Changing The Gaming Major At Penn College

     Scary stuff is on the horizon as far as school goes for me. It looks like I'll be climbing a mountain very soon. The heart of it is: My school is missing aspects of game development that are extremely important. If you remember my drama with the deans that went nowhere last summer, you'll know that I was basically told I picked the wrong school. The Gaming & Simulation degree is IT programming focused, and does that really well.

     What it doesn't do is live up to the name that lured in so many students. We see the word game and the pictures of shooters and students holding Xbox controllers then assume this is the place where you can go to learn how to make video games. We pick Penn College because we can't afford to go to California or Full Sail. It's like saying only the wealthy deserve a chance to make video games. We see this degree as a flicker of hope that we can get that dream job at company X or start our own studios. The school does not currently have a program that achieves that, so some members of the PCT GameDevs have agreed to help me design one.

Unicorn Training Enemies: Cruncher & Cyclops

     This time I'm finishing up the last of Unicorn Training's enemies. I made the last two recently but didn't post about them yet! Cyclops and Cruncher are the final two enemies to script and  both were easier than I anticipated. All the enemies became simpler once I got rid of the roaming script and stuck with horizontal / vertical switch movement.

     Cyclops walk around with their bad attitudes shooting out laser balls every 3 seconds. They always switch from horizontal to vertical (or reverse) after firing. Each time they fire they aim at clover based on their horizontal status and choose to shoot left/right or up/down. Cruncher is the last enemy I did and it behaves much like the Cyclops but spits splashes of water instead of firing lasers.

     It's nice to have this part of the game out of the way. Just 9 bosses to go and I start the sprint toward the finish! If this is the hardest stuff I have to code I'll be done in no time.

Status Report #57 (Fish Feaster's Retirement, Finished Enemy Scripts, & Unicorn Quest Brainstorm)

     This week was hectic! School is going nuts with the workload as we approach midterms and PCT GameDevs is really on the school's radar now. In-between all the madness I've been trying to get as much Unicorn Training work done as I can. I also managed to fix the problems I've been having with Unity Web Player builds of my games so people can play my stuff online. Hopefully things can calm down next week so I can get more game development done. But right now there's stuff to do!

     My school's Comic-Con started at 8:30 this morning so I'm very late with posting duty today! Expect a write-up like last year's sometime in the coming week. In the meantime, you can enjoy a status report!

Unicorn Training Enemies: Sentry, SurgeOrb, Troll, Ogre

     Sentry is the common dungeon dweller. It's the only enemy that appears when you step on a booby trap and serves as the default bad guy in Swirllock's obstacle courses. It has two orbiting diamonds that take turns shooting at you and will also fire if you manage to hit it in the face. The easy part is, they don't have the ability to move, so they can be dodged easily.

     SurgeOrb is basically an aggressive Blockwork. When its electric shield goes down it shoots out wattballs like crazy before going back into hiding. You're going to need some healing cupcakes to deal with these guys. At least they don't move. They don't attack while guarding either, so that's your chance to set up a turret in their faces.

     Trolls and Ogres are cool because they just walk around boasting their testosterone levels. They're based off of a gag character from My Little Pony and just walk back n' forth shouting every few steps. Ogres are green, smelly, and slightly slower than trolls. They shoot fast fireballs that put Burstie's to shame. Trolls are the easy little brother with no bonuses aside from a tiny bit of speed. Both are tanks with twice the health of normal enemies, but are total pushovers once you level up your strongest moves.