Learning 101

I've recently been in a learning mood; I always like learning new things and I've recently found a few new ways of doing it and reasons to do it too.

I've been trying to Get together a game design for dare to be digital for instance; its getting closer to its conclusion now but if we get through to further stages, it will probably need some knowledge of some of the newer parts of the Unity engine such as 2D artwork/games, aniamtion and animation states. I've been trawling through the internet collecting research and knowledge on the matter and I'l hopefully soon be able to put it all into action.

Additionally I've also found the section of Youtube which is what I would call.... 'Informative entertainment' which mostly involves you-tubers playing parts of a game and sort of reviewing it in a non formal way, or giving their first impressions. I like it because it's usually entertaining (of course). I also don't have to get the games working or spend the time playing them (because they are mostly highlights) and at the same time get to broaden the knowledge of the games that are out there. One of the best up-sides of this is that I also get to easily view what a player (who often doesn't know anything about the game or its theme/mechanics/play style) reacts to what they are given by the designer (often to horrific consequences). One of the most important lessons from my university course was to design games, as if the person who is playing them has no knowledge of gaming at all (which admittedly is a hard thing to do) but with this part of Youtube, I get to learn by other designers mistakes, and what a game player (rather than designer) would have preferred it to be like and why.

A Series Of Unfortunate...?

I very recently finished reading 'A series of unfortunate events' by lemony snicket; and when I say 'reading' I mean listening to audio books. It turns out it's much more convenient. I like actually reading; but laying in the dark with my eyes closed listening while trying to sleep is more relaxing, and doesn't cause arm ache from holding a book for hours. Audio books can also be horrible depending on who's reading them, and luckily in this case, everything was much more entertaining as Tim Curry was reading them!

There are 13 books in the series, and there are 13 chapters to each book (14 on the last one). The chapters being read are on average 25 to to 30 minutes long (a few being up to an hour). So it's quite easy to comprehend how long it has taken me at the pace of several hours listening every night or so!

You may be thinking "what's he doing reading children's book series?". Don't worry, I can read adult books, I'm not a dummy; but for some entertainment, book series such as these are always a go-to. They may not be the best stories in the world, but they are simple, effective, and perfect for something you can enjoy but not concentrate fully on. Also they are usually written for the imagination of children, which is a nice thing to try and hold on to.

I got drawn to the series after I enjoyed the movie (of the same name) and shortly realised there was not going to be a sequel, so I turned to the books. I soon found out the movie is actually a mixture of the first few books (stylized  and adapted). For that reason the first few books were (sort of) spoiled, but at the same time I was very interested in the many differences between them all.

For those of you who don't know; the basis of the story is that a set of three children become orphans which sparks off a series of less-than-optimal situations for the children which are narrated by lemony snicket (a pen-name and also a character in the story who is documenting the story of the orphans). The basis of the story is the children trying to survive great threats and solve the questions related to their predicament (in which creates a trail of  more questions).

Without giving too many spoilers; Because of all of this there ends up being a sort of philosophical/ moral base to the story which is never particularly revealed, and there seems to be many further linked tales which are just left untouched or thrown by the wayside. Its a very unusual style, which I think adds to the theme of the books, but it does cause many questions to arise, which is why I'll probably spend some time on related wikis trying to deduce/ find out more about some of them.

It'll also mean I'll probably do a blog post or so about what I find, and a sort-of review, It might also inspire me to write something on some of the other (probably children) books I've read.

Cakes For All Occasions! Part TWO

Yes, its time for another tasty installation of Sean-Cakes; A little smaller this time.

After the problems with the previously noted mushroom cake, we decided the icing we were using may not be the best for what we were trying to do, so we trawled through the internet for different types of icing and their properties and had a go at one. If I remember rightly, the icing recipe we found was american, and because of that everything needed converting, and substituting if some things weren't available in the UK. In the end we had something that resembled icing, but  we found when using it that it had some undesirable properties; Like getting hard really quick, gaining a crust and not being quite as tasty as the others, but it was a lot easier to work with with the liquid-like colours that we had so much problems with before. Because of the consistency we decided to do a bit of sculpting. I assume the "Dragon-trainer Lulu" skin from league of legends was recently released, because we decided to have a go at making one of her dragons out of icing, as seen below.

I wasw really pleased with what we had made, it was miles above our mushroom, and yet it only needed toothpicks for the wings to hold them up, which is understandable. we got a pretty good likeness too I think, Possibly the cracking of the icing gave it a more "scaly" look.

Our next cake was made short after... I believe left-over icing and enthusiasm from cake success was probably why; It also ended up being a League of Legends themed cake; In particular, a Shark-themed cake.

 

One of the differences this time was that Ross had gotten proper Icing colours for his birthday, which meant they were much better suited than previously, making the icing much easier to work with. Of course We'd also learnt a lot of stuff along the way. Though quite fiddly, and hard to get the right shape in general, I'm really pleased with how it went, and it was fun too. Just as a note, the purple colour of the shark was actually supposed to be a black, But I assume we didn't use enough, but it worked out OK anyway!

This cake was just a small side-project for my brothers birthday, it wasn't anything particularly fancy, or complicated, but it was simple, tasty and effective, and pleasing tot he eye; and that's why I liked it.

This cake was actually our families Christmas cake last year which I got my hands on. I teamed up with my mother who has spent much more time in the kitchen than me, and we ended up with this design (it wasn't particularly planned), but we managed to give each of the snowmen a different personality, so that counts for something... right? 

The final piece (for now) was baked for Ross' Fathers birthday; We did get the idea from the internet, but made it our own as best as we could; it included marzipan, name badge and chocolate buttons. I think the simplicity of this design added to its effectiveness, and of course, it was very tasty. Trying to get the collar to stay upright and not crack was a problem-solving task in itself though!

And... i think that concludes The cake post, Not forever, but for now.

Hope you enjoyed, sorry for making you hungry!

Cakes For All Occasions! Part ONE

I'm going to admit, I have no idea how my friend and I got into making cakes; I assume it just started out (like many other times) as a joke or a simple idea which escalated dramatically reasonably quickly.

All I remember is that the two cakes below were some of the first ones we made. My parents made an interesting point the other day; That I can't draw pretty much anything more than stick figures, but things like these I seem to do quite well with. Decorating cakes, I suppose, is just a natural progression from carving pumpkins.

The cake to the Left is a Cake-rendition of the league of legends logo, If I remember rightly we just made a simple jam-Victoria sponge and iced a circle on top. It was for our friends birthday since we all played quite a lot of LoL at the time. it turned out quite well considering we had no idea what we were doing; main problems were the thickness of the icing (must have been nearly an inch thick in some places) and the fact it was just the top.

The cake to the right was a chocolate cake, I don't think we had any occasion to make it for, we just had some free time and quite enjoyed making the one before it. It was around the time Portal 2 came out, so we put 2 and 2 together and came up with a Portal Cube cake.This was MUCH harder than the last one we did because of the layering of the pieces, not only were there different, more complicated shapes, but also the layers of the portal cube meant we had to layer everything in the right order to get the bumps in the right places without it dipping and bending the layers on top. for instance the blue parts are strips, and there are invisible blue squares to hold up the rest of the cake in the corners.

I can't remember if there was an occasion for the above cake or not, I assume there wasn't. We did a bit more experimenting this time though, instead of baking a cake from scratch, we bought one of those packet mixes; it was red velvet chocolate which was great. We also made our own peppermint butter icing, which was also delicious. As for the icing, I think we tried to draw around things as much as possible so that everything was reasonably even. we made everything a bit modular as well, such as the feathers. It worked out a lot better and cleaner than we expected. We still didn't understand the concept or how to ice cakes down the side as well as on top, it seemed a little beyond our capabilities really.

This cake was delicious. I mean it's personal preference, but I personally love lemon curd/lemon, so this was amazing. I think we also added in lemon to the icing as well. I'm not sure what brought around Spongebob, I think we were just trying to find something yellow to go with the cake, but I'm not sure. I think we might of iced the whole cake on this one; I really liked the outcome, the nose was very hard to get right.. but we did the best we could. I think we did quite well with the colours of this one as well, becouse at this stage we were still using regular food colouring in red yellow and blue, which meant if we wanted a colour which wasn't one of those three we had to do a lot of mixing to try and get a colour we wanted, such as the red mouth which had black mixed with it.

This monstrosity was a step too far out of our comfort zone; it didn't turn out too badly, but it wasn't the best we've done. This was actually supposed to be a mushroom from league of legends. This was also our first attempt at carving a cake too. We decided we needed a more dense cake to carve, so we went with a fruit cake. The problem we found with the fruit cake is that it was really heavy, I mean heaviness comes with density but it was just a bit too heavy. the base was a spicy fruit cake which was delicious but after a while it just squashed and became almost nothing underneath the weight of the top part of the cake. Another problem we had with this cake was the icing, we were relativity new to icing but our job wasn't made any easier by the colours we were using; you have to use a lot of colouring with the icing to get the colour you need, which makes the icing wet and nasty to work with. we ended up using a lot of toothpicks to keep everything in place and it just felt a bit like we had failed and were cheating.

I like baking and decorating cakes, even without an occasion; its always a challenge and almost always results in us learning something. It's great doing it with a friend because each person can fit different parts of the puzzle and abuse each-other about mistakes and all sorts. Another bonus is of course, being able to eat delicious cakes.

Stay tuned for more cakes!

Game-Preserves: Philosophical Flavour

This is the last in the series (so far) on games jams I've been to; The most recent being The Global Games Jam 2014.

I took part in the global games jam at UCS. This time I enlisted the help of Rob, who I know, but haven't worked with much. It was an unusual games jam, but I enjoyed it all the same. The games jam started at around 5-6 on the Friday; we set ourselves up, had a few talks and talked with others. Shortly after we got given the theme, which was one of the many unusual parts of the games jam;

'We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are'

The quote as I later found out later is from an american author called Anaïs Nin. I know many people were completely thrown by the theme because usually people taking part are given a one-word theme like "mountains" or "heartbeat" to work from. I'm not sure what the thought process behind it was, but from what i saw there were several reactions;

• People not being able to make head not tail of it.
• People severely limiting their time and options by trying to come up with an idea which fit the quote entirely, or near entirely.
• People taking key parts from one or another part of the quote.

I think the great thing about the single word themes means everybody can understand and interpret it, and people can interpret it in MANY different ways, and some of the great things in a games jam is listening to somebody justify their reasoning for a game idea which you can't fathom fits with a single word theme. Just imagine having the word "set" as a theme; there are nearly 400 definitions of set.

Anyway, The quote led to most people coming up with something which encapsulates the first part of the quote; "things not being as they seem", Perspective, views, illusions and other such things. We came up with many ideas, some which were very close to the theme, and some which were completely random; the first one we took a liking to was what I can only describe as a "painted room illusion" and show a picture of an example;

The idea was finding clues by looking at designs from a certain view (which reveals them). We came up with lots of settings to use such a mechanic, I liked an art gallery setting for instance, like an inspector or spy game sort of thing, but we chose an alternate theme of graveyard/exorcist type thing instead. We got quite a bit done with the game, and we sort-of got it working, but one of the main problems we just couldn't solve was that the projectors (which we were using to project the images) did not stop after they had projected onto one surface, they went straight through everything, which meant the map was just a mess of lines which had leaked through form other places. technically we could have designed it so that the designs were straight on the geometry, but it would mean we had no leeway for changes and it would take forever to line up in 3DS max. (If anyone actually has a Unity 3D projector script/shader which is blocked by geometry, let me know!)
Anyway, because our time was limited we decided to scrap the idea, and try another (this was at 5 AM on the Sunday). Our second idea was a branch of our original idea which we didn't previously take which was using lens type things to change what you can see. It was an idea originating from many sources, but it instantly reminded me of the eyepiece in the Spiderwick chronicles, or the goggles in the movie Epic.

The concept was to have lenses which only showed items or objects of that colour, so in order to "see things as they actually were", you had to switch between the lenses of the goggles. Because of the lack of time, we came up with a simple platform game demonstrating the concept, with different coloured platforms which different lenses, if you weren't wearing the lens of the right colour, you couldn't see the platform. The mechanic by itself was simple, but the ideas  and possibilities that arose from it were huge

• If you didn't have a "any colour" tile in the middle of two platforms, you had to switch colour in mid-air to stop yourself falling to your death when you switch lenses, which was a mechanic in itself.
• If you had different colour platforms next to each-other, you have to remember the colour order so you can switch to the right colour (because you can't switch to check or you will fall)
• You would be feasible do lens combinations, e.g. a blue and red lens could allow purple to be seen
• Possible to create a new era of maze games, platform games or escape/collect/explore puzzles.
• We had the lenses on a Rotary arm, instead of button for each colour, this meant you could judge which colours were next and the order, so you could switch to them by memory and pattern.

The game still in its state of when we deemed it as playable can be found HERE

The global games jam at UCS was a very strange experience, It wasn't for most people I assume, but here are just a few reasons it was unusual;

• It was a bit like a camping trip, where you make games; I had sleeping bag and everything (I think I was one of the few who didn't live in or around Ipswich, so most people just went home every night instead of staying)
• My parents came; there was an open evening on the Saturday, which meant my parents just showed up, and after not sleeping for a whole weekend I'm not sure what they thought. I still don't think they completely understand games though.
• My team-mate had a job, in a pub, so he had to work from 6 pm to 12 midnight on two of the days we were there; I didn't mind, as we still managed to contact and develop the games, it was just.. different.
• I spent a lot of the time (especially when my team-mate was at work) going around helping others code or solve problems in their games; People would usually say that I would have better spent my time working on my own game, but I find solving other people's problems usually means you are prepared for your own when they arise, and.... I was being helpful.
• Just after 5AM on the Sunday after what must have been nearly 50 hours of not sleeping, My body gave up... I don't mean I just dropped instantly to sleep; something more scary happened... and it was very hard to explain. Basically I sat in my chair for around 45 minutes, awake... but feeling like nothing was real. I wasn't particularly aware of my surroundings, and everything was a bit like being underwater. I'm pretty sure living off the huge amount of snacks provided hadn't helped. After then i took a nap every 30 mins or so underneath the desk, just to rest... though by that time I'm pretty sure it was a bit late.

And so that concludes my games jams so far; A set of fun but sleepless events with new experiences, learning and of course, games design.

Game-Preserves: Watered-Down Brain Flavour

I thought I'd might as well carry on with my games-jam ramblings, The second one being a games jam organised by "The Walking Dead".
 The Walking Dead games jam was very different from the last, I think the only rules were "Do it in within two weeks" and "Use unity 3D". I worked with Ross in a team of two and we just sat in our bedrooms and worked for large parts of the days over the two weeks, talking over Skype, Brainstorming and getting work done. I think the theme was "apocalypse" or "apocalyptic" or something along those lines, and we spent the first day or so coming up with ideas and knocking out quick proofs-of concepts if we saw fit.

We decided at the start that most people would probably do some form of hardcore third-person Zombie survival game, so we set out to make our ideas a little different. A couple of days before I was trawling the documentation for the new unity particles, and found an interesting (and reasonably new) section which enabled collision of particles with objects, and collision detection. we had a little think and eventually decided on using the particles as a fire-hose type thing, and used it in a proof of concept; it was a nice effect (even though it was a little crude) and we fell in love. We developed the idea a little further and thought about doing a game a little like the water-hose games at carnivals.

The idea was to take a comical approach to the zombie apocalypse game; where you are supposed to be in training for a zombie apocalypse by dousing  and knocking over cardboard cut-outs of zombies with a fire hose before they overwhelm you. We chose this idea for many reasons.

• We thought it was hilarious, interesting and fun.
• As well as being a reasonably simple idea, it had the ability to expand and evolve after the base mechanics were in.
• Our team didn't comprise of any amazing or fast 3D modellers; this meant cardboard cut-outs were within our ability range, and wouldn't look out of place.
• Everybody can understand what's happening and what to do.
• A variable stream of water is very different to how bullets and other weapons usually work.

We soon got up a proof of concept and the base mechanic in; we tweaked with the feel of the controls and copy and pasted a few zombies around and it worked really quite well; We did however decide that it would get very repetitive and boring very quickly, so we had to find a way of changing things around a bit.

It was hard to think of things to add depth to the game, while under time pressures, without spending days modelling or coding new mechanics or levels into the game. At this time we also noticed that although quite different our game had some similarities with a Thrillville mini-game; you shoot targets, But if you get groups of targets in quick succession new targets come up and you get combos and so-on.

At the same time, somehow, we were also talking about pop culture related material; I think Wreckingball was recently released and we were just talking about random things on the Internet. We ended up combining the two and made some pop culture-themed combo event zombies.

We ended up with;

• A crane with multiple targets, which when all hit made a half-naked Miley Cyrus zombie swing in on a wrecking-ball
• A mausoleum (based from the mausoleum in John Carter) which had bats fly out of it and the batman soundtrack play
• A billboard that got destroyed by wreck-it ralph zombie

We would have put in more but we ran out of time.

A release of the game is HERE

I think it was a good game; there are several things I might have changed and improved;

• Make the combo targets and events more clear and appear different from the others.
• Make the game more like an arcade game (forgot the genre), those ones where you kill enemies and can duck,  and after clearing the area you move around the level to a different part and so on.
• Link the game a little better with the theme, or somehow emphasise it.
• Perhaps upgrades, or multipliers
•  Different zombie types ( I dunno; e.g. you have to concentrate a water jet on it for a set amount of time)
• More hidden secrets (there is actually already one, which nobody has found because of the lack of emphasis on targetable areas, in which you soak all of the lights in the level, the moon glows red and all of the zombies dance to the sound of thriller).

I enjoyed this games jam, it was different; it would have been a lot harder to do such a thing in that amount of time if I hadn't worked with Ross before. I think two weeks for a games jam is very sketchy, because you get to the point where you're thinking " I've actually spent  considerable amount of time developing this", which isn't necessarily a great thing. We mad a pretty polished game in that amount of time though.

Game-Preserves: Brain Flavour

Over the past year or so I have been a part of a number of Games Jams, So I thought I would cover them in reasonably short bursts. Obviously the best way to do such things is chronologically.

My first games jam (EVER!) was actually Brains Eden 2013; Which, to be honest, is a pretty big place to start for games jams. I think I stumbled my way into BE because somebody couldn't actually make it (I'm sure the skills I possess had a part to play too though). It was an exciting opportunity to make games, which is always great, but it was a little daunting due to A. going a considerable distance away for a while, a completely new experience, and B. having a large team relying on on me. It would have been a hard decision to make in my old "Oh no! New things!" Mindset, if it were not for the fabulous offer of  free accommodation, meals and snacks that came with it (I lie, I like making games too much to turn such a thing down).

Anyway, we got there (good start), unpacked and got free goodies, the first day was mainly intros and there were several talks from some of the sponsors. The talk attended was all about the design pipeline for creating levels for Killzone Mercenary and other such Sony games, which was very interesting and informative, but very drawn out. I suddenly realised half way through the (three or four hour) session that only one of the several employees attending had taken their turn speaking. I got to that awkward stage where I was asking myself "Does my face say 'creepy' or 'too interested', I'm trying to pay so much attention here, for so long; I mean this isn't boring but I'm pretty sure this much detail was not required."

I think there were many factors contributing to this feeling, most of them being me; I mean, I was uncomfortable after sitting on a train forever, and then sitting in that room for a little longer. It was also hot after a while from all of those people in there. This new place I was in was also exiting, and I was confined to a room. I hate to say it, but the knowledge I gained about level design in the talk was far outweighed by what I had already learnt from university (which is a good plus to university). Also linked to this was the teachings of Sony programs, plugins, and scripts; interesting, but I had this aching which seemed to centre around "This is good, but unless a miracle happens, I'm not going to get anywhere near this software, to use it or see it work...". I was almost wishing somebody would give me Sony software to let me explore. It was very "look at us and our amazing new game".

The next day brought breakfast and the theme: "Mountains". For some reason, mountains seemed very restrictive at the time; Many reasons, trying to incorporate everyone's ideas, trying to come up with something reasonably original, trying to figure out ways of doing things in the time limit, with the resources we had. and of course, we were excited. Because of all of these reasons we seemed to overlook the game design part of the exercise more than we usually would and instead concentrated on the making part (I think this is the main conclusion I've arrived at from post evaluation). Our final idea was some form of 2D game in which the player has to climb up a mountain using timing/rhythm to get the most out of their input. You can actually play it HERE.

I have learnt many things from this endeavour. From what I've observed, my other team members do not seem to look back at the experience in a positive light. I, however, am very impressed with what we achieved, and I look at it more fondly from the experience, and the things I've learnt;

• Timing, Music and syncing music in flash is near to impossible, but we improvised and  got some form of connection between music and game.
• Having your own en-suite room is cool, even if you don't sleep a wink in it for.. like 52 hours.
• Even if you haven't coded in a language for several months and can't remember anything, it comes back you you within 6 hours or so.
• Don't try implementing Box2D flash, even if you've been using it for a while.
• You can still solve impossible problems you never thought you could, like a wizard, to everyone amazement, in a boiling hot kitchen after 50 hours of not sleeping, after too many energy drinks while dripping with sweat and watching the sun set and rise out of the window.
• Getting a basic gist of a game idea is not good enough; a while should be spent nailing down everything in the design so it is easier to code, create artwork for and so no parts get overlooked (we had a reasonable idea, but no focus on specific integral mechanics, so game-play was a bit of a mish-mash of the mechanics which we managed to figure out, but didn't necessarily pin down what our game was about well enough)

One of the most memorable parts of the experience however, was coming down to breakfast on the last day, walking down the corridor and realising the smell, and how the carpet had a trail of faecal matter where somebody's body had clearly objected to the huge amounts of energy drinks consumed by some attendees, the spicy meals provided, Snacks, and lack of sleep/nights out in the city.I can't tell whether I see it as a sign of determination or stupidity of that person.

Such a long post, hope you enjoyed reading the adventures of Sean.