Art Concept

So far in the week off, I have been watching unity tutorials, spending an hour or so a night practising.

However I had also been playing around on photoshop creating random concepts for no reason, when I thought why not make some art for college projects? I'm going to try and fit every image I make into the games, if they're necessary we can keep them, and if not, at least the image will have taught me something.

I don't really know what this could be used for, but I like it, its going straight to the rest of the group. Any other pieces will go here as well, i'm hoping I can go back through these blogs and see progress.

New unity game!

We have moved into small groups for Ant's lessons to work on a project of our own choice, yey. And we get to create our idea in unity, double yey. We are a 5 man team now, Lee, Josh, Sam, Kieran, and I have decided on a top down horror title, the name is undecided. Without giving away any spoilers I can say that our game should be bloody fantastic, I just have a feeling that everyone in the group is on the same page, which is nice.

We have a few weeks before getting to use Unity, which is almost a blessing because we get to fully construct the foundations of the game and assign everyone jobs. We have also split the coding among ourselves giving those that can code a more focused role, however everyone meets up and talks practically throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.

I picked up a game for inspiration called 'Home', its a 2d horror game that lasts an hour or so. Although our game will be topdown and not 2d, Home gave me many ideas to isolate the player for the full 'atmospheric' approach.

   

Democracy

Media is growing in the UK faster than ever, thanks mainly to the tax break companies receive if their product is British-enough. Sounds ridiculous at first, however the idea isn't a bad one. 

If a whole movie is set in the hills of Cumbria, then Cumbria receives advertisements which snowballs into the UK getting an advertisement. Similarly if an actor/actress is British and they perform well then once again the UK gets some credit.

Overall the idea is to tempt more companies, gaming, or theatre to come to the UK. They pay less and the UK is credited, easy.

Unreal practise

I've began using the Unreal Engine in my spare time to help in any future projects, I spent a few hours on the Unreal youtube page watching tutorials on how to build a modern house using most of the techniques required to make nice looking levels.

Although its not the biggest or most detailed building, however its taught me how to use the program well enough. Il keep updating this building throughout the upcoming weeks in my spare time and will post progress here.

This image shows what the engine can do, obviously with work and time included, however I believe that with tutorials and some inspiration I can create something that is comparable at least.

Things i'm enjoying: Improvement with design programs. I am very exited with the progress i'm making overall, my ability in Flash, Unreal, and Photoshop has improved by a substantial amount, and I can only get better.

Things i'm not: Nothing, usually group work is below par with us, however we've geld together and knuckled down removing any problems.

pong

We used flash to code a simple-looking game, with no idea of the game or its premise to start with.
Our task was to code a ball that would move and bounce off of the walls indefinitely, at which point I had an idea of what the game was, pong.

 Being new to flash, I had expectations of pong being an easy game to make due to the fact that its the 'first game' ever made for a console, however I couldn't have been more wrong.

When coding for pong you have to include commands for the controls, the speed, the score, and the collision effects. Comparing this to the previous 'rock paper scissors' game I made is impossible.
This is more responsive to code, but requires alot more code to work. While rock paper scissors is effectively the opposite.

Heads or Tails

We used flash and some basic coding to create a heads or tails-like game, using code such as math.random I could set it so any number between 0 and 1 would be randomly selected, if it was lower than 0.5 flash would send a message saying "you landed on heads", if the number was greater than 0.5 it would say "you landed on tails".

We then had to introduce a point and streak system that required two buttons, (one saying heads, and the other tails) each button flipped the coin, however it would give you a point if the outcome matched the button.

The player had to guess correct three times in a row to win, if they picked heads and the outcome was tails, then any streak they had was reset and they had to start again.

Although i'm finding flash coding difficult, in a few weeks i'll have enough experience and will succeed.

Group flash game

We spent the morning in two large groups with a goal to make a flash adventure game. We used buttons to help the player with their quest.

The coding was dispersed throughout the group, giving everyone a task to do, however as previously mentioned people in the group were wither doing too much work, or too little. It has improved dramatically though it must be said.

By the end of the session we had most of the game finished.

More on the game its self, you play as one of three characters, and progress to an out-of-town inn.
It is here that you are given a quest log by a mysterious figure, to find out more on your fate and that of the mysterious figure, you are required to complete the three daunting tasks.