So School is Back On…
Originally published September 1st, 2020
Here I go again.
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The fall semester is rolling around once again. And though I certainly have my opinions on schools reopening, the fact is they have reopened which means I'm back to attending classes. Gone are the extra summer hours where I made huge progress on each game, even if that progress was hard to show off at times. Instead, that time will be spent learning new skills and developing my work ability. Some of this will no doubt creep its way into my games. Speaking of which, what's going to happen with those? How will development change now that school is back in session?
There's a few other variables contributing to the time I have available. I also started a job as an IT help desk fellow at the school I attend. Right now, most of what I do is help people with password issues and take care of the simpler computer issues that faculty and instructors run into. I'm basically their savior when something goes wrong, which is both cool and intimidating. So even if classes were not a thing, my time spent working on games would certainly be much less. Really, it's not so much the new classes that are affecting development so much as the job is. Which is fine of course, I'm not complaining. I only say all this to explain why things will be slowed down.
But enough beating around the bush, let's talk game development. We'll take a moment to look at each game in the pipeline right now and what we can expect to see from them going forward. Let's start with Future, since I recently talked about it. It's become increasingly apparent to me that most of the work left to do with that game is largely visual. Mechanically, a lot of the game is present. I'm currently populating the fourth major area with enemies and other behind the scenes objects. Once that's done, there will only be one more major area to perform this population process with, and then any other time I populate worlds in the game it will be smaller areas or additions to previously existing ones. It'll be pretty big and exciting when Future is at the point where every area is playable from beginning to end.
At the same time, I am working on the first pass of visuals for the game. I recently finished the first major area, which I talked a bit about in my previous blog. After I finish populating area four, I'll go back to working on first pass visuals in the second area. I feel like it'll be a lot easier than the first one, since this area is considerably less lush with vegetation and wildlife. Now, as for how school and work will affect this game's development? I'm sure it will really slow it down, but it will likely feel that way because progress in this game takes longer than in others. Take my current work on populating an area: right now it is moving along at an alright pace. The map is coming together, and usually not long after that I work on enemy and obstacle placement. By themselves, these things really aren't hard or take that long. But when considering how large of a world I'm working on (there's ten floors), then you can see why this process may take a while.
The RPG, on the other hand, I think will see little noticeable change. Between the two projects, this game is the “small one” (though admittedly it's gotten bigger than anticipated), and thus progress feels like it happens faster in this game on average. Mind you, it's still no more or less work than Future. Thing is, Future's scale is considerably larger than the RPG's, and thus even though I'm moving at a similar pace, progress is not as quickly seen. Meanwhile, the RPG is much smaller in scale, and thus feels like it's moving at a faster rate even if that's not necessarily true. It's admittedly a little confusing, but I hope I'm making sense.
I'm also currently thinking of ways to maybe work on this game during what little downtime I'll have at class. I noticed the Unity engine is installed on many machines, so maybe I can work with those? Depends on the version they have compared to mine. I tend to keep my installation of Unity pretty up to date when I can. The school, on the other hand, seems to lag behind somewhat in updates, most likely for stability reasons. Makes a lot of sense, really. I've had moments where I update an engine and suddenly my projects stop working. That's why backups are important!
I'm feeling pretty comfortable with the Blender 3D modeling program, something I'll be utilizing for both games. I've gotten to the point where I have been crafting my own objects and creating my own scenes. If any aspect of game development will be slowed down, it would be this one. Modeling even a decent looking object takes quite a bit of time. When it's ready, I look forward to showing off my work in the RPG. So far it's off to a nice start. Future will also be acquiring its visuals thanks to a combination of Blender, Tree It, and any helpful resource sites out there in the world. I'm still working on practicing creating individual “static” objects before I go off attempting to make any character models and animations. I've already set up a point when I say “yes, I'm ready to move on to more advanced stuff”. It will be when I have a first pass of a certain scene in the RPG completed. You'll know when I reach that point...
And that's it! That's what we can expect moving forward in terms of rate of progress as well as what the next tasks are. This is a bit different to Impressions since that game was already approaching the end when school had started last year. Plus, I would come home right after school, usually around 2 PM. These days my home arrival time is almost 6 PM. So a lot of things about this school year and its relationship with my games will be different. But, like so many others, all I can do is keep moving forward. I like my games too much to let them sit still while I go to classes, so I'll be working on them at some capacity regardless of what I'm dealing with.
Until next time!
-Lance T.
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