Funemployment Weeks 17 and 18

Another abominably late blog entry, but at the very least this week has been more productive than the previous ones.

The fight to understand Unity continues, with me almost having finished the "Ruby's Adventure: 2D Beginner" tutorial series. It starts to go in deep with C# scripting which I am almost completely clueless on, but I persevered regardless. At this point in time I've got a character that moves, animates, receives damage and launches projectiles. Next tutorial is getting the camera to follow the character.

After that, I'll be in a position to try and roughly put together whatever the even more basic version of a prototype is for the Hooligans concept. Following tutorials is fab, but until you start working towards an actual "thing", you're still just following breadcrumbs. And having a "thing" to aim for is usually helpful when it comes to trying to learn more.

Outside of this I have continued the Pixelles program, submitting my first draft for the cinematic assignment. I got some great feedback from the folks in my group so I have an idea now of how I want the second draft to play out, which I'm actually excited to do!

I also took some time to have a think about my 2D, top down shooter prototype, and why I wasn't progressing with it. I'm not sure if this was the root cause, but one of my issues with the current prototype was that all the spaces felt a tad too big. No idea if that is normally a good thing in other top down games, but with mine, it felt like it led to zero structure, and a lot of unnecessary travel for the player.

So I've re-worked the opening levels to make them tighter, simpler, but more structured. Trying to take cues I've learnt from level design friends to help guide the player to the intended spots without overt sign-posting. And I'm way happier now. The game is still a haze in my head, and I have no idea if it will continue to proceed, but this feels like progress.

Current game I'm playing: Metro 2033 Redux. A decade old shooter that definitely shows its age, but has a pretty compelling atmosphere and presentation. So even though I'm not the biggest survival horror fan, I'll keep going (mostly because the second and third entries in the franchise are apparently markedly better).