Author: epark

The Plays theThing was such a vulnerable space for me because so many people were playing my game as if it was a regular game. It gave me a weird feeling that people were interacting with what I created. I always had this feeling during our crits, but it felt more real and more vulnerable during this event. So many people asked me questions about my game, first asking me if it was even a game. I explained to a couple of people who were especially interested what I did with my game and how I collaborated with different mediums and projects. The talks and my short conversations with different people really opened up my mind about creating future games. I never considered making more games, but again, “Ouroboros” wasn’t really a “game.” I am interested in wrestling with the concept of what a game is for my future projects. This event really helped me to see that these ideas that only live in my mind can be potentially enjoyed by other people. I am so grateful to my classmates and to Patrick for watching me grow during this short amount of time. I had so much fun creating and wrestling with my mind in this class.

 

For my final project, I tried to manipulate and play with the spaces I created to make it replicate the spaces the scenes that were displayed and shot in. I wanted the viewer or the player to experience the film in a similar, but completely different way.

While finishing up my video game, I realized how slow my computer was getting. My game was a huge file because of all of the videos I was using. Each scene had at least two videos and some even had as many as 14. At one point I had 20 videos in one scene, but every time I played it, it would glitch and go crazy so I shortened it to 14 videos.

I am now trying to publish it on itch.io, but my game is 4GB and the website only allows up to 750MG. I have started to re-export all of my videos to reduce the size. However, Unity on the school macs and my computer are different and I am realizing that I can’t open my project file on my computer without it having it break my project.

I am trying to think of the reason why the versions of Unity on the school macs and my computer are different. I’m wondering if I need to re-download Unity on my computer. If you have any advice, please contact me.

I’m trying to polish my game, but the videos are still glitching and not playing properly. Though it adds an interesting illusion to the game, it subtracts from the quality of it. I watched tutorials online where they made video players and screens, attached them onto 3D objects such as planes, linked the 3D objects to the screens and the actual video to the player. This method does not seem to be the most effective. Therefore, for my polished version of the game, I’m going to try adding a code to play my videos in my game.

The videos I want in my game will feature my experimental film. Another issue I’m dealing with is time. My film is still in it’s production process and I have decided to grab the footage, edit, and add them in my game during my film’s post production process. The fact that the post production process is very close in time to the due date of this game is making me anxious, but because the meaning, aesthetic, intention, and feeling of my game is so similar to my film, I really want to incorporate it.

I could have been more wise with the preparation aspect of my video. I’m also learning how difficult it is to polish and clean up my game to make it look attractive and playable.

Though I still have not polished the project in it’s current process, I am coming up with more ideas. Instead of overwhelming my project with layers of unfinished work, I have decided to list out some of the things I need to figure out and fix.

The videos I add to my game are so broken or distorted that it takes away from the quality of my game. I need to figure out how to match the dimensions of the video screen to the dimensions of the video. Also, there is an option to write a script for your video players. I need to try this out to see if it will boost the quality of hte videos.

Also, I am still not understanding which scripts go in the scriptholder, which go on the actual 3D objects, and which go on the first person controller. I spent hours figuring out why the collision detection was not working when Patrick reminded me that the collision detection script goes on the first person controller. Simple mistakes like these really stall the process of my project.

Honestly, I am overwhelmed by all of my ideas because I know what these dream like spaces look like in my mind, but executing this feeling and expressing my thoughts are a lot harder than I expected. Hopefully, I will be able to fix the quality of my game and that would clear up the process a little more.

 

Dreams

 

I want to create a space of illusions. I was inspired by images from outer space and the ocean and I want to incorporate the feeling of vastness and ambiguity, but I want to describe them with detail and care. The mysterious feeling we have regarding our dreams and our psyche are feelings that we cannot quite describe using words. Sometimes, even the visuals we see everyday cannot illustrate the strange images we see in our dreams. In order to capture this feeling, I will create several spaces that tell an environmental story itself. The player will be able to look into some of my dreams and the randomly occurring visuals produced by my mind.

 

The goal is to create 20 spaces that are so different from each other, but hold similar symbols and thought. The player will have to search for a piece of fruit that will lead them to the next dream-like environment. When you bump into the wrong fruits, they will speak nonsense poetry to you.

 

Though my game is still in its premature stages, it already poses many difficulties. When I added the collider to the fruit in each level, it stopped responding to my collision with the fruit. Also, the rooms started to look very similar to one another so I had to get rid of some of them and recreate more abstract and absurd rooms. Creativity is much needed in order to convey this strong visualization. I feel as though I am running out of creativity and so I have decided many nights to sleep on it in order to let my dreams inspire me throughout this process.

There were so many things I wanted to do through my game, but because of my lack of skills with c++, I had to stick with what was currently do-able. I feel like c++ is the most challenging part that I find myself struggling to overcome in every game I make. The code I wrote for this project was just a collection of bits and pieces of different codes I wrote for my previous games.

During critique, many people felt like my diet game would be more playable if some foods would make the main character less bigger. My game made Mr. Beans’ face grow bigger and more intimidating every time you clicked on a food item. This size++ and size– function was actually a part of what I was intending on doing – hence the name of my game, but I ended up writing a different code with Patrick’s help.

For my final project, I want to be able to fully express myself though a game with many the different commands and functions that enhance the player’s experience. I felt that all my weekly games were super short and unplayable for the most part. I appreciate all of the comments that my peers made regarding my game because it helps me visualize the player’s experience when playing my games.

While I was creating this game, I was often flustered because I would change something really small and it would mess up my game. There weren’t any errors in my code and I followed the directions listed in the tutorials, but my game definitely had a bug. Once the game started, the smallest movement I made would make the game end. I thought it had to do with the destroy function that was listed at the end of my code. However, I soon realized there was a different problem.

I met up with Patrick during office hours and he showed me how the collider was a lot bigger than my actual 3D object. Also, the camera following my first person controller was not centered on the controller.

These small and unexpected things made it very difficult for me to complete the game. However, when I saw how my classmates played through my game and interacted with it physically and mentally, I was so surprised. The way they interpreted the game was very interesting. I also received some suggestions such as adding a timer and having the gold chips swing back and forth. These critiques inspired a couple of new ideas that I could work on for future projects.

Though even the smallest mistakes can affect the creation of my games, the end result of fighting through them is extremely rewarding.

This was my first time using a code to activate and run my game and this was also the first time I created a text-based game. Therefore, it was difficult to wrap my head around both concepts. I watched all of Patrick’s tutorials, but I was still frazzled by the infinite things I could do through code. There were so many things I wanted to do in my game, but the extend to what I could actually do was ambiguous and uncertain. I ended up using the last code that Patrick wrote to start writing mine. At first, it seemed pretty simple because I was literally copying a code and just changing the words around. However, I faced this problem that frustrated me for a couple hours.

I would run my game and press A and it would automatically lead me to the end of my game. It did not visit any of the other rooms or let me play the rest of the game. I started to notice that it was letting me go through the rooms really fast. (I realize a lot of us had this problem and Patrick even mentioned how we would fix that aspect of our game.) However, in those frustrating hours, I decided to not just use A and B, but use the rest of the alphabet and that seemed to fix my problem. Later, Patrick told us how we could use getkeydown and getkeyup. The getkeyup concept is still very new to me, but I am excited to use that function in my games in the future.

Creating this game has been a very frustrating experience for me. There were so many images in my mind that I could not execute due to my lack of Unity knowledge. However, the game I ended up creating felt like somewhat of an accomplishment when I watched a classmate play through it.

My game consisted of all of my alter egos, whom I have drawn on paper and on my computer. My game looked like a sketch book or a gallery space where they lived. The most challenging part of creating this game was getting the downloadable 3D objects. I would download 30 models only to find out that 4 actually work for my game. I also had to download the app called Archive Utility in order to unpack the rar files. Sometimes these models came with an entire package which consisted of a background or a floor.

Another challenge I came across was keeping everything organized. I started to misplace my items and importing them in random folders. I had 3 different materials folders, but these folders also held different textures and unresponsive files. This made it especially difficult for me to locate all of the textures I wanted to use in that exact moment. This stalled my process continuously.

For my next project, I want to be more intentional with all of my choices instead of practicing and improvising with what I knew, or what I felt was comfortable.