Explore how a critical enquiry can be drawn out from an iterative experimentation with tools and media.
Brief: Identify a tool or medium that interests you but that you’re not experienced with. Find a project made by someone else that makes effective use of this tool or medium.
I chose the software Unity Game Engine for the project with the intent of recreating a platformer game like Gris or Hollow Knight. But since I’m a beginner I chose to recreate a game in the same genre Flappy Bird.
Since I’m neither a gamer or a game designer, this software is a new territory for me. I recently started playing games and was very fascinated by narrative based games like Edith finch and the animations incorporated in the games like Gris.
While looking for a project that makes effective use of this tool, it made me think about what are the uses of this tool or what is this tool’s original intent of use. So I looked it up.
- Game Development
- Cross-Platform Development
- Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)
- Simulation and Training
- Architectural Visualisation
- Educational and Serious Games
- Indie Game Development
- Film and Animation Production
- AR and VR Experiences for Marketing and Advertising
- Multiplayer Games and Networking
In summary, Unity’s effectiveness lies in its flexibility, ease of use, and broad range of applications, making it a go-to choice for developers in various industries.
After the initial desk research about the tool and some more games, I found out that it incorporates similar tools that are in video and 3D rendering softwares like Cinema4D and Premier Pro. Tools like cameras, lighting, and rigging for animations. It involves coding and can be used to create generative art. For the game art and animations within the game, a separate software is involved like pixelLab (asprite) and photoshop.
I also came across projects like “Lightbender” by Carl Emil Carlsen, an audio-visual synthesizer instrument which was developed on Unity that makes effective use of this tool but also hacks it.
Iteration_1
refining to get a singular desired output.
To get acclimated with the software, I followed a beginner’s tutorial video. The video had step by step instructions for a simple platformer game similar to flappy bird. What the video included –
- How to make a character appear and move it around the screen.
- How to make a character spawn in and delete it.
- How to have collisions, gamer over, animations and sound effects etc.
Unity uses dev software Visual Studio that is used to write programming codes (C#).
(1) Following the Tutorial
Step 1 : Setting up Unity
Step 2: Physics and Programming
Step 3: Spawning Objects
Step 4: Logic and UI
Step 5: Fail State
(2) Making the game look like original game- Flappy Bird
After building a basic working structure of the game, I wanted it to look like the original flappy bird game. So I found a sprite sheet of the game online and added the background and the foreground.
Challenges faced: I used the code that was used to move and spawn the pipes for moving and spawning the foreground tile but the code didn’t work on the foreground. I used another set of code for the same later.
Insight: You can use different logic or write a different set of code to get the same outcome, just like translating. Everyone has a different way of thinking and this accommodates for that.
(3) Fixing the bugs and making the interactions feel like the original game
Insights
By recreating the game step by step, each step has a different experience. To make the gameplay more engaging for the players, stages like fail state and Highest score are added to the game. ( Game Mechanics)
Level of difficulty of the game can also be used to manipluate the engagement of the player within the game.
Designers have to decide how the components will interact with each other and how the player interacts with the components to meet create a particular game experience.
When I change the numbers in my game, the smaller the number the more easy and boring it got but a bigger number made it frustrating and hard to score. This influenced the gamers interaction with the game. ( Game Dynamics )
The process of using Unity Game Engine is very similar to Simultaneous Interpretation( when an interpreter translates the message from the source language to the target language in real-time).
Key Critical Questions that emerged through this exploration
I was fascinated by how changing variables like speed and time of the GameObjects affect the experience of the Players. The interaction of the GameObjects with other GameObjects can make the game engaging for the player and elicit emotions like boredom, excitement or frustration.
What if we add similar variables to graphic design elements to influence the audience’s experience?
What if we give physics or audio variables to graphic design (visual) variables- shape, size, colour, position, orientation, texture? How would these variables interact with each other?
Giving free reign to the users to manipulate the variability or taking it away from them.