David Field - Game Design

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Games Specialism: Session 23 (24/03/2018)

Okay, so this is gonna take a little longer than I’d anticipated. I’ve finally finished building the layout of the level, with most of the time spent on that dedicated to the background scenery. Everything that needs a collider has one, all the lighting is in place, and there’s even a van in there with the headlights on to designate the level start/extraction point (though I may include two additional options like a speedboat and something else).

Currently the map has been divided into five sections, areas of NO threat, LOW threat, MEDIUM threat, HIGH threat, and inaccessible (as with everything beyond the play area). The low threat area will have enough cover for the player to remain undetected for the sake of level start and end. Low threat will have patrolling guards who just stick to a strict route unless they spot the player. They will only attempt to catch the player, not shoot or raise an alarm. Medium threat guards are protecting player objectives, and they also have torches. These guards will both try to catch the player and activate an alarm. Finally, the high threat guards will have guns with torches mounted onto them. All they’ll so is try to buy a 99p flake off the player. Or attempt to kill them, I haven’t quite decided yet.

Anyway, my next task will be to implement an AI system for the guards, followed by obstacles, objectives, and finally player inventory, as I reckon items are key to stealth games, be it a torch, a map to navigate (there won’t be a satnav system), a noise maker, and possibly a weapon. Well, the weapon’s probably a given considering the player already has one, but I may give it a one-use suppressor and change the projectile from tennis balls to actual bullets. After all, if someone’s shooting at you, it’s probably best to shoot back rather than just annoy them.

If I’m being realistic, spending two days on each of these tasks it’ll probably take a week and a half, which means I’ve overshot my deadline by... a week and a half. Let’s hope I can actually stick to task and get it done, else the only way I’ll be back next year is if I apply for a cleaning job.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Contemporary Contextual Studies: Session 23 (23/03/2018)

Did a quick run-through of my presentation file with John and just confirmed a couple of things. There’s plenty of imagery, so I’m sound with that (though I forgot to ask if I’ll need to reference everything). He also mentioned a few times that my blog will have easily hit the minimum 2000 word mark, so won’t need a specialised token post to fulfill criteria. Also, for the sake of thoroughness, here’s the two responses I received in my email inquiries to various studious. I’m leaving the third out, as it was worthless. And he addressed it to Daivd, so it may not have actually been meant for me...

Hi David, Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, I completely sympathise with how difficult it can be to get a break into the industry. My advice is always to be "never give up" - as with anything in life, if you give up you'll never achieve what it is you set out to do. Although I've been "in the industry" 20 years, I've lost my job several times, failed interviews, had companies go bust, x, y and z. But if someone offered me the chance to do it again? Yep, definitely. It's a wonderful career and a special industry. Being happy to go to work on a Monday morning is worth a salary sacrifice. So onto that - my other tips are: 1. Production is the hardest discipline to get into, your biggest problem is teams want someone who's "experienced", when projects go wrong, they know this guy is a safe pair of hands to get them out of trouble. Or better yet, a guy who can "see" problems because they've experienced it before. - Without a track record in production, you're basically learning on the fly - and it's very costly to make mistakes! (see above) - it's a complete chicken and egg paradox. I moved into production purely because someone who was doing the job left and they needed a replacement! 2. It sounds like you have a varied skill set, (I'm not a programmer myself!) - if your goal is to ultimately end up as a producer - this is good, but at the moment it's maybe a bad thing? I'd always recommend a laser like focus on a single discipline. It sounds like you have design overtones? Why not make a few good maps in Unity or Unreal, or write a design document... build a portfolio and then go for a junior design position at a big company like Travellers Tails or Cloud Imperium. You'll be part of a "big machine" and it won't be fun, but you'll get a vital foot in the doorway and great experience. Game Jams are a perfect way to demonstrate design skills, (taking part in one will give you contacts to other guys.. so you don't need to be a talented artist, or whatever - it gives you a project to talk about) Producers have to be able to talk to every discipline, they need to understand programmers brains (if not programming) and be able to speak to designers without suggesting design fixes, or to artists who are precious little snowflakes with a talent. It's totally a people person job position, you need to be almost invisible at times, but also a natural leader. 3. QA is often the route that everyone suggests for producers, and that's really how I started all those years ago. Like you say, the starting salaries are always very poor for QA staff, (there's a lot of people who want these jobs so competition is fierce) - Again, I'd say you have a better chance of getting a position at a bigger company. My suggestion here would be Sony QA over in Wavertree / Liverpool. (It's a commute, but doable). They have a very large QA position and their salaries are above average for that job role. Warning: staff turnover is high! So roadmap:        Get a degree in something solid, that can be used in a "normal job" - English, Maths, science, whatever. Games degrees are okay, but will be frowned upon in the 'real world', although degree's are always secondary to experience (in my humble opinion)        Get a Prince 2 qualification - this is a basic requirement, but is probably worth the admission fee (it'll get you a project management job elsewhere if you need something to fall back on)        Get some agile/scrum project management qualifications / experience - again, will help in the "real world" of work.        Keep talking to every single company you can think of, most of the time, companies don't advertise for entry level positions and will just look at speculative applications on a case-by-case basis. You might just hit the right desk on the right day. Avoid "application systems" and try and get actual human contacts - it shows you've made the extra step of effort (Linkedin!)        Fake it till you make it, make games in unity (it doesn't matter how bad!) - learn, and attend any gamejams & events nearby you can. (Look into Gameopolis in Manchester for example) if you expand your network, you'll have a much better chance. http://ukie.org.uk/tags/uk-games-map - here's a map of every company in the area. Connect this with people on Linkedin, and build your network of contacts - people advertise for jobs on there all the time. Anyway, sorry for the lengthy E-mail! Hopefully some of this will be of use. Chris Jones Senior Producer Clever Beans

The above response was quite possibly the most valuable of the two, but the email below isn’t without merit.

Hi David, Thanks for getting in touch.  It's always good to hear from our local Futureworks guys :) I'm not really sure I can give you any really general advice, as the sort of entry level positions you'd want to look for can come in a huge variety of guises.  It really depends where you want to end up, in the long run - project management, or actual development, are quite different roads to go down.  Within development, as well, there's a tremendous amount of variation from hardcore C++ programmers through to graphic artists or musicians who've never written a line of code, and everything in between.  Really the starting job title to search for should be "junior developer" but that can cover any of the categories I mentioned, depending on the company that's writing the job advert. If you're looking simply to get your foot in the door, "analyst" can be a good position to search for - that can often encompass QA as you mentioned, and also potentially get you experience in programming, which can help to progress in the long term.  In my experience, a starting salary for a Junior Software Analyst would be between 20-30k in the UK generally, and 30-40k in London.  At the top of the hierarchy tend to be roles with "architect" in the name, for example Principal Architect, Senior Solution Architect and Enterprise Architect are all roles that typically provide the highest end salaries under the overall "developer" umbrella, with the latter fetching typically 70-80k as a senior position - higher than typical CTO salaries - so that could perhaps be something to aim for in the long run. With regards to salaries, I've found glassdoor.co.uk/ to be a very helpful resource for research - especially if you have a specific company in mind, you can get a good idea of what sorts of salaries they're offering for a particular position.  Another useful salary research tool is indeed.co.uk's salary estimator, which can give you averages for a particular job title - you may be surprised to find huge amounts of variation depending on the exact wording you use, so I would recommend spending some time here and searching for all the different ways a position you might be interested in could be described.  It's also worth filtering on that site for the geographical area.  Typically, London salaries can be around 20% higher than the national average for the same role - you mentioned you'd want to stay in Manchester in the long run, so you may want to rule out that difference in London salaries when making your comparisons. Best of luck with your career path research! Regards, Eugene Hopkinson VoxelStorm Ltd

Oh, and it was confirmed that our presentations will be done in front of the entire group, which was music to my ears. No point putting in so much effort for just two people now, is there?

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

3D Modelling for Games: Session 23 (22/03/2018)

As with the Tuesday session, today I concentrated solely on my XB2178 project. Well, I say that, I didn’t actually spend too much time on it, as I helped Eli with his mesh and UV unwrap... who then promptly threw it away (despite being next to perfect...) I also sorted Kenny out with an animated material of a flickering flame for his candle mesh. That one was less of a waste as he actually kept it in, and I now know how to do it for myself too, which will come in handy if I need to make any water textures.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Game Development: Session 23 (20/03/2018)

Not much was on today. We were supposed to playtest eachother’s levels, but nobody seemed to have anything in a playable state. Least of all me. As I’ve said in previous posts, this entire week is going to be dedicated to XB2178, so whilst my focus was on level design, it was for an entirely different assignment.

Using models I ripped and rebuilt from Shenmue, I’ve started to lay out the play area, boxing off the “hostile area” and giving the background a bit of scenery. That’s about it though.

As for XB2001 though, Ewan showed us a couple of project examples that looked ace, which gave us a better idea of what’s to be expected from the assignment. I’ve also managed to figure out what I’ll be doing, and scrapping the football manager idea is just that. Instead I’ll replace it with a short third person adventure set in the boiler room of a ship. Though I’ll have to look over the themes/options again to come up with some strenuous link that justifies my choice...

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Games Specialism: Session 22 (16/03/2018)

Following on from the previous post (DD2000 Session 22), I had a brief chat with John on how I should go about creating a portfolio. He confirmed that I shouldn’t be displaying any work of a poor quality (that’s gonna be a tough ask!), but the overall idea was good.

Below is a quick mockup of it:

Art-based work will appear at the top, with design at the bottom. Clicking on an art thumbnail will load a high resolution image slideshow of the model, whereas clicking on a design thumbnail will load up a video showcasing it (perhaps along with a link to a playable demo) Clicking on individual tabs will bring up work made around that year, so my evolution can be tracked. Clicking “Art” will display all artwork, and vice versa with “Design”. Clicking the star will bring up the highlights, ie what I feel is my best work. Straight-forward and simple.

Moving forward I plan on completing my actual XB2178 assignment by next Friday, which looking at my rate of progress, means it’ll be finished by the first Friday back... Hopefully though the international break will free up enough time for me, so I can spend the entirety of the two week Easter break in Futureworks hammering out my XB2001/2 assignment with no worries about John’s assignments.

Plus they’ll be in on time n’all, which is a first!

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Contemporary Contextual Studies: Session 22 (16/03/2018)

Watched a GDC lecture on company culture, with various decent points being brought up that should ultimately have an important role to play in choosing where to work (if indeed you’re in such a privileged position). Personally, the only factors that will matter to me for the first few years or so are the location and the salary. Oh, and crunch. Don’t really wanna be doing that at all, so I’ll probably have to quit before it kicks in or endure the tragedy of losing my fifth pair of grandparents to a freak washing machine accident...

For the rest of the session I caught up on blog posting (such as this one), and I was also going to watch the GDC talk video from the previous week... until I realised that it was highly art-centric. Whilst I’ve obviously made (really poor) models in the past, along with (atrocious) artwork, that’s not the type of position I’ll be going for, so including it in my portfolio wouldn’t exactly be a wise decision.

Instead I looked up a few articles on what makes a good portfolio for a game designer. For a producer showreels are apparently the way to go, but as that’s not the only role I’d like to fill (though it is the focus for my DD2000 presentation), it’s perhaps best I take the advice given in the articles and include images and snippets of documents alongside the aforementioned showreels. 

Something I’ve previously touched upon is making an interactive app-style portfolio, though as I’m sure I’ve pointed out before is compatibility issues being a potential drawback. It would have to be extremely intuitive and user friendly too, but I suppose if I’m going to be a game designer then I should be good at that anyway...

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

3D Modelling for Games: Session 22 (15/03/2018)

I didn’t actually do any work on models today, though we were introduced to the terrain building function in Unreal, along with how to import heightmaps and such. Instead I had to reorganise my file and folder structure, as everything had gotten far too messy, with the latest version of some files scattered between my Futureworks drive and three USB sticks.

I’ve managed to clean everything up, and feel I’m now ready to get back on top of things. My current thinking is to work on my XB2178 assignment to get it out of the way, as I’ve gotten to the point where I reckon my XB2001/2 idea has become pretty stale, so could do with a little more time to come up with something that will get me a decent mark and can be completed within the timeframe, rather than a kind of original idea I came up with over the course of about 84 seconds.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Game Development: Session 22 (13/03/2018)

Expanding upon lighting from last week, Ewan explained the use of movable and stationary lighting, and how the latter will cast real time shadows when the player is within the specified radius, using the static method when they are not. This saves on performance, making it a highly versatile solution. The shadow data for each stationary light is stored within a lighting channel, of which there are four, so no more than four can overlap within the same vicinity, else it will cease to function correctly (this is designated by a red “X” appearing over the lighting icon within the scene window).

Moving onto the second half - the focus of the session - we looked at audio. Having worked on music/audio a lot in the past, I expected it to be a breeze, however I soon came to realise that not having the visual aids of pots for adjusting reverb or frequency things can get much more difficult. Perhaps there’s an audio GUI plugin for Unreal to get round this issue, but if there isn’t, it may be an idea to create one to put on the asset store.

Anyway, besides the various hiccups along the way, it was all relatively straight-forward. As with the previous week a lack of sleep sapped all motivation out of me... so I took a nap in the student lounge, before the student rep meeting, only to be constantly awoken by people crunching on crisps with their mouths open. Music, loud talking, hell even roadworks wouldn’t have bothered me. Chewing with your mouth open though? Get out.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Games Specialism: Session 21 (09/03/2018)

As mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to do some work on this, but after my hard drive... messed up I had to spend the entire weekend going through files individually to recover and re-organise them (had to use CMD-based recovery software, so all files were given generic “f-xxxxxxxx” names).

The next thing I’m going to do is quickly build an environment using ripped models from the harbour area in Shenmue so I can get to work on the enemy AI. After this, I’ll set a few objectives, give it a UI, and implement the stealth audio system. Should be simple enough... for someone half-decent at this. For me though, I’m expecting another late submission with the obligatory 40% cap.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Contemporary Contextual Studies: Session 21 (09/03/2018)

Got up late today so gave it a miss. It wasn’t the end of the world as I’d planned on working through anyway (or it would’ve been fine if I hadn’t bricked my hard drive) Whilst the files were being recovered I spent the time compiling photos and screenshots of work to put together a chronological portfolio of sorts for an Instagram account. It won’t be an actual portfolio but will work more as a digital sketchbook which I can use as a source to pick out pieces to stick into a portfolio.

The entire process took a lot longer than I thought as all my images are scattered across various hard drives, and I also had to locate and load up old work I’d done to grab a screenshot of. Then there was the revelation that not only can you not upload images via PC, but Instagram doesn’t accept GIFs either, so I had to recompile all of them into video format which - given the file size of my animations - took longer than the wait to see City lift a major title. Oh, and it only works with certain dimensions n’all, so that threw another spanner in the works.

I now have a Snapchat account too, along with my Facebook, Twitter, and newly founded Instagram account. Next I’ll be sorting out my LinkedIn, which I’ve had for years but never really used. For my actual portfolio (which I probably won’t put together til I’ve finished the course), I reckon making it interactive may work in my favour, though I’ll have to consult a few people first as it may be a stupid decision considering potential compatibility issues. I’m also gonna have to ask about to see what other social media platforms I should be using, and whether or not I should create additional Twitter and Facebook accounts, as I use the former for football and the latter for just generally pissin about.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

3D Modelling for Games: Session 21 (08/03/2018)

A quick tutorial from Paul on how to make modular models in Maya today. He absolutely blitzed through it as per. I really need to get to work on this assignment... instead, I spent another session on the Batwing, because let’s face it, if I’m gonna fail, I may as well do it spectacularly.

I connected the cockpit to the main body, adding in more edge loops where needed...

...which was a common theme. Edge loops. Verts straightened. Add more edge loops. Straighten verts...

The biggest pain at the moment is giving the missile barrels a rim, as it looks like the face of a certain character from Preacher if I smooth it without. It’s far from perfect, but it’s getting to the point now where it doesn’t matter.

Next time I return to this I’m just going to rush through the entire thing. Quality doesn’t even matter anymore. I just need to get it done, then when I have something to work with, ask if I can fix it in ZBrush. If I can’t, I’ll just get to quad drawing over it. I really can’t be bothered at this point.

Why didn’t I just go with modelling a record player?

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Game Development: Session 21 (06/03/2018)

Only had a couple hours kip the night before, so I wasn’t in the best shape for taking everything in, especially not with the relatively slow pace of the Unreal walkthrough. Regardless, the lecture was pretty informative, as I tend to enjoy “bite-sized learning” when it comes to science. Mainly because I can’t get my head round any word with more than a few syllables, but still, I do understand it which is the main thing.

When it came to the Unreal walkthrough, I noticed a number of similarities between it and a Unity tutorial I watched a few years back, so got to grips with things pretty easily. Then again, the point isn’t really knowing the functions, but fine-tuning everything to be aesthetically pleasing. That requires a keen, attentive eye that I only really have for when I’m gelling my narrow strip of hair.

I did intend on working on the assignment, but a combination of tiredness and the overwhelming lack of fresh air in the room left my head shot to bits, so left early and crawled into my pit with the self-deluding thought of “I’ll start it tomorrow”.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Games Specialism: Session 20 (02/03/2018)

Six weeks it’s been since I last touched this assignment, and it shows. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and my notes look like someone copy/pasted a load of random clusters of words from various webpages.

After a brief chat with John and Ewan about by intentions for this project, I thought I’d treat it like I’m starting from scratch, almost as if the previous iteration is one of Unreal’s example projects. So, I’ve gone back to the drawing board quite literally, and sketched out a small level.

Whilst I originally intended on building upon the previous assignment by adding more increasingly complex features, I clearly don’t have time for it. In all honesty I’m pretty bored of it too. I firmly believe that by developing the AI, I can create a small level that showcases the mechanics in action as an example of how they can be implemented into a game. It will also allow me the opportunity to build upon my nonexistent level design skills.

There’s an added bonus in the fact I can use pre-existing models. John assured me that my collection of meshes and textures ripped from Shenmue can be used, meaning building the level itself should be more enjoyable (I mean, let’s face it, nobody wants to build a whitebox level, let alone play through one!)

For the moment I’ve designed four area types: No Threat (Green), Low Threat (Yellow), Mid Threat (Orange), and High Threat (Red). As such, there should be four AI types to compliment them. I’ll also need to implement a punishing health system (no stealth game should have the “cover regen” style that many have adopted over the last decade), which should be easy enough.

That leaves me with eight weeks to get it done, but with most of the tools already at my disposal, it should definitely be doable.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Contemporary Contextual Studies: Session 20 (02/03/2018)

Received feedback for my essay today. Have to say, I’m pretty surprised with the projected mark, especially considering nonsense such as this:

Assassin’s Creed meanwhile, at one point, was pushed out by Ubisoft as a yearly iteration franchise, with an annual release every year since Assassin’s Creed II, although it is numbered as the second game, it was in fact not due to mobile releases, and a Play Station Portable game: Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines. However a steady decline in metacritic ratings for the franchise upon every release since around the time of the third numbered game in the series (Assassin’s Creed III) saw Ubisoft change their strategy, delaying the most recent instalment (by the name of Assassin’s Creed: Origins for the eight generation of home video game consoles including the Sony Play Station 4) by a year. The decline in ratings was said to be due to glitches appearing in many an instalment, but the recent release may have rectified this issue as it is now receiving praise despite still being part of the same franchise: the Assassin’s Creed franchise by Ubisoft.

I’m not complaining by any means, though I felt slightly insulted that it wasn’t as memorable to people as I expected it to be!

Onto the second assignment, I’ve almost completed it. John suggested I insert a few slides showcasing the work I’ve done so far to better explain what I intend to do. I’ll probably need a while to comb through it all and find something decent enough (a tough task indeed...) so I’ll get that sorted tomorrow, along with the script, get my timing down, and that should be done.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

3D Modelling for Games: Session 20 (01/03/2018)

Due to the dandruff-like snow and our country’s inability to cope with it all lessons were cancelled today. Thankfully though the majority of tutors were still in and available, including Paul, Ewan, and Dave from the previous year. As expected, I was the only one to show up. Understandable really considering most live in farmlands and equally uninhabitable areas (seriously, move to a real place people!)

Joking aside, I had a slightly productive session. Choosing to dedicate one last four hour slot to the 1989 Batwing, my focus was on some of the details in the mesh, mainly through the use of booleans. The front cannons, front exhaust, and missile launcher were the areas I implemented, and it’s now becoming clearer and clearer that I simply won’t get this finished in time. It’s far too complex a mesh, and let’s face it, I’m not a great modeller. Even if this turns out to be a masterpiece, I’m at the very least a slow modeller, which is still essentially a bad one as far as industry standards are concerned.

I’ve messed up massively with the front cannons. As the “ears” weren’t modelled properly, the housing chamber now looks like the imprint a broken pen would make in a pile of glue. Inserting new edge loops to accommodate the cylinder has proven to be a pain, as it has with almost every new addition to the mesh. Obviously I should’ve looked for the reference toy much earlier, as many elements are much easier to figure out now. Too little, too late though at this point.

The exhaust ports are actually coming along quite well considering. It doesn’t look like much right now but I’ve made a bit of headway with it, which is encouraging. Issues have arisen though again due to the new edge loops. Additionally, many parts of the mesh now have to be resculpted around this due to the changes it’s made in the main body.

Finally, we have the missile launchers. Not nearly as complicated as the others, it’s been just as tedious. Once the edge loops are complete I’ll also need to add in a lip, as with the others, so as to preserve the integrity of the mesh when it comes to smoothing.

Paul actually came in at a couple of points to see how I was getting on, and provide me with feedback for Batwing Forever. The topology was praised for the cleanliness and efficiency, and the the use of emissive channels was also praised. However, the flat colour issue reared its head again. Suggestions for improvement include adding wear and tear, and a few more panel details. As it’s practically finished, I suppose I could experiment with stamping on a few height maps here and there to see how it comes out. Obviously this will take it further away from the clean, sleek look of the source material, however it’s not about authenticity, it’s about getting a good mark!

Additionally, he had a look over the 1989 Batwing I was working on. He gave me a few tips and a couple of new tools to utilise. A combination of selection constraints and the scale tool can smooth out the creases that have been an issue since the start, and “append to polygon” should make cleaning up the bottom of the mesh slightly easier. In theory.

Next time I’ll need to work on the front lights a little bit again, as I’ve messed it up without realising, but it may have needed an extra edge loop or two anyway to maintain the rigidness of the area when it comes to smoothing it.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Game Development: Session 20 (27/02/2018)

Didn’t feel half as rough as I expected to this morning, but still enough to be a bit groggy. Perhaps my decision to forgo a brew and a cig in favour of more time in bed went against me, as the drawn curtains throughout the house meant I didn’t notice the snowfall til after I opened the bathroom window to release the buildup of steam from my shower. A blind rush for the bus stop was in vain though, and it was a half hour wait until a single town-bound bus slowly crawled towards me. Yep, I was late.

On the plus side, the impatient waiting for the dole train allowed my mind the time to develop an idea or two for next year’s honours project. Perhaps it’s a little too premature at the moment, but I’m quite happy with what I’ve come up with, and feel it’s an original enough concept to realistically achieve, with plenty of options to build upon. For now though, I just need to note the ideas down and put it on the backburner until I finish my outstanding assignments for this year.

Back to the session itself, the fact I was late meant I came in towards the end of the lecture. I figured out the subject fairly quickly, but another lecture missed from a genuinely good lecturer meant I missed out on a lot. A run down of what the slideshow entailed goes as follows:

- Keeping the environment consistent with the story (the setting is important to communicate to the player rules to expect and engage the player through immersion)

- Using verticality to guide the player to the goal/finish line.

- Use of affordances (a consistent blend of visuals and mechanics that tells the player what to look out for in order to traverse the level)

From here we looked at a few examples. The use of highlighting shaders to communicate to the player exactly which objects can be interacted with in “Gone Home”, as well as instantly setting out the rules within the opening space. Utilising colour and lines to tell the player which objects can be interacted with and which parts of the level they will affect in “Gunpoint”. And finally, a brief look at “Dear Esther” was used to display an environment that is open enough to be explored, but tight enough to direct the player exactly where they need to go. For example, use of small, empty rooms tells the player that nothing of interest is there in terms of progression, whilst being visually interesting enough to encourage a brief look. Also, every early junction has one correct path and one incorrect path. The latter is always short enough so that the player doesn’t waste too much of their time traversing so as to not frustrate said player and lose their interest.

For the remainder of the session I switched to DD2000, as I plan to have the presentation finished by Wednesday 28th, so I theoretically only have two assignments to focus on for the remainder of the year (XB2001 & XB2002 will be worked on concurrently as a single assignment). This is in order for me to manage my time better, which rather Ironically was the subject which we finished up on, as Ewan introduced us to burn down charts. As it stands mine is quite tentative, but as time progresses I should be able to figure out the intricacies and give a much more detailed estimates.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Contemporary Contextual Studies: Session 19 (23/02/2018)

Spent most of the day constructing my presentation. As it’s the most important part (for me, at least), I focused my attention on the roadmap for when I leave Futureworks: what I intend to do with my time over the 24 months I’ll spend prior to applying for job roles. My idea is to gain a further two (costly) qualifications, move out (permanently this time), and place myself in a financially secure position, all the while developing a small title in my spare time either with a group of others or - if needbe - by myself.

The point here is to cement my standing as a qualified, versatile candidate for roles, with enough development experience, and enough personal stability to compensate for any potential pitfalls along the way. Though I could easily put my hat in the ring for roles within the industry upon completion of the course, my intention is to progress in life as well as the industry, and by allowing baggage from my past to weigh me down I’ll be unable to do so.

If I’m to do this, I need to be both realistic and responsible, and do it the right way.