The school year is finally coming to a close and it is time to take a look back on the blogging that I have down this year. This blog was created in order to help me reflect on my learning in my game design class as well as understanding game design better. I believe that this blog was successful in accomplishing this goal and it was able to help me develop an idea of what I want to do in my life right after high school (go to college for a computer science major in order to learn how to program, whether or not it is for games). I felt like this blog, even though it was another thing to keep track of along with my normal school work, was helpful in writing down my thoughts on subjects that I wouldn't otherwise write down let alone think about. For instance, I was able to think about the game industry and how its individual roles worked together, and this has given me a better appreciation for game developers and what they are able to accomplish. I plan on using this blog next year to help me set a pace on my project by giving a weekly update kind of thing so that I don't slack off and have nothing to write about. I think it would be fun to write down my progress on my game as it polishes out into a finished product so that I can look back on it and see how far I have come. I will still be blogging over the Summer (if I remember to do so). To the next school year!
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So, there is less than a week left before our end of year projects are due and I am pinched for time. I know that I will be able to get a working game done by then, however I am not sure just how much of my original idea will get put into the final version of the game before I have to submit it. I am hoping to at least get the player model and weapon working along with zombies that can kill you and that can be killed by you. If I have some extra time, I will include health and ammo pickups, but the extra weapons probably wont be possible with the time restraints unless I devout all of my time outside of school to it, which probably wont happen knowing me and my procrastinating nature. Although I am not happy about this predicament, I am hopeful that I can complete my game in time so that it is at least playable.
Today, I submitted my idea for my end of year project for this year. Since the deadline for this game is coming up in a matter of a few weeks, I needed to make this game a somewhat simple game to create, yet it still needs to have some challenge to it. I decided to go with an FPS game that is an endless zombie survival in which the player must run around an enclosed map with no escapes and kill as many zombies before being overwhelmed. The amount of zombies and the rate of their spawning will slowly increase as the player stays alive longer. There will be health and ammo pickups strewn across the map along with some random weapon spawns if I can get to that point in the game development. This game is kind of like zombies from Call of Duty, except with less features (no perks, doors, weapon upgrades, less guns, etc.) I hope that I will be able to finish this game in time since I like this idea even though this game is going to be very last minute and I wont be able to work on it as long as I may want to.
So far, my class and I have been using the Unity game engine to learn how to make 3D games this year. However, there is a consideration for switching over to using Unreal Engine 4 if our computers are up to the task of running it. One of the major differences with switching over to Unreal is that the coding is in the form of blueprints, which is a more graphical way of organizing and setting up code for your games. Although I enjoy writing code from scratch, this blueprint system appeals to me since the code would be much easier to understand and it would be much quicker to set up rather than having to hand write the scripts and potentially screwing it up. Unreal also offers some very nice presets for developers to use and build upon from a starting point rather than developing what would be the preset and going from there. In general, Unreal Engine is a better and more powerful engine that can produce higher quality games than that of Unity and if the computers at school were capable of running Unreal Engine, I would not object to the idea.
This week, I was working in Unity in order to understand how to create terrain using the terrain object and tools. I liked how easy it is to sculpt the land in Unity into whatever you want it to be, mountains, hills, plateaus, valleys, etc. It allows a lot of creative freedom for creating your own 3D game environments. I was also able to explore the water assets that can be imported, which looked cool, but didn't act at all like water. The water was able to replicate the visual look of water, and it could be edited to your needs, but when you went to go into the water, the water was just a plane that had no properties that let you swim in it. All you did was go underneath the water and walk along the bottom of the terrain as if there was no water there at all. My only complaint with the water is that it is only useful as a decoration in the distance where the player wont be able to reach it. In the end, I really enjoyed messing with the terrain tools and I am ready to move onward to my end of year project.
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AuthorMy name is Timothy Czerniejewski and this is my blog for my Game Art Design interests. Archives
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