Vlogs and More (Vlog)

Hi everybody! last class a made a video showing my progress in game mechanics. Hope you enjoy!

final vlog from James Thomas on Vimeo.

After my German competition (which ran a bit late), I went to coding class and edited my game from last week. I added a scoreboard that attaches 10 points to every zombie the player kills. My vlog goes into the edited code and shows how it adds to the score. Also, this program uses the UI that I learned how to use to make my clicker game. This at least tells me that all of my learning IS actually helping me with larger code. Thanks for watching!

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The Good and the Bad (Interview)

I decided to interview my coding teacher about his life and how he started coding. This gave me some insight into how coding in Unity is used in real jobs. Also, this interview described how my teacher got into coding.

The Interview:

1. What made you want to learn how to code?

Video games.  I grew up in a small school, where most of us did not live close to each, and I was honestly not a very social kid.  So I spent a lot of my free time playing video games.  I also spent a lot of my time at my grandparent's house who had lived in Maryland, in an area best described as "The Middle of Nowhere".  My grandmother back then had a pretty powerful IBM PC, and had taught me DOS so I could operate it and run games without having to ask her for help.
Over the years, I've grew more skilled at games, and started learning different genres.  Roleplay and adevnture games contributed greatly to my ability to read, and sparked a desire to start writing my own little stories for a game.  A pretty big hurdle to cross at the age.  Around 9 years old I came across some forums for a game called ZZT.  It was a very rudimentry ASCII-Based game creation system by Tim Sweeney.(Who later founded Epic Megagames).  I was immediately enamored.
I would spend weeks at a time building these little worlds and stories for myself, and as time went on, my ambition grew and I wanted make more and more complicated settings and environments.  I started diving into the scripting language of the game, and from there had started to slowly teach myself to code.
Years passed, and the games and languages I created my own levels, scenarios, and games in changed... but ZZT will always be the game that pushed me to want to learn.

2. How do you currently use Unity in everyday work?

We use Unity in the MAP Laboratory in Pearson Lab of Temple University.  We do research work with the Oculus Rift, studying the effects of virtual environments and perception on people's balance, and can use information gathered from various devices (such as the Rift, Wii Balance Board, or Motion Analysis Systems) to help rehabilitate people.  The Oculus Rift is currently used to test people the existence of a concussions during sporting events, in a portable fashion.
The Unity engine is what allows use to display and run these 3D-Scenarios inside the Rift, as well as gather information from the Rift about the wearer's head movements, and analysis it directly.

3. What is the most complex thing that you have made on Unity?

My most complex project, barring those from my job, would have to be a mobile game I had created as a learning experience called Shield Master.  The project involved the use of a number of concepts that were rather new to myself, such as prefab instantiate, game controller systems, power-ups and timing systems, asynchronous functions, touch-screen controls, and cloud-saving, and the process of building a game for a mobile device.  I find very little individual subjects in Unity to be complex, it's more the nature of taking all these individual bits you've created, and putting them together in a working and coherent fashion.  It's a very different way of thinking.

4. What have we learned in class that you have used in your job?

The basics of scene-building are core to my job, as I am a required to develop high-quality 3D Environments for the Oculus Rift.  A lot of the graphic cheats and hacks that we use in game-design that I've taught during class are absolutely key to developing a good looking 3D scene that still runs at an optimized 60 FPS.  High frames per second and overall smoothness are key to working in VR, as any loss of frames or jitter can result in motion sickness.
Beyond that, all the transform, rotation, position, and instantiation functions that are commonly used in games are very important to my job, as well as UI.  Since programs I develop are for use with researchers who are not part of the computing field, an easy to understand UI is as important as the 3D scene itself.

5. Have you ever seen someone use Unity in your profession for something other than game design?

My entire office is filled with people learning and using Unity for 3D scene production.  It's become one of the fastest and easiest ways for someone who is not a graphics designer or programmer to still be able to develop scenes to their specs, and the Unity asset/plugins system makes it very easy for them to get up and running with 

basic set ups.  I see a lot of use for Unity in the future for research and virtual reality studies.

Post Interview:

After this interview, I mainly saw how people learn from being self-taught. It taught me the importance of being diligent, and I really hope that my work ethic will provide me with success. Anyway, stay tuned for the vlog coming later this week! 

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OH NOES (4)

So my grandmother's funeral was during this week's coding class, so instead of working on my code I decided to research the history of Unity. It is really a great tool, but many people aren't aware of it. I think that one of my main goals moving forwards is to show that Unity can be used by more than just "nerds" who use it to design games. Anyway, a brief history of Unity is here for those of you (myself included), who did not know where Unity came from.

The Background:
In 2002, Nicholas Francis needed help making a system that would give 3D objects a realistic design. Joachim Ante replied to his cry for help, and together they started building an engine that would ~change the future~. The found a CEO named Helgason, and named their company Over the Edge Entertainment. The company's first goal was to get some games out there that showed how the system could be used (essentially proving to consumers that their engine wasn't trash). Eventually Unity was released, and was only available on Mac computers. Once the company realized that they needed support for Windows systems they developed a new Unity. It had to be coded over again because their previous version relied on Apple to run. Eventually, Unity gained popularity and became the wonderful software that we know and love today.

Now for the Good Part:
Obviously, Unity is aimed towards game-making. But what if I told you that Unity can be used for things that aren't games (GASP)! In fact, Unity has a gallery that includes a whole section conveniently titled NON-GAMES! After looking into how people in this category used Unity, I saw how Unity can be so much more than just a "game site." Architects have used Unity to build models of buildings such as the China Intercontinental Communication Center, and chefs have made cooking in simulations a reality by harnessing the full power of Unity. These are the kinds of things that I hope to learn more about during my time learning with Unity Web Design software. Next week I should be back to my usual game design. 

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Shooting and Spawning (3)

I'll admit, I didn't think that I had the ability to make a shooting game. The ones that I see online seem super complex, and I thought that my game would never match up. I ended my class today with a game that had all the fundamentals of Call of Duty, but with worse graphics and terrible bullets.

Let's start out with what I learned. The lesson that my teacher made was about learning how to make and shoot projectiles. In addition to learning just that, I now know how to spawn objects and make them chase my character. My game had a spawner in the center of the map that made a zombie appear every second. These zombies were all made of an object that I had coded to spew fireballs at the player. The playable character could shoot the zombies and start a series of animations which would show the gun firing and the zombie dying. To prevent the player from staying in one spot, the fireballs made by the zombies set the player on fire. In order to get out of the fire. the character has to run away from the zombies.

As far as I can tell, my game seems pretty solid. The only problem is that the zombie's bullets disappear slower than it takes for more zombies to be made. This causes the game to eventually crash if no zombies die. Also, my art artwork that I used in this game is really bad because I can only use the worst of all objects: free ones. The free artwork available on the Unity store is nothing compared to what I could get for 10 or 20 dollars, but I can't waste my money because the prefabs(Unity jargon for objects) might not transfer to all of my accounts. Anyway, I think that my game this week was a huge success. Here are some pictures of what I made:

How am I going to make this better?
I'm probably gonna start by fixing that lag issue by slowing the spawn time of the zombies. Then I am going to relentlessly prowl through the Unity store to find some better art to use in the future.

UPDATE: I am going to begin Game Boy construction in roughly two weeks because that is when our class booked our time in a workshop in Philly. For now, all I can do is work on my Unity projects.

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