Mac's Blog

 This week had setbacks. Mainly this one... Every time I tried to get into my game, this message would appear in my Unity Launcher saying that I had no active licence, which is just wrong. I have the free one, but when I tried to add the free one again, it just wouldn't work for me. I've spent nearly the whole week scouring chat rooms and F&Qs to try fix this issue, but as I write this article, I have been unsuccessful.  That's not to say work on the game has come to a standstill, in fact, this week I made a basic character model for my guards and worked on the game soundtrack and recorded voice lines for the opening cut scene. image by me Here's my guard model, I think he's pretty adorable. This week I was hoping to get my Alpha complete but unfortunately due to an unexpected tragedy in my family, Unity acting up and other responsibilities I'm not exactly where I want or need to be at the moment, at least I have the gameplay and level design nailed so it...

This is the cover art for  Dark Souls . The cover art copyright is believed to belong to  From Software .   This week I decided to follow a Wikipedia Trail about good game design, but where should I start? Well, personally I love the game design of the Dark Souls game so my first Wikipedia Entry was... 1. Dark Souls This came out in 2011? As in, 10 years ago? Janey Mac I'm getting old. This game was praised for it's intricate game design, which brought me to... 2. Level (video games) This page was great, if you ever had a question on game design, this article would be the first place I recommend you look, it lead me onto... 3. Immersion To most people in Ireland, immersion is something their mam keeps leaving on when tey leave the house. (hold for laugh track) But this article details how players enjoy feeling like the virtual world they're inhabiting during the gameplay experience is believable. It lead me here... 4. Virtual world This article basically details what...

  design by me This week was rough, I lost a family member who was very dear to me and I couln't attend the funeral as I was unfortunately working so I couldn't make the trip up north on such short notice.  As such, I was feeling pretty down in the dumps, however, work was actually pretty ok as I actually made some new friends, we laughed about and pulled a few pranks on each other, it made me feel pretty happy and made the pain I was going through husrt a little less. Hopefully by next week I can do something nice for them to let them know I appreciate getting to hang out with them.

 This week I thought it might be fun to make a little mantra to help myself or others get through the rough  winter days ahead. A personal favourite movie of mine and one that I quote with my friends all the time is "The Big Lebowski" featuring Jeff Bridges as the man I aspire to be, The Dude. The Dude is the epitomy of taking it easy and having a good time, so I think I'll make my mantra based around his character, here it is.... Keep Taking It Easy For All Them Sinners. Pretty much, just relax and let everyone else worry about their problems.

 I made a list of some of my favourite comic book artists on Twitter, if you'd like to check it out you can find it here . I had already been following these artists on Twitter and I felt like putting them in one spot so I could enjoy some comic art while on the bus home from work. I don't usually like lissts as I mostly use Twitter to see funny viral tweets and stuff, but sometimes I'm in the mood for something specific, which Lists are great for.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pondering-my-orb Crikey, I can't believe it's week 9 already, it feels like so much has changed since we started this wee project back in December. Thats why it's important to look back on the past few weeks and determine how well I've been working with the readings and writings of the past 9 weeks. I'll be the first to admit that my blog is looking pretty scarce, it's been a rough couple of weeks with family tragedies and job drama nearly completely consuming my life so I haven't been able to update the blog as much as I would have liked. And believe me, I like writing this blog, I love it even, I get such a strong sense of catharsis when I sit down and just type my thoughts onto the screen, it really helps me to get in touch with myself and kinda figure out what my brain is up to whilst I wander the earth doing projects and chores until I fall asleep proceed to repeat that process day in, day out. Looking back on what I'v...

  Screenshot of First playable version. To quote Jeff Goldblum in my absolute favourite film of all time, "You did it, You crazy Son of a B**** You did it".  Thats right, I have made a halfway decent stealth game. I've built up the game from my prototype, introducing a GameWin state and a GameLose state to the game, meaning the player now has a goal and things stopping him from reaching that goal.  This is the winning Message. This is the Game Over Screen. I replaced the cube with a Solid Snake character asset to show who the player is, this is only a placeholder for the moment. I found the asset on  this website if your interested, they provide some really cool free assets for games. There are now multiple Guards following diverse paths making sneaking past them a bit tricky. Buildings can be used to take cover behind. The White square at the top of the screen symbolises the cell where Rolands target is located so thats here the game ends at the moment. The boss fi...

I used HTML last year, but I'll be honest I wasn't very good at it.

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/fish-and-chips-by-the-sea-gm484477646-71272013  "Hold on a second," I can hear you say dear reader, "Growth Mindset 2?! He's doing another one? Surely his Mindset has grown enough during his last blog post!". Well dear reader, I appreciate that you think so highly of me but honestly my mind is far from grown, so this week I decided at having a go at looking through the Growth Mindset Padlet and ponder the quotes within to see how it can affect my own growth mindset. There were many wonderful quotes on that padlet board but the one that stood out to me was Fish And Chips, which is an acronym for "Forgetting Is Sometimes Hard, Choosing Happiness Is Possible". I chose this because obviously it's an awesome acronym and far surpasses any kind of acronym I could ever think of in a million years. However I also chose it because the statement rings true. I have a tendency to hold grudges, and it's lost me friends in th...

 I love judging people, in fact, I'd say I spend most of my time judging people. Even if these people have little or no effect on my life. Take Jake Gyllenhaal for instance, I never met the guy, I like a few movies he's in but personally, I don't know him. However, this week, I've judged the hell outta the dude! And why? Because I listened to a 10 minute Taylor Swift song. Hoo boy did I love just tearing this Gyllenhaal guy apart in my head, like wow, what a terrible person he is!  And I would say most people would agree with my judgement and say that he deserves to be judged. But what about all the other people I judge? The common people on the street who didn't star in the classic film Donnie Darko? What makes it ok for me to judge them? I decided maybe it was time for me to judge myself so I read this article called "10 Reasons to Stop Judging People" and what I read surprised me, not gonna lie. image by me Turns out the reason we as a species are so j...

 Oh Yeah, It's all coming together. This week I had a go at actually making a prototype for the game. Surprisingly, it actually went pretty well, I spent the week researching how to code and design an actual working stealth game. As you can see in my screenshot below, it's a fairly basic bunch of squares and pill shapes, but trust me, they actually make sense, the white squares portrays the player character who is coded to be able to move around using the W,A,S,D keys. The tic tac is a guard, it is coded to follow a path and have a spotlight that acts as eye sight that will stop the player dead in their tracks and end the game. Coding is so hard dudes. For my coding I followed a tutorial for stealth games by a YouTuber called Sebastian Lague, who does a fairly comprehensive run through on coding but I still made loads of little mistakes that broke the whole game, mostly missing ";'s". Overall, though it is a bit time consuming, I'm really enjoying working on t...

  Name Possibilities: Leading names highlghted Eternal Vengeance: The Video Game Eternal Vengeance 2: Rolands Revenge Eternal Vengeance 2: Rolands Redemption Eternal Revengeance Eternal Revengeance: The Video Game Eternal Vengeance: Psychopath Simulator Premise: Attempt to make a short Metal Gear Solid-esque game that is visually and mechanically impressive due to the fact that its made by one person who has never made a video game before. Using self made assets in Blender, this game will tell the story of a man breaking into a heavily guarded island prison to kill his uncle who is a prisoner there. The game will be an overhead sneaking game. Backstory: Set 2 years after the events of Eternal Vengeance 1, On a rainy night on an island somewhere off the coast of Russia, Roland Lockjaw, notorious Terrorist fighter and disgraced cop washes up on a sandy beach. He receives a call from his superior detailing the goal of his current mission. Infiltrate the Maximum Security Prison. Kill Y...