Before the day starts, I already knew it was going to be a challenging one, therefore I have been preparing mentally over last night. To ease my stress, I gave everyone the Christmas cards I wrote for everyone as well as well as the presents for the tutors. It was delightful to hear everyone's feedback and responses, thus a "thank you" too.
At the start of the day, "Zoetic Zoe" told us the last part of the written content we need for A2, at least. It is a report which must consist the purpose of the game (the aim and goal), the modularity (different assets and related game work segregated into individual modules), data dictionary (variables and data types to help keep a clean structure and have good readability), and systematic approach (explained logical ideas within the design specification, such as pseudocode and a document for assets). The paragraph just now was hard to understand even for myself, for simplicity purposes just view the lists as separate sub-headings for what I must include in my report. This leads to my design specification where I need to create a table declaring the data types, variables, and constants...
I decided to leave the above task to almost last as it requires me to design my game. I have been finding this particular part stressful because the deadlines are completely different. I must first make the game in order to explain the reasoning of my choice. Although planning may be beneficial in the long run, it may also be inaccurate as new influences can be a factor. However, I do find this fun and a challenge to once again push my work load since it has been a while!
I then spent an hour or so not necessarily re-creating my character, but redesigning the sprite to have different animations. At the end of this process, I was proud of my achievement but this meant that the coding would be tough. Indeed, afterwards I invested the majority of my time making the game work whilst having the animations work in the background. Just imagine all of the other assets I must implement and code for everything to be compatible! This is hectic, but fun. If I push myself, even if it means to sacrifice this will be worth it.
As I was programming, I left the run suddenly and spent a good 30 minutes at the Learner's Forum meeting with the "Amazing Adam", "Phenomial Pete", Callum B from Level 2 and two other students from Level 3 extended (sorry for my poor memory) - we all introduced ourselves (irony) and we spoke the definition/purpose of this. I did my preparation and followed the agenda, therefore I was confident throughout the meeting. We discussed a lot of subjects, ranging from how things are at develop, what other peers want to ideas and planning for the end of the academic year. Mine and Callum B's idea was to have a BBQ and putting dual monitors together to create a LAN party. I have already thought of the drawbacks and efforts required therefore I brought up another idea which is trips! Trips are only available if people are willing to go. The whole meeting was a brainstorm, and will be chased down to its specific finest details. Furthermore, I was also appointed to be the chairman for a term (as I volunteered to be the first without hesitation) - if the managers would like know the progress and situation I will be the representative face of my class, I will also hear from other classes to see what could be done. (I've seen people being a chairman in Animes, so me being one is another goal complete!).
So at the last part of the day, I worked on my programming again and subsequently managed to break the code. As a result, I decided to leave everything and take everything home to continue. I have decided to create all of my assets then code then, this will be easier and sorting the structure will also be in chronological order.
Overall, although I only accomplished a little I felt like I progressed a lot as mastering GameMaker is a big thing to undetake. I am proud and I am looking forward to working hard everyday and night.
