Just before spring break started at our school, I traveled with my school ITS theatre troupe to the North Carolina state competition. I brought my sound design for Dead Man's Cell Phone with me to compete. This was a very new experience for me as I had never competed with a theatre tech presentation before. I knew what I had was good work but I worried I wouldn't be able to present it all properly within the given time frame. Our school has a lot of great tech people and I wanted to put my name up there with them by getting a superior score.
thankfully I was very prepared going into the room. We worked the night before with our teachers and fellow tech students to put the finishing touches on our presentations.When I went into the room I was relaxed and ready to show them what I had. Everything went smoothly as I quickly went through my sound plots, cue sheets, and played cues off of my bluetooth speaker. In the question portion I didn't get any questions that left me at a total loss which I took as a very good sign. At the end of the competition I got my scores back. i received a perfect score and critic's choice (an honor given to the best person in each field). While I will not be taking my sound design on to nationals, (due to my ability to only compete with one event and a critic's choice in duet acting) presenting my sound design at State's was a valuable experience. It helped me learn to explain the choices I made in the show clearly and concisely. It also gave me even more appreciation for the technical side of creating a working sound system as I had to explain the challenges I faced in rigging up speakers and creating a working speaker chain. These are skills I will be sure to take into the future as I continue to do sound work. -When and what competition I went to -The competition in summary -Important takeaways
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This week in game design my teammates and I worked on putting my last major pieces into the game. Pretty much everything worked as planned with a couple minor hold ups. The one thing we need to fix next week is the death text that displays when the player dies. Right now the display doesn't seem to be working and if it did the text would render directly onto the player's eyes. This is obviously a problem in several ways and we need to figure out a way to both render the text in world space and have it follow the player's headset as they look around waiting to re spawn.
Next week I will: -Fix the death text for our game -Help with creating any other last minute assets If you've read my past Pokemon and game related blogs it probably comes as no surprise to you that my favorite Pokemon game is Pokemon Black and White versions. These games have a riveting story line backed up by an interesting cast of characters all packaged in what is still one of the hardest Pokemon games to actually defeat. All of these would be great on their own but up until recently I hadn't realized just how deep this game truly goes.
The land in Pokemon Black and White is based off of the real-world location of the USA. I've written blogs in the past about how GameFreak brings this world to life in the Pokemon and characters of the game. However the deeper I look, the more I see that there is an elaborate comment on the way American society functions as a whole. The main evidence of this is the two main legendary Pokemon in Black and White. Zekrom and Reshiram are the legendary Pokemon of ideals and truth respectively. The legendary Pokemon of each region usually represent the heart and soul of that region, the core values of the real life people who live there. In different regions we might see a sun God Pokemon or a Pokemon that controls time. Instead we see in America that ultimately we pursue our own goals. Instead of deferring to higher gods or powers, in America the ultimate power is your own will to get things done. The legendary Pokemon also reflect this aspect in how they follow humans. Most legendary Pokemon are found in far off places. They avoid humans or actively seek to destroy them. Zekrom in Reshiram however follow humans by nature. Even in their Pokedex entrees it claims that they follow a trainer with strong truths/ideals. Could it be that GameFreak is making a larger comment on American society by doing this? We can't be sure. However, one thing is certain, these Pokemon games are much deeper than many people give them credit for and deserve to be looked at in greater detail from time to time. -Why I like Pokemon Black and White -What is GameFreak saying about America with Reshiram and Zekrom? This week I finished up a lot of the materials I needed to get done for our project. I finished all the functionality for both the menu and Credits scene. I put a nice skybox on both of them so that they look pleasing to the eye. I then created some ambient music for the menu scene. The biggest challenge I had was getting the controller pointers to work in the Credits scene. For some reason when I copied them over from the Main Menu scene they stopped working. After a couple headaches and a bit of adjustment we were able top get the controllers working properly once again. For the background ambiance I found some good spooky orchestrations and combined that with wind, chimes, and heartbeats to create a thoroughly creepy atmosphere. Next week I will: -Assist our programmer in anyway possible to implement the assets I've created -Create more audio assets for the game |
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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