Thurs Sept 4, 8:30am-11:10am + Roll a Ball Reskin notes

Today we dabbled more into Unity, learning how to build upon terrains. I can make mountains and add trees and grass. I can also add a first person controller so that I may move around my terrain. After the tutorial on building terrains, we went back to Roll a Ball and I'm starting to learn how to make pickup items rotate and be collectable.

With what I learned, my peas & carrots reskin idea is building further. As the pea rolls around, I'll try to find a squishy sound to attach to the pea as it rolls. Maybe in the background there'll be some rotating aluminum cans to make the background seem fun as the player rolls around. The terrain....I'm thinking of making the area shaped like a plate.

Rollaball - Reskin Plan

Last year in 3D modeling, my final project involved peas and carrots.

I remembered that project as I was just about to begin the tutorial for making pick-up objects in Unity. I suddenly thought, "hey what if the ball is a pea and it's collecting carrots to be eaten with?"

So my ball with be reskinned to look like a pea.

Because I just really love peas and carrots.

Stephen Johnson's Everything Bad is Good For You response

Once the excerpt started talking about a study that says avid readers were more likely to be more social, I got really annoyed. I'm glad the author said they didn't agree with the argument that avid readers were better people than gamers, and pointed out that video games could have a narrative as deep and interesting as any book. Both books and video games can be mentally and emotionally rewarding to readers and players, but because video games are related to technology, people who are so attached to their "technology is the devil we must go back to traditional values to keep our sanity and genius!!" arguments don't want to accept that video games have had such a significant impact on society.

Tues, September 2nd, 8:30am-11:10am

Today we presented out games. My game was about matching cards with marine animals, but with a twist - if you pick up a pair of cards including two sharks, you automatically lose. If you get a shark and another animal, you lose a turn.

After we discussed the mechanics and skins of our games, we went back to working on the Roll a Ball tutorial in Unity. I was able to get my ball to roll, along with attaching the camera to the ball's movement. I'm familiar with code since I took a Web Authoring class, so the process was familiar. I felt successful.

Next I shall plan to reskin Roll a Ball.

Thurs, Aug 28, 8:30 am - 11:10 am

Today was the first day of 3D Game Development.

First we opened up Unity to try out a demo game, then we played board games so we could discuss the objectives and mechanics. My group played Sorry!, but I unfortunately was not the victor.  Still, it was fun to play with others and it was a great learning experience.

After creating our blogs we went back to Unity and began to learn about small things such as how to move around the map (zoom in/out, move around, selecting objects, moving between objects, etc).

We also worked on our first animating tutorial: Roll-a-Ball. At the end of class I have just started the tutorial on how to make the ball move.

The homework assignment involves creating my own tabletop game. I think I want to make some sort of card game.