Some ridicule it for being 2D, but personally, Terraria is one of my favorite games. I think it's about time I did a review. Terraria is a 2D survival/adventure game. The main point of it is to fight monsters (especially bosses, which there are loads of), search for materials, find and make cool gear, and build up whatever sort of stronghold you want.
First of all, I think the progression of the game is very well done. A lot of materials and features are restricted until the player has achieved certain milestones (many of these are boss fights), especially with the inclusion of Hardmode, which comes after a major boss battle. Hardmode adds new materials, new bosses, new enemies, new gear, and the challenge of keeping two biomes from taking over your world: the Corruption or Crimson (you'll get one of them upon creating a new world), which is there from the beginning, and the Hallow, which is created after reaching Hardmode. Personally, I really like this approach, since the players always feel like they're moving forward. You have to get progressively better gear, and to do so often means fighting enemies that your current gear won't offer complete protection against, so there's still an element of challenge. Enemies get harder after Hardmode, which helps to avoid the unfortunate situation of being far more powerful than everything around you. The game won't get too easy, because it gets harder as the player advances. However, many of the easy enemies still exist, so you aren't robbed of the satisfaction of destroying them easily and remembering when you couldn't. The bosses are all unique and there are a lot of them, all of which give the player access to new items. There are also some different enemies (bosses included) depending on whether the player has a Crimson or Corruption biome, which gives the game replay value. The gear you find in chests is also fairly random, which also adds replay value. I really like that your player characters aren't tied to specific worlds, so you can create new worlds and explore what they generate without having to start entirely from the beginning. This is also useful for accessing materials that have been added in updates and might not be found in your usual world. My one gameplay complaint is what happens once the player has gotten enough NPCs, which will show up at random if there is a room for them and if the player has fulfilled certain requirements (having a certain amount of gold, having explosives, et cetera). If the NPCs are concentrated in one area, enemies will attack that area much less often. As I progressed in the game, I started to miss the fun of fighting the mobs of zombies showing up outside by doors. I understand that there is a point to this, since it would be annoying to lose a lot of NPCs at once, and playing defend-the-castle can get boring when the enemies are no longer as much of a threat (and obnoxious when you're trying to build), but I do miss that aspect of the early stages of the game. I also really like the soundtrack. I've said before that I think sound is very important in a game. The tracks aren't too similar to one another and fit the situation they play in; this is especially true of the Dungeon track, which features marimbas reminiscent of the skeletons found in the Dungeon. It's one of my favorite songs from the game. There is also the feature of music boxes later in the game, which allows the player to record tracks from the game and play them in other locations. This is a feature I wish more games like this would have. Music can also serve as a good indicator of events or entering new areas if the visuals aren't immediately obvious. In terms of art style, it's not super high quality graphics; it's very pixelated. However, the design of the enemies and gear, as well as the level of player customization, has won me over. Of course, I do like the simple art style. Speaking of player customization, the game includes purely aesthetic gear that can be worn OVER the player's regular gear, as well as a variety of dyes (that don't permanently change the appearance of gear). This avoids the familiar problem of "look cool or have good stats" and is another feature I'd like to see in more games. What's possibly my favorite aspect of the game is how whimsical it is. Sure, there's no real NEED for a confetti gun, or a sword that fires cat-shaped rainbow projectiles, or a pirate invasion, or a Santa Claus NPC, or paint and wallpaper, or the ability to pile all your gold on the floor, but this is all in the game. There are numerous pop culture references and plenty of items that are just there for the fun of it. It sometimes seems to me like some features were added because one of the developers had a dream about it and then thought, "Hey, that would be a cool feature." The amount of work it would take to add so many things that aren't totally necessary seems almost unreasonable, but it adds to the adventure and discovery of the game, and overall it makes the experience way more fun, especially because it gives the player something to strive for in the later stages. I'm incredibly grateful as a player that the development team was willing to put in so much effort for things like this. There are plenty more features I could go into, but then I'd be here all night. Overall, this is one of my favorite games out of everything, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys adventure/survival games, especially ones that involve a lot of fighting. I've got almost nothing negative to say.
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I just started working on my first video game (a tutorial), which is exciting! The game itself is not exciting. The player controls a UFO and moves around the board picking up what appear to be gold chunks, which is made less exciting by the fact that they're arranged in a diamond around the board. That's the whole game. When I first started the tutorial, I was rather underwhelmed by what I was going to produce, but then I remembered that even something so simple would require a lot of code, and this is my first video game. It's not meant to be exciting, it's meant to teach me how to build a game. On a seemingly unrelated topic, I finished an art piece today. It made me realize something. One my first art projects that truly made me proud was a picture I made that was 99 percent based on Photoshop knowledge and 1 percent based on my ability to draw. At the time of writing, my portfolio still contains this: At the time I made it, I thought it was the coolest art I'd ever created. At the time I made it, that was probably true. I was so proud of it that I made it my phone's lock screen and showed it almost aggressively to anyone who was willing to look. Not long after, I had some free time and decided to make another. I actually finished it, but then a bunch of the edits didn't save (I have now learned to always make backup copies). Flash forward a few months to today, when I needed art for my blog and decided to finish the half-done piece. The result was this: I'm proud of this one, too. Then I looked at my old cloud monster, and my first thought was, "Wow, that's actually pretty terrible." There's no doubt in my mind that I've improved. And I do like the cartoonish style of my first drawing, but I think this one is just better. I've realized that, much like the simple game tutorial I'm working on in class, early work doesn't look great in hindsight because compared to what you're about to produce at the present, it often isn't that great. If it looks just as good as it did at the time you made it, you haven't improved. A lot of early work, whether it's art, code, or otherwise, isn't about whether or not it's good. It's about figuring things out and learning how to actually produce the work. Don't feel bad when you look at art (or any work) from your past, and it's not as good as you remembered. It's good for what you could do at the time, and that's really what matters. Of course, I realize my new drawing isn't perfect, but it's better. The limbs look more like limbs than last time, but they could look more like limbs. Someday I will master the art of making octopus limbs look realistic! They way I blended them into the body is a little awkward, but at least I blended them in (and I know what I did wrong). They could definitely use shading, which I considered doing but didn't have the time for, but the way I layered them at least gives some appearance of shadow. Those two blue things on the left are supposed to be comets, and they could look a little more like comets, but at least I figured out how to make them at all. Those were actually part of the original version of this piece before my edits got deleted, so I might be able to make better comets now. Of course, that galaxy in the bottom right corner doesn't look great on top of the nebula background, but this piece is really just an experiment of making space-related things, so it's not going anywhere. Going back to my point about making better comets, I might edit this piece again. I know how to improve it, and in the future I'll probably know how to improve it further. Of course, I'm still proud of my first cloud monster artwork, because that was the pioneer. It might not be as good as this new one, but it was a step in the right direction. Besides, I still think it's pretty cool. So, to summarize:
Having finally finished with the basics of C#, I’m about to move on to actually coding games. Admittedly, that is a little terrifying. So, as usual, time to do some research. From these two articles, I’ve learned some useful tips for first-time game programmers. I’ve got no idea what exactly the future holds, so hopefully these will help me out. One of the tips I read (and have heard before) is to start small and not get discouraged. Better to have a small, finished game than a large, unfinished one. I also heard to get feedback. Once again, I’ve heard that before, but it’s an important step. Something very interesting I read was to focus on the content and be willing to redesign if needed. It’s easy to get attached to your vision, and this is definitely a trap I see myself having to avoid, but if it’s not working it’ll only lead to getting stuck. I also read not to get caught up in doing things from scratch when there are already tools to get it done. Reuse elements from within the game or from previous projects rather than create new ones. In the case of things like keyboard controls, always follow the rule of DRY, or Don’t Repeat Yourself. This ties back into what I said before: you might want to do everything your own way, but that won’t always work. Another thing I read is not to commit too much time to a project. This is another trap I see myself falling into, but sometimes you just have to move on. One other important thing: don’t think you know everything. Admit it when you’re stuck. Of course, it’s important to try and solve the problem on your own, even if that means doing some research online. So, to summarize:
Writing C# code has been going well, but there's a long way to go. Time for research as usual. I read this helpful article and learned a few interesting things. One of these was that you can actually put comments (using a //) on the end of lines, after the semicolon of course. You can check if two objects are equal without knowing if they're null by using an Object.Equals method. This is much shorter than some other ways of writing it. In a similar vein, Extension methods allow you to add new methods to existing types without having to modify or recompile. I'm still learning how to use methods, so I don't quite understand this yet, but I predict that I will soon. I also read this article. One very useful thing I learned is that you can use tuples to return multiple values from a method. Since I'm working with tutorials I probably won't be doing this yet, but it's good to know for later. I also learned that you can flag enums to access the enum values. Another thing I learned is that data types can be changed using a Convert class. Most of these tips seem to have a couple of things in common. They're about keeping things organized and avoiding the creation of long and unwieldy code. Efficiency is key. So, to summarize:
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AuthorI'm moving on to my 4th (and final) year as a Game Art & Design student at Durham School of the Arts. I'd like to call myself an artist, but I'm a programmer at heart. Archives
February 2020
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