Week Four - Mighty Vision

     This week, I started work on my Midterm project for this class, and after working on it for some time, I read “Mighty Vision: How to do a Game Jam” by Michael Brough as part of our DevLog assignment. I feel it is important to highlight the fact that I read this piece after beginning working on my project, as this allowed me to reflect on the work I had been doing this week in the context of Brough’s process.
I think the most important step was to get working. Brough highlights that one of the first things you should after coming up with a rough idea is to begin implementing it roughly in code. Alexander King also stressed this when assigning the midterm project, and so while I did spend some time trying to focus on describing goals and mechanics instead of actually beginning implementation, I had begun coding earlier than I think I would in any other project, and Brough’s process reminded me that that was a good thing, and I should continue to code instead of focusing on the abstract too long.
     My midterm concept is to have the players build an information kiosk. This is what I did for my Eagle Scout project. In the Summer of 2017, I spent months meticulously planning and then executing the construction of a brand new information kiosk at the Fiesta Island public park in San Diego, CA. This is an experience that I spent a lot of time and energy on, and I feel was formative and important to my future in service and as a leader, so it was what came to me when thinking of an idea to translate as my autobiographical experience game.
     I am trying to stay within the scope of this project by condensing the experience of building this kiosk into one screen where you go through the steps chronologically from digging the holes to placing the wood to painting the kiosk and installing the glass.
     This week I succeeded in instantiating blocks at the mouse within certain bounds, and I tried my best to figure out how to paint to the texture mesh of objects using the mouse but was unfortunately not able to complete that mechanic. I foresee this being the most difficult aspect of the game mechanically wise, but I would also like to spend a significant amount of time polishing and juicing the experience so even though it is short, it feels very well done.