Frustrated by some difficulties we came across in designing our first tutorial, we decided to take a day this week and look back at the work last year's CTE class did in VR. Their goal was to create a simulation for a prison to advocate it's renovation into a senior citizen's home for veterans. This project was a large undertaking and the first of its kind in the game design pathway.
To complete this project, last year's students modeled out the prison taking many trips there to measure and photograph the area. Creating models of everything in the prison, they then took those models and put custom textures to them making the prison come alive. This is how I think my group will create Durham School of the Arts next year so it was useful to see how well it had worked in the past. Another thing we were able to find in the old project was how they decided to move the player around. Using a point-and-click method, the player could navigate between prepositioned anchors letting them explore the whole facility with out having to move around their play area too much. This might be useful once we start programming our game next year and explore options for how our player should be able to move around. -What CTE worked on last year -How they made it -What we can use from it
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Nowadays there are a lot of issues you can advocate for in video games. You don't have to just make games for pure entertainment but you can use games for a greater good. However, there is a very fine line you must walk when create a game with a deeper message. Let's explore just a few of these considerations.
First off, you need to make sure your game is still fun. Way too many "serious games" get caught up in shoving information down the throats of their players and so nobody plays it. In order to get your message out there you need somebody to play your game. This year I made a game about the Durham Light Rail Project for my Game Design Class. Unfortunately even though the game was completed no one really played it because it turned out kinda boring. You see as game designers we are incredibly biased towards our own game. You don't want to get to deep into the development process only to discover that the game that sounded so good on paper doesn't work well once you start playing it. To solve this problem it's essential to create prototypes. The game should be fun on its own even without any over the deeper message added. The second thing you should be careful of when designing a serious game is that you don't flaunt your opinion too much. Games are their core interactive and therefore while you can hint towards one side of an issue, people are bound to get frustrated if you present a one sided argument. Players love to play the devil's advocate and if you don't let them the game can feel rigged. Let players make their own choices and come to their own conclusions. that's the most effective way to make sure players will be receptive to your message. -Serious problems for serious games -Being fun -Being objective Recently, I learned how to use a new skill in Unity. Unity terrain building is a relatively easy-to-use way of making terrains for your video game. It uses textures and bump maps so you can create a lively environment. But what are the advantages of doing this over just importing your own assets. Is creating a terrain fresh in Unity really better than designing one in 3ds Max?
The short answer is yes! Unity has created a simple built in way of designing your map. It utilizes a point and click method which allows you to paint on mountains, valleys, hills, and streams with ease. The way you shape terrain in Unity feels a lot like Sculptris yet since it's for the specific purpose of making land it works more intuitively for making land forms. Another advantage of building a terrain this way if that it keeps your project centralized and in one place. You won't need to worry about importing a bunch of models, textures, and other assets. If you can make a beautiful map for your players to explore in your game engine there is no need to build it anywhere else. From what I've observed this is a fully comprehensive way to make a play area offering all the same features that any other program I've used (such as 3ds Max) has offered. -What is terrain building in Unity? -Is it a good option for making terrains? Over the last school week we worked on using Unity in VR. To do this we obviously had to start by setting up our VR rig and this led us to the first major problem of our project: none of us know how to coil wires properly. While this might not seem to be a big problem at first you have to consider how much we will be setting up and taking down our rig. Everyday we want to be able to work in Unity requires us to set up the rig at the beginning then take it down at the end of the period. This means that tangled or messily-stored wires will not only waste a lot of time but also damage the wires. The solution to this problem is simple. We just need someone to learn the proper wire coiling technique so that the rest of us can learn how to make sure our wires are neat and safe from damage. This is the role I decided to take and here is what I've found:
For thin wires the coiling technique is pretty simple. You make a loop, then keep loops the wire around without doing anything special. This just makes sure the wire is neat and organized when you put it back into its container. Thick wire are more complex. If you coil a thick wire the way you would coil a small one you risk the twists damaging the thicker cable. To start you must make a loop just like in the small coil. Make sure the coil is loose enough to not do any damage to the wire. Then instead of looping around like you normally would, grab a piece of wire a distance away from your original loop and bring your hand straight to the top of the loop. The wire should naturally loop around forming a new looped section. After that alternate between looping normally and using the new technique and voila you now have a beautifully (or not-so beautifully if it's your first time) coiled wire. -Why I'm looking at wire coiling -How to coil thin wires How to coil thick wires |
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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