Final Post

Over the course of this ... half year? I guess. I have learned a lot. We have gone over quite a few things and I have discovered a few new skills within  myself. I'm honestly happy that I have taken this course because it has opened my eyes to the gaming world and its difficulties. I've only scratched the surface as well! It has been a really great experience overall. Though here is what I learned. 

Ok now this bit might disappoint my teacher, but I must say when it comes to coding I feel like I haven't learned half as much as she wanted. I don't know learning languages has never been a strong suite of mine, coding or otherwise. Anyways I still understand the basics like I should so I'm at least happy with that. Also I'm decent at reading code just not at writing it so at least I can tell what is going on when someone shows me something. Furthermore I have also learned that coding is a lot more complex and simple than I originally thought. It's not necessarily hard per say, but instead a lot of busy work and effort. You have to write a lot of lines to get things to work properly. That's about it with coding though. 

Now we come to the next thing I didn't really have too much trouble with, Unity. A lot of the coders in my class complained about Unity, it seems like it can be very frustrating. Since my focus was on the art I never really had that problem. I only had issues with some files changing colors, but if I saved it as a PNG then everything is fine. Also it's has a lot of cool features, but since I just followed tutorials the only thing I really learned was the interface. I will have to look at Unity a bit more to learn the ins and outs though. I'm still pretty happy with what I have learned though. 

Now this is where I learned the most, ART! Digital art is a wonderful, terrible, frustrating and rewarding world. It's all those things and more. I think the most important thing I learned from crash testing Photoshop and Fireworks was that layers are the most important thing EVER! The more layers you have the easier everything becomes. It's almost silly how much easier it becomes. Also I learned that our school's WACOM tablets might need an upgrade because they only go up to windows 7. If we plan to get windows 10 or 8 we might need to look into that. Also I learned that for now I prefer a slow mouse to a drawing tablet. I was able to get things done faster and they looked better. So that's that. I also think I learned a lot about the hotkeys in PS. It really speeds your work along. I had never really used hotkeys too much until then. Another important thing I learned was that making realistic art is difficult, if you have only a few days to work on it. Even weeks didn't feel like enough. I also learned that a good assets list is a god send. If I ever plan on making a game that will be the first thing I make sure is complete. The amount of changes my partner made to the game made two weeks of work a waste of time. If I had that I would have been done. Oh well though, you can't change the past. So yeah that was my art experience. 

In general I think the overall lesson that is to be taken from this is that making a solid game is hard. It requires a dedicated team that spends hours to make sure everything is done right. It takes a lot of effort basically. No part of the team is really easy either. Sure some parts are easier than others when your game focuses on different bits, but it's still not easy. Electronic Game Dev was a lot of fun. The teacher was great, the class was fun and the students were usually a pleasure to be around. I may have had my complaints, but all around it was a solid experience that has opened my eyes to the gaming world around me. That is all. Have a great everyone!

Week 6 Day 2

Jesse needed me to work on some more buttons so I went and did those. It took a lot longer than I thought it was going to. Like the whole class. I was kinda surprised. the last buttons I did didn't take half as long. Whatever though, I figure that it was mostly because I was trying to do too much. I hope to do a few of the tourists next week, but we'll see how that goes.

Week 7 Day 2

Ok so today I got almost everything I needed done. I managed to finish all of the planets like I planned, but I only was able to outline one other tourist. I am happy with my work though because we really did need those planets. Now this means that I most likely won't have the tourists done on time, but as long as the planets are working we should be fine. So right now most of the pressure is on Jesse. It seems like he doesn't think he will be able to finish and honestly I wish he would have listened to my advice which is to focus on mechanics not on how pretty it looks. He has barely coded a game it's more like an app for his version of splendor to count how many counters the player has and a bunch of random cards. It's like a half game at the moment. Anyways it should work as a demo so I'm not really worried. All in all I learned on thing, making games is difficult and it takes a lot of time. It's no wonder that game makers are constantly making game series rather than unique IPs all the time. If we have a working day on friday I plan to finish as many of the tourists as possible. That's my plan anyways.

Week 7 Day 1

Today I planned to work on one of the tourists. I honestly didn't like the results. In fact I was down right disappointed. Otherwise I didn't get too much more done. I got the tourists scanned so I have basic outlines for all of em. It takes a long time to work on the tourists. I think I will work on one later tonight to make em look right. Next class I plan to finish the remaining planets and finish the digital outlines of all of the other tourists. Depending on how that goes we should be in good shape when it comes to assets. Hopefull I can finish everything in time.

Week 6 Day 1

Today I got our new background. The old one looked terrible. I went through about 4 before I got one that I liked. I'm quite pleased with the result. I also spent a majority of the time sketching out the tourists. I have all but, the final one. the last one is going to be a female of some sort. Jesse gave me a list of required assets that he needs done. Otherwise everything is fine. I should get it done in time. I wish he could set up game play soon cause that is going to be the biggest problem. I feel like he spent too much time on appearance. Jesse told me he wanted me to do a credit of some sort, so I went and did that. I think it turned out alright.

Week 5 Day 2

Today I was asked to make some of the planets that are needed. I did some of them but, not as many as expected. I started to work on the tourists instead because it's probably going to take more effort to draw people rather than planets. So after working on that for a bit I pretty much ended up finishing the first one. I can use this one tourist and just switch out colors and be fine. I might to two other models so that way it looks more diverse. One model might get boring. Last night I discovered something that saddens me slightly. My computer is a windows 8 and the drawing tablet that the school is letting me borrow only has compatible drivers for windows 7 and back. This means that I cannot use it on my computer to it's fullest power. I'm thinking of getting my own drawing tablet but, that won't help me later due to the fact that I won't have the class anymore. The point of getting it is because I now have a budding interest in digital drawing thanks to this class. I'm really pleased with this. The more I learn from online tutorials the more I'm getting into it. I still do better drawings on paper, but I'm making progress regardless. Anyways, work isn't going to bad for this project, I'm mostly worried that jesse won't be finished coding by the time we need to do testing. Cause we really need to do that in the digital version not just with the physical prototype. Also I still don't know how I'm going to pull off mining planets. I mean it really just doesn't click for me. I'm probably going to use textures for them rather than using a custom paint job. I don't know I'll figure it out. tomorrow will probably be better.

Week 5 Day 1

Ok so today was another planets day. I have to make combos of all the planets that I had made so that means that in total I have to make 10 based off of the original 5. Also I have to make "mine planets" Jesse told me to make them more, "plentiful". I honestly don't know what to do about that considering I have a planet that is litterally just water. How do you make water look like it has more water? Sometimes I just look at jesse and think "why you do dis?" Anyways I also made some people that are need over the weekend but, I'm worried that they aren't up to par. I decided that if they are going to be on the gameboard that I need to give them backgrounds. I plan to finish the rest of the planets during study hall tomorrow and the tourists should be done soon. I have to finish the ships as well but, we'll see where that goes. Otherwise I think the art should be done soon. I also should be working on sounds, but that should be easy. I honestly feel like I made good progress today hopefully I can keep this pace.