Busy, busy, busy

Well, I've finally realized just how busy Term 2 can be, and I'm not even half way done yet.  Currently our biggest assignment is a Flash game.  This is a project we do in groups of five people, and we have six weeks to create a fully functional Flash game that you would find on the internet.  We're all given specific roles, of which I am the Designer - which entails level design, the interface (menus), how the game and upgrades should work and so on.  It's quite the experience so far, and although there is plenty of work still to do on it, the project is quite enjoyable and I'm excited for the final results.

I've been working on an assignment in a program called Unreal Development Kit (UDK) which is used to create many video games.  We needed to create two rooms and decorate them with Static Meshes and Materials - I love it.  The creativity aspects of it, and the sense of accomplishment as the rooms are being created, is just awesome!

The picture above shows what I've been doing for the assignment so far, as there is more to it than what can just be seen from the picture, it's taken many hours.  Remember I didn't make, or model any of the objects on screen, I just laid out the foundations for the rooms and then inserted, moved, and scaled objects together.

Vancouver life is much different from what I'm used too, especially on late nights.  I usually always hear someone yelling at another person, or some sort of chaos taking place - I guess that's expected while going to school a block away from East Hastings and Maine Street.  With this in mind I will never pull out my phone, or listen to my iPod while I'm in that area of town to reduce the chance of getting mugged - better be safe than sorry.  On the brighter note, McDonald's gave free coffee out for all of last week, I took advantage of that and had about ten cups within three days - quite enjoyable.  

An odd sighting; across our street there is a store, or room (I'm not to sure), with windows and a clear glass door leading into it, but for some odd reason there used to be about a hundred pink balloons filling the entire room up to the roof.  It's the strangest thing and made me laugh every time I saw it, but unfortunately the balloons are gone now - they were in the store for a couple of months though.  Whether they were trying to hide something, or just trying to attract attention, it was pretty sweet. 

School in Chinatown really can be weird sometimes... but a good weird.

So that's a quick little update in the life of Andrew, I hope that you, whoever may be reading this, are doing fantastic!

Thanks for reading :)

Term One Finished!

Term one of Game Design... completed!  Plenty has happened, including being nicknamed Pepper for no particular reason, and increasing my McDonald's diet to something that it definitely shouldn't be.  Classes vary in length, some days start at 9AM and go until 9:30 PM, with breaks in between of course, and others will be a simple day from 1-4 PM.  The worst part is the one and a half-hour commute I have to get from White Rock, to our campus located along East Pender street by the entrance of China Town.  But in that time, on the last bus ride home in term one actually, I completed The King of Torts by John Grisham.  It was a great book that I started a few weeks ago and made the commute much more enjoyable.

Each class is three hours in length, and sometimes they feel like they lasts forever.  Term one has been long, stressful, fun, and ever so difficult.  Needing to sleep on the school couches overnight, and working around the clock due to the workload is not an irregular sight, nor is it fun.  It's been extremely overwhelming, but the things I am learning is like nothing I have before.  So what did I do in term one...

Level Design - As a level designer you determine what the player sees, feels, and hears in the game.  We had two large assignments in Level Design - the first of which was to create a 2D level for Super Metroid, and the second was to make a 3D Deathmatch level for a First-Person-Shooter called Unreal Tournament.  The process was similar for both, it started by laying out a basic foundation for the maps by drawing squares and circles on a piece of paper, and then translating those into photoshop, and then again into a program called Google SketchUp.  It was a long process for both assignments, and at times I wanted throw my computer out the window, but I managed and produced some results that I was proud of.

(Above is a picture showing the 2D layout and a simple side-view of my 3D deathmatch level)

(My Super Metroid map)

Storytelling - This was probably one of my favourite courses of term one because I love story and writing.  The course focused on the story aspects in video games, and movies.  Learning about the Hero's Journey was extremely intriguing, it's the structure that is found in almost every story and consists of twelve crucial steps that follows each stage in a story.  Our final assignment was to break down the Hero's Journey in a movie, and then explain how it would work within a video game -I chose Gladiator, one of my favourites, and the presentation went extremely well.

Visual Design Principles -  In Visual Design we learned many basic, and advanced techniques in Photoshop.  Learning about different types of brushes, masks, filters, layering effects, animation and so much more - it was a very valuable course.  One of our assignments was to make box art for a video game that the teacher made up, naming it Grandma Theft Auto Wheelchair.  Very random and humorous, but it was an enjoyable project.

(Above is my Grandma Theft Auto Wheelchair Box Art, nothing special, but every picture used had to be altered at least 75% in some way.)

Pre-Production - This course was solely focused on the Pre-Production phase of creating a video game.  It's the most important/ crucial step for any video game, or movie for that matter, because it is the time when you figure out what the final product will look like and what you are aiming to do.  In a nutshell, it's the planning process for however long the development cycle will be for the game being created - what is going to be done throughout that time?  What should be included in the game?  What shouldn't?  How will your team be time effective?  What will your game be about?  What will it look like?  All questions should be answered in Pre-Production.  

In Pre-Production we needed to present a game in groups of three and explain what our game will look, and play like.  The final presentation was done in front of about 70 people, consisting of classmates, instructors, and alumni working in the industry.  It went better than expected, and afterwards our group received some great feedback.  Unfortunately I cant share our game idea, which happens to be an application for iPhones and Smartphones, because I don't want anyone to steal it for I plan on creating it myself in the future.

Game Theory (Analog and Pratical) - This course was solely revolved around analog games (board games, card games etc.)  In this course we studied many, and played many, analog games to show basic gameplay principles in a non-digital way.  A very fun, and interesting course where we had to actually create our own board game.  This was a lengthy project and was worked on all throughout term one.  We started by coming up with 25 - 50 board game ideas in which I ended up choosing a game I called King of the Pond: A two player board game where each player controls a small army of battle frogs and must gain possession of all three lily pads in the center of the board in order to win.  It's an extremely strategic game that plays like Chess or Checkers, but has a unique theme and game mechanics, such as the ability to leapfrog.

(Above is the layout of the board that I did in Photoshop)

(This is the actual board with frog pieces that I painted.  I brought the inital board layout done in Photoshop to Staples where they printed a Glossy poster image of it (37x50 cm's).  I then used glue to put it onto a game board that I scrapped from a game I already owned - It now looks like a real board game with pieces.)

Cinematics/ Storyboard - Most video games have cinematics that tell a story, or show an action sequence that the player doesn't control.  This course studied the technical aspects that are found in movies such as lighting, filming, mise-en-scene, the 180 degree rule, blocking etc. and how they can be applied to video game cinematics.  In addition, we learned how to do draw storyboards, basically putting a cinematic onto paper in a way that's understandable and gets the vision across.  We had to present these at the end of the course and everything was hand drawn by ourselves, mine was... rough around the edges, if i could put it nicely. 

Programming - Quite self explanatory, but in this course we learned the basics in how to code using C#, which is a coding language.  Probably the hardest course in Term One because it's like learning a brand new language.  Coding is a giant block of text, sort of like this blog post actually, but in a language that that seems alien unless you know what you're doing, and each line runs a specific function.  We had to create a text based dice game, a Pet Sims game, and then a final project with a group of four people.  In the final project I was in charge of doing the level design and story of the game.  I did over eight pages of straight story and explanation of each room the player can enter.  Since it's a text based game with no visuals, the player must enter North, South, West, or East to navigate around the game - It was a very interesting experience.  Coding is extremely useful to know though, especially if I want to pursue creating Applications for iPhones, iPads, and Smartphones.

(Creating a text based game with many different places the player can go is very confusing.  I needed to create a layout of the map in Photoshop so I knew what was going on, and it helped the rest of the team when we got down to creating the game)

Game Production - This course teaches, in great detail, everything there is needed to know about the basic steps of the game creation journey, and the many different roles there are in the game industry.  Consisting of two tests throughout the course, we learned about the roles of a producer, senior producer, project manager, artist, programmer, game designer, audio lead, programming lead, and many more.  Game Production teaches the long development process of any game, and makes it very clear that the amount of work, time, and effort that goes into creating a game is huge - it's no stroll in the park.

So that is everything that I've encountered throughout term one, besides the experiences of going to school in East Vancouver that is, but that will be saved for another time.

One additional detail, I love spending the day at school in my comfy slippers while sipping on some hot tea or coffee - probably the only thing that keeps me sane throughout the extremely stressful days.  But jokes aside, its been a great time and tomorrow I start term two which is said to be the hardest of all six terms, but I'm ready for the challenge!  I will post more frequently and update my venture throughout my time in the Game Design program at VFS.

Thanks for reading,
Andrew