Tag: Week 1 – M740

Week 1.1 – 3rd September. 2021

Why Start Doing?

I have chose to make a start on the new module 740 with a reading called; Stop Talking, Start Doing Action Book : Practical Tools and Exercises to Give You a Kick in the Pants. This book provides simple methodologies, to put into practice, with an easy to follow guide, to help you note down the absolute essentials, through to your future goals, highlighting key areas that need to be worked on. Diagram below;

I feel the book explains what I already know, but it almost reminds me of where I am in my life, with my own personal goals. It has helped me to revisit my own personal long term dream, and look at ways of building up a strong portfolio of work, creating new connections, and a social media reputation, which will show my development of my creations throughout, the Indie Game Dev Masters Degree.

The long term goal = Storyboard/Environment Artist, Junior Animation role, or just anything to do with Game Art in general.

“You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for people to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” Winnie the Pooh

(Wasmund 2016: 71)
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This quote is perfect, and gave me a “kick in the pants“, to finally create a Twitter account, especially for my Indie Game Dev and animation experiments, and hopefully to start collaborating on a new game project.

Twitter Avatar

Below is a new avatar especially for my Twitter account, never tried attempting a cartoon of me before, but here it is.

Starting and Running a Business

After reading the details for this module, I began my research with an extremely insightful book; “Starting & Running a Business All In One For Dummies“, which has helped me to make a start on the procedures involved.

Market Research

Week 1.2 – 10th – 17th September. 2021

Experimenting with Unreal for the first time…

Yes… Finally I have started tutorials with Unreal, this is key to helping me, to understand a more in depth look at character movement, game tile sets and sizes, adding atmosphere, and to create new assets from scratch. They advise you to choose one of the game learning kits/ templates already created by the Unreal team, to practice with.

Intention

My initial intention was to focus on getting a better understanding of the amazing 3D world. Below you will find all the screen shots of my process I have taken to; place the floor, character, add sky, clouds, and have learn’t the proper way how to make my own grass texture in Photoshop, following a Youtube tutorial…especially for games, as per the video link below.

1st Problem

• Placing the floor – This should have been straight forward, but each time I selected the floor from the content browser, when I placed the floor tile into the new “test level” I had started…It never seemed to be the correct angle, even when I changed the location axis X, Y and Z.
• I was concerned about the viewing angle, as it was completely different to what the tutorial was showing me. I was determined to get it right from the start…as I wanted to try and avoid bad habits arising.

Solution

• To change the floor tile, as this one was also in the content browser “SMkit“, I needed to change to the tile with the extension “floor” on the end. From here it was simple. I could easily duplicate the floor tiles, add the Player Start, make the character touch the floor, and not float in mid air.
• Plus adding atmosphere, like the sky and clouds, and playing with the basic directional lighting.
• I think the best part, was applying my grass “tileable texture“, to the floor, and brightening everything up.

Next Stage of Development

From here the next stage was adding the landscape, sculpting hills, and experimenting with the height map.

Sculpting seems to be a very straight forward process, and very easy to do wrong. (You can get carried away with creating rocky areas, hills that are so steep or just a slope, but if you want a certain look to your landscape you must choose your brush size carefully)

Mini Learning Curve – or should I say bump?

When I first attempted sculpting, the experiment used a medium sized brush, so my hills/ bumps were very small, but when I continued they become a little more angular or pointed, which was the opposite, of what I was trying to achieve. I had to really play around with the size of the brush and the brush fall off.

More Screenshots of Unreal

This was great practice with helping me to start uncovering what Unreal’s Engine can offer. The next stage is looking into learning, Blue Prints and Coding if possible…?

Week 1.3 – 20th September. 2021

The Indie Games Industry

In Lobb’s video presentation, he helps to identify the key aspects of the processes involved when approaching an ‘Indie Game Start up‘.

The 5 main points to focus on are;

1. Find a Gap in the Market for your Product
2. Raise Funding
3. Recruit a Team / or Solo
4. Execute Successfully – (build the game well/ make nice art work/ Assets/ Environments/ Characters etc.)

From the above, finding the gap in the market is my main priority currently, and after joining Twitter and the world of gamers, I know there is a gap for every kind of game out there, it just seems that it all depends on what audience you want to attract? Plus the way you choose to market your product.

This is why I am slowly, but surely, following more and more solo game devs, small team game devs that all work remote, game devs that are both using Unity and Unreal, and of course learning about Blueprints and coding with Unreal, to test myself before I start creating my game.

Indiepocalypse

In Smith’s GDC talk 2016, and other developers discuss how their sales increased, decreased, what it was they were releasing at the time. They all agree that, “there is no Indiepocalypse“, and some really useful points that I feel I could use.

• don’t try and make double the content – and focus on large games, because they sell just as well as the smaller games.
• Make radically different games, give you a better chance of succeeding

In Rohrer’s GDC talk, 2019 he relays, what it is like to make so many games and not make any money from them, to not give up, and reviews how making games today have changed. He explains that you need to focus on failing to improve in making games, and to focus on making what gamers like to play.

He discusses how when “word of mouth” got out and he started to talk to more people and mention the game that he was due to release…This is when game sales for him improved, and compares different types of non indie game sales too.

“Make Unique Situation Generators”

Jonas

Screenshots

trailers

Gifs

Text

Week 1.4 – 23rd September. 2021

Mini Retrospective…

• What needs to be Started?
• What needs to stopped?
• What needs to be developed / continued?

Next Stage – Blue Prints/ Coding

Never before have I attempted coding and the way Unreal’s tutorials work, are just fantastic! As much as I love learning new things, I am putting my self under pressure to learn all the basics I need, ideally to create my own vertical slice, for this module.

I will be working solo and I am enjoying the challenge of practicing with templates from Unreal’s Engine and amending the code as I go.

The real challenge will be applying all what I have learn’t to my own concept art, characters, background/environment, objects, adding the UI design, effects and movement smoothly…

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References

Barrow, C. 2011. Starting and Running a Business All-in-One for Dummies. (2nd ed.) Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

Foddy, B. 2014. Indiecade East 2014: State of the Union. Available at : https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/924/pages/week-1-a-history-of-indie-games?module_item_id=57428 [Accessed 20/09/21]

Wasmund, S. 2016. Stop Talking, Start Doing Action Book : Practical Tools and Exercises to Give You a Kick in the Pants. Available at : https://www.proquest.com/legacydocview/EBC/4406045?accountid=15894. [Accessed 3/09/21]

Lobb, I. 2021. The Indie Games Industry. Available at : https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/924/pages/week-1-lecture-the-indie-games-industry?module_item_id=57427 [Accessed 20/09/21]

Kleon, A. 2012. Steal Like an Artist : 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative New York: Workman Pub. Co.

Smith, R. 2016. What Do We Mean When We Say Indiepocalypse? Available at : https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/924/pages/week-1-understanding-the-indiepocalypse?module_item_id=57429 [Accessed 20/09/21]

Tyroller, J. Jonas Tyroller on Indie Games Development

Practical Law 101 For Indie Developers: Not Scary Edition. 2016. Available at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eAW-7Js7NA [Accessed 21/09/21]

Full List of Figures

Figure 1 : Norton 2021 Twitter Avatar – Adobe Illustrator.