So this will be where I display my project, for this post at least
I am going to talk about what I intend to do, why I intend to do it and how.
I'm using blogger because, well I've gotten used to it now, I used this for my
final year of uni to document my progress on projects, and I only really used
it well on one project. In hindsight I think it was probably to make up for the
lack of work in that project, some sort of self justification. I see the
benefits in creating blogs, only too late. Now that I am finished uni and am in
the process of looking for work, I know that I don't have any work from there
that will help me get a job in the games industry and I do not feel confident
in my abilities in their current state. Therefore in the meantime whilst I get
whatever job I can for money I will be working on this side project to help
further my abilities in my desired field.
One of the main issues I had at the start
of my final year of uni was that I had no direction, I started off as a concept
artist but my enthusiasm for it faded, I never managed to progress in skill
fast enough and once I learned new areas of games design I found I was able to
focus on them better. When it came to choosing my Honours project for the final
year I found I didn't feel confident enough in the areas I wanted to use to
actually do the project I wanted to do so I just picked the "safe"
option and did character designs for a game and tried to incorporate aspects
that I really wanted to do into it, like character gameplay abilities and
narrative.
Moving on from this, the project that I
actually wanted to do was to look at methods of storytelling in games and
attempt to create a level that explores a new or interesting way of
communicating a story through gameplay. One of my major flaws in previous years
has been that I always put story first and had gameplay serve the narrative,
something no doubt many designers before me have tried to do and found that it
just doesn't work. My issue was that I wasn't competent enough with a game
engine, in this case UDK to actually try and complete this project. I know now
that the help I would have gotten from my new tutors that work at White Paper
Games would have given me enough technical skill to make the project I wanted
to. Alas that was not the path I took. I now feel i have enough skill and understanding to get this project underway and use my foothold to further my design ability in practice.
To firmly lay down my goals for this project i'm going to write up a project plan for it, another aspect I've picked up from uni, i may as well use what I've learned. This will detail my aims and outcomes for the project, hopefully it will help me keep on track. I won't create a schedule as i never found them helpful and i don't exactly have time constraints now anyway. I will still lay out a predicted work order but i won't plan out each day.
