DevBlog 1: I went to PAX West 2023
I am back with an update on my DevBlog journey, including a day trip to PAX West 2023 in Seattle. But before we get to that, I have to catch you all up on the many things that have happened since my last post, which is surprisingly a lot.
I finished the Unity Essentials course a few weeks ago and got my lovely badge for completing it. This was an excellent foundational course I recommend anyone starting fresh in Unity to do. It covers all of the basics, and I am ready to start the next steps in my journey after finishing it. And before moving on to those next steps, if you want to have a giggle, here is the project I made to play with gravity:
https://play.unity.com/mg/other/falling-pigs-2
About those next steps, things changed a bit since my last post. Initially, I was going to follow along with a YouTube tutorial; however, while that may have been useful, I stumbled upon a project from Unity that takes you from start to finish building a 2D top-down game. They provide you with all the assets and a series of step-by-step instructions, including building out the scripts to make animations run and how to use Cinemachine. At this time, I haven’t finished the project yet; however, I am already starting to figure out how to pull my pirate pixel game together so I will take that as my win.
A couple of quick notes on the tutorial, should one of you out there be interested in it as well:
Read all of the comments regardless if you get stuck. The comments help with questions that the tutorial should have covered and provide more up-to-date alternatives.
Be prepared for the tutorial to be out of date and have to look for certain things in different places.
Parts of the tutorial are kinda sketchy - they have typos and don’t necessarily seem like one person wrote them, as the code bounces between Update and FixedUpdate, which can be confusing. This is why number 1 is significant.
I also figured out some art-related items things since the last post. If you read my previous post, I took a Coursera course covering the basics of making pixel art for games. It was out of date at best and probably the wrong way to go. I have since found two important things:
Use Aseprite, not Photoshop, for pixel art. I also got this confirmed by many at PAX. It is an application designed for creating pixel art, and the animation loops and sets are much clearer and cleaner to work with.
If you want to learn about Aseprite and making pixel art, don’t use the Coursera course; instead, go to this YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AdamCYounis.
He has every topic you could possibly want to cover for pixel art, and his teaching style is fantastic! I wish I had found this first, but it is what it is.
He has a discord. Join it! I joined it and have had valuable conversations there that kept me from going down a terrible path.
Moving on, I have also started my Game Design Document for the pirate game, including writing character briefs and building the storyline. I went with Notion.so as that felt the most flexible without being cumbersome. Also, the application is free when you use it on your own, so that’s a nice added perk. While working on the document, I tried their AI out, and if you can do so, I would recommend it. Even though I didn’t keep everything it wrote, it was great to have it extend sections of what I had written as it prompted me with new ideas and concepts I had not thought of yet and thus positively broadened my story. Since the writing parts are for me and help me stay on track in my creative process, using AI is a tool, not something replacing something else.
One last thing before jumping into PAX: I have decided that I will need a different computer than what I originally planned. I have a Macbook Air M2 chip with 8GB RAM. Unfortunately, due to a bug that has yet to be resolved by Unity (I am assuming a bug based on a thread I found), my Unity is leaking memory. I have to restart the application for it to run smoothly continuously. Honestly, I knew working on such a low RAM could have been an issue, and Mac is questionable for development unless intentionally doing Apple Arcade or iOS game. As such, I have decided to invest in a Windows PC, which will be interesting as I have only ever used Windows in college due to Access being a key component of my studies (yes, I am dating myself a bit here :P). I will keep you posted on the final choice in the next blog.
Alright, it's PAX time! My partner and I went together on a single-day pass on the weekend. He felt the crowds were a bit much; I, on the other hand, being small, just dived and navigated around people. There were a lot of people, though. I think some of the best parts of the day were going around to the indie booths and talking to the game makers. I got to meet a couple of artists and a couple of teams that were made up of just one or two people. I got a confidence boost from attending because not only did I see small teams making it, but I also had a few people look at my art; of course, they had feedback, but they also said I was on the right track and honestly, this was great to know. I also got to have a dance party with a woman who makes her own full-fledged animal suits (they are amazing!), and it was a lot of fun. If you are starting and there is a conference like PAX near you, I would recommend attending. I found it provided inspiration and confidence to get me going.
Alright, that’s it for now. Talk to you all soon!