Ok, I have a confession to make to you all... Yes, I know its been over a week since I've updated, but I have been 'grinding' away on Assassins Creed: Brotherhood and despite my earlier concerns and worries, it does not disappoint at all! When I first started playing, I was a little unnerved as the game kept throwing different gameplay elements at me, which is of course exciting, but you can over egg the pudding in order to try and hit a wider demographic, or just an attempt to keep the existing fans interested. But slowly I got used to it, and started to appreciate how much thought and detail had gone into the design. Impressive when you consider that they only realised AC II last November (09). But anyway this isn't a review blog, so I will stop going on about it, but it really is a well put-together game :-)
So what's new? The only thing I can really think of is that we've started using the Unreal Development Kit and Kismet. Now programming isn't really my thing, but as I'm sure I've mentioned before, it serves a greater purpose to learn these things now, so you can understand as a game designer the limitations and what's realistic and do-able taking into consideration the time-line too (milestones). I have to admit I'm quite enjoying it, although it all seems very much over my head, I can definitely see a nice silver shiny light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Things like turning on a light-bulb in the game requires an understanding of how to link a trigger with a toggle-able element (i.e. the light) via Kismet. Kismet is also based around a graphical interface as opposed to scripting so in theory its supposed to be easier, but I still think you need to learn how to use it, much like you to take the time to learn how to programme in C++ in order to use it.
I've got a nice sound assignment to hand in this week, we've had a few issues (the group) with the sound design lessons, problems with teachers and staff, so its had an impact on the level of education that we get, being of a lesser standard than it would normally be. I suppose I can't help thinking that somewhere inside of me there might be a person that really enjoys the sound design side of things. Obviously not so much that it would change my views on what career I would like to step into, but enough to motivate me to look into this area of development with greater enthusiasm. Ultimately, it's time. There are moments when I wish I could go through everything that I now understand needs to be understood in order to better myself to the best that I can. I just have to try as hard as I can with areas that I feel will best help me for my future.
I've started trying to go into more depth with Flash as I found out the other day that you can do something called 'bone tweens' which is basically animating a body making it seem like the body has bones and is moving in the correct way to how a body would normally move (does that make sense??) I'm thinking this might be quite 'cool' when it comes to designing a portfolio to showcase some of my work. Not entirely sure what shape it will take, but I have a few ideas, and I won't spoil it just in case.
Till next time...
