October 2017

Making Your First Game Advice

Notes:

SCOPE: More people is better than one with experience.

Forums can help with problems you may have, and its more effective than just being angry.

Build based on your talents

Don’t give up.

Notes:

Don’t create long goals, have small ones.

It’s gonna take a while to build the game. Double amount of time you think it’ll take.

Don’t worry about the quality of your first game.

Set Milestones

Breakdown milestones further

Send yourself an email to check up on what you did last week and what you did this week.

Review game once a week.

Don’t worry about production quality

Don’t spend more than an hour trying to solve something yourself.

Force people to play your game

Notes:

Minimum Viable Product:

Minimum essentials that are needed to be able to play the game.

Also have a reset.

Maybe running.

Function > Content

5 Game Ideas

Creative Commons Image Tetris DS by Richard Kelland on Flickr

Idea 1: 2D Puzzle Game: Resizer

Objective: Complete puzzle levels to get to the top of a mountain, and you use a gun that can shrink things and grow things instantly to help you.

Idea 2: 2D Puzzle Game: Colony

Objective: You are a singular bacteria, and you eat food to reproduce and grow your colony inside a human, traverse through the person’s body and fight their immune system.

Idea 3: 2D Puzzle Game: Zoo Breakout

Objective: You are a crocodile inside of a zoo, and you want freedom. You manage to escape your enclosure and need to find a way to exit the zoo.

Idea 4: 2D Platformer: Virus

Objective: You are a molecule, trying to escape a computer that is being taken over by a virus, and you have to transform into different forms to traverse your way out.

Idea 5: 2D Platformer: Wilderness

Story: Some shady animal smuggling company is flying over Canada, but due to technical difficulties, the plane crashes in the Canadian forest. The only animal in the plane that survived is you. A Giraffe.

Objective: Explore the new biome and try to traverse your way past bears, wolves, and other threats while climbing the hilly terrain in order to get to civilization.

Games Can Change Our World

Notes:

Man bleeds out

Is considered on death bed

Days to live

Somehow survives

Loses touch with friends

Plays lots of games

Makes friends

Gets happier

Notes:

10,000 hours gaming until 21, same as school w/ perfect attendance from 5th grade – high school

What are gamers getting good at?
Urgent Optimism

Social Fabric

Blissful Productivity

Epic Meaning

Super Empowered Capable Individuals

Dice games invented to help Famine

Survived 18 year famine

Notes:

Games can increase happiness and lower stress

Gaming can get rid of regrets

Gaming helped Jane become less suicidal

Wanted to turn problem into game

Post traumatic growth occured

Roll A Ball

Video on Roll A Ball: https://youtu.be/WoDS_FIeHo8

In the video above, I talk about the first video game I made, which is a 2D Version of the Roll A Ball game.

The video talks about the troubles I had with the code, and how I solved them.

The resources used in making the game are Unity, Unity Learn UFO Tutorial, and C#.

Listen Smart – Safely Handling the Power of Sound

CC image Headphones by Tal Atlas at Flickr

Can You Hear This?
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HA6qm5C64

More than one third of hearing loss is caused by noise.

Cotton and toilet paper do NOT work as earplugs.

Tinnitus Is hearing things that aren’t there.

You cannot get your hearing cells back after losing them.

3M™ Hearing Conservation Worker Training Video

Hearing loss can negatively impact your life.

It can be painful.

It could prevent sleep.

SoundAdvice.info For Audio Career Tips

Make sure to stay in legal noise limit.

Do what you can to reduce the impact of loud noise.

Marching bands, concerts, etc. can be harmful to your hearing.

My Stretch Goal for the Year

Creative Commons image Super Mario World 2 SNES by Leon Keller on Flickr

Role – Artist.
Goal – My goal is to improve the sprites I make for 2D games, and learn to use Unity to import my own sprites into a game.
Why – I want to achieve my goal because Art is very fun for me and if I were good at it at the same time, it could lead to future opportunities/jobs.
How – I will practice designing custom sprites and studying other game’s sprites in order to improve my skills as an artist.
When – I already work on Art as a hobby almost daily.
Resources – I need a website to use in order to make 2D pixelated sprites/animations.
Milestones – At somepoint in time, I want to learn how to import my own sprites into Unity to use in a game.
Heroines / Heroes – Ken Sugimori, Art Director for Pokemon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Sugimori

Unity Learn

Today I used Unity Learn to learn how to edit sprites and add properties to them. I also learned bout two camera typer, Perspective and Orthographic. Orthographic is used for 2d terrains, while perspective is used for 3d terrains.