These past couple weeks in class have definitely been some of the most interesting in my game design career, mainly because we have actually started to make digital games. About a month ago we started in the Unity game engine, we started with a brief introduction to the Unity interface and some of the assets that we would be working with them we got straight to work. We aren't doing a tutorial made by the state or made by Mr.B, we are actually doing a series that was made by some of the people who work at Unity and its actually quite good. They started out with a basic introduction to the course and what we are going to accomplish, then we jumped straight in to the Units. Each unit consisted of a couple of lessons which would have about 8 or 9 videos where you would watch then do what they did. Each video would be 5 to 7 minutes and it would consist of them telling what they were doing, how it would affect the assets, and tell us how to do it. My only complaint so far is that those 7 minute long videos are just to demonstrate a thing that takes about 30 seconds to do, but I get that they have to explain everything so we know exactly what we are doing. I'v only just now completed the first unit and overall I have already learned so much, I learned how to import, assets write code, and even understand the code I'm writing. In the first Unit we started with a vehicle and a road and then we had to place objects in the road, find a way to have the vehicle be controlled by the player and then adjust the camera to get it to follow the vehicle. This was all done by writing lines of code in C# in VisualStudio 2017 which is a program that was connected to Unity where we would write our scripts. Now we still have a couple more units to go in the tutorial but I sure can't wait to see where this road leads.
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Now that we are almost done with our game development process, we are starting to write our postmortems. For those of you who don't know what a postmortem is, first of if you don't what a postmortem is why are you here, but a postmortem is a reflection essay that is written by game developers after they have completed the creation of their game. The postmortem is split up into sections like, "What went right?" and "What went wrong?" with lots of little sections within those outlining the specific parts. After reading a bunch of different postmortems from lots of different game developers, one thing that I noticed that was a constant between them was that they all mentioned the dates of what was happening. When I say this I mean they would mention that in fall of 1998 they brought on a bunch of new assets to focus on the servers and they would do this all throughout the postmortem and its crazy to me that they remember all of those important dates over a three year long game development. There are lots of reasons for people to write a postmortem, people may like to see the progression of their game and look at how far they've come. Looking at it now, about to begin my own postmortem, them most important part of writing the postmortem is look at what went wrong and learning from it. If you made the game the certain way and it turns out to be not the result that you wanted, you learn from that and whenever you make your next game, you don't follow that same way you did your last game. But overall I'm excited to begin writing my postmortem and I'm going to follow the same ways that the game developers do theirs.
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I know what you're thinking, "But Jay, Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee was on the Switch!" and I get where your coming from but give me a minute to explain my thoughts. Yes the Let's Go games were released on switch but A they were just Gen 1 reboots and B the game was created to tie into Pokemon Go. But now to onto the real topic of this blog post, Pokemon Sword and Shield! Pokemon Sword and Shield is the 8th generation of Pokemon and the first NEW NEW Pokemon game on the Nintendo Switch. When Sword and Shield were first announced, it was announced that not all of the Pokemon were going to be in the game which created lots of disputes among fans. Personally for me this only created one issue, MUDKIP DIDN'T MAKE IT, but all jokes aside (not really) this didn't have a huge effect on me, I was just excited to see the new Pokemon. The biggest new mechanic of the game is the wild area, where players can encounter wild Pokemon up to level 60 which can be pretty scary when a level 12 Grookey is your best Pokemon. The biggest new mechanic about the wild area is that players can rotate both joysticks to move your character and to move the camera following your character which is new to Pokemon games. Other than the wild area the gameplay is just like any other Pokemon game, you progress through the towns earning gym battles until you can beat the champion. My only complaint about the gameplay is that the first hour and a half were so stupidly easy and boring, I don't want to do all of these stupid tasks, just let me start battling Pokemon. Another big issue with the game is some of the visuals in the wild area, you can tell that the devs just wanted get the game done and released and you can tell by the trees in the wild area. You can tell that they were reused assets from another game and its very obvious because its copied and pasted all over the wild area. But other than the tree the game does look really good, like the towns that were created specifically for this game all look really good and they all have a special charm to each of the towns. The interface is just like any other Pokemon game with subtle changes like you can access you Pokemon box from anywhere. Personally I have really enjoyed this game so far and would definitely recommend this game to Pokemon fans old and new!
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So our last assignment in class was to storyboard our game that we have been conceptualizing in class and that got me thinking, "Why do game designers even need to storyboard it just seems like a waste of time and effort?" I asked myself. Well after I created my own and did some research I got the answers to my question. Storyboarding is part of the pre-production phase of game development, where the designers brainstorm, sketch their ideas, decide on their target audience, and Storyboard! Storyboards help game designers plan out their game shot by shot, but for my storyboard I just drew big general sketches of things like the user interface, player interactions with NPC's, cut-scenes, and transitions between things like outside and inside. Another thing that is big in storyboarding is creating the flow, something very important to games. A game with no flow isn't fun for anyone! The storyboard shows how the players progress through the game and the challenges of the game and how they increase in difficulty as the story continues. With all of that being said the biggest thing that the storyboard shows is the games story. It can show early stages of the story, with the biggest plot points being highlighted in specific sketches and as the development of the game continues, the game developers can change the boards for new ideas that they may have come up with later. Overall, storyboarding is one of the most important parts of the pre-production phase and I can see why game developers put lots of time and effort into it.
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Creating a video game seems like it would be a hefty tax with all of these nice graphics and fancy controls, but actually its not that hard. The first step most game designers make is not even on a computer at all, its with a pencil and paper. Game designers have a lot of decisions to make even before they jump onto a computer, they have to conceptualize the game, pick out their target audience and pick the software which is both available and suits their project. Then if a developer has the availability of a team they would get the artists to design the characters and environments, and even if they don't have artists to do that they can do it themselves. Both the characters and environments play a huge part in the game, they give the game the aesthetic that the designer was hoping for and the charters are what drives the storyline and wha keeps players engaged. Then after all of the art stuff is complete its time to start writing the story (if the game has a story). The story of a game is one of the most important parts, it's what keeps players coming back and wanting to continue playing the game. After the story, it's time to get into the nitty gritty of the design process, the coding and implementing all of your assets into your game. After lots of time and lots of trial and error, you have created a video game! Good job you keep up the good work, I hope you learned more about the game design process and proven to everyone that anyone can do it!
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Yesterday in class we got to play card games in preparation for our end of quarter project. We got to play was a game called Bears Vs. Babies which is made by the same people who made Exploding Kittens. This game was kind of weird to play at first because of the different types of cards and what to do with them but after that we got the hang of it. Players used their cards to make Frankenstien-esque monsters with random parts of the body like the fins of a fish and the head of a dolphin. Since we only had one class period (50 mins) to play the game we didn't really get to far into the game and nobody figured out the purpose of the pile of babies and it was a big mess but still my group and I had a lot of fun. With the rise of video games in the past decade I feel like playing card games has become obsolete and it makes me feel bad. Just sitting down with a group of my friends and just paying a fun card game really made me think about this. Nowadays people just go on their game consoles and chat with their friends online but they are missing important face to face interaction which are essential to having a healthy life. So take some time out of your day, sit down with your family and friends at the dinner table and play a good ole' card game, trust me you won't regret it!
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Mario Kart Tour was released on September 25 by Nintendo as their second major mobile game release. The game was first announced in February of 2018 and was meant for an early 2019 release and here we are now in September of 2019 and the game just released. Well was the wait worth it . . . eh kinda, let me explain. The game is fun, I do have a good time playing it but there are just some major improvements that could be made. The game is overall pretty enjoyable and every time I open the app I seem to get trapped for a couple of races. You race against seven other people, in maps from previous Mario Kart games. For a mobile game, the graphics are good, it looks like you are playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on a Switch in portable mode. I think that if they flipped the screen to be horizontal instead of vertical then the game would feel more like a regular Mario title. The audio is straight from other Mario Kart games, the map music and sound effects are the exact same as on past titles. The interface is similar to the other Mario Kart titles, your placement in the race is in the top left of the screen with a small mini-map under it, your score from the race is in the top right of your screen. The game is highly accessible, it’s a free game and all you have to do when you get it is make a free Nintendo online account. For the technical side of the game you have to have a phone with either the IOS App Store or Google Play Store. Overall the game is really fun and if Nintendo adds in other features like a good multiplayer and different controls it could be golden!
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Dear Minecraft, I love you so much. I’ve put numerous hours into you and through all the ups and lows I still end up coming back. But in all seriousness I really do enjoy Minecraft and it’s a great game and let me tell you why. After you’ve completed the main storyline which is still great there’s so many other things to do in the endgame, you can download numerous mods that just make the game more enjoyable. Or you can play on different servers with your friends and do anything that any other creators have made for you. Over the summer my friends and I all pitched in to purchase our own personal server so we can do whatever we wanted. In between swim practices we would go home and play Minecraft all day until it was time for the next practice, and don’t even get me started on the storyline. With so many different things to get into it’s an endless amount of fun. I don’t think that I can explain in words my real love for Minecraft, it gives me so many memories back to my childhood when I would play Minecraft Pocket Edition with my sister on long car rides to Massachusetts or at swim meets with my best friends in between our events. So from deep down my heart, Minecraft I love you.
Sincerely, Jay Summary:
So for the past week in class we’ve been working on the history of games and the history of rating systems like ESRB and PEGI. Rating systems were first brought into the realm video games when games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. Both were considered explicit while Mortal Kombat featured things like excessive blood and gore while Night Trap had scenes that were considered to be sexually explicit. People like Senator Joe Lieberman believed that these games needed to be rated to keep these out of the hands of younger children, so they brought SEGA and Nintendo to court. Both had very specific views on the concept, SEGA’s Mortal Kombat was not dumbed down, there was all the blood and gore that the developers intended. While Nintendo had to dumb down the game and did things like turn the blood into sweat. This led to the creation of the ESRB which was a department outside of these companies and outside of the government to determine what age range the games should be for. Now today we have international rating systems like PEGI who rate games for the European audiences.
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For our first unit of the year Mr.B asked us to explore the history of games and some pre-modern games like The Royal Game of Ur which is the first noted board game from the Fertile Crescent in the Mesopotamian era. We also had to pick a modern game and trace it back to what we thought it came from, I did the origins of Tetris and how I think that puzzle games started out with games like dominoes where you had to connect similar pieces. With all that being said for the first official blog post of the year Mr.B has asked us to put ourselves in the shoes of a soldier in the Roman Empire and explain what pre-modern games we would be playing in our off time as well as what current game they would most likely be playing. According to lots of different websites, all say that soldier did play board game sin their free time whether it was Tesserae (a dice game) or games like Latrunculi which is the Roman version of chess. If I were a Roman Soldier and I had the choice to play a modern game, I wouldn't want to play an action or fighting game because Romans did plenty of that in real life, I would rather play something to get my mind off of my job like a game called Tiny Towers for PS4 which you build towers like Tetris but you can play against your friends with special power-ups and sabotaging other players. Or another game that I would play if I had the choice would be Minecraft, because you can just escape your reality and build anything you want in the game. This has been a little something on the history of games in the Roman empire and what game I would play if I had the choice of modern games in the Roman empire.
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