Reflection on the Month

by **Miles** Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:58 pm

Tkach, Joseph, and Zach Aikman. "Making a Video Game from Start to Finish: An Overview for Beginners.”
Game Career Guide Article. UBM, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
<http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/422/making_a_video_game_from_start_to_.php>.

This article gives a first introduction to students about how a video game is created. What I would say is relevant for my project would be the fact that they refer a game to “building a cathedral or writing a novel or painting a picture”. This example actually explains the core of the process at once. Also I can identify myself with the author a lot and with his view explained by “It's a very demanding and highly stressful endeavor. If you don't love it completely, with all its misgivings, you'll quickly grow to hate it.”. Going on in this article he speaks as first step about a Game Design Document and Technical Design Document which are unnecessary in my case (they will be replaced through my storyline and the fact that I am working with scratch and not a definite code language) as well as having a developer group and a publisher group working with you. But it is good to know which roles I have to play by myself. What is important for me is that I should start with building an engine (the core of the game) as first eg. calculations,.. Maybe I will use a already existing RPG Engine from Scratch since the article tells me that many companies do it and that it saves a lot of time. Also to add content and everything as simple as possible (so that you can change it fast again) is a good tip as well as start to test as soon as you are able to see the game becoming what you want it to and ask other people to test the game as well since it is the best way of improving.

Staff, By PopSci. "The Future of the Environment."
Popular Science. Bonnier Corporation Company, 13 June 2008. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.
<http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-06/future-environment>.

This article concludes a positive image about the future instead of the dark full of waste-world which other people await. It is maybe a good way to find what the character can say what we should have done and maybe to contrast this with the negative reality. One of the ideas is to launch satellites in 2030 (through japan) which are collecting energy through solar beams and sending this energy through microwaves o the earth instead of atomic and other energy resources. But what is really dangerous is that the satellite could miss the antenna and fry a city instead (maybe people can turn off the beam when it drifts out of route). Also people want to breed furry plants that reflect the sunlight and cool down the globe. Experts say that would take centuries and they will probably also keep all the water what would also rise the temperature. Also they want to pull gas for cars from the one that comes out of the car, One polymer-skinned CO2 bag would dwarf any structure ever constructed except the Great Wall of China (Sequester carbon dioxide in six-mile-long sausage-shaped plastic bags on the seafloor),Save six billion kilowatt-hours of energy annually (enough to power 20 million lightbulbs for a year) by blasting brew with supersonic streams of steam, Harness the warmth given off by millions of commuters and reduce global energy demand by 15 percent,.. and so on.

"Inside the Games - How a Game Is Made."
PBS. KCTS Television, n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.
<http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/inside/how/01.html>.

“Few realize that creating a game can be as complex as making a Hollywood blockbuster.” is the trigger for the article which I really love since it is true. What may be important to know is that n the beginning mostly a storyboard will be laid out by designers, writers and artists on the basic idea (either original, spin off or based on film/series). “It is a visual representation of the story and a reference for the writers, artists and designers just as it would be for a film.” But there have to be many different storylines since Games can have different ends in some cases.Next step is creating the characters. They should be refined as much as possible. The next step is to set the characters into motion (when creating a real game the 2D Model of the character will be programmed to move in a designed pattern according to what the engine tells it), creating the world map (those get more realistic within only a couple of years), Coding (often in different languages “based on the C programming language” and control the game as a whole) and finally testing (there is a alpha phase where the fatalist bugs are fixed and a beta phase which also includes the public sometimes). Concluding this there is also a lot advertising going on (makes up 2/3 of the budget), mostly already while producing the game, which should awake interest in buying it since games are considered as business at all. I should definitely take a look at the videos before starting off with my report.

This is the Reflection on the Rest of my Research that I did until now. Also, since the month will end soon, I want to reflect on the Goals that I have set for this month and if I could achieve them.

Until the End of October I want to have done...
- Completed general Research about Scratch and the other things listed above
- Develop Story and Plots as far as possible. I am not sure yet, but I will write it all down in
bullet points probably and maybe do a little storyboard with graphic ideas
- Get most of the Art that I need for the Game done (3/4 of it)

To the first point: I think I got a good general overview about scratch in RPG matter, since I looked at many examples and also experimented a bit with the website by myself. So I would tick this box. Also I created the characters and developed the story as well as the plots already in a simple kind of way. I would tick this box with an orange colour, since i really should do a graphic story board to keep track of what to do the best (like i read it in my research). Furthermore i think i achieved my goal of doing most of the art half-half. Well, i got all the sprites ready to insert into the game and decided not to do the faces (since this would be too much because scratch has no option to insert faces in speech bubbles). I would actually count backgrounds as well as art but also as stages, so I guess it depends on the viewpoint here. But in general i could achieve everything I wanted this month. Tick, Tick, Tick! Also I was able to almost work exactly with my more detailed plan, what will help me later a lot since I can manage time effectively.

The next months goals would be those below. I will try my best to also achieve them all until the end of the month.

Until the End of November I want to have done...
- Finish all the Art that I still need to do in the planned 'Do-everything-you couldnt'-week
- Get ready to completely start of with coding the Game
- Fix the story and Plots at this point
- Already start off with coding a bit