Welcome to my game dev blog where I'll be posting things I've been making
I'm currently on my last year of uni doing game design, so as of now, I'll be posting mostly on my final year project development
Alongside that project, I'll also be doing another project on coding in Unity (it's bad timing I know, but I had planned this for a while already ;-; ) as someone who has no clue on coding, so feel free to give tips and advice 👍
For any fandom related and art things, I'll be at @ye-yamen
Over the course of 12ish weeks, our team of 3 had been working on a game for a project. Alongside, I had another project that documents my journey into learning coding in Unity. The blogging of my docuementation was meant to start a few weeks ago, but with the news about Unity happened. Whilst I know that it doesn't effect my team and I, it had dampened my motivation to post publicly and worry about my future in making games. So I had made just made pages about systems and the development process of our project.
Below is an average overall reflection on my short journey learning to code as an artist
In this project as the programmer learning on the way, I had taken different self-study approaches and talked to a few others to help with my work. Whilst I could visualise how code would look in my head, applying it didn’t always result in what was intended. The biggest culprit was the dialogue system and my own stubbornness to use other users’ packages to aide with the project. Admitting to myself that a task is too difficult, especially with the knowledge I lack in the field, was probably the first step in making progress in development.
Did I do a lot of coding?
Yes and no.
Yes, as I written up multiple attempts at dialogue systems and understanding how loops work.
No, ‘cos I ended up not using 80% of it in the final project.
In saying that, sometimes it is best not to write too much to overcomplicate code that gets interweaved with each other. I found it better to write small individual code that is independent from one another to avoid confusion.
How do I feel about coding now?
It’s fun when it works and makes me rethink life when it doesn’t. Coding, at least in Unity, has methods and functions (are they they same? I don’t really know) that are fairly obvious, like OnTriggerEnter happening when something enters the trigger collider and SetActive to change if the object is active in the scene.
It’s when there is a very specific thing I want that it becomes confusing, where I need to problem solve with the tools available. Making a timer and path for an object to follow separately is fine by it itself, but when combining them I somehow becomes a mess of connected scripts and variables (at least when I work).
I am thankful for all the tutorials online (especially Brackeys lolol) that dive into the lines of code and break them down into their purposes. With the way they explain and use pseudo-code to visualise the process in which the code acts, I can apply their teachings into my own needs by moulding and splicing them together.
Whilst I’m not the best at it, I’d like to think I’m competent enough to code up basic things and branch off from there. Now, the way I see code is similar to reading a recipe or composing music, with steps to follow and jump back and forth from. It’s also great to look at others work and understand their own processes and see what commonalities they all have.
So, what is my learning style?
With the huge setback in Week 9 with restarting of the project, I found that I work best under pressure. It’s not the best and healthiest, as it stresses me the heck out, but it had given me the best results and steam ahead. However, I end up taking huge breaks after deadlines are hit and am reluctant to go back. It becomes a lopsided cycle where majority of the time I’m taking a break or just sitting at the desk and glancing at the project momentarily.
As Wu in 'Time pressure changes how people explore and respond to uncertainty' had experimented, I am less relucant to work when time pressure is forced onto me. I don't worry about the risks and I instead worry if I can even complete the outcome.
Thinking about it deeper, it’s really just Pomodoro but flipped around. That style of learning I had found to grant some progress at the beginning, but soon began to lose its effectiveness as I had begun to just wait for the clock to tick by until my next break.
So maybe for my next game or game jam, I’ll use this technique because I’m soon going to be unrestrained by the clasps of attending classes and multiple deadlines for entirely separate subjects.
Did I have fun?
Only at the start with the character controller lol
