Our challenge doesn’t start until Wednesday where we decide the theme so I thought I’d use the time beforehand to finish off another project I’ve been working on. I am currently learning Unity and C# by going through Udemy courses. I would like to join a game company after I graduate (or before) so it’s important for me to improve these skills. I am currently going through “https://www.udemy.com/course/the-most-comprehensive-guide-to-unity-game-development” (Mehovic, 2021) and the game I’ve working on is called The Artifact.
There are video tutorials of how to do particular things and it takes you from scratch to completing the game, with challenges for the student along the way. I find this a really great way to learn, I get more out of learning by doing than I do from reading books. “The best way to present new information to a kinesthetic learner is through personal experience, practice, examples, or simulations.” (Anon, 2020). Going through the course has given me a familiarity with Unity which is building up my confidence to create things myself which leads perfectly into the rapid ideation we are starting on Wednesday.
There were only a few things to finish off on the game, most of the mechanics were already in place, I had to create an enemy spawner which spawns enemies at particular time intervals which spawns faster as time goes on. I also had to create the menu, game over screen and UI elements on the game such as the Artifacts health which gradually goes down. It’s really fun bringing everything together into a complete game and seeing it all working. Going through this complete process has also taught me other elements of game development such as animation, sound and things such as tile mapper which I hadn’t used before. This has broadened my knowledge of Unity as a whole which is useful for my career ambitions as I plan to create my own game.
The game is now finished but I will probably add more to it in future to make it more personal. It currently has sound effects but there’s no music. I find that music really helps me fall in love with a game so that is important to me. Ninich (2017), who is a video game composer, believes music can improve a game on many different levels such as immersion and player engagement so I will definitely come back to this and add music to future games. I could also experiment and make my own assets, although it would probably be a stick man as the player but at least the animation would be easy. I feel proud of myself that I’ve gone through quite a few features and some were complicated and I understood how it all worked.
Screenshot of The Artifact
Link to The Artifact
https://riggy92.itch.io/the-artifact
References
Anon, 2020. 4 Types of Learning Styles: How Do Students Learn Best? | BAU. [online] Bay Atlantic University – Washington, D.C. Available at: <https://bau.edu/News/types-of-learning-styles/> [Accessed 12 October 2021].
Mehovic, F., 2021. The Most Comprehensive Guide To Unity Game Development Vol 1. [online] Udemy. Available at: <https://www.udemy.com/course/the-most-comprehensive-guide-to-unity-game-development> [Accessed 12 October 2021].
Ninichi, 2017. Why Music in Games is So Important — Ninichi. [online] ninichimusic. Available at: <https://ninichimusic.com/blog/2016/10/31/why-music-in-games-is-so-important> [Accessed 12 October 2021].
Richard Charles Ellis 