Deep vents is a multilaterally competitive game where the objective is to bankrupt the other players of their archaea. The players periodically launch attacks on each other while also attending to the growth of their own ecosystem economies. This leads to a slow and highly strategic player experience that rewards patience and long-term investment. The underlying structure of the game is the hex tiles and their unique traits and interactions. Hexes have the ability to enhance each other, generate resources (archaea, shell points) and launch attacks upon enemy players. The way that the player chooses which intended effect they want from each hex in each turn is the choice between aggressive hex triggering and more passive hex growing. A downside of the multilateral competition aspect of the game is that the meta-strategy of multiple players teaming up on a single player does not really have a counter and is basically a death sentence for the player on the receiving end. In conclusion, although I personally greatly disliked the game, Deep Vents made use of a relatively unique combination of game mechanics that create a unique player experience.
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The flow state is "being in the zone" when you are in the flow state your full focus is completely locked into the game, and time flies by. Reaching this state when playing games not only improves immersion and experience, but also objective performance. the game I choose, Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga, is fun for me mainly through the wide variety of locations level designs and characters that flesh out the game's world, or "discovery". The designers of the game did not optimally design the game for flow, with each episode not guaranteed to be an increased challenge compared to its predecessor. Despite this, the sprinkling in of challenging levels along with a steady stream of fresh mental challenges helps form a fun, if not extremely difficult gameplay loop that is easy to get lost in. On my chart, I included many of the game's most memorable levels in chronological order. For example, to this day, I still distinctly remember playing the Darth Vader level for hours on end trying to beat its difficult lava platforming. The final run where I finally beat it and got well-earned satisfaction was definitely one of my first memories of the flow state. Recently, I completed the last item on this chart, the speed run, which is a way of artificially increasing the challenge of a given game to continue progression and flow. In conclusion, flow is an essential part of gaming, and Lego Star Wars is an essential part of me as a gamer.
For the first task of the game design 2021 school year, we were asked to create a trading card that would serve as an "all about me" assignment. I decided from the onset to make my card as ridiculous as possible. I stretched the photo I used and used a cheesy fire background. as the topping on top, I added emojis next to my trading card's "attacks". This was actually the first time that I found the emoji font in illustrator, a feature I will undoubtedly utilize in the future. building on my fire template, I adopted a warmer color scheme, focusing on yellows and reds. I wrote my fun facts/attacks which complimented my emojis with low effort humor. to top it off, I gave them a stupidly wide variety of damage output that wouldn't make sense at all with the character's health of 6hp. Inspired by Pokémon, I added a bunch of random Max lvl/limited edition stickers to clutter up the design. Finally, I went into photoshop and using 3 separate overlays I found online added texture and grunge to the card. This really gave it the authentic feel of "accidentally went through the laundry machine". In conclusion, I was able to put a lot of new skills to the test for this assignment and I found it very enjoyable.
Illustrator was one of the first Adobe applications that we learned how to use in class. So it seems only fitting that I revisit it for the first assignment of the new year. In the making of my "coronavirus rose" picture, I revisited using shape builder, which was one of the first assignments we did in illustrator. The picture itself uses these shapes I built to form interlocking patterns representing a rose. The reason I made this was because patterns have always been very interesting to me and I thought a good challenge for myself would be to make an interlocking pattern out of seemingly random shapes, and I think I succeeded. After I finished, my mom asked me if I was trying to draw the coronavirus. I hadn't thought so, but I'll go with it.
In conclusion this experience with Illustrator has been a good one. Summary . I revisited Illustrator . I used it to make an art piece What do you do when you run out of ideas for stuff to make, you use an already clichéd one! this was precisely my train of thought when making this. that is not to say it didn't have challenges. half-way through making this I realized that in order to make the program I was using recognizable I would have to copy and recreate over 100 desktop app and adobe tool icons. that is why i ended up making a mixed media art piece requiring me to use both Illustrator and Photoshop simultaneously which you can see by look at the apps open on my dock. When it came to the actual copying and pasting of the consecutively smaller images the task became pretty boring and increasingly difficult because of the lack of control on tiny objects. I eventually just caved and let my little sister do the last 2.
First and foremost I must mention that this blog post is completely subjective and that Photoshop and Illustrator both have different strengths and weaknesses. Besides that here is why Photoshop out classes Illustrator. The advantages of photoshop are many and varied, including the ability to insert outside images into the program, and has a variety of platform unique tools like filter and healing brushes. Unlike Illustrator Photoshop is able to make photo realistic images, because illustrator is restricted to a very limited set of gradients. A specific thing that I noticed hindering me while I was using Illustrator was the complete lack of support for pixel art related designs. While I was trying to recreate Minecraft Steve in Illustrator I noticed that pixel art in Illustrator was near impossible for two reasons. The first reason stems from the fact that Illustrator uses vector graphics and not pixel graphics. What this means is that if you wanted make an 8 by 8 pixel square you would have to take the measurement of the square art board, divide by 8, set that as the dimensions of your square. After that you would have to align each of the 64 individual squares just to realize that reason 2 has come into play. Reason 2 is that because of the tiny bit of overlap from the auto alignment of the squares the sizes don't add up and you are stuck with a grid slightly too small. The one argument that Illustrator has going for it is that the vector graphics are scalable, meaning that no matter what size you make your picture pixels will not be visible. This in practice is not very useful, because when you are making art in Photoshop you will often know what size your picture will be used as, and you can use the software accordingly. In conclusion Photoshop is the more versatile tool, because pixel graphics are far superior to their vector counterparts.
Summary I talk about the strengths of Photoshop I talk about the traumatic experience I had in Illustrator I talk about the one advantage of Illustrator I refute my previous claim I state my closing statement |
AuthorI am an eleventh grader who goes to DSA. My main interests are design and music. Archives
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