Journal Entry 2

Date: 23.02.2023

Activity:

- Downloaded, updated and installed the new learning kit.

- Did the homework.

- Built the game.

- Wrote the journal.

Notes:

Despite my strong discontent with being forced to use Unity's tools to "learn" about video game development, I wanted to try and actually put in an effort into making a nice level which used most (if not all) of the assets that are in Unity's kit. To my misfortune, I was soft-locked out of my initial scene design due to the Tile Palette having to work nearly (sometimes over) 3 minutes for each tiny block of earth that I put on the level.

(Looking at this screenshot as I'm writing this journal, I realized that my Unity's version is different from whatever is written on the instructions. In any case, I managed to make the game, so meh...)

In my previous dev blog entry I mentioned my surprise as to how bug-free the learning kit was. Well, perhaps I spoke too soon and possibly jinxed the whole thing, because this time there is a stark contrast to my prior experience. I guess this is why people say Unreal is better than Unity. Because Unity spent years making these half-baked tutorials instead of adding (or improve existing) features that actually benefit those who use their product.

Schools in some countries force children to read books in various ways, and end up making them hate reading books as a result. Personally, I would say Unity succeeded in making me start hating video game development with their god awful "learning tools". At least I'm not being forced to use them -- oh, wait...

Other notes:

- Making a push-able box to kill an enemy was painful. Because the damaging part of the box is disconnected from the physical part of the box, and there isn't an automatic way of having it done.

Stretching out the bounding box was also annoying, because it kept overlapping with the physical bounding box, and also the axes of translation. Unity stopped rendering most of the gizmos.

- Something is wrong with Spikes' material, so I used Rubble material instead and it worked.

- Things worked out ok after these.

Invested hours:

- 30 minutes on downloading, updating, and setting things up.

- 15 minutes on pre-writing the journal due to my frustration with Unity.

- 2.5 hours (maybe 3) on actually working on the level.

- 5 minutes on writing the final version of this journal.

Outcome: V I D E O   G A M E

Build (uploaded to the itch.io page as a .zip file)

EDIT: Wrote the "Activity" part (apparently I forgot).