Well the three weeks went by quite slowly for the first two weeks, until I found out I had another week of. This week then proceeded to disappear in a haze of alcohol and late night gaming….good times!!
Now even though I did let my hair down, I did continue my studies over the break and worked on two games. This was in accordance with what I had set out to do during my TSSK meeting (way way back, it seems) in the middle of last trimester, but it also was something I wanted to do as my journey to master scripting is still ongoing.
The first game I worked on was from the Unity Tutorials section, specifically the Survival Shooter which I changed to Clayton’s Survival Toy Shooter.
There was not much scope to change things around as I would have liked, and I also decided to just get this one done as quickly as possible. It was a good lesson on making animation which I blogged about in the previous post. I did change around a few things but the only major design change was I added an extra character which I downloaded from the Asset Store.
Molly was included in the game to give the player a much larger and stronger enemy, which spawned very rarely. Molly moves a bit slower but is relentless and takes a lot more shots to kill. I used the same methods to create this new character, including the animation. I also wanted to include a health pick up or bonus to give the player more opportunity for strategy and survival. 
I started to make this using the create a Tree from the create an object menu. I changed the settings so that it was just a tall trunk that stuck out of the ground, and which spawned once a minute for 10 seconds. The player has to touch the health pick up to restore the health bar completely. In all the game was quite fun to make, even if it took me a few attempts to get the animation right. I have not published it yet, as I do not consider it finished and it is still too close to the original version to proudly call my own. I will continue to work at it over the next few months and will publish it after I have implemented a menu system as well as a few other tweaks.
The second game I worked on was also from the Unity Tutorials section, specifically the Tanks tutorial, which I titled Clayton’s Tank Battle. It’s a two player game, where they must try to destroy each others tank. It is played on one screen and both players use the same keyboard.
I was looking forward to this game and did tweak it a bit and injected my own design flair. I used photos from my Instagram account to apply as textures and shaders to the playing field as well as the tanks and various objects.
I changed the textures and shaders to try to give the players a more realistic if not slightly surreal view of the objects around them. I did apply concrete looking materials to any buildings, photos of rocks to any rock formations and camouflage to any buildings. I did change the main body of the tank but wanted to keep the tracks and bogeys the same primary colours to help distinguish between players.
I learnt about ‘baking’ the scene which establishes items and objects on the playing field that will be recognized by the player’s tank and will not drive through it. I did not finish this game, as there is still a lot of ideas I have and want to implement before releasing it. These will include:
¤ Main menu and other UI.
¤ Health system for tanks.
¤ Lives for tanks.
¤ Health pick ups.
¤ Bonus weapon pick ups.
¤ Change to two players on two screens.
¤ Create more playing field/levels.
So as the new trimester has started, I have put this game on the back burner for the moment but want to come back and complete it when my skills and knowledge enable me to do so.
Ok so after that report of what I got up to beside killing brain cells, now back to the main reason for this post:
My Expectations for Studio 2
So far to date, there is a lot of things I have learnt and have had to put into some sort of practice through actually designing and building games. Last trimester I went off on a bit of a tangent, embarking on my own journey to try to get scripting down pat. That journey still needs to continue but I need to balance that so that my official studies do not suffer. Even though I passed Studio 1, I was deeply disappointed with myself. My goal is to achieve at least a distinction in Studio 2 but also realize that I will only get there through working smarter, not necessarily harder.
I expect that not only will my skills and knowledge increase in the procedures, steps and methods I go about designing and creating a game but also that I will get ample opportunity to put those skills into practice. I have found that learning everything through just theory is not exactly conducive to my learning style, so I need to learn and apply, over and over again until I get it rammed into this thicker head of mine.
I have now found my place, my spot in college and am now a lot more comfortable and aware of what is expected. I have made mistakes along the way but want this trimester to progress steadily by me doing my work diligently, as well as applying myself 100% with no procrastination.
I am confident that if I continue to put in the hours (which by the way is much easier to do as I am really finding my passion for something again) I will get through.
That’s all for this one, once again thank you so much for your company and interest. I look forward to seeing you again soon, until then….
God’s blessings upon you always and in abundance.
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