Dev. Journal #1

   Alright, boyos and girlos, I don't really have much to talk about but I also have tons of stuff to talk about. Does that make sense? I didn't think so, either.

   This is just going to be me self promoting myself to rise in the industry so I can eventually swim in money narrating the progress of my projects, ideas and just life as a dev. in general. All because I want future Phill to be embarassed of how bad and ineffective he was a few years ago. Hi bud.

But anyways!

Anadma:


   So, these past few weeks I actually made stuff... -ish.
Remember Anadma? The cute grey block with eyes that I talked about a few posts ago? Of course you don't, but she has her own demo right now!

Here's a link for it: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/702511

And no, Newgrounds isn't as dead as you all might think. Shocking, I know.
  Anadma started off being a learning project, and still is, that's why I dropped it as a "demo". I feel like I learned everything that I aimed to learn with it, and I'm happy with it, and that is why I didn't finish it, I learned everything that I needed from it. Who knows, maybe I'll finish it one day, but for now it's my little learning project and will always have a place in my heart. it's nice to have a "Pet Project" or a "Learning Project".

With this one, the most important lesson was that shopping games can still please some folks. Then again, this wasn't exactly a shopping game, it was more of a Stick RPG clone. For those of you who played Stick RPG, you know that it is a simple game despite all the events that are in it.

I was able to learn about "Level/Scene Switching" which was a real pain since it is not that easy to tell a computer "Yo, I want you to teleport me to that scene in front of that door there", especially when there are multiple doors in that scene. It's easy now that I learned it, but dang.

It was also nice to learn about Upgrading systems and Money, "Time" and Goal systems. Play the game and you'll understand what I mean.

In general, it was perfect to learn how to deal with a game that deals with several scenes where you have to keep track of several items and data that had to be saved.

Super recommended to make a clone or two of a game like this as practice (or more).


PongBreaker:

Well, I'm gonna mention this one just because it kinda helped me with the next topic.
It's pretty self explanatory, I made a mixture of Pong and Breakout, really simple, as practice for the Ludum Dare 40 that would happen in the following weekend.

If you wanna try it out,

Here's the link for that:
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/702734

It's always nice to go back to the basics, once in a while. At least, I enjoyed myself.


LudumDare40:

Alright, so this was my first time participating in the Ludum Dare, or any game jam for that matter.

Here's the link for my entry: 
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/infected-pong

I made a game called "Infected Pong", and it is exactly what it sounds like: Pong + Viruses.

Amanda came up with the idea of having a game where your computer is infected with viruses and you have to deal with that somehow. I really liked that idea, but I wanted something more, something more challenging! So I thought about adding a game of Pong in the background!

So I started off by designing the main idea which was to have viruses to pop up in the screen. A simple coroutine did the trick to simulate that. You just had to click a cross button in the top to get rid of it, simple stuff.
Then, I went ahead and implemented Pong playing in the background, which was easy because I remembered most of the code that I had used in PongBreaker just a few days earlier.
I felt like the game was a bit tedious as it was so I wanted to add some sort of anti-virus that would contain upgrades to help the player. This was a bit more tricky because I had trouble thinking in what upgrades I wanted to implement. Eventually I came up with 4 simple upgrades and I figured that that would do.


So that was all the logic done! On to the graphics and sounds.

I wanted to simulate a windows UI, so I made the little hills with the sun as the background and created the "Anadma", "Waterfox" and "Folder" shortcuts so that it actually felt like its own computer.

I think this is when I stopped for Day1.

For Day2, I didn't have much left to do, so I polished some physics, added 2 other types of Viruses, added some more graphics and made the music and sound effects, which I'm quite proud of.

When the time of submiting came, my Standalone resolution was being a little pain. The graphics were all out of place and my Canvas were all larger than intended. And nothing that I did to fix it was working. So, ultimately I had to leave it as HTML only in itch.io and Newgrounds. So that was a bummer.

Nonetheless,

It was tons of fun! There's a reason for why experienced developers recommend game jams for beginners. It helps you with dealing with stress and deadlines, you'll have a theme to get an idea so you don't get stuck in that process, you meet lots and lots of people who can make incredible games and are willing to rate yours in the process!

It's an amazing experience and I do recommend it to all the beginners, even if you don't feel all that confident!


Online Requests:

On a smaller note, I started doing some online requests for anyone that is interested.

Small stuff, no full time projects. Already helped a couple of strangers with their projects, made a "Spawn, Kill, Spectate" system and just gave some general tips and clarified some topics that the other was having problems with.

What I am planning to do with this is start small, making some projects for free to build up my portfolio and then start charging small fees later on, a man's gotta eat, amiright?

SO! If anyone wants help with anything, DM me while it's free I guess, it's still gonna be for a while but hey, you never know!

Check all the projects that I made up there to see what you think of my work. I have some other things on GitHub too (@phillserrazina) for any of you interested!

My point being (TL;DR):

I made two games...-ish, I participated in my first game jam and I'm starving for a job that does not involve making food, serving food or trashing food.

Here's to the first Phill's Dev. Journal, folks.

Microtransactions

If you somewhat pay attention to the drama world of Gaming Industry, you certainly have heard about the whole EA Star Wars: Battlefront 2 fiasco with greedy mechanics. I felt like sharing my opinion about the situation. Not just EA but microtransactions in general.

How it started.

The microtransaction problem has been around for quite a while now and it has been so because it was kept under the radar for a while. As far as I can remember, it was always present in browser games and MMORPG's. "Bloodcrystals", "gold coins" and all that stuff that could be used in the black market. Some of these games were free and really popular, but there was a much smaller gaming community too. Could these be considered Pay To Win? Maybe.
I might be wrong, but the first big popular microtransaction service started off with Dota2 and League of Legends when these rose to popularity. And it was fine because it was merely cosmetic purchases.
Then, mobile games like Clash of Clans introduced the same concept but with an unfair advantage to it: "Buy more resources", "Pay X money to get more lives", same thing with facebook games. No one really cared since they were just free casual games in not so popular gaming platforms. Again, could these be Pay To Win? A slightly stronger "maybe".

It was always ignored because "we are just supporting the creators", "you know what you're paying for" and "you don't have to buy it if you don't want to". And I 100% agree with all these statements, microtransactions are "fine" if they are kept safe. The word "fine" in quotes because there's still a lot of debate in the unfair advantages of some.

And then came the gambling.

Gambling Mechanics.

Again, correct me if I'm wrong but, the first big "gambling system" was introduced by CS:GO. From top to bottom, it was all a big gamble. You would pay a certain ammount and spin a slot machine-like mechanism that could give you a normal cheap skin that costed three cents, OR A SUPER MEGA RARE SKIN THAT WOULD GIVE YOU HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS. ... Moving on,

Again, it was all fine because they were just cosmetics, you weren't paying for advantages and you didn't have to buy it if you didn't want to.
Was it fine, though?
There are more than just a few stories of addiction to this gambling system, and became worse and worse when gambling websites came along, "Bet on what team is gonna win", "Flip a coin and win all of your opponents weapon skins", "Compete against several people in a roullete system to win their skins".

Do I even need to talk about PhantomL0rd?

You get the idea.

True endings hidden behind money and paid mods.

Now, they really messed up the "staying under the radar" part when it got to the DLC's. That's when people started to get mad. You would pay $30-$60 for a game but its' true ending would be revealed in a 20$ DLC? Come again? How is that fair?
Recently, Shadow of War got a lot of hate because of how unfair it was to grind to its' true ending and how it was an obvious scam to make you buy their loot boxes that COULD contain a better item to help you grind. Could this be considered Pay to Win? Do I even need to answer?
But the DLC problem started way before that, don't get me wrong.

Oohoohooh, should I even talk about Bethesda???? How they messed up move after move after move, and the Creation Club really did it for the community. That was not acceptable. There have been free mods for their games ever since anyone can remember, and all of sudden they introduce "unique" mods that you have to pay for? With "unique" do you mean mods that are out there for free already? Nice one.
Now now, I've always loved Bethesda and I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt because they announced that they were bringing bigger content to the CC. Not DLC sized, but bigger. So I'll give them another chance.

EA and Battlefront 2.

And then EA announced Battlefront 2.
The hype around this game was overwhelming. It looked like they finally did it: a really good star wars game. The campaign is there, the flying mechanics are there, a good-ish multiplayer is there, it even has classes!
Everyone was itching to get their hands on this game!

But that was before loot boxes were announced.

Everyone got a little skeptical once a loot box system was announced to the game. But they tried to soften it by turning it into a simple card system that could also be crafted and that it would properly adjusted to your rank and level. The issue was obvious here: unless rank 50's only played against rank 50's, this system would be incredebly unfair to latecomers to the game.

The community still complained about all of the weapons that could be unlocked through loot boxes, so, again, they adjusted it. "Now they're acquirable through playing. Play with class X to get their weapons at a milestone"... wasn't this obvious from the beginning?... Stay with me.

Now there was another issue. In the game, there's the "Hero" class. Characters like Yoda, Darth Vader, Rey, Darth Maul, etç. are a part of this class. Obviously, the strongest class in the game that you can unlock through grinding or paying for them. Other pieces of content had the same system to be unlocked. The issue is: someone made the math and it would take roughly 4500 hours to unlock everything in the game... EA?? Are you sane??? So you would have to either play the game for 4000+ hours or pay $2100 to get the full content.

Now, recently, they disabled the whole microtransaction system temporarily, which is good, we got something out of all the complaining and the industry is starting to feel the backlash. But we won the battle, not the war, folks.

MrMattyPlays talked about this issue brilliantly, so, if you're interested, I highly recommend you search him out on youtube.

My point being (TL;DR):

Microtransactions ARE a problem, and I'm super glad that this is finally starting to be shown. The community is being somewhat listened to. I've never agreed to them and I don't think I ever will. Buying the game should already be enough to support the creators.

If you want more money then make a good game and then make merch for it, or something around that area, just don't mess with the game itself.

What do you guys think?

Also, on a small note, I released my first Game Demo on Newgrounds! Leave a review and let me know what you think of it: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/702511

Influence

Where are the limits in videogames and other types of media?

A couple of days ago, I watched the second half of a documentary called "Miss Representation" which touched on the subject of men judging themselves more powerful than women ever since the dawn of time.

At a certain point, it demonstrated a series of situations where the media supports this exact idea of men being supperior. They showed images of posters, commercials, internet adds, and, not surprisingly, a clip of GTA San Andreas where Jonhson (the player) was beating up a woman.

This dispolted a discussion between me and my girlfriend, Amanda.

You see, Amanda thinks that a game like GTA never should have been made.

"A game that puts you on the perspective of the moraly wrong side for the purpose of fun, is automatically teaching you that what they are doing is okay.", she said.

To this, I answered that I, along with millions of people, have played GTA San Andreas and I do not think that beating a human being is right in any way, shape or form.
However, she thinks that if a game has even 0.01% of triggering or teaching something wrong to the player, then it shouldn't be made.

Now, I'm sure that a lot of you are thinking right now:

"She's just attacking games, what about all of the other media influences?".

Well, you see, other types of media methods feed you something, but you are the one that decides if you want to swallow it or spit it out (even though it will still influence you in some way). In a game, a lot of times you are forced to do the wrong thing to progress. So you are not just being fed, you are being forced to swallow what the game gives you. And this is the fundamental problem to A.H..

Do you remember the whole "Super Columbine Massacre RPG" situation that happened a few years ago? Basically the same discussion, and always the same question:

"Where is the limit?"

Where is it?
Columbine RPG made you play as the two school shooters that were responsible for the mass school shooting in Columbine, CO. It was made with the intent of telling the story of the Columbine Massacre, portraying the facts while making you think "What in the hell am I doing?" while you played the game, why were you killing those people? Who in their right state of mind would do that? Those horrible, atrocious, vicious actions? It was meant to make you feel bad and disgusted while you learned about the massacre.

But, obviously, that's not how the world received it.

I don't want to go into a lot of detail about it, but the creator got a lot of hate. It triggered a lot of people, "a game like that shouldn't be made in respect for the dead and their families". The poor guy even got death threats because of it. If you're interested to know about it, there's a great documentary called "Playing Columbine" and I absolutely recommend it.

My point being (TL;DR):

I think we are all sick of hearing people saying "Videogames make people violent", but should we be? Should we ignore that statement? GTA didn't make you, or me, violent, but that doesn't mean that no one got violent after playing it. Is it the game's fault, or is it the player's guardian's fault for not telling them "It might be fun in the game, but this is wrong"? If , in World War II games, you played as the Axis instead of the Allies, would it not be okay anymore? Should games like GTA or Columbine RPG be banned?

I'll try to stay neutral to the topic but I would like to know what you think, so I ask you again: Where is the limit?

Studying Game Development

Surely I'm not the most suited person to talk about this since I've only been studying game dev for about 3 months now, but hey, consider it as a fresh view of what I have gotten so far!

I've had some people asking me: "What is it like?", and more importantly: "Is it worth it?". To get these answers, jump straight to the TL:DR section because I'm about to ramble for a bit.

So, I've been here for almost 3 months now studying Computer Games Development, starting off with 5 classes:

- C++ Programming For Game Developers 

- Computer System Concepts

- Game Development Fundamentals, Practice, Professionalism and Employability

- Mathematical Tools for Computation

- Information Management, Assurance and Security

I'm gonna separate these classes into two groups: "Game Dev", where I'll put C++ Programming and Game Dev Fundamentals, and "General Computing", which includes CSC, IMAS and Maths. Let me talk about the General Computing group, first:

General Computing:

So, this is the group of subjects that you are not required to know as a game dev and you'll probably take them along with other people like Computer Science, like I am. Do they help? Oh yeah, a whole lot. Do you absolutely need them? No, you don't. If you take a Game Dev uni course, you'll most likely have them or something like it, so it would be best if you embrace it right away instead of pouting at it like I did in the first month.

Computer System Concepts:

This is "Computer Anatomy 101" basically. I'm learning what's inside a computer, how does it work, computer language, binary, hexadecimal, decimal, how to convert them into one another, logic gates, truth tables, system buses, memory, secondary memory, chips *Big Gasp To Catch My Breath*. Yes, it is a lot of stuff and, if you're new to it, it may be very overwhelming, but ultimately it will help you to understand what is going on when you code and in several other aspects.

I absolutely HATE classes like this, mostly theory and not much practicality, memorize the material and spit it in the exam just to forget about it right after. In the first month, I just kept thinking how useless this class might seem, but I found myself falling behind because of it, so I decided that this stuff might actually be useful eventually, or else they wouldn't be teaching it.

Yes, a lot of theory, lots of memorizing, but just do your homework on this one, and you should be fine. 

Information Management, Assurance and Security

I'm not gonna talk a lot about this one, because I only started taking it 3 weeks ago. To keep it short, it's your anti-hacker class, basically. You'll learn all about the terms, the protocols, the systems used, the difference between attacks and threats, the countermeasures to both of those, the roles that you'll have in a company for this, etç.

Just like CSC, this might be a bit overwhelming, but I think you guys can see the utiliy for this: no one likes to be hacked. And you get to learn a bit of hacking yourself along the way, for all you naughty boys and girls!

Mathematical Tools for Computation

This one is actually quite hard for me to talk about. You see, I came from another country where I had to take maths up until the end of the 12th grade, which was equivalent to Pre-Calculus in the US, I believe? But anyways, this class is kind of a mish mash because everything that I "learned" these past 3 months, I had already learned throughout my 10th, 11th and 12th grade. Sets, Equations, Trig, Progressions, that sort of stuff. Which is basically what you need for programming.

If you have your maths up to date, don't worry too much because you'll probably have a basic math class like this. If not (and there is no shame in that), pay attention to this because I cannot explain how much it helps with programming coursework.

Game Dev:

C++ Programming for Game Developers

Exactly what the name tells you, I've been learning C++ but with a lot of game analogies and exercises. Now, it's good to have this as a school subject because: 

a) you're forced to study it, so you're forced to practice, which is the best way of getting better at it. 

b) you're teached the correct way of doing all of it, the best practices, how to comment and indent the code. You can write code in lots of ways to make it work, but that doesn't mean that it is well written. 

That is by far one of the pros of having this subject and of taking this course in general.

c) You are guaranteed to have a mentor and you'll be surrounded by people that are trying to achieve the same goal as you, which is a lot of extra help.

I'm taking C++ but I'm sure that not all unis do it. You might take C# or Java but all of these points apply to whatever programming class you have.

Game Development Fundamentals, etç, etç

Alright, remember the one class I talked about where I had to make a game in 6 weeks? TR45H-Y? Yeah, this was it. And let me tell you that this is BY FAR the most important class in this course.

For those of you who didn't read my previous posts, this was a class that I had for 6 weeks that was basically an industry simulator. We were given the task "make a game in 6 weeks" and that was it, no information on how to use the engine, no information on how to code, no information on what to do at all. Obviously, if you asked, the teacher would help you, but that was it.

It was really stressful at first, and sometimes even frustrating, but it was SO important, and truly an eye opener as to how the industry works, what you need to do and, most importantly, how to work as a development team. If you wanna read some more on this, my previous posts talk about it.

My univeristy does a class like this for almost every course, and I know that not all unis do something like this, but I would recommend you do it even if just as a personal thing. Set yourself a deadline, gather 2 or 3 coursemates, and go for it!

My Point Being (TL:DR)

To answer the questions:

"What is it like?"

It's good, it's fun and you're doing what you love while you learn it in the best way possible, surrounded by people that motivate you to do it.

"Is it worth it?"

Don't be fooled, what you learn in this type of course is easily learnable through research and online cheaper courses. You will always be lacking something, but they're not necessarilly vital things.

But, not to be controversial here, personally, I would say "yes, it is worth it". It gets you direct contacts to the industry if you manage to stand out and you will be learning the best practices on what you're doing, which I'm sure that a lot of companies will enjoy. 

You will also be surrounded by people that are doing the same thing as you, that means that a team can come out of it, or maybe you'll meat someone that already was in the industry, or someone that can help you with any question that you have.

Making Games

Alright, for those of you who, for some reason, read my first post on this thing, I told you how I had to make a 6 week long project that was basically an "industry simulator". And the objective was to make a... *drum roll* ... a game! Yes, I am an aspiring game developer, as ridiculous as that might sound to some of you.

I was teamed up with 3 other students to make a project which we had been told nothing else besides of: "Make a game", that was it.

Say "Hi" to TR45H-Y, that little guy on the right there.

I came up with the idea of Trashy because I kinda have a crush on WALL-E, the disney robot, and me and my girlfriend had watched the movie just a few weeks before.

The idea was to have a weak and defenseless robot, whose job was only to mantain its' junkyard organized, and help him do the job by going through several small levels. He would be picking up trash and compressing it to make blocks that could be strategically positioned to help him out.

Again, as mentioned in my last post, my teacher told us multiple times that something was gonna go wrong, and guess what: he was right.

Forgetting about all the bugs, glitches, features that didn't make it and all that crap that (ah ah ah, let's be honest) no one really cares about, shit indeed hit the fan. Good call by you Dr. Mike! 👍

The stress of having a deadline, having to deal with people that we had just met a few days ago, with no guidance while dealing with a subject that we had to experience on... *hanging noose sound effect*... Not to mention that one of my team members went MIA the whole project. Don't you guys love college/university? 💚

I had made games in the past, never released of course, but I still made them.

Say "Hi" to Kanki:

And Anadma:

My two little children, as of now. Kanki was kind of a dead end, the idea is there, but it was just not fun, but I'll never forget him nonetheless. Anadma is still going, still being made in the vast planes of Unity Land.

So I was used to making some of these things, but I dreaded the engine that we were using, so I voluntereed to make the art side of the project. Booooy, how I sucked at it! At least that's my personal opinion, the public seemed to love it for some reason!

Here's a few examples of what I had to make:

Background 1

A Rat Enemy

Background 2

 And here's what some of the game looked like in the end:

I guess my level designer didn't trust me in the early phases of the project, so some of the sprites in the game weren't made by me, but no hard feelings, B-Dog, I wouldn't trust myself either!
I was also in charge of the sound department of Trashy, which I'm quite proud of, despite most of the songs thrown in there getting annoying after the first 30 seconds.

Anywho! Enough talking about my project, all you need to know is that we finished and we were proud of it! We had to showcase it in the end, and I think I'm allowed to say that the public loved it!... most of it!... And for all you curious folks out there, it was made in UE4.

My point being (TL:DR):

I had to make a game in 6 weeks, and I LOVED IT. It was challenging, sure, but the creativity doors that something like this opens for you are infinite. You have a canvas and you're told: "do something, whatever you like, and I will reward you". Yeah, it can be awful. Yeah, it might not be a big hit. But! you! did! it!, and no one can take that away from you. And let me tell you, it feels GREAT to be able to look at Trashy and say: "I did this".

So now I say: go ahead, make a movie, paint a landscape, write a book, and for all of you anti-nerd people: make a game!

Being Self Taught At Uni

So, it's been two months since I came to the University of South Wales.
Today, I had a substitute to a class that I only started taking a week ago. It's one of those classes where you are not expected (that I know of) to have any basis whatsoever before you take it.
The substitute handed us a quizz and told us that, after we finished it, we had more questions that the teacher left us online along with some notes to help us in our "research". Last week, when the teacher was there with us, he did the exact same thing.

* BACKGROUND STORY TIME *

I told you guys in that last bit that I started taking this class a week ago. For the first 2 months of uni, I had this other class, where the teacher purposedly didn't teach us ANYTHING, literally. We had 6 weeks to develop a product, while self teaching ourselves on how to do it.
The objective was to give us a real life experience of being part of a team in the industry.

"It will be unforgivable",

"You'll eventually be given something to work with that you have never seen in your life",

"Shit will hit the fan at one point".

These was what that class was supposed to teach us, and I get it. It's a big industry with a lot to cover, and they would never be able to teach us all of it. I actually enjoyed what I was doing, so I didn't mind it at all. Alright, fine, it's done, moving on to the next class.

* BACK TO THE PRESENT TIME *

Right, so! The substitute had left at this point. Keep in mind that this new class has not caught my interest at all, so far. But I was doing my "research" and answering the questions on the quizz, just like everyone else was.
I don't know about you, but me + a class that does not interest me + having to be self taught at it = MAJOR SYSTEM FAILURE!!

*Clears throat*, anyways! In my boredom, I turned and I asked to no one in particular:

"Is this going to be another class where we self teach ourselves again?"

And one of my classmates, turns to me and says:

"You are supposed to be self taught"

HOLD ON, HOLD ON, HOLD ON! So, you're telling me that I'm paying £9000 for help documents that I can get online and tutoring that I can also get online?

...buying a computer for £1000-2000 is overrated all of a sudden, huh?

My point being (TL:DR): 

I can see what the teachers' point of view is: "The real world is not easy and you have to learn to be alone", okay, that's fine, but I am paying to be taught stuff, which is exactly what I'm going to do if I don't know something in the real world! I will ask for help, pay for courses and find a way to get resources. I did not come to uni to learn how to be self taught, that's the whole point of going to school after all.
What bothers me is that it looks like a lot of teachers have this type of mentality, and I can guarantee that no student enjoys it.
We want someone to talk to us and put us in their shoes. Someone that will explain the material to us like it is the best thing they've ever done in their life. Powerpoints and quizz packets will not do it, ladies and gents.

We have time to learn about the real world, but for now: hold my hand, and tell me what I'm supposed to do.