Next gen year 1 week 23

This week was different from others because our class had a mock exam. For this we had 4 days to create a game meeting the criteria of what they wanted in a game. For this they wanted a space slingshot type game where you are timed as you fly around planets. Luckily it was an open book exam meaning i had resources to aid me in this difficult task.

Within the first day i had successfully made a spaceship avatar which could be launched from a hook that acted like a slingshot. This was down to the player controller script which had been given to everyone before hand and also made a working propulsion system where pressing a key would boost the player.

On the Wednesday of that week i began to work on the planets which were the obstacles within the game. For that i downloaded some from the asset store and gave them all colliers. In addition to that i also wrote out a script that would give the planets gravity. For this i would then need to adjust the planets and remove the in software gravity. This resulted in my product consisting of  a rocket which could be sucked into planets or use the gravity to arc itself around the planets.

The day afterwards was the most treacherous experience imaginable that left me frustrated beyond belief. This was down to Unity just being lousy as it would crash and wipe what i'd made regardless of whether or not i had saved it. This then meant that my last day was all i had to make the game.

The last day i had managed to put my game back to its state before all of the heavy errors. After that i created a timer but used milliseconds as its measurement. I then spent the remainder of the day creating text so if you collided with a planet you would get a game over screen and colliding with a finishing line would give you a winning screen.

Ultimately i fell short of what was expected by the criteria as i was missing out on a best time leader board which i couldn't find any working  example to refer to whilst creating it. Whilst i am melancholy that i have most likely failed and whilst it is a mock i am nervous for the future. Despite this i do not see myself at fault as Unity crashed 20 times within that week and wiped my game twice therefore i have done all i can possibly to make the game.

Next gen year 1 week 22

In this week we continued in our VFX project. For this i needed to adjust the colours and saturation in each shot. I found this to be an easy process within the software and as a result it was enjoyable. Despite this though  it showed to be a time consuming process but for that day i did it. The day after i had to render out all of the shots into image sequences and i would've been done with editing on Adobe premier. However the last shot took too long and due to that i will have to come back to it at a later point. The next editing software in which i am currently using for this is Nuke. For this process i had to use the shot of someone holding a phone. For this i placed a tracker at the corner of the phone screen and it would try to follow the same position across all shots. The first tracker didn't go too well and i had to place each frame with the tracker individually. From there i placed 3 more trackers at each of the corners of the phone. These ones went dandy meaning i could leave them where they were and that is how i finished of the lessons of that week for the VFX project.

Next gen year 1 week 21

Hello blog

In the previous week we looked more into the players and categorizing them with specific genres developing our knowledge more to set us up for the following blog post. We also looked into specific statistics about the market which could help us out further down the line.

Later that day we proceeded on wards with our VFX project by filming the scenes needed. For this i play an extra who just runs away. Shooting it was a tedious process as we had to re do the same shot multiple times in weather conditions which weren't the best. Ultimately we got the shots required and after that I participated in taking a picture of a distortion grid to use for future purposes.

The next day we began editing the shots we had taken on premier pro. For this we edited the video by cutting time out from each time solely getting what we need. After this i took the time to re do the stop motion animation group work. For this we breezed through as it wasn't to difficult of a process just a rather time consuming one.