Studio 1 - Week 5 - Weekly Progress HH

By Harry Hughes

So this week it was long overdue for me to start fleshing out the narrative aspects of my Folio 1 work. I was actually fairly burnt out from throwing myself into C#, and I was also starting to realise that I was beginning to understand scripts that people were making on, say, their YouTube tutorials. So it seemed like a great time to change tack.

I did some brainstorming on Monday. I knew I wanted my project to feature some playable games made by a fictional creator. Using some writing techniques I've learnt in MAGI I came up with an idea of making a fictional documentary film about an evil psychiatrist who made games for his clients to play, telling them they would help with their trauma while secretly knowing that playing them would make them worse- and it did. Then there could be a link to a website where you could play the games- uploaded in secret by a disgruntled former employee of the psychiatrist. I am really happy with this idea so far for a few reasons: it justifies the low quality of the games- there were supposed to be made by someone who is not a video game maker by trade; thinking about this evil guy who made the game while you're playing it adds a level of intrigue and context that I think has not been well explored in the video game world; and it gives me license to make the games extremely creepy!

So then I set about figuring out what the actual games would be, and then I began making one of them. I spent most of the rest of this week making this game which is set in a waterslide. I used several of my new skills in scripting - triggering audio, teleportation, a torch you carry which can be switched on and off- and got the game to a point I'm reasonably happy with.

I think instead of completely finshing this game, I'll move on to another one. There are still several things I want to figure out in Unity: making usable menus, having (at least) a restart function, having collectible items, a timer, text on the screen, subtitles, AI. For the first time I actually am feeling like those things are achievable which, considering where I was back in March in terms of animation skill, is hugely exciting.

I'm kind of at a crossroads with my C# study though. Every script I've needed so far has been very easily located in a forum or YouTube tutorial that I sort of just feel like I don't really need to "learn" things on my own. I know this is maybe a little dangerous so I think I need to seek some advice about whether this is a logical approach, or whether I really need to start writing my own bits of code instead of looking for help every time.