Ideation

For this week’s challenge, we are meant to take an existing artefact of someone else’s creativity and to modify it into another creative artefact. We need to do this using one or more creative techniques for ideation – that is ‘creating ideas’.

While I realise that the artefact we create doesn’t necessarily have to be a game, complete or otherwise, I have decided that I want to use this week as a stepping stone and as an opportunity to remedy a few weaknesses that I have, which I believe will be obstacles to progressing on this course and as a game developer.

While I have identified many strengths that I have through previous posts, there are ares which I will need to build upon. I have identified two particular fields that I want to develop myself in:

  • 3D graphics: This is a very general term, but I want to use this course as an opportunity to revisit 3d graphics and to get back up to speed in this area. This covers a broad range of areas, which include modelling, texturing, rigging, dynamics and rendering. During my BA, I used Maya largely to rig characters and also to produce animation. However, looking back, I don’t feel I really explored this area in as much depth as I wish I could have done. I have decided that this will be an opportunity to resolve this and I would be keen to teach myself Blender and to start exploring 3d graphics further and use it in future projects. I have done a small amount of Blender recently, such as this piece I did for the last Inktober, but I would be interested in taking this further.
  • Scripting: I have mentioned a desire to become more fluent in this over the past few posts, but this is something I believe I will need to develop some proficiency in to realise game projects, although I also realise that there are several people on this course from a programming background that I can collaborate with. I identify my lack of proficiency here as one of the reasons that I have had several false starts in pursuing game development. Coming from an animation and graphic design background, this will definitely take me out of my comfort zone, but as Picasso once said, ‘I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.’.

For this challenge, I have decided to focus first on scripting, specifically C# as this is the primary language of Unity, my chosen game engine. I have chosen Unity for this project as it is one of the most well known and well used game engines (Dsouza, S., 2021), possible second only to Unreal Engine. It is compatible with many different platforms and there is an excellent community around Unity (The Ultimate Resource for Video Game Design. n.d). While it is powerful, it is fairly accessible and has a relatively small learning curve and is popular among indie game studios.

I am going to use this challenge to exercise my ability to generate creative idea, but also as a means to improve my knowledge of C#. In order to guide my learning, I will need to use my creativity to come up with methods for developing knowledge of C#. This means that while I use various ideation methods to come up with a good idea, I will continue to use these methods to execute this idea and also to find creative ways of developing the skills to execute this idea.

I have decided that the creative artefact that I will produce this week will be a very simple game, but in my next post I will talk through how I will brainstorm this idea and also how I will take a creative artefact that already exists and remediate it in this project.

References

Dsouza, S., 2021. 7 Most Popular Game Engines Of Today [2021 Updated] – TechBlogCorner. [online] TechBlogCorner. Available at: <https://techblogcorner.com/2020/02/06/most-popular-game-engines-for-game-development/> [Accessed 4 February 2021].

The Ultimate Resource for Video Game Design. n.d. The 10 Best Video Game Engines | 2021 Edition. [online] Available at: <https://www.gamedesigning.org/career/video-game-engines/> [Accessed 4 February 2021].

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *