Survival Video Game Concept - Owen
Survival Video Game Concept - Owen
I developed a Low-Poly (constrained resolution), Survival Video Game. The goal was to learn as much as I could about coding, 3D modeling, and animating. To this end, I wanted to create everything myself. To build the game, I chose the engine Unity. Game engines are the framework for all games and allow developers to use the tools they offer. Think of the engine like a kitchen, with its utensils, and the game as the dish you are making (except a little more complicated than that). It would have been great to have finished a super high-end game in a semester, but that was never feasible due to lack of time and resources. I had to work within the constraints of my timeline, and that’s an important skill. I gained many new skills during my time at Propel, such as learning how to code with the C# language and how to create low-poly models (which means low amounts of polygons in the models). I also learned how to animate those models. I created many mechanics in my game: an inventory system, a health system, and a way to cut down trees. Also, I was lucky enough to talk to some experienced people for feedback and tips - Rebecca Harrison, Art Director at Gallium Studios, and Mike Safioles, Technical Artist at Ubisoft. It was helpful to talk to both of them. I appreciated my time here at Propel and, through my project, I learned how much time and passion goes into creating a video game. I now see that I could work in the Game Development world.
There were many points during my development where something went wrong. The first step was always to figure out what was going on. It could be that my code had an error, or my animations were not set up properly. Whatever it was, it needed a fix. Near the start of my project, I would sometimes spend a whole day addressing something. It was all to see if I misplaced a semi-colon or typed “MonoBehavior” instead of “MonoBehaviour” in my code. In the end, I was able to read errors more efficiently so I could find what went wrong and where MUCH faster.
For example, during the fourth week, I couldn’t figure out why my tree wouldn’t fall over when I cut it down (I had copied some code over from a YouTube video). I spent days trying to figure it out and eventually gave up. In the fifteenth week, I decided to try again, and I learned how to read the errors and fixed the problem. Now it works as shown below.
This is what my tree fall looked like before:
This is what it looked like after:
As my project grew more complicated, so did the issues. Instead of misspelled words or missing symbols, the error would be closer to something along the lines of:
“compiler error, YOURCODESUCKSGETBETTER”
I learned that Coding Forums, Reddit, and development Discords are my new best friends. These spaces have a ton of information that would help me fix my issues, but they do not solve all problems. Most of the time, the skill doesn’t come from inventing the code. The skill comes from being able to take that code you copied and applying it for your use. I significantly improved my problem solving skills during the semester.