clyde

Progress Report for Week #4 I'm pretty much a technomancer now. What were my goals for the week #4? Which of my goals did I accomplish? - I read the chapters on pre-fabs, GUIs, Character-Controllers, and I also read the ones on audio, and builds (these are short chapters btw). - I read a little about coroutines. I didn't grok them, but I made progress. After reading this introduction to coroutines, I went back to the wave-spawning portion of this Space-Shooter tutorial and wasn't completely lost. - Though in its current form, all the choices end with music being played, the visual-novel style text-boxes and choices in the current build of the dancing-game is arranged to be scalable. The way it works is that choices change a int pageNumber; it's not difficult at all to put in additional pages of text. A more elegant solution would be to have variables for the strings in the boxes(or maybe some sort of dictionary thing which I know very little about), BUT THE POINT IS that it's effectively a Twine demo so I accomplished that goal. What happened? - I figured out that reading my Unity book at my job makes the day sail by. And after reading it, I get super excited about trying shit out. I also read this tutorial on 2D sprite-animations and then had to try controlling Patricia's stomping so I banged my head against this wall until I eventually ended up on the other side of a busted wall that I need to fix later. I can tie animations to controller-input, but I'm not good at it and it takes me a lot of trial and error to figure it out. -Then I published my first build and I went into a spiral of fantasizing about how I'm going to be a world-famous game-developer and haven't done much since. Except I did one of week #2's goals (watch the live training video for cameras) this morning. What is the long-term goal? -Make the dance-game What are my goals for week #5 - I want to make sure that I don't stop working on the dance-game just because I have a little to show for it (I have a history), so that is the first priority. I want to make sure I add something to it. There is plenty of room for more. I'll probably add another character and hopefully one of their animations. Once I have two lovable characters on the screen, they will tell me what they want to do for a narrative. - After Dinosaursssssss's audio-experiment build, I really want to do something in that area. I'm imagining a 3d kinda thing. I was already successful in making some bouncing balls that play a tone when they collide. I want to make it so that their pitch is a function of their size, make that alterable through controller input, and also create an interesting environment for it. No rush, I just want to work on that some too. -I need to read more about Unity's Mecanim. That thing is a beast and it's incredibly useful. What challenges might I face and how can I prepare for them? - I can't do most of this at my job, so time is a factor. I think the best I can do to prepare for this is to just prioritize my goals. I might not be able to do them all this week. Dance-game progress is the first priority. - I'm planning on using rigidbody physics for the second character. It won't be the same situation as it was with Patricia. I suppose I can prepare by being willing to switch to a character who is animated in a similar way as Patricia if I get stuck. - I may get really into the 3d hanenbow experiment. If I don't input another sprite into the dance-game by Thursday, then no more 3d hanenbow until I do. - Mecanim is my nemesis. Maybe I should switch to a character who animates rather than the rigidbody one. That way I will get more comfortable with Mecanim. That's what I will do. Second character will be a standard sprite animation that plays animations with controller input. BTW: I know that ihavefivehat and TheCineaste expressed interest in dance-game making on page 3 of this thread. My response at the time was that I don't have a build to work off of yet. I now have a build to work off of. If you or anyone else still has an interest in contributing or experimenting with the dance-game project, then I am more than willing to send you the Unity files for the game or whatever else you might need to do your thing. I am taking no ownership over this project, it's just a project for amateurs to get started. Experience is not necessary and commitment is not expected. Just tell me if you want to contribute and what you need in order to do so. Anyone.

So if you are a super beginner like me and you just want to approach learning Unity as an hour-a-day kinda thing, I think these videos are helpful and in order. I'm only on episode 6 and I'm using a lot more resources than just following along here, but I like these videos because on mornings when I don't feel like doing anything particular, I can sit down with my breakfast and coffee and watch this guy show Unity's UI at a slow pace. It's a good way to find out that what tools exist in Unity. The reason I'm only on episode 6 is because it isn't what I'm always in the mood for. BUT I AM THIS MORNING! While watching the one on cameras, I start thinking that I can't wait to make Split-screen: the Game

I enjoy ethical confrontations. I'm not sure why it doesn't keep me from buying a game, but I'm pretty sure that it hasn't in the past. I bought L.A. Noire because I wanted to play a big-budget mystery game. Inversely, I think I may get more enjoyment out of Titanfall because I'm viewing it as a triumph of worker's rights (not sure if true), but I won't buy the game because of that. I'm going to buy Titanfall because I keep thinking about how much I want to play more of it.

I've never really been a Penny Arcade fan but as far as the broader games-industry goes; I've gotten the impression that Double Fine is a worker-friendly business by watching Amnesia Fortnight, hearing Jake and Chris talk about the atmosphere, and following a few of their employees on Twitter. This has a noticable increase of my enjoyment of their products. I'd love to see whether or not a studio is a worker-cooperative on the back of the box. Hearing about employees being treated like crap won't keep me from buying a game, but it certainly affects how good I feel about enjoying it.

Yup, that's the one.

I can't watch the video at the moment to be sure, but I thinknit was Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on genius that I'm thinking of. The basic idea was that when artists attribute the brilliance of a great work to themselves, it destroys them. That's why it can be healthy to recognize the creative process as a role similar to that of a medium. Great and not-so-great works as the environment and circumstances flitering through the artist's perspective and technique. I think there is a lot to be said about how reflecting on the technological, social, and intellectual capital that is necessary for a great work to be made can take some of the burden off of an artist to keep them humble, thankful, content, and capable.

I used this one, it was very helpful as an intro on how to import and create sprite animations.

This was largely my experience this week. It's kinda neat to look back through this thread and see that I just went through a similar process as you, just a few weeks later. I had no idea that the Animator component was going to be so deeply complex. The thing that really fucked me up was not understanding that I had to get the animator component in the script and then use the script to pass changes of the parameters back into the Animator by setting them with SetBool and such. I still don't feel confident about it, but it'll be a lot easier to figure out the second time.

The dirty gold smog-color really sets a mood.

Eventually there will be more dancers, more songs, and maybe even some more moves for Patricia. Right now, I'm just happy that I have a build. Early version of Dance Game

Pro tips for Unity users: -Save everything before you test a while loop. -If you intend to publish the game on the web, don't use the "Fire2" axis.

After episode 6, I couldn't be more excited to play these prototypes. Drew Skillman's comments after seeing some success with Little Pink best Buds were really insightful. I love Amnesia Fortnight.

Cool. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I like how high the aim is. It makes the game feel different than most FPS's I play, maybe because I always use the sights. It took me a little while to figure out where it was shooting though because the wall was too low for my bullet to hit when I was using the iron-sights. That music is pumpin. Do the white orbs do anything yet?

I have a question for you 3d-modelers and 2d-artists out there. What's the ideal scenario for finding out you want to contribute work? Would it be seeing a prototype of the game with shitty art and saying "I want to make the models or backgrounds for that"?

This is so good. This sounds like it would be so much fun with a small group of friends.

Dude. I don't mean to hijack your idea, but now that you suggest the prediction of the deck ability, I'm really inspired. As you say, the person from the future can look at the deck, but they can't rearrange order. But maybe the person from the present can shuffle. I love the idea that there could be these moments where the person from the future is like "You can't go to the party! You'll be in a car wreck!" and the person in the present is like "But I really want to go to the party." Then they ignore the advice from the person in the future and discover that it wasn't a car-wreck card. The person from the future was avoiding something else. But why? Maybe the two players have different victory conditions. The person from the present's victory condition could be face-up and the person from the future doesn't have to reveal theirs.

A game where one player is the other from the future sounds like a great idea for a loose rules story-game. The player from the past could make progressively crazier decisions so that the person from the future has to somehow account it into their history and there could be an assymmetry where the player from the future must be listened to in order to avoid injury. Maybe the person from the future has cards like "Lottery numbers for 1997" that they can use to bribe or herd the player from the past. Turns could move a regular chronological clock forward and the focus could be on the person from the future being arrogant and the person from the past being disingenious.

Has anyone heard anything about 3d-modeling software supporting the rift. I haven't gotten into 3d-modeling yet, but rift support may affect which programs I look into using.

I enjoy thinking about table-top game-design. I haven't ever gotten very far with my ideas, but I think it's fun to try to imagine things I enjoy, like Korean drama (romantic comedy) tropes in a card game.

Now that I have looked up "Hoisted by my own petard" I wonder why it that's not the message you get in Call of Duty when you kill yourself with your own grenade. I get that message a lot.

I just want to clearly state that I am stupid too and that I don't want to value people based off of their intelligence. I prefer to be around people who demonstrate compassion habitually, regardless of how fast they can grasp Quaternions. My frustration is when stupidity is enforced. Now that I think of it, intelligence being enforced can suck too (and it's kind of scarier). I guess I don't have a problem with stupidity at all then. I'm glad we had this conversation!

I don't know what y'all's Facebook feed looks like, but let's just say I post Snopes.com links in the comment-box more than I would like to. I don't know why I care. I guess I just hope other people would do the same for me.

The other day Captain Hastings had a conversation with a coworker and discovered that the coworker believed that mermaids were real. When explaining this to a third coworker, that person said "They are real, I just saw something about it on the History Channel." Captain Hastings works in a lab. Also, I'm convinced that 1 out of 20 adults I see on a daily basis believe that Santa Claus may be real. All that said, I'm actually comforted by the freedom to lack knowledge or critical thinking in our society. I think the problem is that our technology is far too powerful. There are a lot of people driving cars who never consider the possibilty that something anomalous may happen to the car in front of them while they are moving at 65 miles an hour. That's stupid.

Words I now use everyday after seeing them used a lot on these forums: -implicit -explicit -subtle -conflation