Mobile Game Prototype: Finishing Basic Tile Sets
Hello everyone, welcome back once again! I've got some more pixel art assets for you this week, so let's jump right on in and see what's been made!
More Ice Tiles!
Continuing from last week, I finished up the last ice tiles that I believe my team and I will need in order for us to create our basic levels. There's essentially 2 sets drawn to go with other tiles from their given set, particularly tiles that are used as boundaries. So you can think of last week's tiles as the first set, and the following as the second!
With this additional set, it should now be possible to create our boundary around the edge of the maze and create terrain inside too. Again, it's not very easy to get a grasp of how these could be used in this format, so I created some example scenes for the team to help them understand how to create some dynamic environments in our levels:
I'll do a breakdown from left to right of the above images:
Left - an example of making terrain combining all the edge pieces to create a wall, and then adding in some snowy ground tiles inside to give the impression of a surface
Middle: uses the same terrain as previously, this time with the perimeter tiles from last week mixed with an exit with the ladder and a combination of plain snow and snow with pebble tiles to create the floor
Right: Combines all of the above, with the exit hole instead, some curving terrain and the illusion of layers on the left side of the image
With these examples, I'm hopeful that it'll give our level designer some inspiration with creating interesting variations for us!
Weekly Events - Minecraft inKUbator & Student Staff Council Committee
This week for inKUbator, we were lucky enough to have a graduate speak to us on MS Teams about his journey and how he eventually found himself working at Mojang in Sweden on Minecraft!
There was definitely some interesting points that stuck out - namely how much he seemed to be 'breaking the rules' when it came to job hunting and how he had a seriously amount of luck on his side. He also graduated with a 1st Class degree, something I am also hoping to achieve, so it was interesting to hear about some of the struggles he had when he was doing his dissertation piece. Since I'll be applying for work soon for when I graduate next year, I guess the main takeaway was to just keep on persevering and see where things go!
I think it was the most packed session we have had for this academic year, since everyone loves Minecraft or has nostalgic memories from playing it. The session even ran over a good hour before concluding; our lecturer for this module who hosts them had to dash when the official timeslot ended and left me in charge of our Teams call, which put me on the spot a bit but I think I handled it pretty well! Although it did take a while for me to close our call officially as everyone wanted to maximize their time with him; it seems he's a bit of a celeb in the Minecraft community!
I also attended the first Student Staff Council Committee (SSCC) of the year this week, where all the course reps for the faculty bring up any issues or other points they wish to discuss with peers and heads of department. Having been the sole rep for my course since I started, I've become a lot more familiar with the staff and understanding the mood of the class regarding various things, but it was strange doing our meeting virtually this year.
It was also trickier to gather feedback from everyone because of everything being remote, but I managed to acquire a fair amount of comments to relay in the meeting. We should hopefully see some results from these points shortly in the coming days and weeks. I sometimes feel I am the only one that is aware of both sides of our current situation; a lot of students feel that the professors aren't in a particularly dire situation and that they are, in a way, being paid to be on a kind of holiday.
Conversely, I also know from some of the staff how much pressure they are under to organize all our online material and be available to students that need help when they are being inundated with emails from everywhere. It definitely feels more exhausting this year to try and stay connected with all of my cohort & to help them see that the lecturers aren't having an easy time either, but I'll keep at it!
Closing Thoughts
The next step for me will likely be adding a few more options for objects that will be found in the maze; we have a selection of rocks and boulders currently, but there's room for adding in more interesting objects. Once a decent set has been produced, I'll move onto either designing the UI art or onto our main character.
It's a shorter post this week, but I hope you enjoyed reading through it, and I'll catch you again next week for another update - buh bye! :)