Meeting the challenges of designing a game

Antonia Hoeta, gamer and novice game designer, shares her thoughts about game design platforms. Some of the young designers share the prototypes they created for the D-Bug Game Design Challenge, as part of The Science of Medicines project.

Questions for discussion

• Have you used digital platforms to design games?

• Are there programmes that you would recommend?

• Who might be able to help you with game design?

• How could you integrate game design with student learning outcomes?

Transcript

Antonia Hoeta

The initial ideas for this D-Bug Challenge were to try and make a digital game about viruses. We didn’t realise how much mahi would go into it. Producing an actual game does take a long time, and trying different templates is more realistic if you’re going to go from the ground up.

So in trying to find software for the kids to use, I thought I’m perfect because I’m a novice. I have no idea what I’m doing, so if I can figure it out, these kids can probably figure it, because they’re more techie than I am.

So I tried, I don’t know, how many software programs until I found three that I thought were really good.

What are you building?

Omar

My game, and this is Unity, and it lets you code the game.

Antonia Hoeta

Unity was very high level – it’s taught at the university here.

GameMaker Studio 2 was my second one, which is an awesome program, but it doesn’t have character building inside of it – pretty much you’re just block coding to make the game, so you don’t actually need to know specific languages.

With coding, there’s different types of languages that you need to use for different software programs. JavaScript is a really common one. C++ is another common one. C Sharp. So those are physically typing in different codes into a software program. Block coding is having premade codes already and building them on top of one another.

Scratch is a really simplified version of block coding, so the kids can see what the command is and just put it together like LEGO blocks.

And then Blender, which allows you to create your own mesh, which is what characters are made out of. You can manipulate the environment – create the environment in whatever way you want to. You can animate. So that’s why we went with Blender in the end.

I found the software quite scary in the beginning just because I felt very novice. But one of the kids here, he’s got a YouTube channel, and I watched some of his videos in order to learn some of the programmes.

Omar

I don’t model in object mode because it’s hard to move around because the computer is working hard to make these shadows and reflective stuff.

Antonia Hoeta

Mmmm.

Omar

So it’s better in this mode.

Antonia Hoeta

And that mode is edit mode?

Omar

Yeah.

Antonia Hoeta

Cool, that’s so quick.

Yeah, don’t be afraid to pick up some tips from a 9-year-old – because they’re so smart.

If you didn’t want to go digital, you can definitely just do the clay building and build the dioramas, and the kids will make a story just like that. Like we had one boy who wanted me to download an app on the iPad so he could make a stop-motion animation and it was brilliant, so you don’t have to go into the coding side.

Anya

This is a basic level layout. So the green is the outer boundary walls and the red are the inner boundary walls. These are models and then we take 3D scans of them that we’ll put into Blender that will allow us to model them further, give them colour, give them texture – that sort of thing.

So, the Mafia Boss here is white and black. In the game, it’s green with very fine fibrous hairs all over it, and he looks even more threatening.

Dr Karyn Maclennan

I was absolutely inspired by how creatively and how quickly the children embraced the technology behind the gaming – the 3D imaging of their clay models of the viruses and then transferring those to Blender where they could create environments and animate their objects.

Isla

Doing the texture was quite easy. It was cool making the virus look more realistic.

Antonia Hoeta

If you’re going to teach something that’s going to be both digital and physical, ask game makers because they will give you helpful tips. They’re all so willing to pass on that knowledge – it’s something that they’re passionate about. And just don’t be afraid. Like go in, you’ll find yourself seeing it all unfold and watching them create their little creatures, I think is – you’re gonna – you’re gonna find it’s gonna be so much fun.

Acknowledgements Antonia Hoeta, Tūhura Otago Museum Omar Anya Dr Karyn Maclennan, Te Roopū Rakahau Hauora Māori o Kāi Tahu | Ngāi Tahu Māori Health Research Unit, University of Otago Isla GameMaker Studio 2, YoYo Games Limited Scratch game created by Stephen Ross for the Making digital space debris clean-up games activity; coding and all interface design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Blender software, The Free and Open Source 3D Creation Suite Moose virus walking, stop-motion animation, designed and created by Flynn Lucas Unity, Unity Technologies