The Journey Day 9…. UNITY!!!
(or how I learned to stop worrying and love unity)
“UNITY!!”
I remember watching The Chappelle show episode about Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories. I laughed until tears rolled down my face and then I started again only to have it happen once more. Again! Again! Like a child on a carnival ride, I laughed and re-watched. To me, this was one of the most insane, and genius comedic performances of Dave Chappelle’s career. Today’s battle with Unity could have left me with tears, albeit for different reasons, but instead it left me with a greater sense of how truly fun and powerful the Unity engine is.
Today’s plan was to demo the game. Not show it off actually but to demolish the scene of the game and really start to put my own creative stamp on it. The thing that really got to me the most was the background. The background provided is static. No motion. No change between scenes and constant the entire length of the game so I ripped out my background and started again. As the GameDevHQ internship is as much about learning Unity as it is C#, this seemed like a great way to spend some time becoming more familiar with Unity as an object and less as a social construct.
I started by finding an empty starfield. This actually took much more doing than I could have imagined. But then, given my pickiness borne from a life of artistry in many mediums, I realize that everything does in fact matter at a young age. So when if comes to putting together a clear, concise and cohesive gaming experience, I was unafraid of the time. I spent this time searching for scenes, changing it out and trying another until I found exactly the feel that I was looking for. Mind you, I kept an open mind to using alien terrain as well but in the end I found what I was looking for in terms of color, content, and feel.
I watched a documentary titled “Kaz” a while back that really inspired me in my life at the time. The documentary chronicles the life and gaming prowess of the legendary Kazunori “Kaz” Yamauchi, the creator of the Gran Tourismo series on Sony’s Playstation. In the movie, Kaz talks about how important it is to really put all of your concentration and energy into what will become your final product. Take care of everything. Make sure every little detail is fine tuned and concentrate that energy into a ball that will eventually become the thing can blow up and become something big.
Now, I’ve paraphrased that heavily but that’s what I took his words to mean and I began to really be extra careful to bring this ideology into everything that I did. It was already my nature but hearing his words only confirmed my belief. Everything matters. Just like in a kitchen every flip of the saute pan matters. Every crack of the egg and every beat from the whisk… they all matter. So today was really about applying that ideology to my game. Given the fact that I’ve been at this for ten days I would say that I got to where I wanted to be for today.
I found a pack of 3D planets and moons that looked really cool during my searches so I downloaded and imported those into my assets file. My next stop was to find some animated space stations or something to place into the back ground so that I could manipulate my own scene giving it depth, feel, and animations. I came across a set of asteroid bases and piece that I could put together to make the background come alive. Armed with some space scene building tools I began the demo.
With an eye towards flow, mood and depth of field I played with the Z-axis extensively. I tweaked my depth of field on my camera so that the field gained a feeling of being truly deep and I placed the sun, planets and bases creating a very cool looking place that I hoped would inspire the end user to envision the story being told. Just as I was really starting to have fun with Unity and getting a good feel for it… that’s when things took a turn towards tears.
It was at this point that I messed it up… and badly from my point. I couldn’t figure out how to fix it and didn’t know what button I had pressed but it sure seemed like the doomsday button. Nothing worked anymore, my animations didn’t show up. I fiddled with it, played with it some more and then decided that doing another scene would do me some good to reinforce my usage of Unity. So, I started again. This time building another really cool looking scene that was better than the first.
It was at this point that another mistake was made. I accidentally deleted a wrong file and there was no coming back from that mistake. So i re-downloaded my assets, took a walk and came back ready to do it again. My final one was the best of all. By this time I had become considerably more proficient in my manipulation of objects in scene. Aside from a couple of stupid mistakes the practice had really done me some good. In practice, mistakes happen. That’s why you practice. To attain mastery. In my practice today I found a step towards that.
By remembering that practice is good and nothing is every truly perfect on it’s first iteration I kept going and found an enjoyment and honed my skills. It’s not what happens to you in life that defines you, it’s how you choose to define yourself in those moments that does so. I think that had I not made these mistakes I would have accepted my first pass as the product. Given my entry level to this it behooves me to go through the processes many times looking for just what I’m after in pursuit of the vision.
I watched another documentary series featuring Ian Spalter of Instagram on Netflix recently as well. He talked about the process of iterating in high fidelity many times before arriving at what would be the finalized process. In the documentary, he talks about how he was charged with changing the look, feel and most importantly, the logo of what was becoming a global success story by this time. When asked how long it would take he gave the time frame of 3–4 months. This was almost an unheard of time period but he wanted to make sure he did it right.
They iterated thousands of different ideas, that asked their employees to quickly draw what they can remember of the logo and took all of these answers in search for commonality. He blacked out his office for months and hammered away at this one thing in search of perfection. The journey towards making a vision happen is as much a science as it is a feel. In this space he hoped to capitalize on both ideas. In the end he arrived at a logo that is now one of the most recognized in the world.
In the end this is what I came to. I like where the process landed me. Depth of field and background animations give the scene life now. I gave the scene spacing and depth through layering and flow. All in the hopes of inspiring the player to realize there’s more going on than just flying through space battling baddies. There’s something else afoot here.
Today’s lesson. Perseverance will get you there. That’s why it’s called perseverance. Hard work, attention to detail and putting a care for what you want your product to be will dictate how you get there. Although this is my first project I know it will be the first of many more to come. This isn’t about just slamming code and getting a new something to do and feel good about. This is about the art as much as the science. It’s as much about being good and being great. It is about not giving up crushed but rising and proceeding on happily and confidently. For that, I am thankful today was such a lesson in Unity and perseverance.
