day 1
the firt thing we did when we go into uni this morning was get are time tables and take the introduction to it.
in this introduction we recieved are student id cards and learn how to print using the money that we can put on
are cards, after the introduction we went to another class room where we disused rules in gaming and how
rules affect the player and his interpuation of the game.
to practice this we did a step by step plan of how to make a cup of tea and then applyed the same techique to
a game of squares. at the end of the lesson we were put into groups and told to make a game simular to
squares due next week
24/09/12
day 2
on the second day we had are first concept art lesson, in this lesson we took drawing faces, figures and objects
back to the most basic level. the first task we were set was to sketch a picture of a face from a photograph
we were given, i personally think i took to long to sketch any of the drawings due to lack of practise. at the end
of the day we had are lecture in context and watched a film called the indie movie which was very moving in
my opiion.
25/09/12
day 3
today we only had to be in half the day starting from one, the day consisted of learning 3ds max which being
a studier of maya for the last 3 years wasnt to much of a problem for me as they are both created by
autodesk, however all of the short cut keys are in different places so i will have to download it to my
laptop so i can practise. are final lesson that day was on how to right a CV and learn about are desired
jobs in the games industry.
26/09/12
day 8
today are lesson started at 1:45 however jon and i went into town early to pick up parts for our board games, once we
were in class we had 20 minites to finish are board games but my groups game was already completed so all we had
to do was make sure we had all the peices. in todays lesson we partook in testing each others board games with
varieing levels of success, this was due some games relying on the role of the dice alone (the game my group created
used stratagy and a little luck as you didnt need good roles to win) after testing two of the games we were given the
choice to say what we liked and things we would change about the games we played.
four rules of makeing a game:
1) valentry partispation
2)goals
3)rules
4)feed back system
01/10/12
day 9
today are first lesson was drawing and in this class we started by going over the basics of shading again by
drawing basic shapes and then shading them using the light from the ceiling to see where the shadows land,
after we had finished 3 shapes a square a circle and cilander. in the second class we learned what the images
we had collected for homework were for, we had to use the images to write a break down which i almost completed
in the hour set.
02/10/12
day 10
the first lesson was 3d modeling even though at this point i have quite got the hang of max yet because i have been
studying maya for the last 3 years im sure ill get the hang of it shortly. intodays lesson we learned simply how
to bring up the render editor and put simple textures on a cube, even though ive done this before it took a while
to jog my memory. in the second part of the day i was in grahams class where we learned about jobs in the game
industry and began our research files.
03/10/12
day 15
today was another late day starting at 1: 45 however my alarm didnt go off so i had to rush if i was going to get to
grayams class on time, in grayams class we talked about the difference between game dynamics and game machanics and
how they effected the gameplay, to find out the difference we went as a class to the libary to research the definision
of both machanics and dynamics followed by a short right up. once we had written up and posted the results on our blogs the
class went on a flash game called this is the only level (a game where there is only one level but each time you complete
it the rules) this was very entertaining and taught me allot about how simple changes effect game play. at the end of
the session we were again set the task of making a board game however this time based on platformers.
08/10/12
day 16
today instead of learning shading techiques of paper based work the class and i were on the computers learning photoshop
but before we could even start the class mike and i had to get the 20 or so graphics tablets from the office up on
the 2nd floor. once the graphics tablets were retreived the lesson began with the photoshop basics such as how to change
the paper size and how to select brushes, however by the end of the lesson we were putting into practice all the skills
that we had learned on paper such as sence of scale and shading. in the second part of the day we had another lecture
about the theory of play and what play is to different cultures and species, later on in the lesson we changed topics
and went into signs in video games such as power, wealth and culture. to follow up the sesson we were set the task of
looking at the images that we had all selected from the previous assignment and look for signs in them.
09/10/12
day 17
in the 3d modeling class today i learned how to make a crate in 3ds max (which is very simular to the way we do it in
maya so i had no problem getting a early lead in the lesson) after we had made the crate we learned two ways of uvw maping
them to apply textures, however both techiques involved cuting and stitching the uvw maps so that the centre of each
face was in the middle with the outer layer of the crate around it. the two techiques used were neting and stacking. because
i knew most of the techiques already from maya i help out during the class.
in the research class i was mostly helping other students as i had already found my templates and completed 75% of my CV
10/10/12
day 22
today i got up at 6am so that i could go into town and get a few things for the board game before class and then went to
the libary to practice max and print off some of my work on A3 for my room. once i got into class we had 20 minites in
which to do the finishing touchs to are games before testing everone else, the hole class consisted of testing each others
board games and giving feed back at the end of the class.
sadly this is the last lesson we have with grayam on the topic of board games
15/10/12
day 23
today we learned about what we are doing for are final peice of work in this module (enviromental drawing) our final peice
for this unit can be in anystyle of concept art that we chose, it can be interior or exterior and can ether be done
truditionally on paper or created with the aid of modern software such a photoshop.we also learned the stages of producing
our final peices such as sketching, refine sketching, research and final peice.
for the rest of the lesson i began to sketch down a few ideas of what i may want my enviroment to look like. during the
second half of the day we learned about the space within games(text space, contained 2D space,raparound space,scrolling space
, scroll along two axes, adjucent space one room at a time, scroll with muliple backgrounds, limited 3d space, vometric space
,window to outside, split screen, video capture, mapped space, early 3D and full 3D) after learning what each one ment
we were put into groups of three and set the task of designing are own game around one of these spaces.
