During a white elephant gift exchange I was able to get my hands on a pair of cheap phone-based VR goggles. Don't get me wrong these weren't anything fancy; mostly just a plastic covering with glass lenses. Still, I was excited to explore what I could do now and set our to find what the internet had to offer in terms of free VR experiences.
What I found online was a little demoralizing. Most "VR" videos were either a normal video configured to be seen with VR goggles (in other words no moving your head to look around) or used the phone's gyroscope but lacked the ability to be seen through the VR goggles. The simple lack of material that provided both was sad. This was the greatest weakness I found in the goggles. There simply aren't enough free websites offering interactive experiences. After this, I turned to apps. Here I found much more of what I was looking for. Due to google cardboard there were already many apps out that had the same format for viewing as my goggles used. There was a problem though. I couldn't touch the screen at all while viewing a video or game. This meant that games were nearly unplayable and it took a lot of time to stop and start videos. This meant that while I could use some apps to there full capacity, (such as one in which I just got to sit on one, never changing, spot on the moon) for many others I had to compromise my experience for the practical issues I had to endure. All was not lost however, Eventually I stumbled upon the discovery channel VR app. In this app I could watch documentaries in my goggles in the right format. Not only that, but they also had included a unique way to stop and start videos by using a look and go UI system. Overall while the goggles don't have as much support as I'd initially hoped, they were still fun to use and mess around with. Beyond that there is a lot of room to grow in this field and I look forward to what developments will happen in the future for VR.
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This week for my blog post I've decided to do something a bit different. Instead of focusing on something that specifically happened in class I want to address an ethics issue that has once again come to the forefront of the pubic eye: gun violence and video games. This past week a deadly shooting occurred at a Florida school killing 17. This has rekindled a debate in the video game world about violent behavior and how certain games may play a catalyst role in encouraging it.
Many studies have been conducted on both sides of this debate with a wide array of results. Some studies seem to prove a strong correlation between games and aggressive behavior while other studies fail to find any connection. Individual studies tend to show that video games do have an effect. Children who play more violent games tend to display more aggressive behavior. However, in society as a whole, even as more graphic and violent games are coming out than ever before, researchers haven't seen any statistically significant rise in crime or aggression. And so on the debate goes. Not everyone both sides of the evidence. In light of last weeks shooting, Kentucky governor Matt Bevin has gone as far as to directly link the virtual bullets of games to the very real bullets that were shot in Florida. This seems like a very extreme reaction to me. Video games simply haven't been proven to have that deep of a behavioral effect on people. This is a touchy subject for many people but as of right now I feel, while violent games should be studied further and adjusted to try and prevent any such issues arising in the future, games cannot be used as a sole scapegoat whenever something horrific happens unexpectedly. Last year for my final project I made and infinite running game named "Bleed Out!". This game was made entirely on my own without anything except sounds being taken off of the asset store. While this game was a pretty good first attempt there are some things that I definitely could have changed to make it better. In this blog post I plan to go back over Bleed Out! and discuss the successes, failures, and challenges that came with making my first game.
First off, this game is NOT user friendly. Without me behind the player directing them to the controls a new player would have a hard time discovering the rules of the game. Some of the controls are intuitive but still a small tutorial phase surely wouldn't hurt to make sure players can start playing and exploring the limits of the game ASAP. This could be solved with a quick title screen when the player boots up the game. This would be quick solution which I could add in maybe about the time it would take me to create the title page in Photoshop and would give the game a more professional feel. Beyond this main shortcoming the game has many graphic and mechanic glitches that aren't very noticeable but could be solved. This would require more work going back and looking at my code to make sure it's economical and not causing any errors. Using Debug.Log to find where the problems are would be the quickest way to go about this process and then using google to find answers whenever a problem comes up. All in all though the game I made is pretty fun (at least to me). I used my own creativity to come up with a custom double jump code as well as a special invincibility skill for the player to use. These successes truly make the game fun to play and I could see myself actually playing the game a bit in my free time. It lacks a professional feel but that is to be expected for an independent game from a first time maker. I can work on getting things cleaner in the future and making games that are even better. -What's Bleed Out! -What went right? -What went wrong? This past week of Game Design we left the realm of videos and moved back into the world of 3D modeling. If you've read my past blog posts you probably have some idea of how I felt to be back in 3ds Max. Max and I have a sort of love hate history. At one end I love learning techniques in 3d and the fact that I can make 3d animations is insanely cool. On the other hand our computers at school don't exactly have the graphics cards for 3d rendering and so making anything in 3ds Max requires patience and a lot of restarting the program. Needless to say I was not looking forward to diving back into 3d this year and I've been dreading this unit ever since it showed up in Schoology.
However, I've been surprised. So far what we've done in 3d has actually not been the hell I remember it as. Last year, I often followed tutorials listlessly trying to fix my model on screen to look like the one in the tutorial, which despite me copying all the steps correctly had coming at looking beautiful while mine was... more interesting. This year I feel like I'm starting to get a hang on the principles behind 3d modeling. Part of this is due to the tutorials not only being much better than the ones we used in the past, but also these tutorials are made in a more up to date version of 3ds Max meaning there's much less guesswork that goes into copying them. This year I also feel like bones have become much easier. Part of this is due to the fact that we've been working with biped rigs instead of free form bones but even beyond that I feel like I have made some progress in understanding how to move and use them to be more life-like. In conclusion I think 3d is actually going to be fun this year and I'm looking forward to working more with it in the future especially as we move into making 3d games. |
AuthorSamuel Henry is a Senior at DSA in NC. He has 3 years of prior experience in the game design pathway and he's looking forward to becoming a great game designer. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools Categories
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