So its about that time again, with the start of a brand new studio its worth reflecting on things that i have improved upon over time and addressing the new areas i want to learn next as a developer.

 

What has changed about your practice as a developer during studio 1?

There has been three main areas that changed through my experience;

Planning ahead:

As a developer we want to create things, its in our nature. A common trap i was falling into, was rushing to create that thing instead of planning or thinking about the intricacies of that thing.

Most of the projects i started without planning, failed or at least serious problems arose in the development process that called for redesign.

After a several attempts and failures, i decided to take a slower approach and plan almost every interaction before i made a thing. This game was Overdrive and turned out to be a great success which was no coincident.

Tools:

Tools are essentially the developers arsenal of weapons, as i learned of different tools it expands my options with how i approach a problem. I found as i tried to create more and more complex things that those options were invaluable to my success

Clarity:

As i worked with other people on projects it became increasingly important that not only could they understand what i was doing but how they could interface with my work. For designers it was implementing simple variables, ease of use and being able to added code without modification. For programmers it was using a consistent casing, commenting and summaries for my work.

 

What areas of game development are you wanting to get into?

Honestly i’m not too sure yet, I’m definitely interested in the logic behind AI, shaders and networking, however i have a pragmatic approach to finding work after finishing study. So I’m not apposed to learning things that aren’t related to games, such as UI, UX in web development.

 

What areas do you really want to know lots more about?

As mentioned above i would really like to know more about:

Games: 

• AI
• Shaders
• Networking

Coding outside of Games:

• UI
• UX
• JavaScript

I’m aware that i may not be able to get all the answers i want from SAE but i will devote my spare time this trimester in trying to understand some of these things.

 

What have i done this week as a developer?

I’ve been gathering information that i will need for my next project “Creature Feature”, mostly i have been focusing on the behaviour logic for the AI i will be creating for this project. This also involves researching the different types of pathdata generation and pathfinding that i could use in my future projects.

Researching these peaked my interest in different companies AI that is used in the industry. Which led to further research on such as the neural networks used in Supreme Commander 2.

 

What have i learned about my practice this week?

I now have a much better understanding of how Pathfinding works and what goes into the creation of AI. Specifically I’ve learned the most about how A* operates and how it can benefit me in “Creature Feature”.Something that i have also learned is that a lot of programming both in industry and otherwise is less about how you can do the thing and more about how can you imitate that action.