Oh boy, fire hydrants! What tantalizing secrets do they keep? The answer happens to be about 20 P/SI...
But what about digital fire hydrants? Well, I'm here to talk about the process that I went through for creating my fire hydrant model. I actually broke from the tutorial a bit and instead of using the mirroring that the man in the tutorial used, I instead went with just being really, really careful and eyeballing it. It was perhaps not the best strategy considering I should just be quiet and learn to follow the gosh darn tutorial but eh, I've always been a hasty person. In seriousness though, I did follow it as closely as possible hence why I got good results. I should've payed a bit more attention though because I got some of my numbers of sections off and my divets on top of my fire hydrant were not exactly even. Overall though, I found it to be a pleasant and interesting time in making more complex assets for video games. Also it made me feel bad for everyone who has to make a million of different objects for games. Oh well, at least they get paid for it.
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1. Thankfully, I remember how to use proboolean and edit poly to combine shapes, edit faces, edges, and vertexes.
2. The largest struggle was lining everything up. As far as I know, there is no snap feature so I had to eyeball it all as best as possible and I don't think it's perfectly lined up. 3. I worked slowly and particularly to line it up as best as possible. With some attention to detail, I think I got it to be as close as I could have hoped to get it. 4. It reminded me how its possible to use the edit poly tool to construct complex shapes out of a starting simple shape. I made my fire hydrant using just three cylinders, adding details with edit poly. I had actually kind of forgotten how to do that since last year.
A magnum opus.
A masterpiece of the century. This. Is. Physical Pain. Ok in all seriousness (as serious as I can be staring at "Teo's Balls"), this was a fun demo to make that did actually teach me some things. The first thing I did was add the textures and hey, if you can say anything about this game, you can say it made you laugh and that's worth something. Next I added in the camera controls because I wanted the player to be able to observe the sublime spheres from every angle and not a fixed one. I based the first set of code on the spinning ball game we made this unit. Then I modified it to include a secondary axis of movement for total 360 controls with the arrow keys. Yes, they are awkward, but I think it adds to the wackiness of the game. I tried to add code to spawn in more spheres but it did not work. If I wasn't so pressed for time, I would spent more trying to solve it but I can't really do that. What did I learn? I learned to not take the tutorials for granted. Trying to make things without the guidance is not easy and I really wanted to go back and try to see exactly what to do. My knowledge of C# I wouldn't say was expanded but was rather realized. Getting the camera controls to work from memory proves that I was paying attention. I think these are the important skills that will help me later in this pathway: Knowing how to create without full guidance. If you were to take a competitive game like Counter-Strike and look at map data, you'd see this: Most games are played on the same few maps. Just a handful. Then take another, more casual game like Team Fortress 2. Image Credit: Teamwork.tf
Look at that trend! Over 1/4 of official games are played on just three maps, and half of all games are played on just nine maps. So why is this trend happening? The first thing that I can ascribe this too is nostalgia. Four of the top five maps listed: 2fort, Upward, Badwater and Dustbowl, have been in the game since launch. That's fifteen years ago! Despite all the newer maps that exist, people keep returning to the same ones. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. Playing the same map you played years ago will immediately invoke a sense of familiarity and comfort. It's exactly how you remember it and you don't have to worry.
This is a cube. It's a really neat cube. It is green and it spins. Some people made theirs spin faster but I liked it slow. Some people made theirs change color but I just like green. Yet, this simple cube, rotating in space, is the culmination of the first learning unit of Unity. In this sense, the cube means more than just what it appears to be. While it's simple to look at the cube and see a simple project that has no intrinsic value, it means that someone has learned. It's probably not the best cube, nor the worst, but it is what I have learned how to do and in that sense, the cube is priceless because you can't put a value on learning. I hope to learn more of Unity and coding so I can make better video games and evolve from the cube, but for now, I can look at the cube and know I am moving in the right direction.
The situation in Ukraine is unavoidable. There really isn't much that can be said other than that this is a disgusting show of illegal force against a soverign nation. But that is undeniable. What about video games though?
There are many Ukrainian video games that exist. The most notable of these is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. In STALKER, you are a bounty hunter in the Pripyat excusion zone around Chernobyl who goes on missions ranging from finding scraps to sell for cash to big shootouts between rival factions in the wastelands. A sequel was in production but has been haulted since the developers have gone off to serve. I wish them well on the fronts. The game service Itch.io sold a bundle of nearly one thousand games for a minimum price of $10 with all proceeds going to Ukraine. I think this is a great way to have video game enjoyers interact with the world and help a good cause. I think that these services like Itch.io and Humble Bundle should promote themselves more so that way they can give people enthralling digital experiences while also helping those in need like the Ukrainians in this time of unprecedented strife. print "C# | An Absolute Nightmare";
print "By Glenn Thompson"; C# is interesting. On the one hand, I cannot sit and say that I hate it. It is useful. I'm aware of that. On the other hand however, I also find there to be faults with it. Many, many faults. It is hard for a computer to interpret human language. On a fundamental level, human language is subjective. What I mean by this is that it has a certain flexibility because connotations for words can and are different from person to person. And there is not just one language in existance. There are thousands. Because of this, it is hard to translate that into machine code. At a basic level, computers run on ones and zeros. Ons and offs. To convert human words into these ones and zeroes, and in meaningful ways as well, we need scripting. This is where I understand why C# is difficult. There are rules and mechanics to C# that are unique to itself. It's a programming language, not a programming dialect. You cannot simply tell the computer to "Please make it so that the WASD keys move my character like in every other video game" since the computer just won't understand what that means. Using a series of inputs, semicolons and a liiiiiiiiittle bit of luck though, it will understand. On the other hand though, I wonder at times why it must be the way it is. Why are some rules in C# the way that they are. I suppose I would understand that more if I learned the language, however the language almost seems intentionally counter-intuitive at times which makes it a vicious cycle of wanting to understand and not being able to understand. Likewise, should we not strive to make code interpretation as much like human speach as possible? It's food for thought. I love puzzles. Puzzles are incredible games because they are able to stimulate your thoughts like no other medium. Whether it's solving a mystery or a code, or maybe finding what pieces fit together, puzzles are able to captivate. My favorite genera of puzzle is called the "Riddle Game" but do not be confused. These riddles are not like your normal ones. No, they're totally different. The online riddle game has simple mechanics: Using the information presented to you, you need to find the next level's URL. I think the reason why this system works so well for an online game is that it doesn't require fancy coding, graphics or music to captivate players. As long as a player is dedicated, they won't need a fantastic PC. It can be played anywhere on anything. It is this that I think is the core of a good puzzle. It needs to be able to be enjoyed by anyone anywhere.
There is a lot that can be said about the 1990 show 'Twin Peaks'. It's weird, paranormal, surreal and sometimes scary. It's a complex mystery surrounding one simple but impossible to solve question: Who killed Laura Palmer? The writing of Twin Peaks has proven to be very inspiring to me as a writer. With my current story at about 43,000 words in length, I found myself running dry for new ideas to keep it interesting and Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks taught me something that I feel as though I had forgotten about both writing stories and video games. Death is a tragedy.
In the words of Joseph Stalin: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." I think this is important because when we play games about killing many, many people. We start to grow detached. Twin Peaks though changes this. It's about one death. A tragedy. Every episode is not another random person to serve as a plot device. I think it is this that is important to remember. We need more stories and games that do not desensitize the player to the concept of murder. Normally in my blog posts, I try and maintain a neutral approach to my writing, but I just couldn't for this one. NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens are the stupidest economic bubble that's waiting to be burst. An NFT is a piece of art usually or any file that someone buys a unique URL to to prove their ownership. Because they're an image though, people will claim that right clicking and clicking "Save As" is property theft. This is not in fact property theft. Also, you're not technically buying the image or file itself, you're buying a unique link to it and only a link. However, you do get distribution rights so you can put them on things and sell them. It all makes it very complicated and frankly stupid.
They also take a ton of resources to make since they can only be bought by cryptocurrency (The second stupidest thing that exists on the internet). This means to actually buy one, you need to be insanly rich or willing to create tons of pollution through computer crypto generators. In conclusion, if someone tells you that NFTs are cool, you run. |
AuthorI am an artist as anyone else is an artist (if that makes sense). My style is abstract and I also draw cartoons. I am also a voice actor for a web-series. Archives
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