The first semester of my diploma this year had a heavy focus on games. This was fine with me, but it wasn’t so fine with other students in the class. The lesson learnt here is that if you’re going to make games with other people, then at least make them with people who actually like games. And I mean all types of games. Not just Call of Duty.

I’m told that student games often remain unfinished. I’d like to break that pattern, but not just yet.

Our first game was The Comeback that I mentioned earlier in the year. At present, it’s still incomplete, but it’s a game I actually would like to finish eventually. I had some positive feedback to the rough version of it that I showed to some people at an IGDA meet I attended this year. I can’t anymore use the joke that it’ll be released before Duke Nukem Forever is out, so I’ll say instead that it will be done before Half Life 3 is out. I hope.

My plan is to meet up next month with the programmer I met at the IGDA meet and redo the game with him in the game engine Unity. I’ll have more to say about it and show when that happens, but I’m not ready to write off this student game yet. It needs a lot of work but it’s still doable.

The next and final game that was made in the second semester of the diploma is an untitled game about a whale being hunted by Japanese whaling boats. Here’s the swim cycle animation I made for the main character:

The game was extremely rough though. It was rushed to completion in the seven weeks that we had and there was little of any play testing and refinement that should have happened. Also, the concept has already been done more successfully by games such as Whale Trail and Sea Stars so I’m content to let this be one of those student games that is never completed, and go on instead to work on other projects.

I’m off to Melbourne tomorrow for a holiday for a week and then when I return it’s time to get organized, contact the programmer to work on The Comeback, be productive, and do some self-study for the remaining time I have until I start at AIE in February.