Week Four
A Nexus of Ideas
Reflection
Exploring and experimenting over these past few weeks has brought me successes, failures and new perspectives. After presenting my ideas, I understand that I have a solid project that I would like to research and create. However, I do need to experiment and trial more so I can solidify the processes that I will be taking and broaden my ideas that I can bring to my research. My original idea was to use Unreal Engine as my game creation software, it was something I had yet to use, and I was eager to learn and find how I can utilise it in my research. The exploration process became quite difficult when I realised how much I had to learn with Unreal to experiment and create artefacts, even if the creation was relatively simple. After this realisation, I knew it would be best to switch back to a software that I knew, Unity.[4] Rather than putting myself under the pressure of learning entirely new software and learning how to build my ideas, I wanted to go back to what was familiar to focus on my research ideas and put more effort into it without the additional strain. As I will be now working with software that I understand, I will bring the current experiments I have created and place them in the context, in this instance, the game space, that I had intended. This way I can work on further experiments and see if what I have tested will work with the project to help me further my research.
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Figure 1. Kate Giles, Rough layout of starting room. Unity. 2021
I have started to create the base room within unity; this will be where the player starts. I am keeping it simple to be able to build off of it easier. The layout of the room I plan to make like an apartment or small house. I won't be restricting myself to using just this space while I test my ideas, as I will end up struggling to experiment and lay things out in the way I envision them. I plan to have the layout replicate an apartment or small house in my final game, so there will be a bedroom, lounge, kitchen, and hallway. I will be keeping the rooms limited, so I don't stress myself out creating environments and objects for each room.
