Well this was a really fun week for me as I was in my element with prototyping and rapid ideation. It has also been enlightening for a couple of other reasons that I will get to later.
Game Jams
The week started with an investigation into rapid ideation event, or Game Jams to me. I was pleasantly surprised at just how many of these events are now available and accessible to the different standards of games makers that are around now. Just looking at the amount of events happening through itch.io for the next two weeks really did illustrate to me that no matter who you are or what your capabilities are there is probably an event out there for you.
Strangely enough we are currently running our own Game Jam for our Level 3 students at Wakefield College. The jam is called Rise of the Rhubarbarian and the students have been given a Unity project with some pre-built aspects to it such as moving platforms, falling platforms, sentry guns and droppers. They have been asked to create some content for a larger video game using these pieces but are also encouraged to investigate new functionality and visuals they wish to add to the game.
So far we have seen people recreate levels from famous video games using ProBuilder, other students repurpose the existing pieces in ways we never imagined them to be used, but mostly students exploring the possibilities of what they can make. This is something I have taken from the research exercise, there is an event out there that I can take part in, and it does not take much to find it.
The Challenge
The challenge this week was to reverse engineers an existing artefact using a prototyping technique that would then allow you to be able to rebuild the artefact and appreciate all the aspects it requires. I gave myself the challenge of looking at the Fortnite Battle Royale chest mechanic.
This ended up being extremely fun, I was in my element at all stages of this challenge. The prototyping stage was a chance to crack out the Post It notes and really break down the core components of the system. Then I was able to jump in to Unity and begin trying to get things working. This is always something that I find fun to do, I could quite happily sit in Unity just making different things and playing around.
You can read all about the process in the two posts I put up about it here and here.
Moving Forward
So as I mentioned this week has been enlightening. I have come to realise that there are a few things I need to improve on and get better at, but also return to doing.
The first being that I cannot just sit in Unity and play around with stuff, I need to start bringing things to a conclusion or a purpose. The challenge made me realise that while its fun to put stuff to test and try things out you still have to actually get to creating things that you can use. While I learned a lot from making the Chest Simulator it is not something I could really re-use because, well it’s be done before.
I almost see what I am doing as starting a side project that never really needs to come to fruition. So what is the point in doing it? Well there is the learning aspect, I did learn a lot from making the generators but there was also the realisation that I already knew how to do it. I did not have to do to much research into how to get it functioning, I just need to do the prototyping to break it down into its components that I could then rebuild back up.
So should I just start making something that has a purpose rather than playing around? Perhaps that is where joining a game jam would be more beneficial than just playing around for the sake of playing around. If I gave my side projects purpose, to enter a jam, to complete the challenge set out, then maybe I will begin to produce things that are more complete and functioning rather than little toys. I do not think teaching has helped me here because in my day to day job all I do is jump in to other peoples projects and fix little aspects for them, without needing to look at the bigger picture.
The second thing that came to mind was provoked by reading a post on Gamasutra by Mendonca (2019) titled the Game Jam Survival Kit. He mentions a good tip would be to ‘Build a code library or a “DevKit” that you can reference to.’ This is something I already have, the project itself is called Playground and thats exactly what I use it for, you play around in, but I have realised that it is outdated. It uses stuff I made 4 to 5 years ago and there are much better ways, that I now know, to do things.
So I have made it a task to use the rest of this module to build a new Playground project, but this time I am going to take it seriously and not call it Playground. I am going to call it Boilerplate instead, that name comes from the term Boilerplate Code, something asked by Parsons (2010) on StackOverflow and answered in part by Vandenberg who states ‘“boilerplate code” is any seemingly repetitive code that shows up again and again in order to get some result that seems like it ought to be much simpler.‘
Oh and on a final note. This was quite satisfying.
References
itch.io. 2021. Game jams. [online] Available at: <https://itch.io/jams> [Accessed 13 June 2021].
Mendonca, N., 2019. Game Jam Survival Kit. [online] Gamasutra.com. Available at: <https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/NielissonMendonca/20190410/340456/Game_Jam_Survival_Kit.php> [Accessed 13 June 2021].
Parsons, N. and Vandenberg, A., 2010. What is boilerplate code?. [online] Stack Overflow. Available at: <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3992199/what-is-boilerplate-code> [Accessed 20 June 2021].
Figure
Featured Image: Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash
Figure 1: Charlish, R (2021) ‘Screenshot of Itch.io game jam for June’ Created on June 13th 2021
Figure 2: Charlish, R (2021) ‘Rhubarbarian game’ Created on June 22nd 2021
Figure 3: Charlish, R (2021) ‘Complete prototype process’ Created on June 22nd 2021
Figure 4: Charlish, R (2021) ‘Completed project management’ Created on June 22nd 2021
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