Losing a Dimension

Over the past few weeks I've been working on my essay, I've finished my first document going over the key differences of 2D and 3D game design, and I've been making progress on my first actual 3D to 2D document, the one about Resident Evil. Here I'll post some screenshots of my '2D vs 3D - Key Differences' document. I still need to add my references and some pictures, but the content is finished for now. Here we go: I'm happy with how this turned out as it let me expand upon my 4 week project and it also functions as an intro to my main project and a companion to my essay. It allowed me to think more about different approaches to adapting 3D games into 2D, as well as analysing some games and explaining some of my opinions and personal rules for what I would consider 2D. Getting some images in will make some of my points more understandable though so I'll do that at some point, maybe after getting some feedback. Now to keep working on my essay and my Resi...

 So, over the past week I've been working on various things. The first thing I did after finishing my 4 week project was finish off the first version of my learning agreement. Here are some screenshots of it: I'm happy with it for a first version, but we'll have to see what my tutors think! In the meantime though, I thought I'd get started collecting some sources and quotes relevant to the area I'm looking into. I ended up doing fairly well in my search, here's the document so far: These sources are intended to inform the document in which I'll compare 2D and 3D games design, but I believe some of them will be useful for my main essay this semester, as the ones discussing immersion are particularly interesting. The document I create won't be very long, as it's mainly supplementary - something I can refer back to when working on my main project.  My main essay might be a good chance to look further into the topic of immersion in 2D games, a potential ...

Overall, I'm quite happy with how my 4 week project turned out. I'm actually surprised at the length of the document considering that I was ill for around half the given time - I was concerned at one point that I wouldn't be able to produce much work, so I'm happy with the amount I got done. In terms of the actual content of the project, I'm quite pleased with that as well. It was interesting to look into various 2D games to figure out an interesting area to look into further, and I think I hit at a good topic. I do think that I could've gone a little deeper in terms of looking at how 3D games design has influenced 2D, in particular with regards to level design and mechanics, but I think I might be able to do that for my semester 1 essay. My finished 4 week project was already twice as long as that needs to be anyway, so going much deeper would've potentially made it a little too big. Whilst about halfway through the project I started regretting not doing so...

 So, my 4 week project is finally done! It ended up being a document/essay in the end. I intended to look into some modern 2D games to see how they currently sit in the industry, try to find out if my preconceptions about how indie developers are more willing to take risks than triple A devs were true, and I also wanted to try to narrow down an area of interest for my main project. Here's a link to a PDF on my OneDrive, only accessible to UCLan: 4 week project I'll post a quick writeup shortly going over how I feel about the project that I ended up creating, I also might post the project as screenshots so it's viewable on here. See you in the next one!

Hi! It's been a little while since my previous post, and there are several reasons for that. Read on for a look into what's been happening over the first few weeks of the MA For my 4 week project, I decided to get to work on a fairly brief version of what I intended to do for my main project, conceptualising a 2D version of a popular 3D game, so I could also get my tutors opinions on that idea. I decided to go with the original Resident Evil, as I already had an idea of how to change it. I got to work in Powerpoint and started creating what would be a fairly short document discussing the original game, identifying its key features, and talking about how I believed the best way to make a 2D version would be to make a survival horror point-and-click puzzle game.  After getting some of my main points down the time came to show my tutors what I'd been getting on with. Jim seemed to like the idea but thought it'd be quite a lot of work, suggesting that for this shorter proje...

During E3 2021, Nintendo announced the first fully new 2D Metroid game since Metroid Fusion, which was released 19 years ago. The new game was called Metroid Dread, and it looked awesome, even to me, a casual fan of the series (at the time anyway, I've sinced played and enjoyed every 2D Metroid game). Big fans of the series were ecstatic, as it seemed like this was the chance the series needed to fully move into the ranks of Nintendo's other flagships such as Mario and Zelda, both of which have sold far better and enjoyed much more widespread success. But there was another reaction. A pessimistic reaction. Not aimed at the series or game itself really - but at the number of dimensions we'd have to explore this mysterious new world. Some people seemed genuinely upset - angry even - that this new game would be sold at the same price as other 3D games, games like Mario Odyssey, or Breath of the Wild. Their point seemed to be that 2D games simply aren't worth the same, or a...

Hi! I'm Adam, and welcome to my MA Games Design blog. I'm starting this MA course immediately after getting my BA in the same subject, from the same uni - UCLan. During my time on the BA course, all the way through to the end of third year, I chose not to specialise in a particular area. This is partially due to the fact that I was achieving similar grades in assignments of all kinds, but also because I found all aspects of games design to be interesting. I didn't do any sort of games or even computer related subjects in sixth form (though in retrospect I wish I had), so everything was exciting, as it was all learning about how the games I love were created. Now however, I know what I like. I'm honestly still super into game design in a holistic sense, but let's just say I'm glad I don't have to do any more 3D modelling if I don't want to. In my 3rd year I did 3D modelling and texturing for my honours project, and general games design for my games propos...