Author: Odin

SUMMARY

Role

Artist – Character/Level/UI

Intention (SMART Goal)

By May 10, as part of TEAM 7 as an ARTIST, I will have evidence of cohesive pixel art and a color palette and by following Derek Yu’s Pixel Art Basics for Session 5.

PRE-PRODUCTION – INQUIRY

Leader(s) in the Field / Exemplary Work(s)

0:40 – Easy to learn, difficult to master

2:25 Progression 3 ways

2:53 Simple premise executed brilliantly

3:01 Followed with a surprising amount of depth

4:18 Replayability driven by sense of progression

4:52 Microtransactions and bloating ≠ replayability

5:50 Need to plan to win, not mindless

6:06 Faux pas

6:44 Windows Defender is my #1

7:19 Need to learn how to use computer

Training Source(s)

https://derekyu.com/makegames/pixelart.html

this guy has a great blog post about making pixel art characters.

NOTES

1: Choose a Palette

pixels in pixel art has more meaning than in other mediums because of constraints

32 Color is most common, but 16 is also popular

Color palette can be used to represent a time period or specific game console (like a Famicom).

2: Crude Outline

Drag pencil tool around

Sketch the same way as with pen and paper

Overlap between pixel art and traditional art

3: Cleaning up the Outline

Remove stray pixels

reduce every line to a single pixel thickness

Jaggies – plural noun. a jagged, stair-step effect on curved or diagonal lines that are reproduced in low resolution, as on a printout or computer display.

two basic types of line. Straight and Curved

key to making nice curves is reducing the amount of stray “jaggies” small pixels or segments that break up the consistency of a line.

small size, large impact. – eyesore

make it so lines grow and shrink in a consistent manner

4: COLOR

Bucket fill

5: SHADING

simulate shadow to simulate shades

imaginary light source from one direction

6: SELECTIVE OUTLINE

LIGHTEN OUTLINE IN HIGHLIGHT AREAS

Project Timeline

Burndown wk. 1 will be defining guidelines for sprite work, cards, and level design.

Burndown wk. 2 will be menial work creating art, cards, and coding groundwork.

Burndown wk. 3 will hopefully be polish and triage of any remaining tasks.

Evidence of Team Planning and Decisions

We locked in.

PRODUCTION – ACTION

The (FILM, SOUND, or GAME Creation)

https://chsgamedesign.itch.io/wizarduel-chs-period-2-team-6

This is our Itch Game, made in Unity.

Skills Commentary

Credits menu can be found in-game.

POST-PRODUCTION – REFLECTION

21st Century Skills

Ways of Thinking (Creativity, Innovation, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving)

Ways of Working (Communication & Collaboration)

Tools for Working (Info & Media Literacy)

Ways of Living in the World (Life & Career)

Reactions to the Final Version

Self-Evaluation of Final Version

Grammar and Spelling

I used the Grammarly Web Extension for error checking.

Editor

LOGLINE

• In a world where magic rules all, a lone sorcerer must harness their card-based powers to vanquish evil wizards, or darkness will consume the land.

PROTAGONIST 

• This is the player character. I wanted to make a two player duel type game, but with the AMES prompt revealed, I have changed my focus. Expect to see something such as “His family was slain by Geoff, Arch of all Evil. Now, he seeks revenge.”

PROTAGONIST CORE WOUND / MOTIVATION 

• You are motivated to return good to the world after Geoff (an ancient automaton created by the original Dark Lord) takes everything dear to you, claiming the Crown of Conquest for himself.

GENRE

• Card-battler/Roguelite(?)/Dueling
• Inspired by a few games, such as Neon White, Slay the Spire, and Street Fighter.

PLOT DESCRIPTION

The story starts with the player seeing Geoff wreak havoc among your city, taking the Crown of Conquest from its place of resting.

You must then pick up the pieces of what is left, using them to battle your way free of the city.

Luckily for you, Geoff has made a number of mistakes in his calculations, presuming that no one with enough power to face him later would survive the attack.

You must then bide your time on the fringes of civilization, gathering back your power, waiting for the perfect time to strike back.

TREATMENT

Your character begins the story surrounded by opulence, living in the highest reaches of the city.

As you are from a celebrated lineage of mages, you are expected to dress in the finest of robes, imbued with hundreds of years worth of enchantments.

You are only to speak among people of noble class, but your parents have since been passed for many a year so you tend to ignore this.

You have a loving partner, and a child you expect to raise as your heir.

You make a habit of circling the gardens every morning before heading to your place, the person second from the end to the right of the King. This ties into the story.

INFLUENCES and EXAMPLES

Some influence came from Slay the Spire, as previously mentioned, so I have a video clip of the gameplay, which partially inspired my idea, despite having never played it myself.

I actually want to have a card system that is NOT turn-based, instead being based solely on mana.

SUMMARY

Role

Level Design – SOLO

Intention (SMART Goal) for the Session

By Mar. 8th, as the LEVEL DESIGNER for MYSELF I will learn how to generate terrain in Unity, by following Sebastian Lague’s Procedural Landmass Generation Tutorial for Session 4.

PRE-PRODUCTION – INQUIRY

Leader(s) in the Field / Exemplary Work(s)

Primary Source

I’ve been in awe of the level design since I started playing Elden Ring a month ago. Everything is so well planned out and polished down to the smallest, most out of the way cave.

Secondary Source

This guy was a level designer for Mass Effect Andromeda, and there’s like a good ten minutes worth of useful content in here.

Training Source(s)

PRODUCTION – ACTION

The (FILM, SOUND, or GAME Creation)

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eVUlw9CDn_X80g8zIgA–Ca0amKe3ODVDkaPCQgqMzo/edit#slide=id.p

POST-PRODUCTION – REFLECTION

21st Century Skills

Ways of Thinking (Creativity, Innovation, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving)

I learned a few different ways to control my expectations and also frustration when things didn’t work out. This also forced me to fix these issues, thus brushing up my skill in problem solving.

Ways of Working (Communication & Collaboration)

I talked to the person in my head and he convinced me to stay focused like Remy from Ratatouille.

Tools for Working (Info & Media Literacy)

I used a variety of online resources including YouTube tutorials, StackExchange, Quora, and a multitude of other forums.

Ways of Living in the World (Life & Career)

I learned how to manage my workflow to be more efficient and focused. I also continued to hone my problem-solving skills as I have in previous sessions.

Reactions to the Final Version

Nellie Hughes, the Xbox Design Director at Microsoft, said that I should check out GDC Talks. She also said that procedural level generation was the future, and I was doing well to learn about it.

Self-Evaluation of Final Version

I’m not entirely happy with what I have this time. I ended up with a couple errors that I still don’t quite know how to fix myself. I hope that I can find time in the future to fix these problems and fully accomplish my goals.

Grammar and Spelling

I used the Grammarly web extension.

Editor

Wynne P.

LOGLINE

In a world where levels generate, you need to walk, otherwise you will be sad

GOALS

• My technical goal for this session is to take my noise generation and make it three-dimensional.
  
• I want to mimic real life national parks as much as possible, to recreate the feeling of exploration and awe as you find big rocks and such.

Summary

Watched C# tutorial series, learned about methods, classes and loops.

What I Did This Week

I watched Brackeys’ tutorial series on the basic parts of C# coding, and used my new knowledge to write a script that generates a wizard similar to his example.

How I Did It

I stored the information for the different parts of a wizard (spells, exp, name) in a class, and then called the class to make an instance of a wizard in Main. The wizard can cast spells, and gain exp from it.

What I Learned

I learned about loops, arrays, functions, and classes in C#, and how each one works and interacts with each other. This was more of a refresher course for me because I had already learned these things at some point but my memory was hazy due to lack of use. Though I will say, classes were something that I didn’t really know much about so it was cool to learn how they can store things and be called on so I don’t have to type out the contents every time I want another wizard or similar thing.

Problems I Solved

mistyped string as sting in the wizard class and I didn’t realize for like 10 minutes. Once I fixed that it actually worked.

What Was the Result (Picture/Video)

This here is a class, which stores the info for the creation of an instance of a wizard. It saves me time having to type it out every time I want a new wizard.

How on/off Track Was I?

If this was a normal week I would’ve preferred to get more done, but since it was a 3 day week due to break, I think it was a good reentry, and I hope to pick up the pace come Monday.

“El Capitan, Yosemite” by rjshade is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

SUMMARY

Role

Level Design – SOLO

Intention (SMART Goal) for the Session

By Jan. 12, as the LEVEL DESIGNER for MYSELF I will learn how to generate terrain in Unity, by following Sebastian Lague’s Procedural Landmass Generation Tutorial for Session 3.

PRE-PRODUCTION – INQUIRY

Leader(s) in the Field / Exemplary Work(s)

Notes

0:40 : De facto level design = on-the-rails paths with a definite boundary between gameplay encounters

0:53 : Not bad design, efficient, often crafted for immersion

1:02 : Many different genres and perspectives of game use this

1:09 : Level asks you to progress

1:42 : Games like Mario Galaxy, GTA, NFS, Far Cry design asks you to explore

1:52 : Goal in Elden Ring is sometimes deliberately obscured

2:02 : obscuring in a deliberate way, some spaces are meant to be experimented on, rather than progressed through or explored

2:35 : Some spaces have a point where its not obvious where to go

3:12 : Most levels are constructed like real spaces that would make sense to interact with as a human

3:28 Elden Ring’s experimental philosophy throws that idea out, as well as the idea that the spaces are even meant to make logical sense, feel real, or be lived in

3:39 Spaces designed to be interacted with purely as a space within a video game, hence the rules of normality don’t apply

Training Source(s)

Playlist on procedural generation using perlin noise layers

Notes

0:14 : will be generating terrain using perlin noise

0:18 : assigning terrain types to height ranges

0:33 : Regular noise = val of either 0 or 1

0:39 : Perlin noise = coherent, changes gradually

0:47 : Perlin noise cross section is a wave

0:55 : Amplitude Y and Frequency X axes

1:10 : layer multiple noise effects

1:18 : Noise maps referred to as octaves

1:38 : Each subsequent octave should add more detail than the last in a smaller overall area

1:42 : Lacunarity = controls increase in freq. of octaves

1:56 : Lacunarity of octave 1 is Frequency = Lacunarity^0, next octave Frequency = Lacunarity^2, next, Frequency = Lacunarity^3 and so on

Project Timeline

Pre-production Milestones

• Thing 1
• Thing 2
• Cat in the Hat

Production Milestones

• basic terrain
• wasd movement + 1st person cam
• detailed textures
• nice skybox

Post-production

• presentation
• blog post

Proposed Budget

I dunno how this thing works but i think i got it.

Fixed some spelling errors too.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gvCrAbzeMRey_UixQQvIsSOPsaD-DfHuuzrq2KxOqNc/edit#gid=0

Evidence of Decisions

PRODUCTION – ACTION

The (FILM, SOUND, or GAME Creation)

This is what I have so far — Perlin Noise I can generate in the Unity Editor. This will eventually morph into three dimensional terrain using negative and positive values in a heightmap.

Skills Commentary

Session 3 Pro Fortnite Slideshow

This is an overview of my work this session in conjunction with some other solo students in my class.

POST-PRODUCTION – REFLECTION

21st Century Skills

Ways of Thinking (Creativity, Innovation, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving)

I followed a short tutorial for adding an in-editor noise generate button, and had to rewrite some lines of the code because it would throw an error message when I tried to run it.

Ways of Working (Communication & Collaboration)

I worked solo so I didn’t have any on-topic conversation with anyone around me for my own project.

Tools for Working (Info & Media Literacy)

I used YouTube, Google, the Unity forums, and Stack Exchange to help find solutions for problems I had, and to find ways to accomplish tasks I needed to do in my game.

Ways of Living in the World (Life & Career)

I learned a lot about C# this session, and I definitely saw an increase in my focus so far, and I hope it sticks for the future.

Reactions to the Final Version

“I like the sound of noise but I don’t understand it” -Jay (paraphrased)

Self-Evaluation of Final Version

Overall, I’m proud of what I have, although I was originally expecting to have much more to show for my work at the beginning of the session. Once I started, however, I realized this was an unrealistic goal.

Grammar and Spelling

Grammarly Premium

Editor

Wynne

Summary

Watched perlin noise terrain gen tutorial, learned things about it, wrote some code.

What I Did This Week

I watched a tutorial from Sebastian Lague about Procedural Landmass Generation. My goal for this week was to watch parts of this series to learn how he used the built in perlin noise feature to generate randomized terrain.

How I Did It

I watched his overview and the first video in the tutorial, following what he did, and started upon the creation of my own iteration inspired by his design.

What I Learned

I learned how perlin noise differs from regular noise, and how you can edit the amplitude and frequency of the noise to change the shape of the resulting terrain. Additionally, I learned the concept of layering multiple iterations of perlin noise on top of each other to generate more realistic terrain. I also learned some more concepts of the usage of C#, and picked up some nifty new lines of code to accomplish things I was previously unable to do because of my lack of knowledge.

Problems I Solved

I fixed multiple lines of code as I went along because I inevitably forgot a semicolon on line 14, and typed some variable wrong somewhere.

Luckily nothing big this week.

What Was the Result (Picture/Video)

This was the basic code defining the perlin noise used to generate terrain, and establishes a few parameters for it.

How on/off Track Was I?

I don’t really have a set end date for this project, so I’m telling myself that as long as I stay on task I’m on track. Could’ve been better, but I was busy helping Le Duc create this template.

• TITLE THIS BLOG POST: NAME OF PROJECT Weekly Work Log #(n+1)
  • WATCH MR. LE DUC TUTORIAL
• FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS IN THE:
  • (FILM, GAME, ROCK) Weekly Log.v1 (PDF)
• REVIEW THESE POST EXAMPLES:
  • Odin’s Session 4 Post (game)
• DELETE ALL OF MR. LE DUC’s INSTRUCTIONS DETAILED ABOVE AFTER COMPLETING THEM

SUMMARY

What I Did This Week

How I Did It

What I Learned

Problems I Solved

What Was the Result (Picture/Video)

I Am On/Off Track With My Burndown Chart

LOG LINE

In a world where trees grow, you need to walk, otherwise you will be strafed by an A-10 Warthog

PROTAGONIST

The protagonist is you

You started walking and ended up here. Now, you must walk — not run — to have a nice day and enjoy the outdoors.

PROTAGONIST CORE WOUND / MOTIVATION 

You wanted to get out of the house because you were incredibly bored, so you walked to the nearest park.

GENRE

Indie/Exploration

PLOT DESCRIPTION 

You awaken in a forest, and get out of your tent. Soaking in the majestic view, you feel compelled to take a walk and explore your surroundings. You walk until sunset, and must return to your tent to get a good night’s sleep.

TREATMENT

The world is modern, but you have escaped the suburbs and found a pocket of nature. Being from the Pacific Northwest, your outfit consists of outrageously expensive outdoor clothing.

Session Number:	2
Week Number:	3
Total Estimated Hours Contributed this Week:	4
What is/was your overall goal for this week?	Make the game playable/as finished as possible

Work Tasks 

Date	Task Description	Time Spent	Was / Were your choices and work Best Practices? Why?
11-6	MVP troubleshoot & version control management	1 Hr	They were, because I spent time problem solving issues I found in the build. It was listed as a best project in the link so I think it is.
11-7	Follow Camera, Team Meeting	1 Hr	I used communication & collaboration to write a block of code for a follow camera with Lex
11-8	Debug Camera Zoom/ help Jasper upload his build to itch	1 hr	I used Communication and Problem Solving to fix the compile errors in my code and help Jasper upload his build of the game to unity
11-9	Sent over mostly final car models to Jasper to build and finished the camera zoom to send to Jasper		Communication because I had to talk to people and email them with files and instructions for them.
No School			Veterans Day Observed

Personal Comments (Optional) 

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