DEV Community: Anu Altankhuyag

Switching gears to Unreal Engine

Anu Altankhuyag — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 17:01:19 +0000

The first game I made was a "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" Twine game that had the player choose options to advance the story and every once in a while play a mini-game or clue puzzle to progress. When making this game, I absolutely fell in love with the idea of making more games. I ended up learning Python as a foundation for learning programming language and made a basic terminal game as my final project for my course.

Then it came time to decide what game engine I wanted to learn. After considering between the two big names in the industry, Unity and Unreal Engine. I decided to go with Unity for a few reasons. A few of the games I have really enjoyed were made using Unity and also Unity was better equipped to use for 2D games whereas Unreal Engine was more known for 3D games. At that point in my game dev journey, I wasn't confident to be making 3D games and wanted to make pixel games like Stardew Valley.

I have made a few games as projects with Unity. Ultimately, I had to take a break from my game dev journey as work became overwhelming and I got accepted into graduate school.

Then about two months ago, the whole drama with Unity happened. For anyone who doesn't know, here is a video that I watched that summarises everything pretty well.

Now, I believe that Unity's future is uncertain due to the company losing a lot of game developers' trust and respect. I decided yesterday that I would be moving on from Unity and learning a new game engine instead. I thought about learning Godot because there are some whispers that it might be the next big thing. But ultimately, I decided to go with Unreal Engine. I have become more comfortable with creating 3D objects and environments using Blender and thus, feel more confident in the idea of creating games with it.

It is still heartbreaking to accept that the time I put into learning Unity is put on a shelf. I know it will maybe help me in the future, but it is kind of like saying goodbye to an old relationship and starting a new one. It is bittersweet.

However, the roadmap to learning Unreal Engine feels clouded. I am not sure how this is going to go. But I will be keeping a log on here starting next week after my finals are over. I refuse to let my dream of making games die.

What are your thoughts on the future of Unity? And what are your opinions on other game engines? Will there be a rise in Unreal Engine programmers? Or do you also believe Godot is going to make it big?

Day 2-3 of 100 Days of Code

Anu Altankhuyag — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 03:55:49 +0000

So I forgot to post yesterday my work, so this post will be for both yesterday and today. 👀

What have I done:

After day 1, I said that I would not distract myself with aesthetics and focus on game mechanics and story building. Well--

That is not what I ended up doing. I very much got distracted with art.

Because in my head, I told myself I needed some objects to play with so that I could get my player to be able to pick up stuff. After I finished making the little objects, I told myself to get my player moving.

In my game, I wanted it to be where the main character moves automatically across the screen. That took some time trying to figure it out on my own until I found a helpful discussion board that helped me with the main movement. I got them going forward.

After I got them going forward, I needed to see if I could get the main character to recognize if there is an object in her path and if she could identify what it is. At first, that is what I did, where I would have her say in the console if she knew what it was, but then I decided to then move on to making a working inventory system.

Now, Zoe, the main character, knows how to pick up objects and put it into her inventory.

After finishing that part, I decided I needed a more crisp idea of what I wanted my game's story to be since I ended up changing the story more to fit my own capabilities and skills.

I used Milanote to lay out my characters and I am starting to make a web of what the game's story will lead to. The player will be able to make choices and those choices will lead to different scenarios and depending on each scenario, it will affect Zoe's trust in the player and whether or not Zoe will listen to the player's choices. And what each choice the player makes will affect future levels and dialogue. This requires a lot of pre-planning that I need to lay out and focus on.

What I learned:

I learned that I get distracted very easily and let myself spiral into work that is pointless at the current stage of my game. I feel like I should have joined a team instead so that I could have shared the workload, but I don't feel like I am experienced enough to be able to join a team. I feel like I am already so behind compared to the other members of the game jam, that if I had joined a team, I would have only hindered their work.

Just to get my character moving was difficult enough, and I had spend hours on that alone, but I would like to say that it is mostly because I wanted to make this game harder than it needed to be due to the story I want to tell with it. If I was making a regular rpg where the player moves the character, then it would have been simpler for me to code since I knew how to program that already. But I, of course, want to make things harder for myself for whatever reason.

What I plan on doing next:

I am going to finish laying out the story and once that is finished, I want to set up the intro scene and the first decision that the player has to make.

This will require me to set up the UI I want the game to have and also the dialogue system as well.

I do know that in order for me to get this done, it will require artwork again, so I am pretty certain I will end up focusing a lot on that. I need to make the large monster. I also need to animate it so that it looks like the monster is attacking Zoe. And I will also have to illustrate the UI, such as Zoe's money, inventory panel and the dialogue screens. I also want to add fog to my game.

I want to add achievements the player can get at the end of the game, but I think I will set that for a later feature if I have enough time.

I need to remind myself to focus on the story and core features of the game. Wish me luck!

Day 1 of 100 Days of Code

Anu Altankhuyag — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 05:08:22 +0000

It has been a while since my goals for my 100days of code. I lowkey forgot that I said I would keep this devlog type thing. To catch you guys up with my progress up to today:

- I finished coding my 108 Card Game.

I finished the final updates to my card game and it is finally finished. It is a basic terminal game, but I am proud to say that it is my first baby that I built. It was very difficult to do because the game I was trying to code, was never coded before, so there weren't many tutorials I could follow. I could only catch tidbits of people coding Blackjack or UNO to understand how certain functions could be programmed or what kind of classes I could use. But I am glad to say that I am ready to move on to my next step in my journey to becoming a full fledged game developer.

How it started:

How it is now:

It is available to play on replit - https://replit.com/@lunargravity/CardGame108?v=1

From that experience I learned a lot about the importance of clear coding and also commenting. I think my comments to myself saved my life for a lot of my coding as I would take days breaks in between my coding sessions due to school. In the beginning, I was overcomplicating my code and that is where a lot of my original bugs were coming up. Now, I feel as though I have a better grasp on my coding skills. At least in Python.

- I bought a course for learning how to work with Unity.

I really want to start using C# and make games outside of the terminal and Python. So I bought a Unity course from gamedev.tv and have learned a lot.

Two things I am really proud of is these two basic prefabs I made when I started the course.

We made a basic obstacle course with simple shapes and then we went to make a rocket game where we learned a lot more about making games such as inputing audio files, making levels, particle systems and such. It was a lot of fun and while I was learning all these things, I was also watching YouTube videos to learn more about other things I wanted to do.

Now I have joined a game jam to challenge myself. I don't think I know enough to be even top 50, but I think it gives me a nice chance to push myself and participate in a fun environment and meet new people. The game jam started yesterday, but then my period started haha, so I have only sketched out and wrote out a lot of my plans and ideas. Today is the day I truly begin coding the game and working on the mechanics and level design.

What have I done:

I first got started with my game idea and tried to think about what I wanted to start with. To have a prototype working, I wanted to at least have my character and an environment for her to run around in. This led me to question whether I should try to buy assets or try my hand at making illustrations. Due to not being able to find any assets that matched the vibe I was going for, I decided to try my hand at it.

This was a lot of work because I have never tried pixel art before, but after some sketches on some paper and then several different drafts on Photoshop and then eventually moving to Aseprite, I got my character.

Trying to do her animations was tough. I had to go through several different drafts of spritesheets to get the animation looking how I wanted it. But here is the end result.

Then I spent some hours working on the background. (After giving up on trying to learn tilesets and a top down game).

Then came the hardest part - the actual coding lmao.
I wanted to do a parallax background, but didn't know where to start. So, I decided to start with YouTube. There were many videos on how to do it, but the most helpful ones for me where these:

This is the one that helped me with making my background and understanding the concept of parallax:
The Perfect Pixel Art Parallax Tutorial [and Unity script!]
This is the one that helped me set up the script for my background and help me understand why we put certain things where in the coding
PARALLAX & INFINITE BACKGROUND IN UNITY 🎮 | Create A Endless Background In Unity | Unity Tutorial

What I learned:

I kind of don't like how much time I "wasted" on the aesthetic of the game. As much as I enjoy the art I was able to create, I feel like the look of the game should come second after making the game work. But I am such an unorganized person that once I get distracted by something or an idea, I just run with it.

But I definitely want to make sure that I focus more on the mechanics and functionality of the game going forward.

What I plan on doing next:

Now I am going to move on to programming Zoe to move through the world and having objects for her to interact with. I really want her to have an inventory system to help her get through different levels. Then afterwards, I want to get started on creating an UI with having the player make choices for her. However, that part will have to come after I finish writing the script and storyboard for the game.

This was day 2 of my game jam. If anyone has any advice or feedback for me, please let me know in the comments <3

My Goals with 100DaysofCode

Anu Altankhuyag — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 21:08:02 +0000

Hello! My name is Anu and I am a programming beginner. I started about a little over half a year ago and decided to begin my coding journey with Python. After learning for half a year while a full-time student, I was able to earn my certification from Codecademy. With my newfound knowledge, I decided to build my first terminal game, "108", and am still currently making changes and updates to it. However, with school starting up again, I feel as though I don't have enough of the time I did beforehand as it is my last semester and I am taking a lot of writing intensive courses.

Thus, I decided I wanted to attempt to do #100DaysofCode to challenge myself and motivate myself to keep moving forward.

In this post I will be setting goals for myself to focus on and what I hope to gain from this challenge. Then I will be posting for the next 100 days on this platform what I have accomplished or what I have learned.

My goals summary:

"108"
GitHub & terminal
C# & Unity
Portfolio website
Network

My goals in detail:

Finish coding my "108" game with the new rules and functionalities as well as finish fixing some of the bugs. I had already "finished" the game a month ago, but my cousin reached out to me to let me know I had some of the rules wrong. When I tried to apply the new rules to my game, I noticed that my code wasn't efficient and began to have bugs with the new code. So, I restarted from scratch a few weeks ago to make the coding easier to follow and flow.
I want to learn more about how to use GitHub and utilizing its features like projects and workflow. As well as learn more about utilizing the terminal and how that works. I have the basics, but I want to learn more than just push and pull.
I want to begin my first 2d game in Unity and begin working on level design, storyboarding and coding the first few levels to add to my portfolio. The game I have in mind is a large project that I want to work on long-term, so I am going to downscale it to a few levels so that I have something on my portfolio once I begin applying to graduate school. In attempting to make this game, I will need to learn how to code C# and I want to also learn to make my own art for my game as well. I have no decided what software I want to use to make it, but I am thinking of using Blender.
Learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript to make my portfolio website from scratch. I have a specific idea for my website that I want to implement and it requires some work that can't be done through resources like WordPress or Squarespace, unfortunately. Through planning and coding this, I also want to learn how to use Figma. Learning these skills are less for my career goals and more for my own personal interest. I have done a small bit of web development in the past and it isn't something I plan or wish to do as a full-time career.
I am very much a beginner to this industry. I am not even studying computer science or programming at my university. I am actually studying creative writing, so I unfortunately do not know a lot of the jargon or how to push myself out there to network. So another goal of mine is to find the confidence in myself to reach out to other beginners and even more senior programmers and make new friends and contacts in the industry.

My desired outcome:
That I am proud of the work I have done over the course of 100 days.

I do think my goals are ambitious, especially with all the other projects I have going on with my creative writing degree. However, I think as long as I am satisfied with the work I have accomplished, I think I will be happy. An inch is still progress. I know I won't have everything on my goals done by the end of 100 days, but I will certainly try!

How I will be formatting each day post:

What I have done (literally speaking)
What I am most proud of
What I learned
What I want to focus on for tomorrow

For other things I would love to also do:

Document my journey of creating my 2d game via devvlogs on YouTube
Work on an updated resume
Polish my LinkedIn page
Learn more information on the industry

For those who are going on their own 100 day journey or have completed this challenge in the past, any helpful tips and tricks or advice in the comments would be most appreciated!.

108 Card Game

Anu Altankhuyag — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 05:58:39 +0000

This is my first finished python project. I started learning Python from Codecademy's Computer Science career path and for my portfolio final project, I was tasked to create a basic terminal game.

I decided to recreate an old Mongolian game that I used to play with my cousins while we spent our days in the countryside. The rules are pretty simple once you get used to it due to the similarities to UNO, a more familiar game to most.

I would love feedback and comments about the game. Even if you don't really have feedback, but want to let me know if you enjoyed the game or not, I would love to know if people played it.

It is called 108 (or зуун найм) and I hope you enjoy!

Thanks to a helpful commenter, I found out I can share my code through replit to allow you guys to try playing it.

https://replit.com/@lunargravity/CardGame108?v=1
If you wanted to check out the github anyways, here is the other link.