DES311 was a game design practice module, in which I primarily got to grips with using Unity properly. It was the first university project in which I directed my own learning; My interest was in figuring out maintainable and consistent project development.
I explored tooling, editor scripting, and automation. I got familiar with Scene management, creating my own tools to do so, during the project.
My documentation practices developed (previously non-existent); In this project, I primarily documented via the pull requests, you can view a detailed history of the project by viewing the closed pull requests.
https://github.com/orangutanrider/GDPAbertayUndergrad-DES311/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed
It isn't standard practice for me now, to document a project via pull requests, generally I create separate reports, that I occasionally link to pull requests.
I also investigated inheritance and reference management; I looked deeply into very basic things, because I wanted to understand what good practice was. Within the project, the structure of the enemy bullets, in the ShmupMusician project, models those learnings. The ShmupMusician project is the most developed out of the three.
The project never delivered on the deliverables agreed upon in the learning contract. Originally, the plan was to create a game that I would use to create music. However, as the project progressed, the focus was shifted onto programming, with my interest being in maintainability and conventions. The project's goals never pivoted to match this interest, and it ended up being a failure; With a resit the grade was a D. Despite that, it was a critical project in terms of progressing my understanding of programming and project management; My concepts of tooling and automation were founded here.
You can find documentation in product.zip; A build was never produced. The portfolio content is lacking, I mainly reflect upon this in terms of what I learnt, rather than what I made. It was a messy project, but important in my progression as a game developer.
Off the heels of DES311, I jumped into creating tools for my own purposes in Unity, to formalise and automate the conventions I had come to create.
https://github.com/orangutanrider/GDPAbertayUndergrad-UnityToolsResearch
It was a module for a games design and production (GDP) course, during my time at Abertay as an undergrad (2020-2024) (student number: 2002607). I was taught it in the 2nd term of year 3, in conjuction with another module DES310 (most of my time went into DES310).
DES310: https://github.com/orangutanrider/AbertayUni-DES310-Moonsprite
Official module information: The aim of this module is to provide students with the opportunity to undertake advanced independent study in a defined area of game design practice, with a view to developing relevant creative, technical, and professional skills.
Learning outcomes:
- Research contemporary areas of game design practice, identifying roles, responsibilities, required skills, and relevant bodies of knowledge.
- Identify an area of personal interest within the field of game design and devise a personal development plan founded upon a skills audit.
- Undertake a specialist project following self-directed tutorials and reading, leading to the generation of a portfolio of new game design work.
- Demonstrate the ability to assess and communicate one-s own development, and to devise effective strategies for ongoing personal improvement.
