Julian's Game Design

Lets make some games

[julian--hunt]

Pixel Art & Animating

Been working on some pixel art/animating for a game I’m making on the side. For now I’ve just kept it to the main character, a simple enemy and a single boss. Hopefully in the future I will expand the different kinds of enemies and bosses as I expand my skills in animating and pixel art.

[julian--hunt]

Making Progress

Got weapon pickups working as well as making enemies die when shot. Had a really lovely(painful) experience with code when a classmate got my projectiles to work with only 4 lines of code instead of my 12.

thnx to @jackw-gamedesign for helping me out. Such a beautiful human.

[julian--hunt]

Working currently on a top down shooter using the pixel art I’ve been making. 

All I have working at the moment is movement, aiming and shooting. The next steps  are programming the weapon system and enemy AI.

[joshc5]

Squiggle, still kicking, still alive (barely). I took a break briefly as admob reward videos were getting to me and instead chose to focus on some more feedback and minor things.

Pretty new particles! Made some more visual colour changes and gem pickup, still tweaking these to not be overwhelming. Using unity particles is also something I haven’t played around with much so this was also a good test with them. WIth this I also added a tiny screen shake when you die, this will need a little tweaking but it looks good for now.

I also added tonnes of tiny animations such as a little bounce to your score total when you get a point, a grow and shrink ping pong for the ‘tap to play’ on the main menu and probably like at least 3 more.

I replaced some of the hard to see colour palettes with more vibrant, distinct colours such as the following.

BEFORE

AFTER

The biggest issue still looming over me is admob reward videos, I have banner ads working no worries but the reward videos just aren’t having any of it. 

I also have small bugs with flicking colours which I ‘think’ I’ve fixed but it works fine for a while before breaking again so I have no idea what’s happening.

Lastly I haven’t implemented audio yet as I do want to spend a lot of time on that and I worry that if I spend too long on that I might end up pushing the release date further back than I anticipated.

There was never a goal so to speak to release this game quickly, learning from other games I might as well spend more time here making it pretty before releasing it then worrying about prettying it up afterwards.

Hence my release date ideal goal is in a months time, this may be pushed back but no longer than 2 months. On this as well there is no way it’ll be released before the month is up, if I think it is ready early I’ll bust out some more testing and iterations before releasing it.

[julian--hunt]

Art Assets

Been working on some art and a game (which I have yet to post gifs on) in my spare time and in doing so improving on my pixel art skills.

 One thing I’ve learnt is that shading is ABSOLUTELY key to make anything art related look good. This kind of information is probably obvious to most but I’ve come to seriously appreciate good shading.

In the future I hope to be able to grasp a good understanding for pixel art and sprites for games. Another goal of mine is to also develop a better practical understanding of coding which I’ll try to post about more in the future.

[julian--hunt]

New Mobile Game

Been working on a new mobile game for a college project over the past couple weeks. I dubbed it ‘Too Many Squares’, a tile clicker game for mobile devices.

Put simply it’s a lot like Piano Tiles where you tap the tiles that come and gain points. Over time the tiles come down faster and requires more and more accuracy.

I chose this concept since it has a manageable scope and can provide a good experience for me to further understand mobile development.

The project itself was to develop a game using a piece of technology we hadn’t used before. While I have worked on mobile games in the past I have never fully developed one all on my own.

[julian--hunt]

Angry Reacts on the App Store

Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about Angry Reacts. Download Angry Reacts and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Released a new mobile game with some friends, @joshc5​ & @mitchellnojohnson​. The project took around a month or so, most of the time going into actually having the game reviewed by apple so it’s ready to be released.

The project allowed me to work on some of my art skills, specifically pixel art which I have been trying to touch on in preparation for my next game.

Please go check out the game on the app store. :)

[julian--hunt]

Creating more and more assets for my game as the days go by. Now I’ve made a chest which you’ll be able to get gold and potions. 

Later on once I finish the greybox I’ll show off the game in action. 

[julian--hunt]

Made a lil’ wizard dude for my new 2D game I’m developing. I’ll have to animate this guy at some point so I’ll see how I go with that.

[julian--hunt]

Hello, what talents or knowledge would you need to do game design? Or what subjects should I do in order to do game design?

There are lots of ways to learn and the main way is just researching and looking up tutorials. 

The best place to start is downloading Unity and playing around with the program. The website for Unity has a few simple game tutorials that you can start off with to get to know the program and how everything works.

https://unity3d.com/get-unity/download

You can download Unity here.

Extra Credits, the Youtube channel, is a great place to learn some things about game design in general.

https://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz

This is the link to the channel and if you watch through their stuff on game design you’ll definitely learn some things.

For subjects, I assume you mean school, learning some things in IT and Art in general is a good place to start but what people in the industry focus on most isn’t what you’ve studied in school but more how much you know about game design.

The main thing in learning game design is just research, watching tutorials and talks, playing all kinds of video games and trying to understand how they work or what methods the game uses to keep you playing.

Also try to know the basics in EVERYTHING there is to making games: Art, programming, writing, design, developing etc. 

With research, time and patience it’s perfectly possible to be a game designer no matter who you are. 

Good luck and I hope this helps you. :)

[julian--hunt]

Keeping that pixel art going

Trying to make a new avatar that’s a bit more detailed and human.

I’m starting to get a hang of pixel art but there’s still always room for improvement.

[julian--hunt]

Working on my art skills

I’ve been pretty lazy with my blog so I’ve decided to try and work on my art skills a little more, specifically pixel art. I like to make weapons but I’d love to learn how to actually make a decent looking person to hold the weapons.

Who knows, in the future I may even dabble in some animation.

[simon-long-blog]

REM is now on the Google Play store! 

And we even had to hotfix it to version 1.0.1 a couple of hours after release.

Download here for free: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.OkayLoot.REM 

If you don’t have an android phone, don’t worry, you can download the PC version and its funky animations in widescreen here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzO3cRY3limOWi1GSmFiX0FBdW8?usp=sharing

I’m so incredibly proud of the team, it’s been a long journey and it feels unreal having it up on a storefront. 

[julian--hunt]

First published game!

As of yesterday one of the projects I have been working on, REM, has been published on google play. It’s free for anyone to play. :) The only unfortunate thing is that it’s android users only.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.OkayLoot.REM

I’m so happy to finally have my first ever published game!

[julian--hunt]

First year finally complete!

So with the final project of my game design course pretty much finished I would like to go back and summarise my year so far.

The first thing I gotta say is that this year has gone by way too quickly. I’ve learnt so much in such a short amount of time! I remember when I first came into the institute not knowing anyone and really hoping that I’d be able to get along with my classmates.

I started game design with a ‘everything you know about game design will be way different’ so that I could go in with a open mind and not be too surprised. 

I was still surprised.

The amount of work, money, time and effort put into games was way bigger than I thought. Obviously I knew that making something like GTA, World of Warcraft or Skyrim would’ve taken lots of work, but I could’ve never imagined what actually happens behind the scenes. To be honest I’m still coming to understand the true work that methods that are put into making games.

Probably one of my favourite memories of earlier in the year is when we first went into learning Unity. I’d had used Unity a little bit in the past but I wasn’t able to do much and I quickly dropped it. With some help I created my first ever scene filled with trees, mountains, rocks and grass fields. It was almost magical when I dropped a simple player controller in and took a look at the world that I had made with my own two hands.

After getting to know Unity a bit better we started off with making a simple roller ball game following a tutorial on the Unity website.

When we finished we used all that we learnt to make our own roller ball level.

And then there was the first (somewhat) major assignment we had. Our task was to, in a team of 4, go out to a specific place in the city and sketch down the area and all the major aspects of it (buildings, gardens, walls, murals, etc.)

That was us all back then. :) So innocent. So young.

The experience of the assignment was pretty full on and it got pretty hectic as we came closer and closer to finishing the assignment. Some fires may have broke out but in the end we got everything sorted.

Our next major assignment after that was creating our own game, by ourselves, and with emphasis on coding so we got to understand the programming side of game design.

I created a plat former game with a teleport mechanic which effectively enabled you to fly through the air.

I actually really enjoyed this one because it taught me that knowing how to code is probably one of the best skills to have in the video game industry. You can practically do anything with programming once you know what to do.

After learning the basics of coding we went onto learning about art in games. We were taught to use a program called Maya to make our models, which became an extremely useful tool for making games. 

Interestingly we also learnt about story in games which we focused on for the assignment, focusing on art earlier in the year.

I didn’t consider myself the best at 3D modelling but it was extremely fun. Once we got into unwrapping and texturing models it go way better for us since we could do just about anything we wanted.

I regret nothing.

Well some things.

But not most.

Back to the assignment we were given, we had to create a a vertical slice and a full level using art assets to tell a story. The goal was to use 5 models, no more and no less.

My story was about a young alchemist called Arch who, despising his job and wanting any excuse to run away, poisoned the main water source of his village which inflicted a deadly plague upon its people. A cure was found and everyone still alive left the village, allowing Arch to finally quite his job and leave the village.

Probably my favorite part of my project is the vertical slice which I believed I did quite well in.

I obtained a lot of free assets from the Unity asset store and pretty much covered the entire vertical slice with assets. The aim was to make it look as lived in as possible, having everyday objects strewn all about the place as though somebody was clearly living there.

Our next module was about testing games, how it works and what mainly happens with QA and bug testing in the industry. Our teacher went online and found a bunch of games for us to test, placing us into different groups and assigning us different games. 

As well as being assigned a game for the group to test, we were all individually assigned a game to test, receive results and then send those results to the people that made the game.

The game I was assigned was called Columnae: A Past Under Construction, a point and click adventure puzzle game developed by Moonburnt Studio. I had to have at least 15 people do QA testing, sending the results of the testing by the end of the module.

Testing would have had to have been my least favorite module but it was still extremely interesting to learn what testing was really like and that it isn’t all just ‘get money to play games’. Please don’t believe the adds for testing to be fun. But testing is still an extremely important process for making games, without it games wouldn’t be as fun or just completely riddled with bugs.

After testing came our final project, the biggest project of the year for us, to make a game from scratch with other people we have never met before in our lives. I was paired up with another designer and together we were grouped with 3 artists and 2 programmers from other classes. We had our introductions with the new people, getting to know each other and preparing for an extremely bumpy 12 weeks.

Our group was called Okay Loot and we had decided to make an endless runner game with being able to play on mobile in mind. We were the only people to want to make a mobile game which was interesting to the teachers.

We decided to name our game REM.

I learnt a lot from this assignment and the 12 weeks of managing both designing a game and handling keeping the group together along with my design partner. People come in lots of different personalities and having proper, efficient, communication is definitely a skill necessary for game design.

Also making a game is really hard.

But it’s also so damn fun!

In summary this year has gone by so quickly and was full of such intense learning experiences. I’ve always loved game and being able to make them has been my dream. Now with all I’ve learnt I’m getting closer and closer to achieving my dreams. 

There’s still so much for me to learn and to experience but I’ll happy every step of the way. :) 

[julian--hunt]

The aftermath of REM

REM is finally finished! It was a pretty hectic day with handing in the projects, bugs coming up at the last second, assets needing those last teaks etc. It just goes to show how intense game development can be. 

Here’s a trailer for our game. I hope you guys enjoy. :) 

With this final project finished it marks the first year of my game design course completed. What a wild and fast year its been.

I’ve had a lot of fun and learnt so much from this experience, being a designer is definitely hard work but it in the end it’s totally worth it. I remembered the first day I met my team, we were so awkward an quiet and didn’t know what to say.

I’ve loved working with my teammates who are so talented and amazing. I’d like to think each of us had a wonderful time working on this project.

The feeling of bringing a team together and finishing a game from the ground up is so satisfying. So many hours poured into the game and so many times heads have slammed on the desks. 

I’m happy with what we achieved and for a first year project I don’t think we did too bad. Now the future comes and hopefully the team and myself can bring REM somewhere in the future, perhaps improving it and actually selling it. :)

[simon-long-blog]

A half “after death” - REM

The team and I finished up REM last Friday, hitting the gold milestone not with a bang (I don’t know what I was expecting) but with a relieving letting go, experiencing our first taste of game development in a team from start to finish. 

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