This week was mostly dedicated to working on the Reflective Journal 3 module, so don’t expect much in the way of project progress. I began the week on Monday morning by heading to the studio, as per usual. After doing some research Reflective Journal for a while, I started feeling unhappy and struggled to get anything done for some time. I was helped out of this mood in the afternoon (which was very much appreciated), and continued with the Reflective Journal work. After some time, though, I was once again incapable of getting anything done for a while. After I headed home in the evening, I continued working on Reflective Journal until I went to bed.
On Tuesday morning, I headed to university and did more Reflective Journal work. I briefly gave Fred some feedback on his game’s most recent prototype, and then continued working on Reflective Journal until heading upstairs in the early afternoon. This was because we had a scheduled Reflective Journal 3 session with Adam, where he clarified some details about the module and its submission. You can see my notes for this session below, though it didn’t last too long (as Adam knew most of us wanted to just get on with working on our essays). After going back downstairs, I worked on Reflective Journal until I headed home, after which I did the same until going to bed.
On Wednesday morning, after heading to the studio early, I eventually started working on Reflective Journal. This continued on and off throughout the morning and afternoon, though I didn’t make nearly as much progress as I’d wanted. Once I headed home for the evening, I worked on Reflective Journal until I was eventually able to head to bed.
I headed to the studio early (as usual) on Thursday morning, and worked on Reflective Journal until heading to the lecture theatre at around midday. This was when we attended a talk hosted by Marie-Claire Isaaman, the CEO of Women in Games. She spoke about the gender-inequality of the games industry, the goals, operations and details of the organisation, and her own personal history of feminism and activism. I appreciated the talk, although it wasn’t directly applicable to my practice in game design and development (as much as it was very much applicable to the social and economic spaces of the video games industry). I won’t repeat everything that was said, but you can find my notes below. After the lecture, I returned to the studio and continued working on Reflective Journal. I also had Adam check to see whether my plan made sense, and he just said to make sure that I cover certain aspects properly and that I come to the right conclusions. Meanwhile, Marie-Claire was talking to people and teams about their projects, though we didn’t get to speak to her, and we weren’t going to prioritise our team speaking to her when only two of us remained in the studio for most of the afternoon (and were working on Reflective Journal, anyway). After leaving the studio, I attended a GP appointment, where I had to deal with some unpleasant stuff (and had to walk around town, looking for and buying what was recommended to me). I then went home, feeling quite unhappy, and continued working on Reflective Journal throughout the evening until heading to bed.
On Friday, I headed to the studio in the morning and worked on Reflective Journal for a while. This was until Adam began speaking to us about the degree shows, going over some key details about what we’d need and what we’d be doing for them. The notes from this discussion can be found below. I then started to feel unhappy, and headed to lunch. Afterwards, Adam showed us the potential directions for the visual design of the degree show that Studio 3015 came up with, and asked for the class’ opinions, though I was still feeling unhappy. After speaking to the class, Adam spoke to our team about the project, explaining that we were developing aspects in a segmented manner, looking to combine all of the separate parts into a functioning whole, when we should consider building the functioning baseline for getting the experience across and working up from there. He said that we could have a meeting to discuss a small number of core goals for the project, defining what we’d need to get the experience across, and said that we need to consider that we’re not a proper game studio yet, and we therefore need to make a ‘teaser’ of what Gloria could be if we were. After this discussion (for which the notes can be found below), I headed home, feeling extremely depressed. I eventually continued working on Reflective Journal for a short while, and then after another pause, continued working on it during the evening until I was incapable of doing so any further.
Saturday was spent almost entirely on Reflective Journal (barring doing shopping and having a few breaks), which brings me to Sunday. I’ve decided to spend this morning working on this blog post (acknowledging that it likely wouldn’t take long, due to how the week has been focused on Reflective Journal), and to continue working on Reflective Journal afterwards. Reflective Journal 3 is due on Monday, so my priority is to get it completely wrapped-up for then, such that I can focus completely on the project once it’s out of the way. The module has been a massive time sink, and has meant that the team isn’t where we wanted to be by the end of this week. It also means that we have little new to show for the scheduled testing session on Monday afternoon, so I wonder whether we’ll actually be participating in that as a team (especially since Reflective Journal is the priority until everyone’s handed it in, which could well be 16:00 tomorrow). Once Reflective Journal is out of the way, my first priority will likely be getting the new movement system programmed, and then it’ll either be implementing the triggering of the wave mechanic in the context of the overworld, tweaking the wave mechanic to support the ‘It/Tag’ mechanic of the player overtaking the character and the character following the player’s path, or programming one of the new synchronisation mechanics so that it can be tested and properly implemented. I’ll see what I’m asked to do, and I’ll find out what I’m actually able to accomplish in next week’s post (which I may get out of the way early, so that I can have a chunk of Sunday free to spend time with my parents).
Crowence Game Development 