This was the first time I had seriously blogged. I had a small blogger page for an art class back in grade 12, however it was mostly artsy stuff.
This year I maintained graphics and game design posts. If I were to pick my best from each section they would be:
If I were to pick my best game design post it would most likely be: Game Opinion: Japanese Culture and Western Game Design. As a huge fan of the RPG genre, I was mulling over a game idea at that time which I also wrote a post on. I would say that this was my best game design post during my second year because I have always been very passionate about Japanese culture. I feel like they had great games back in the day, but lately the Western RPG’s genre contains much better games. In that post I try to figure out why the JRPG and WRPG are different and why WRPG are doing so well.
For graphics, picking my best post is difficult. I had a lot more fun writing about graphics because I ended up researching and learning a lot more then I had thought. A great example of this was: Game Construction: Terraria and 2D Level Generation. I was interested in how Minecraft random generated worlds using voxels were created, then I found an awesome blog that highlighted random terrain generation using noise. I learned how noise was made and how to create terrain using a simple noise function. It also made me want to try to learn LUA. If I had to pick a runner-up it would be: Shaders 103- Lighting. I had the most fun in Cg learning how to do lighting. I don’t know why, but I just really liked playing around with it. I think I spent over 2 weeks trying to find the best lighting in my tech demo, if only I was able to fully incorporate that in my second year GDW game :(.
If I had to pick the best overall post, it would be: Game Construction: Assassin’s Creed. I felt this was a cool post where I used concepts from game design and tried to de-construct it using the knowledge I gained from Computer Animation (one of my favourite courses). Also it was one of my first posts where I had a lot of time to work on it, because my other workload was light at that time.
Summary
Best Game Design: Game Opinion: Japanese Culture and Western Game Design
Best Graphics: Game Construction: Terraria and 2D Level Generation
Best Overall: Game Construction: Assassin’s Creed
/rants 