Penelope Deoliveira Capstone

When coming up with an idea for a capstone, I wanted to do something that would interest me and also give back to the SLA community somehow. That is how my partner, Kenny Nguyen, and I came up with the idea to build a game about SLA. We both enjoy playing video games, and also wanted an engaging way to teach future generations of SLA students about the Core values. Our video game does just that, but it in a slightly more engaging way than how they were originally introduced to us.

The game starts with the freshmen Yael, whose curiosity leads them to venture onto the forbidden fourth floor. (It's a very known thing that the 4th floor is off limits so we wanted to use this to start the game's lore.) Next, Yael wakes up on an islands beach, and seeks help to get back to Mr.Reddy's class. After receiving help from the village leaders "Mr.Worst" and "Doctor Echo" they learn that they must collect the 5 core values, which are the heart of the island. Once they collect the values (and learn what each value is) they are teleported to fight and defeat the islands guardian, the “Benchmark”.

My partner and I collaborated throughout the capstone, and used our talents to make it better. I focused on creating the environments, animating the characters, and coded the mission and boss battles. Kenny focused on finding resources that we could use, recording the voices, and he coded the combat and dialogue in the game.

Bibliography:

"Getting Started with Unity | Unity Cookie." Unity Cookie Getting Started with Unity Comments. Unity Cookie. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.

This is a website featuring useful tutorials, videos on how to use Unity, and a user forum that allows feedback on how to use Unity. This will be a useful source because, if need be, we can simply look at the tutorials they have. It also has a forum which we can also look at if we face a problem that others may have experience as well. This will be a valuable tool for references; if we don’t know a string of code to add, then we can simply look on this site, in the tutorials section. It also features free (and some for a  price) premade models and games we can use for tests.

"Tutorials." - Blender.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This is one of the programs we’ll be using to create the characters; the site features downloads you can use in your blender projects, a FAQ area, and contact information in case we want to contact the team about copyright models. We plan to use pre-made models if designing our own is too difficult, so being able to review all of the legal stuff with using pre-made models is important. Also, this is the official website for Blender, so it has a wide variety of tutorials made from professionals. This site will be very useful also because it features a forums section, so we can look there of we have similar issues other users have had too.

"Blender Stack Exchange." Blender Stack Exchange. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This website’s best feature is the huge forum it has that allows blender users to post their experiences with blender. This is a good source for a project because of this; if we have a problem in blender we can’t figure out, we can simply look on the forum to see if someone has had a similar problem. We can also use some of the posts that outline how to make new, interesting things for our game. Since the site is free to use, it’s easy to navigate around the website and use the many tools that are available. It’s organized by the most popular posts, by if we have a problem, we can simply search for it on the websites database.

"Characters 3D Models - Free 3D Characters Download." Characters 3D Models - Free 3D Characters Download. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This is the main site we’ll be using for NPCS and character objects. It features thousands of prefabs and premade character models that we’ll need for our game. Spending extra time to model every single NPC in the game will take up more time then we have, so having a site where free prefabs are available is a great for our project and the process. This site will save us a lot of time. It allows it’s users to upload their work for other users to download their work. having a plethora of free NPCS models will make the extra month working on NPCs turn into extra work time. The website is easy to navigate, and free to use.

"2. Interface and Navigation - Blender Cookie." Blender Cookie 2 Interface and Navigation Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This is essentially the same as  cg cookie “Unity Cookie”, but for the program Blender. This features lots of information about using blender and character creation, which is part of a crucial first step for creating the game. The first things we need to do involve advanced CGI, and a site that has step by step instructions on charactering modeling is a valuable source we need. It also features mostly free downloads that we can add to the game. The website is partnered to “Unity Cookie” so the videos have a lot of tutorials where the user uses both Blender and Unity. That’s great for us because we’re using the same programs. Exporting files from Blender (with animations meshes etc.) seemed difficult at first, but this site has shown us a simple way to do it.

"33 Brilliant Blender Tutorials." 33 Brilliant Blender Tutorials. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This sites may purpose for our project is that it includes a lot of great tutorials. Watching tutorials for references while building our game is going to be very important, because we’re learning new skills while we’re building. This site has lots of sources besides itself that we can use, and has professional tutorials done by professionals in this business. The entire website features tutorials on other programs, and also includes a forum section for questions and comments. The website is neat, organized, and user-friendly. Most of the things on it is free, so it’ll be a great reference source for the Capstone.

"C Games and Graphics Code Examples." C Games and Graphics Code Examples. Happy Codings. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.

This website will be an important reference website for our game. Instead of spending hours on hours trying to write our own, brand new code, we can use already written code from this website. It features a plethora of different languages and lines of code that are free to use. This will be great for our project because this will allow us to make a more organized, better game. Instead of spending hours on a simple part of the project, we can add even better things to the game that we otherwise couldn’t. The website is organized and easy to navigate through.

"Learn to Code." Codecademy. Code Academy. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.      

This is the website me and my partner used during the summer. This is one if the first thing we used to help us learn programming, and it’s a fantastic site for that. The curriculum is easy and teaches well, it’s free to use, and has great courses. It has a wide variety of languages to learn, and the website itself is appealing. When I first started learning coding, I was a bit intimidated because of how hard it appeared. This website really did make learning code very easy. It helped me learn a few languages fast, and will aid us with the Capstone. If we have a certain language we want to use for code, but don’t know it, we can simply use this website as a reference or use it’s free courses to learn the new language.

"Amplitude Studios Chose Unity." Unity. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <http://unity3d.com/>.

This is the site that contains that program Unity. Unity is the engine we will be using to build our game. The website will be our main platform for learning how to use Unity. It has useful tutorials, user experiences, and support for the company that produced Unity. It allows easy access to many of it’s files, and, includes a forum where users can post comments, concerns, or experiences. Unity itself will be a great option to use because it’s easy to use, free, and already includes many of the assets and prefabs we'll need to make the game.

• Rauschmayer, Axel. Speaking JavaScript. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, 2014. Print.

This is an online book me and my partner found that will be a valuable source. We’ve decided that the main language we’ll be using is Java Script, and we both aren’t experts in that language. This will help us brush up on this language, which is another important part of the next step of making the capstone process go smoother and faster. Jumping into a project without know the basic code needed to make it will only make the process harder, so it’d be wise to learn the language first then use it. We plan to do that, and this book will be a great aid that will make making the game a lot easier.