This is my reflection for the first half of the Autumn Term for 2023 at HSDC South Downs. I will split this into 5 sections: research, audio, visual, interactive and what’s next.

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Research

In research we learnt: what primary and secondary research is and their methods as well as what market and production research is and their methods. We also put into practice what we learnt by doing our own market and production research for our first project. Though this stuff is not the most interesting it is important to learn and the research I did for my project did actually help me make some decisions.

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Audio

In audio we learnt: the different types of audio in video games, different terms used when talking about audio, how to use Adobe Audition, how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, the art of foley and how to set up our own microphones to record foley sounds. This is all very important for games as even though audio can often be forgotten about audio can make or break a game. Good audio design will enhance the experience of the video game where as poor audio design will ruin it. What I have learnt will help me to hopefully produce good audio.

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Visual

In visual we explored: different visual styles, perspective drawing, model/character drawing and character design. I am very lacking in artistic skills but hopefully with the things I have learnt I can make moderately good visuals with a low-poly style for my project. Audio maybe the unsung hero of good video games but visuals are the very big sung hero of good video games. Though visuals in video games aren’t expected to be photorealistic in every video game and you can have a very good and well praised video game with bad graphics, Undertale for example, it is still important to make visuals that make sense and can be understood.

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Interactive

In interactive we learnt how to make game in Unity. Though I am going to be making my game in Unreal which does use C++ rather then C# it was still helpful to understand how a game engine works. I have done programming before and that has helped with the basic concepts but game engines are a completely different platform compared to what I have worked with before. So learning Unity has given me an understanding of how game engines work.

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What’s next?

Well what is next is making a video game. I have all my research mostly done, I will do more throughout the project when needed, so I can now work on making the game. Producing audio, crafting visuals and developing gameplay to hopefully make a decent first game. But also for my research lessons I will be learning about the professional world of games design and development and how to craft a good narrative.

Scott