Week 3

Week 3:

Initial Ideas -- Final Idea:

My initial and main idea for the project is to create a game using the Unity Engine. This’ll allow me to utilise free assets in areas that will help reduce the amount of time needed on models; For example, such as weapons, non-player characters or other objects needed in-game. Additionally, it’ll great opportunity for myself to display my design and coding skills. Not only will I be learning something brand new (I.E: How to make use of a different Game Engine and its Assets), but I’ll be acquiring different-but-familiar skills for projects that I can apply in the future.

In terms of ideas, I still need to think of what I actually want to do with Unity Engine. These kinds of decisions can be a whole problem of their own. Will it be a Shooter-type, Racing-type or Sports-type game? As mentioned in my previous blogs, I have worked on and created a few Survival Horror/Third-Person Shooter-type games with Unreal Engine. Unfortunately, personally, I have come to feel I’ve gotten enough out of that particular genre and feel that I should work on something new. In terms of inspiration, I’m still on the fence about ideas and thus, feel I should research more.

Regardless, though, I have been brewing on certain ideas and weighing my decisions of what I should be actually be looking towards in terms of research. Recently, Isometric Shooter/Survival-type games have become popular with the likes of Hotline Miami, Don't Starve and The Wild Eight. By using the Unity Engine, I could benefit from this since there are lot of tutorials online for these types of games. Additionally, they also avoid Unreal Engine’s problem of being Blueprint-centric that are notably very complex, and they can be difficult to troubleshoot should something go amiss.

My second idea that I have now scrapped was to create a 3D Model of a Cartoon Panda (or Cartoon Animals) using Autodesk Maya, which I would have then imported into and to be used as assets for Unity Engine. At first, I was originally thinking that perhaps that I could combine both ideas. Here, I could have created a game using Unity Engine and 3D Model assets from Autodesk Maya. Unfortunately, I had to shelve this idea and simply go with my other idea. The reason why is because I realized that it would have been both time-consuming and frustrating on my part. This is partly because I am still a beginner-level user of Autodesk Maya and I notably found using the program rather difficult to use, and I likely would not be able to advance quick enough to work on both. As a result, I was advised to focus on simply the Unity Engine idea for the time being.