Student Reflections - Video Game Design #22

A. B.

10th

Video Game Design I

Video game design is a class where you create every aspect of the game. From the visuals to the UI, every bit of the games will be created by you with help from the tutorials. You may do the tutorials once or twice but they didn’t really stick with me so I ended up doing the same few things over and over so that I could remember how to accomplish the certain things I want. Coding in Gamemaker was probably the hardest thing for me to learn. Sure I would have done things the same way the tutorial did but I never really learned how to do things. Once I started to understand how things came together and would work simultaneously to make on thing all of it got easier.

Unity 3D was my favorite game engine to work with. I could add something and see something that was more than a flat screen. I could create and mold things the way I wanted to. After learning how a lot of the mechanics work and seeing what they do visually, creating the game became increasingly easier. Eventually it just seemed to be common sense to add certain scripts or manipulate objects the way I needed to.

This work was at the top as my best work. Though I feel that way, there were a lot of things that could have been adjusted to make the game better. I had enemies that would phase through certain walls and come through to the other side and then they would come back again just to repeat the error. This wasn't because of the game’s scripts but because of the level design. I had overlapped two blocks of the same kind and the enemies wouldn’t read it as the one wall that they were supposed to turn around at when they reached it.

Video Game Design is a great class if you want to be able to work independently work on and create your own game. If you find yourself being good at or liking one part of creating the game, such as character design, then you can maybe go into a group or maybe even a larger company. Focusing on that one piece of the game yet you still get some credit and paid. Designing a game is quite time consuming with all the creating and then testing with seeing the errors and then going back to try and fix them just to play the game again to see if it worked. There is money to be made out of making games and can be made a lifestyle if chosen. Though it is extremely time consuming, stressful and is not recommended. If you are willing to be patient enough and you are actually good with creating games then go for it.