This week was fun, I got to 3D model two inside jokes from our game design class! It was good practice with UVW unwrapping, and while I am still finishing the second one, it feels like this was one of the most productive weeks of the year just because of how much I got done. The first joke, I already made a post about because I started it last week, was Beats by Broke. It's a joke about the crappy headphones that Mr. B has to lend out to students who forget their own. The second is "why do we yellow banana?" a throwback to an exam question that made no sense to anyone. On a more relevant note, I also managed to model a simple bookshelf, so once I texture that, that can go in some of the classrooms (it has less polys than the banana, which is only about 150 polys, so it should be low lag). We also had some people from Microsoft along with a former NFL player come to visit on Friday to see what we were working on, and to talk to Mr. B about what the classes were like. Goals For Next Week:
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I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons for almost 5 years now, a few times as a player, but recently only as a Dungeon Master. Since 8th grade when I started playing, it's always been a big part of my life, from being the way I connected with my friends outside of school, to the being the club I go to every other Tuesday, to being a key component in a podcast that means the world to me, to again connecting me with friends. It's helped me develop closer relationships with people, improved my improvising and leadership skills, and has just been really fun. It's also very closely related to game design since it is a game where you get to do a lot of the designing, so I'm going to talk about some things that I've learned from the game. This is the first post, but I hope to make more.
This first lesson is "Who's Playing?" or in other words: Audience is EVERYTHING. Ok so this one might be because I'm a weak little man without a backbone (aka a doormat, a pushover, what have you) but truly, the players that you have can really change the game. A stricter DM may not experience this at all if they try not to be flexible to fit their players needs, but I certainly try (maybe too hard) to be accommodating to the players and the story that they want, so my games do change depending on who is playing them. I especially have been able to see this through running the same (or a similar) campaign twice with two different groups: one composed of my close friends, and the other at tabletop club. My group of close friends are much less combat-oriented than the tabletop group (possibly because they know that I hate running combat) and are more likely to explore and investigate, and MUCH more likely to talk at length with NPCs to ask about what's going on. At tabletop club, intimidation is the name of the game with NPCs, who are often ignored, and no questions are asked as they rush into potentially dangerous areas. This past Tuesday at tabletop was the smoothest combat that I've ever run, and that's because these players are really into it. All (except maybe one) were constantly paying attention to what was going on, and so it moved very quickly. Usually, combat drags on forever and doesn't feel so consequential, but here, they were using high level spells to stay alive, and while some of this can be attributed to me improving as a DM, I also really believe that it's because of who my players were. It's a little bit like how if you throw someone who is bad a videogames into a racing game, they're not going to be able to go very fast - similarly, my friends, who are catching up after being months apart, aren't very good at focusing in on combat. In contrast, the tabletop kids are like pro racers, they have more knowledge of the Official D&D rules than I do, so once their turn rolls around, I don't even have to tell them that it's their turn: they already have their entire move planned and ready to go without any prompting from me. This leads to very different combat scenarios, the first feeling tedious, and the second being a core component of gameplay. I'm not trying to say that the tabletop group's way of playing is better though, I actually typically prefer the way my friends play, as is outlined by the tavern scene. I had set up a tavern with 6 different NPCs who would supply different plot threads so that the players could have a bit of choice in what kind of game they wanted to play (I would develop the overarching storyline based on who they chose to do a quest for). With the tabletop group, after talking to the first guy, they rushed to get a horse and carriage and got outta there! (they went to complete his quest). My group of friends however talked to 4 of the NPCs (we ran out of time in the session to talk to more) and they had a nice scene where they deliberated which quest to follow. It allowed for some good character development, and set them on a path to a quest that they were all interested in. There's nothing wrong with impulsively rushing in, but I personally appreciate careful deliberation as well. Overall, I'm trying to say players choose which direction the story is heading, but also affect the energy of each encounter as well. There's no style of play that is inherently bad, but there may be a style of play that's a better fit for the game you are creating, so you need to take into account who is going to be playing, how they play, and if you can work with that. It's exactly the same with all game designing. If you want to make an FPS, your players are probably not going to appreciate long, unskippable cutscenes, unless you are specifically advertising to an audience that likes both FPS and narrative heavy games. Knowing what kind of game you run, and who your target audience is can really help solidify what challenges and features you create for the game you are making. I don't know when this happened (or it may have just always been there but I never noticed) but Weebly now has an Alt Text feature that allows you to easily write image descriptions on any images on your website! This is very cool, for a couple of reasons.
The first, less important reason, is that if your alt text contains keywords, your image may be found by these keywords, but the normal description doesn't have to include them. It could help images or entire websites get a little bit more exposure. However, what's even better is the second reason: accessibility. Alt text will be read by screen readers, so people who are blind or have any sight problems who use screen readers (programs that will read online text to them) can also understand what is going on in the image. This is something that a lot of people never even think about when creating content, so I am very glad that weebly has brought this technology to an easy to edit place on images (the same place you would click in order to write a regular caption). I learned a lot about this as I've been doing fan art for a podcast, because as a completely auditory medium, there's more hard of seeing people in the audience since it is a media form that is more accessible to them, and so many people in the community have been encouraging more image descriptions. There are people who aren't completely blind who can definitely enjoy visual art, but may just need a little bit of extra description in order to figure out what they're looking at. For instance, telling someone who sees a blob in the middle of the screen, "hey, that's a face!" might clarify it enough for them to be able to see the face you drew, much like how when we look at clouds, if someone suggests what the cloud looks like, it becomes much easier to see. If you include an important image or diagram that is crucial to understanding a blog post, an image description means that there is a better chance that people who have trouble seeing can still follow. It's also helpful if you took a screenshot of some text to transcribe it to alt text, because a screen reader wouldn't be able to read that. Personally, I think, from both a business and humanitarian standpoint, the more people who can enjoy your content, the better, so even if this feature would only help a few people, it's still very worth it to use. Of course, it is a bit more work, but image descriptions should be less than 125 words (this is so that people with screen readers don't have to sit there for a long time as each image is being described) so it shouldn't actually take that long, and it's a really great thing to do. This week was more UVW editing! I didn't get too much done, but I started modeling some "Beats by Broke" headphones as a little inside joke for the game. I started off by doing traditional UVW mapping since it's not terrible, but I ended up having a lot of problems lining up the letters. I downloaded the Lazy UVW mapper that Mr. B suggested, but when I gave it a first try, I just gave me the same issue that photoshop does when you don't unwrap at all. I don't know if this error was because of the complexity of the object or what, but I'm going to figure it out on Monday, and if I can't I'll go back to the old method of UVW mapping. Goals for Next Week:
This week was pretty relaxed, I spent all of it relearning how to UVW Unwrap, and making textbook textures. So far I've only finished a chemistry and biology textbook, but now that I have the base figured out, I could easily make other books if we want more. However, I think instead I'm going to try to work on making some bookshelves or other furniture for the new building. I need to discuss with my team what objects we really need right now, because we're getting close to the end. Goals For Next Week:
Although this week was cut short by illness and playtesting (which I will make a seperate post about) I did manage to get the pig textured! Well... sort of... There are some surface issues, BUT! It isn't entirely my fault this time! I went back to the old, fully polyed models, and they still had some weird spots when textures were applied (though far fewer...). Anyways, I don't think it's something worth fixing at this point in production unless I can find an easy fix, or if it really bothers one of my team members. I made all of the textures metallic because I thought it made the pig look sharp and scary, but this may change depending on computer capabilities (lag) and my teammates' preferences. Goals For Next Week:
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AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
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