Making a game is obviously better said than done, but in order to fully understand it you must go through the process yourself, or as I did, with a group. In our class we didn't have a choice of group parters, so the examples I'll give is for people I wasn't used to working on big projects with. A positive of working in groups you split up the work in making the game another good thing about working in groups is people can give out ideas and improvements to ideas for the game you will make, ideas that could help drive the game in the right direction. Some downsides is in a group it's hard to keep everything organized, it's hard to trust that everything will get done in time, it's hard to every do your part on time. So you may say that you'd like to work on your own, that you trusted yourself enough or you just don't want people to "mess up" your vision then you're in for a ride. As of writing this I've had to start over completely on my game Strict Parents Simulator as every bit of code slowly broke down one by one like a domino effect. With no one really to collaborate on this project, the old build of the game was unplayable as things like the ground being solid and enemy movement patterns did not work no matter what I did, the path finding program did not want to move the Father on the path and I kept falling through the floor even though collisions were on. Eventually I decided to start over after I got a Macbook for my birthday with updated hardware and a more code friendly device, also starting over is a lot easier then fixing everything. If you're getting into game design, make sure your projects are small if you're working by yourself or even with a team, focus on simpler ideas and don't try to go all out like I did (twice).
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This year our class worked in Unity and C# code, slowly learning the ups and downs of creating video games virtually on our own. To help us understand how Unity worked exactly we followed a tutorial called Create with Code, Create with Code is a course on the Unity website that has video tutorial teaching beginners the basics like how to make a character move left to right. The course is very accessible and easy to understand, the problem comes from the difficulties of using C# scripts. C# scripts requires the user to spell everything correctly and everything has to be perfect, one small mistake can and will break the entire script and not directly tell you what's wrong. When there's a mistake in one script, Unity will not work and show an error message and highlight the script with the error, not telling what was wrong. When using Unity I learned it is extremely frustrating when code and elements start to break down because of one little mistake, so when using Unity I have to be very careful. In my experience when one thing does not work it can be a lot more trouble then it's worth when fixing it, I spent a lot more time fixing one little problem I could have spent finishing everything else. But that's is the only big downside, when everything works Unity is a great engine to make games with, pretty easy to use and understand especially after going through the Create with Code course. Unity and C# script can be tricky to maintain but most coding and game software are tricky at times, Thanks to Create with Code I have enough know how to make my own games even if I will definitely run into problems.
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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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