I'm gonna be a game developer someday :D

A compilation/review of my days studying the creative techs.

[themightyblogster-blog]

Assignment 3 - Introduction to creative technologist

Reflection - Semester 1

11.06.2015

This semester has been interesting and tough for me. I’ve had to experience working with so many different kinds of people. I’ve really opened my eyes up in regards to how to go about working as a creative technologist. When I filmed myself for the video about myself as a creative technologist, I was unsure of how id cope with such a drastically dynamic environment. I came from a life of sitting in order and writing essays or solving maths problems. Now i’m running around the city buying materials for the new costume i’m about to design which lets me play the game I programmed using a camera I’ve made in a group using kinect and spare circuit parts!!(i wish). But seriously we’re doing so many different things now which require input from everyone in our groups. Its fascinating as well as really hard for me.

A lot of the projects we did this semester were completely new to me. I’ve had no prior experience with a lot of these things. I understand that experimentation and experience are two things that are very important, not only in this course but throughout my life. And so this semester ended with myself just barely scratching the surface of what’s to come in the next few years. I’m motivated to continue and expand my knowledge and experience in these fields. I feel more closer to a creative technologist than a student when im in the studio busy working away at my next project with my group.

[themightyblogster-blog]

Final vernissage project

I don’t want to make a huge blogpost repeating most of what I’ve already said, but if there’s anything I CAN say, its that through this project, I really do feel more confident in my own skills. I mean a year ago I don’t think i would’ve been able to create something like this. I’ve figured out a thought process that i can follow along when designing and creating something new out of an idea I have.

But anyways, this was my project set up. I think I definitely could’ve improved the storyboard. It looked really lackluster when I had it printed out. Maybe if I printed it out on an A3 paper, it might’ve looked better. But yeah there are a lot of things I have yet to learn and if i knew how to, I totally would’ve created a small app that people could use to play my game, or at least an animation of it.

[themightyblogster-blog]

This is the storyboard design of how an app of the card game would look. This took a while to make because I didnt know how to use the software so I had to play around with it to figure things out. It captures the look of what I wanted to do but I wish there were more storyboard slides I could’ve used. It was a free trial so I could only use 3 slides.

[themightyblogster-blog]

THE CARDS HAVE BEEN PRINTED !!!

I had to go with my back up plan for the card printing. My original plan was to get them printed overseas and express shipped here. I had a feeling i shouldn’t rely too much on this though so i kept a back up which was... PRINTSPRINT!

I received an email from the card printing company that my cards would arrive on Tuesday. That’s one day too late >:( So instead i hopped on to printsprint to print and cut them myself. I think the quality suffered a tad though.. it makes me pretty annoyed. But overall im really happy with how these cards look. I think this look captures the fun factor of the game. The previous designs were simple black silhouettes. These looked cool but didn’t fit the theme behind the game in my opinion.

Im quite excited on how people will judge these cards compared to my old ones. It also feels really nice to actually have them in my hand.

Its funny I say this but, even this small act of having the cards printed on campus was a learning experience for me. The lady at the desk said if i want the cards printed double sided, I need to mirror the backs to the fronts rather than having them in place. And due to a silly mistake of mine, I forgot to save the original files for my card designs and instead I had PDF files. PDF files aren’t editable so I had to figure out how to convert PDF to MS Word and then learn how to mirror the page rather than copy the card places.

I also had to use a guillotine thing :S I’ve never had to use one before so it was pretty interesting trying to get the cards cut. I guess due to my lack of experience, the cards aren’t in the best quality but hey I tried! We’ve gotta start somewhere :3. Definitely a learning experience.

[themightyblogster-blog]

Back from the dead!

Sunday morning, after a sleepless night.. I sulked my way to my computer with a last ditch attempt to bring it back to life.. and i tried waiting things out and system restoring a few times and by a miracle from above it worked! My hard drive really is fried but the main drive with the OS was still working. PHEW! And im so lucky that I saved my photoshop files and other helpful software on this working drive as well.

That being said, I didn’t have the luxury of working at my own pace. I managed to create a storyboard for the mock version of my app. This took a while because i was unfamiliar with the software and website I used. It’s far from great but it gets the job done.

I sit here now thinking if I had this problem earlier in this year, there’s ABSOLUTELY no way id be able to cope. I used photoshop to work really quickly on the cards and if I didnt have the skills which I gained the past few months, I would’ve been lost. Man this goes to show how important back up plans are. You never know when some piece of technology is going to fail on you in your time of need. I think for future projects I want to experience working without technology. I think those skills would always complement technological skills in one way or another.

Anyways in short, system restore saved my ass and hopefully the results of today will mean something in the near future.

[themightyblogster-blog]

Major setback :(

Woke up this morning ready to work on the next part and developing the mock app version of my card game and guess what? I hear this weird clicking noise from my PC and find out my hard drive is fried. I feel so defeated >.< and so frustrated. I’ve used the laptop to find out the problem as well as possible solutions but it all indicates that I’ll need a new hard drive.

I will be using my laptop for rest of the vernissage period but its extremely laggy and limited in terms of software I have on here. Its going to take at least a week to fix my computer and some helpful data I had on there is probably gone.. As frustrated as I am, I will continue to work hard on this project.

I went to sleep last night thinking how incredible it is that I’ve had the chance and experience to use so many different kinds of software. I’ve gained soo many skills and everyday im doing something new. Whether i finish my vernissage to a satisfactory extent or not, i know for sure that the kinds of skills i’ve gained will help me to do much better in the future.

[themightyblogster-blog]

My game. :3

[themightyblogster-blog]

Vernissage update and Programming! Finally complete!

After so long, finally the day has come. I struggled a LOT with this project, mainly because I didn’t know how to do a lot of the things for my game. I initially started off thinking about making an RPG game. I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew. If i had more time, it might’ve been possible but oh well, no regrets!

I ended up changing my game into a slightly trolly, comedic version. It still has the RPG graphics, but instead of actual fighting, you just move the enemies into zones. This sort of *implies* that you’re fighting them back and capturing them.

I am quite happy to say though, that I did finish the game to an extent I was satisfied with. Satisfied for sending it in, but not satisfied with finishing. In my spare time, and as I gain more skills, I want to build off this game and continue on with my original plan of making a small RPG game. I’ve always wanted to make one and I think if can crack it this year, It’d be a huge accomplishment for myself. 

I’m now free to continue working on my vernissage as much as I need to. Just waiting for cards to be delivered. I really hope they come in soon. I do have a backup but that will set me back for other things I wish to do about the vernissage. It doesn’t help that I fell sick today so I really don’t feel like getting out of home in this weather. :(

I’ve thought of using movie maker or maybe adobe premier pro (depending on which one suits my needs) to make a sort of advertisement or trailer for an app that *would* come paired with the card game i’m developing. Obviously I can’t make an app just right now, but i can show how an app would work. I’ve downloaded all the software and thought of a plan about it already, and now that my programming is finished, I can go full on ahead with the vernissage. Can’t wait to get this all over and done with.

[themightyblogster-blog]

Programming for Creativity game update

So I spent most of today at home, programming away. Well.. most of my time was spent in trying to make my sprite.. Im happy to say, I’ve made the sprite but for the life of me, I cant make it animate correctly while I run. I’m seriously considering leaving it as it is so the sprite slides all over the place lol. Also, i’ve also been considering a few different types of gameplay. My initial plan was to have a pokemon ish sort of battle screen where its turn based. Now I think that might just be a bit boring and with my lack of knowledge, probably time consuming to code. So Instead, i’ve been experimenting with real time fighting where you shoot arrows or swipe to attack. This is definitely more fun than a turn based game so i might just continue with this strategy.

[themightyblogster-blog]

Vernissage Update

So I’ve taken the past 2-3 days to redesign my cards and make them a little more.. user friendly. I’ve also sent in the order to get them printed and hopefully they arrive next week sometime. Pretty happy to say, the skills i gained during the digital collage and moving image projects both came in handy here. I used photoshop for the redesign and boy it’s an upgrade from MS paint xD

I’ve found that a big struggle im currently facing is splitting my work between programming and working on this vernissage. I was having problems prioritizing which project to work on and when. In the end, I thought if I could take as long as I need and work on the cards for now, in the time it takes for them to be delivered, I could work fully on my programming and get that over and done with. So far this is my game plan, so i’ll see how this turns out. 

As for my plans on furthering my card project, I think I want to make a GIF of an app related to my card game. Yeah that sounds complicated but Stefan prodded me in this direction and I think with the resources I have now, I can make something interesting pop out. I’m currently looking into this and researching possibly ways of presenting and editing this GIF to make it seem good quality.

[themightyblogster-blog]

Vernissage

I have decided to work on my set of playing cards for this final project. The reason why, is that when I was actually going through the cards for play project, there were a lot of things I wanted to do, which I was not able to due to time and group ideas. I also feel like there’s a LOT of room for improvement with the cards as well. They really did seem unfinished and the concept behind them wasn’t very applicable in my opinion. So I think i can seriously polish this project up.

Another reason why I’ve decided to do this is because when we were introduced to this project, I didn’t have an open mind in regards to the design and play themes. I was in an awkward and suppressed state because I still hadn’t gotten used to the uni life, so I think now that i’m more familiar with the resources and people here in the class, I should be able to produce something much better than the first time through. I also have more skills in photo editing and programming so  I hope to incorporate all these skills in this project.

[themightyblogster-blog]

Programming for Creativity

I’ve been working on my game for a few weeks now. Progress has been slowly lately becuase I DONT KNOW HOW TO ANIMATE SPRITES T.T. It’s taking me a while, and this is probably one of the larger challenges im going through so far. From what i’ve researched, there are a number of ways to go about making an animated sprite, but I decided to use spritesheets. I really have to get this done and over with so I can continue adding more content into my game.

[themightyblogster-blog]

Game developer meetup- ICT entry

A month ago, I went to the game developer meeting held on Wednesday at AUT. The topic of that session was this google app marketing plan where app developers for android and apple could use resources from google to help monetize and advertise their apps.

It was the first time i’d been to one of these meetups and I feel like this topic was aimed at existing app developers rather than “newbs” at developing. The representatives from google spoke about how their system of app advertising would help designers choose when and where to add advertisements in their applications and what kind of advertisements would be the best to show. It also gave a detailed list of their app performances in terms of users and downloaders. I can imagine this would help an app designer know if their app is a success or not. It could also indicate whether their app is adequately advertised too.

All in all, it was pretty interesting, and after the speakers finished, other app and game developers in the room could go up and speak about things they’d been working on. Some of their things were brilliant.

[niishbct]

(via Image tagged in gifs)

[themightyblogster-blog]

Lets all reblog this

[themightyblogster-blog]

Fingemo - Year 1 BCT 2015: Moving Image Project #2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v...

FINGEMO moving image project !

[themightyblogster-blog]

Moving image project -  Reflections and final thoughts.

The past week was well.. pretty stressful. We had to make some big changes to our original plan which we didn’t know if it’d make our moving image better or worse. In the group, it felt a little chaotic, but through the chaos we managed to sit down, think things through and follow a plan. Through this we managed to finish our project and I can’t say im not happy with the final product :3. 

Reflecting back to the beginning of this moving image project, I was afraid i wouldn’t do well because if you’ve followed my blog so far, i’m not too keen on my drawing skills xD. I thought it’d involve a lot of drawing or graphics and i’m really not good at expressing my creativity in drawings..I mean yeah, short sketches and doodles, but definitely not in flipbooks and animations. So I was off to a shaky start. When we got to the second part of the project, which was the proposal, I started to think more broadly after seeing some of the examples. I started getting ideas in ways where I can use my strengths. I definitely enjoyed the second part more than the first (lol).

Joining fingemo was definitely something im very glad i did. The ideas that some of the group members had were brilliant and they expressed it so effectively that everyone sort of knew how the general filming was going to turn out. Throughout this project, I learnt so much about how important plans and teamwork is. It’s really hard to work properly in a team, without knowing each other’s strengths. 

Reflecting over the other groups’ work, I was truly amazed by how abstract and how effectively they could portray different emotions. I feel like its opened up new ideas in my head that I wish I could’ve thought of beforehand. But I guess thats what experience just is, I wouldn’t know how to open my mind if I haven’t seen others going out and opening their minds up.

Overall, I found this project really interesting and fun and many many skills were gained throughout the project. I never once thought i’d be applying the camera angle shots I learnt at school, in a degree project xD

[themightyblogster-blog]

Filming.. aaand cut !

Today we decided to split up into two groups - the artists and the actors. Santiago and Tama stayed at the studio to work on the characters animations while Sujay, Kenneth, myself and Jamie went out to a few parks to take shots for our film. It was pretty fun to be honest, and it was interesting to see how everyone’s mind would suddenly snap into this director’s mindset and how the inner actors of some people would come out xD. We decided to film in grim, shady and lonely looking places to bring out the emotion in the shots.

I think one of the greatest strengths in the group today, was that everyone was coordinated and knew what each other was doing. No one was really idling off (and nor did any of us really have any chance to for that matter) . We managed to get a lot of the filming off and this decreases the workload for the next few days. Hopefully we can finish the rest of the filming and animations tomorrow, so Sujay can begin editing on Wednesday.