Haven't posted in a while as I haven't really done anything I consider 'noteworthy' of a post but thought I'd give a update on the things I've done over the past couple of months. Apologies in advance for the walls of text but it helps future me out a lot when wondering what I did and why I did them.
C# Course
As I have a general preference to using Unity over Unreal Engine due to the 2D capabilities I decided to look for a course that in an ideal world would teach me the basics of the C# language before going into Unity. After some research I found a course by Andreas Metz titled 'Unity C# Programming: Ultimate Guide to Game Scripting' which I purchased on Udemy and have been doing little bits and pieces during the break.
I've really enjoyed the teaching style of Andreas in general and I'm very impressed with the projects included within the course and find the activites they included to be both engaging and informative. The use of videos marked optional are a good idea for those wishing to expand on certain topics if they wish. I can see this course being something that in the future I use a lot as a reference, particularly the Unity sections it has.
Unity RPG
During my first year studying towards my Software Engineering degree we were given an assignment asking us to created a Game Design Document for a fictional game on our choosing. It was made explicitly clear to us that we would never be expected to design this game so I therefore created a document for a 2D JRPG in the style of classic games such as Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger and had the plot of this game focus on mental health issues. My tutor was very impressed with my idea and encouraged me to work on this with the goal of creating a demo that could possibly be showcased and used as a teaching instrument due to the sensitivity of the issues covered.
I put together a group of friends to assist me with this project and created a Trello board to enable proper tracking of target and milestones for the duration of the project. I also put together a Github repository that was shared to enable suitable version control in the event of any bugs or errors that are sure to occur when workign on something of this magnitude. Roles were assigned to all team members and a Discord group was created to communicate with each other on relevant issues. Written documentation was also created by myself as a means of planning and reflection at all stages of development as I believe this would be good practice for the future.
Unfortunately due to circumstances outside of my control I have since been forced to change this project from a four person group task to something that I do by myself during my spare time and any plans for presenting this in a public forum have been shelved at this moment in time. As this is a purely optional challenge with no bearing on my degree I will continue work on this during the remaining two years of my degree, however if I find it is taking away from my grades in any way it will obviously be put on hold.
Currently I have a few scenes in Unity and each scene has buildings and characters with suitable gravity and collision detection, keypad and joystick compatibility for movement, triggers to enable a scene change when entering or exiting a building and prefabs, tilemaps and sprite atlases have been created. The asset pack used is the Fantasy Dreamland pack by Elv Games and I find it has everything needed for the prototype stage of development. As mentioned previously this project is hosted on Github and I also keep backups in both local and cloud storage to protect against potential loss of data.
I'm very glad to have done this project as even though it hasn't been anywhere near as successful as hoped so far, it has taught me a lot about the dangers of relying on other people with no backup plan in mind and it has also allowed me to learn how to use Github and Trello, which will both help tremendously in my future endeavours.
Returning to Study
As I write this I am currently just under two weeks away from returning to begin year two of the degree, which is considered by my tutors to be the most difficult year of the three. It has more elements of actual game design than the first year and also introduces artistic elements, which to be honest is my major weakness at this moment, as I can barely draw a stickman unfortunately and creatively I'm someone who needs visual examples or some ideas from others when working on new things.
Unlike most in the group who are probably dreading the return to the grind of studying and assignments, I am so excited about getting back in the saddle and returning to the routine that I have missed so much. Just seeing my friends in person again after four months will give me that boost I've missed over the summer and I am absolutely raring to go and looking forward to everything year two holds in store. No it won't be easy but nothing good in life ever is and I'm giving this everything I have.
