a good idea to start practicing, if you don't have other things you need to do at the exact same time tomorrow. I haven't really gotten started on the scripting as of late since I'm slipping hard in classes so i have to be on top of anything and everything that comes in, which is a headache and not just because I'm staring at my screen for 8 hours a day. But enough about that, the programmers whole job is to actual make the game the players will play. For me, I am working in Unity so I am using c# script to build my games, so correct grammar and spelling are key. As of now I am working on a whitebox prototype, a prototype where you use primitive shapes to act as game pieces in order to write and get code working for you game. First what I have to do is make sure the player can move around since this is a 3D space, I will do that by create a simple player move script. Then I need to make sure the player can pick up certain items with a press of a button, hide in lockers with a press of a button, and the difficult part of programming the monsters AI. Enemy AI on any level is hard to do first time around, you have to make it so the enemy reacts to the players movement while they chase them and have it so the monster doesn't attack players that are hiding in lockers. It will be hard to pull off especially since I'm still a novice but it can be done, it's my job as programmer to make it all work
In my group we are making a game called Strange Occurrences: A Journey, an adventure horror game that has you spending the first part of the game exploring the layout and collecting and the other spent being stalked by a monster and rescuing students from a dimension in the school. The school, Strangeview, is one with a record of students going missing and no one seems to bring up. The introverted and bullied are the only ones to truly notice and end up disappearing themselves. The player character is introverted so of course they find the dimension, the monster, and save the missing students. That is the rough overview of our story so far, pretty solid in my opinion, though the plan didn't start off that way. Originally the group had two different game ideas, one side wanted to do a point and click survivor horror and our producer wanted to make a game set in a high school focused on growing up and the challenges you face. Now you might be thinking "What was the big deal?" well, the big deal was one side already had a foundational elevator pitch for a game that we needed the producer to be on board for, but they didn't like the idea of a monster being a central element because it felt generic, and the Producer wanted us to work on a game that we didn't really understand the core theme. The producer is the leader of the group, producers make the plan, the deadlines, who does what and when, so the producer needs to like a game idea enough to run it. I ended up being the middleman, talking to our 2D artist and producer looking for some kind of compromise. Our 2D Artist wanted to do the point and click horror with a central monster because it's quite a simple concept and the producer wanted to make a game centered around characters with a little more complexity and it features... monsters. Yeah the two ideas shared a template of "oh no there's a monster in the high school" but the ideas were different in a thematic focus, one side wanted monster first characters second, other side wanted the reverse. This went on for a good week, until we worked on a compromise, our Producer finalized his idea to the point where everyone got the premise, the game would focus on characters with a monster as an antagonist, Oh and our 3D Artist was not apart of this at all, they were down for whatever. Now we just need to work on concept art, an overall map design, and a working whitebox prototype (that's my job). First real introduction with working in a group making a video game and i'll be honest, I didn't think it would be a smooth start, I expected a bumpy start. Everyone has different visions of a game and sometimes it's hard to truly communicate that, but it is a great skill to learn since you need your team to know what direction this idea will go. Communication is extremely important and getting that nailed down is important in any team.
Around 2 months back, our schools officially shut down for COVID-19 and our quarantine began, and since then me and other students have found it difficult to work at home. Not to say the time off and basically having our own schedules is a bad thing but for some like myself it can be demotivating, especially for other classes. GAD was built on online courses and programs so the transition was smooth, that can't be said for any core class I took as they were built for in person lectures and those lectures helped me understand the work, those lectures of course are only present in math and chemistry. But back to GAD, GAD while built to be a class online isn't safe from highs and lows of motivation. It seems now a days I get sudden bursts of motivation to do my work, doing a lot for my game then just as suddenly lose that motivation and not touch it for a day or two. All my school I have basically been trained and conditioned to do work in a classroom and when I'm home knock out some homework that takes up to an hour or two depending on the homework, but now I'm home all the time and within months of being at home, I am still struggling to get myself to do any work. Game design is my dream job and making games is a lot of work but still fun to me, other work not so much, that's why working at home is hard for me. The mentality of "You gotta do it cause you gotta do it" doesn't stick well with me, I know work is important and grades, GPA, colleges, etc expect me to do the good, but now a days it seems like I'm only working for colleges and my parents and that's not a very good feeling. That why I like GAD work, I'm doing it for myself for my own learning and understanding of game design and I'm not doing to get into a college.
In 3ds max there is a tool call CAT rigging, a tool that is used for 3D animating inside 3Ds max. The tool is call the Character Animation Toolkit and allows animators to do non-linear animation with models. The tool allows for realistic animation for anything with the proper bone structure and comes with different preset models you can use to animate if you can't make your own. The CAT rigs also come with their own muscle strain system to realistically simulate muscles. The first CAT object we learned was Marama, which is a basic skeleton of an humanoid model with bones and joints without any texture or skinning that helps with animating in 3D. Marama is used to animation any humanoid characters on a basic level, the model resembles a human skeleton system that makes animating a lot easier. If you like to make your own custom CAT rig, you can be making a CATparent and in the Load save menu, clicking on None and clicking add pelvis, then by clicking on pelvis you can add any limbs you'd like. CAT rigging is not an easy this to do, with one assignment on CAT rigging taking about 4 hours to complete of a simple action. CAT rigging is a basic and most useful way of animating characters in 3DS Max.
“Creating a CATRig.” Autodesk Support & Learning, Autodesk Knowledge Network, 11 Dec. 2018. Lighting are very important when rendering a model or scene in 3ds max, it can set the mood in a scene or give it a pinch of realism with different techniques. In 3ds max there are different kinds of lights to use, for example the Omni light radiates light in all directions, normal used as a fill light to balance out other lights. Directional lights function exactly how it sounds, it beams light through a cylinder onto a single point, these are used mostly for simulating sunlight. Skylight light the outside of a scene, ever having settings for the time of day to simulate it. Spotlight lights through a cone shape, used for simulating flashlights or spotlights. There are two different kinds of lights in 3ds max, free lights and Target lights. Free lights allow the modeler to move it and rotate it freely while the Target light restricts the movement to a single point. Free lights are normally used as fill lights, meaning the lights don't need to focus on any point or model. While Target lights are used to keep focus on the Target model, using a Target light and pointing it at a model will make the viewer focus on that model. If you want to add some realism in your scene with lights, you will have to use shadows. When using shadows, there are three big settings to use to impact the scene, Density which controls the darkness of the shadow, Color which controls the color of the shadow, and Mapping which controls any textures added to the shadow. Lights can impact the scene in 3ds max with shadows and the many different kinds of lights.
app.schoology.com/page/1992296654 During the February Direct, Nintendo announced a free to play game for Nintendo online called Tetris 99, the classic Tetris game with a battle royale twist. The game itself is very bare bones only having three menus with only one game mode, The Battle Royale mode, stats, and settings. The controls are pretty simple, you move your Tetris blocks with the D-pad, press A to flip them, and use the left stick to target ether your attackers, random players, players with badges, or people with the most K.Os. Once you select the Battle Royale mode you'll be dropped in a random lobby and starts to load while the other 98 players load in. There is no tutorial and doesn't even tell you the controls, just drops you into the game. At the beginning of the game, you will be targeted by a number of players, and when those players get combos, a stack of grey blocks will spawn when you drop your next tetris block. The game is unforgiving in the sense that at any moment a hundred grey blocks will spawn in and completely make you lose. It is just basic tetris and people who do not like tetris will not like tetris 99, but ones who do like tetris will love it for it's no real divergence from the tetris formula and hate this game for it's unforgiving game play and matches.
In DDA II, We used our old Robot we made a few months back and make UVW maps and apply those UV maps to the robot. For my robot, I drew my UVW maps off of references with a mouse, which wasn't as hard as I thought because I was just basically tracing and slightly altering off references. Although I was using Photoshop to draw the UV maps which was a pain because you can only redo once so if messed up two changes ago, you can erase the mistake, but the problem is I was making the outline with 0% hardness, so if I erased a mistake and retraced it, it would be so obvious and annoying and ruin that side of the map. The Face and the Shell were the the hardest part as the two were one object in 3DS Max while I made the two separate. The UVW map layouts I used for making the actual UVWs weren't saved in 3DS Max and as a result, I had to try to work with what I had in 3DS which I remind you was completely different than what I used. But the robot overall looks good, could definitely be a lot better but it could have turned out worse.
The Battle Royale genre is the most popular genre of multiplayer games at this time, and video game companies are trying to bank off the success. For a long stretch of time, Fortnite Battle Royale, the free to play game made by Epic Games, is the #1 battle royale game in the world. But should they? Should a submode in some game really have the #1 spot? For me, it's a clean no. Video Games should be fun to play with friends and solo, it shouldn't be one way or the other, for most battle royale games it's really only fun with friends, and that's a bad thing. Anything is fun with friends, this goes for games too, me and my friends played a terrible Smash Bros clone, Kung fu panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends, and had lodes of fun compare to if I played it myself. A second big problem with battle royales is RNG being a factor in winning, it's up to RNG what weapons, armor, health you get during a round, it's all luck on the layout you will get. Another problem is that the maps are usually big, so that means that you can spend up to five minutes not fighting, just running from place to place, then getting killed by someone you didn't see.
My little brother got Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and a poke ball plus controller for Christmas, and dropped it after a few days, so I picked it and completed it in a couple of weeks. After completing the game, I have mixed feeling about the game, for one I found myself struggling to put the game, on the other hand, I found myself throwing it down in anger at times. Pokemon Let's Go takes place in the Kanto region, the original setting for the Pokemon games Red and Blue, where you play a boy or girl and explore the region catching all the Pokemon from Gen 1 plus two more. In the game, you either start with Pikachu and Eevee depending on which version you got, and go on a familiar adventure, catching Pokemon, and fight an rival that wants more to help you and be your friend than be an actual rival. The graphics are not impressive for the Switch, it's basically a up rez of Sun and Moon games on the Nintendo 3DS. In Let's Go, the catching mechanic is not dissimilar to the catching in Pokemon Go, the app game that Let's Go is based off of. The catching mechanic uses gyro or motion controls, depending on how you play, but if you are playing on the TV you are forced to play with a single joycon and use motion controls, if you want to use gyro controls, you'll have to play in handheld mode. While there are more good aspects to Let's Go, the bad aspects and changes are enough to get mixed feelings about the overall game.
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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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