First!

My first Blog - Computer Games Design =)

I have been on the UCS Computer Games Design course for just over 2 weeks now and so far, so good. Although no actual work has started – we are getting the guided tour of what a games designer IS and what is expected of them before we jump into the technical lectures.

Sum up of my first few weeks of University

We have had a lot of great introductions from the team – who are very skilled and credited themselves which is a great boost to confidence and moral for the entire class. At the moment everything has a calm feel to it, we have all been sitting around in classes talking and whispering to each other as we get to know one another. As the classes have been progressing and the introductions are all over, it seems as though we are starting to form an atmosphere of  – Wow were starting to design games here and everyone is itching to get started on our training.

During this initial ‘Get to know your peers’ week; we completed a series of tasks and challenges to get to know everyone and their mind-sets. Things such as questionnaires, games which turned into tasks and small scale experiments that acted as a guide of what’s to come all fitted in and got us communicating among each other.

One of these little events was to get a questionnaire with some basic questions, and complete it about anyone else. Then get them to do the same for you and swap your answers. Although you could simply fill in your own answers – it was a great way to break the ice and get to know the people you’ve been in class with the past few days. Chris interviewed me and my answer sheet went a little bit like this . . . . .

The Stef Interview

-          Q1: What is the title of the book (fiction) you are currently reading?

o   A Song of Ice and Fire – Started to read it after I watched “A Game of Thrones”

-          Q2: What is the title/topic of the book (non-fiction) you are currently reading?

o   He looked at various books in disgust, lack of images

o   Although that’s the answer I gave at the time, the answer would likely be a gaming / media magazine I read on the plane over from Ireland.

-          Q3: What is the last live performance (music, drama or dance) you attended?

o   Ozzy Osbourne and BLS in Belfast, fantastic.

-          Q4: What is the title of the last film you saw at the cinema/online or watched on dvd?

o   At the time of writing, it was Jurassic park …. Again! But it was being re-released into the cinema and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

o   Now the last movie I watched is Bunraku – ace cast, an unexpectedly good movie.

-          Q5: How often do you read a newspaper?

o   As often as my girlfriend gives me one, which is seldom at that .

-          Q6: Which Art gallery/museum/exhibition did you last visit?

o   Well this answer is probably the same for everybody in my class, EuroGamer 2011!!! Which was amazing.

-          Q7: How many hours a week do you spend playing video games?

o   Well it varies, especially since I started Uni as I am now doing a lot more reading and tutorials online. But roughly it was 5~ hours a day. Now it’s whenever I have time – I imagine that that time is only going to dwindle as the week’s progress.

-          Q8: How many hours a week do you spend playing games other than video games?

o   Generally I turn everything into a sort of small mini game. Whenever I am sitting alone waiting at a bus stop or for a friend to turn up, I sit and stare at my environment and things start to mesh in my mind and I take pieces and I imagine how they can be digitalised and made to what I think of as ‘cool’.

o   However I suppose that’s just a really cheap way of getting out of saying zero.

-          Custom Question: If you could be a Game Character, who would you be and why?

o   Duke Nukem!! He was such an iconic character that stood on his own. The comedy overshined everything else in the game that made it a treat to play. The difficulty made it so that it wasn’t too hard to get from one catch phrase to another.

o   I also like how – even if it takes 13 years to be released, it can still hold a fan boy community.

Another project we did a few days back was ‘You have 5 minutes to make a board game – GO’ which was an intense adrenaline rush. A lot of people went for the tried and tested follow the path games with obstacles to get through to complete the game – most of which were fun to play and completed in time. Some others went for a different style – with cards and the numbers needing to match.

I went off the deep end and took advantage of that full 5 minutes and tried to make the best game ever! I wanted it to have risk or warhammer elements – in the sense that you have pieces / units and a game board to work with. To simplify matters I made the rules as basic as possible. After the 5 minutes and the testing began my game started to show its cracks – at first bugs appearing and then game breaking situations.
After that I redesigned a couple of rules and replayed it and things went smoothly until I found a couple of loopholes which gave too much of an advantage to the first player to get to point X. By the end of the class I and I had got around to the other games I didn’t get to perfect my own and get it into a workable enjoyable state. With the positive feedback I have received I want make some time to try some solo work on it for future use – perhaps to digitalise the game. Thinking back, I realise I should managed my time better and designed a game that was a little bit simpler so that I could have had it finished within the initial 5 minutes, then I could use the rest of the time to add details and extra features.

Looking up through this post I can see I have yet again nattered on about every little detail that potters into my head. I’ll leave it off here and pick it up again next time something epically shockingly amazing happens worth noting.

SM – iHK

‘;..;’