The Engine

The game engine I decided to use was Unity. I saw a lot of good reviews with unity and thought it would be the right option for me. I used the tutorials that Unity provides. I thought that the best way to learn about the game engine and learn how to use it was by learning from the creators themself. I feel like they will go more in depth and that it will be better than watching a video.

What Worked Well

Once  I finally understood how the learning hub worked, it was actually fairly simple to follow. The learning hub broke the engine down enough into smaller chunks that were easier to understand. A second thing that worked well was placing pieces down. During the mini game that helps you learn how to play you have to put down pieces. At first, I was using my mousepad and it was kind of hard to put them together, but once I started using an actual mouse it was super easy. I was able to use the mouse to make a bridge so that my person didn’t fall through the cracks. Another thing that I felt worked well was the game engine itself. I felt that it was very beginner friendly and that if at any point I did get stuck if I just reread that learning hub I didn’t have much of an issue.

What Didn’t Work Well

There were a lot of difficulties that I faced when it came to trying to learn how to use Unity. One of them was downloading the application. The instructions themself weren’t complicated, but there was a point where I had to add a license and it would not connect to my account. I ended up logging out and logging back in and it fixed itself. Another challenge I faced was underestimating how game engines actually work. I thought it would be simple and I could just pick a character and pick a template and everything else would kind of work out, but I was extremely wrong. I fixed this by just taking a minute and clearing my head of what I thought the game was going to be like. The third challenge I faced was understanding the learning hub. I thought it would look different and I thought that I would be learning right there on the website. At first I didn’t understand how the steps work, but once I backtracked and reread what the prompts were asking it became less confusing and I was able to follow it. The fourth challenge I faced was learning how to use the controls. I don’t play video games a lot and when I do it is usually on the PlayStation so I am not used to using the A,W,S,D or the arrow controls to move. During the tutorial, I had to play a mini game to learn how to use certain features of Unity and because I was having trouble with the controls I kept dying and having to retry. The fifth challenge I had was the training parts kept crashing on me. I would get to a part where something had to be done and my computer would get stuck on a loading screen. I fixed it by just restarting the engine a couple of times.

What Changed as a Result

The game idea I had outlined was a first person shooter zombie game. After messing around with Unity and really learning how game engines work a lot of things in my game will have to change. In my proposal I had many different settings and backgrounds, but now I am leaning towards having only one or two backgrounds. Also I was going to have zombies hiding behind things and jumping out at the player, but I think that instead of having some of them hide I will just have zombies coming from all different directions.

What Did I Learn

While trying to navigate through the learning hub I learned a lot of different things, but the main thing I learned was that I grossly underestimated how difficult this was going to be. I thought that I would be doing some work and the gaming engine would do a good chunk of it and that it would be super simple. I was completely wrong. I didn’t realize that how the player moves, putting bridges together, and things like making sure that everything is placed strategically would fall on me. There were so many different settings and adjustments that had to be made that I never even considered.