Introduction to Unity & Game Development Courses – the First Step towards a Hotshot Game

Developer

The game development industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world with no indications of slowing down in the future. This, undoubtedly, makes it one of the most promising careers to go for. However, developing an all-appealing game is not as easy as playing one. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, focus and of course, expertise. Perhaps you already know these. So, if you are an aspiring game developer, Introduction to Unity & Game Development Courses are the best options to bank upon.

Go for the right game engine

As far as game development is concerned, selecting a suitable game engine from so many available options is very important. The options range from simple and basic 2D game engines to feature-packed 3D options as well as free of cost to highly expensive powerhouses. And for obvious reasons, choosing the right one might be a bit hard for you. Confused, right? Don’t worry - there is a solution to all your confusions. It is the ‘Unity’, an amazing game development platform.

What is Unity?

Well, launched in the year 2004 by Unity Technologies, Unity is considered to be one of the best game engines so far. You would be surprised to learn that there are more than 1.3 million Unity developers (registered) and over 3 Lakhs active developers/month. According to a survey conducted an esteemed game magazine in the year 2012, it has been found that near about 53.1% of the mobile developers make use of this platform for making games.

What makes Unity so popular among game developers?

You might be wondering – what is so special about this game engine. Here are the answers – 

• Pricing – There are a number of game development platforms available in the market that come with super-expensive price tags and absurd payment plans. However, Unity is quite straightforward in this respect. It comes in two variants – Free and Pro. The former is obviously free of cost and no, it’s not at all a gimped version. In fact, Free Unity is a feature-packed version and allows you to develop games commercially without any compromise. In case, you want more professional features, such as Path-finding, LOD (Level of Details) support, etc, you can go for Unity Pro for a price of 1,500 dollars only.
• Easy to use – Everything in the Unity platform is so visual and thus, easy to use. This platform mainly focuses on simplifying the main aspect of game development, that’s seamless workflow. It provides you with an instant insight on what you are developing. 
• The freedom to script – Unlike most of the other game engines, object behaviors are not restricted to engine-integral modules when it comes to Unity. Rather, the latter allows you to write powerful object behaviors using JavaScript, Boo, and C#. 

So, there are three of the main features of Unity. However, that’s not all. This gaming platform offers much more. Although Unity is mainly used for developing 3D games, you can also make 2D games using this platform. It also allows you to develop multi-player games. One of the best things about Unity is – it is a multi-platform (Android, iOS, Windows, Xbox, etc…) game engine.

Learning Unity

In order to master this game engine, the need for Introduction to Unity & Game Development Courses cannot be overlooked. That’s because - without professional training, you won’t be able to go far in this career. So, get yourself enrolled in an esteemed institution and begin your journey as a hotshot game developer.

Believable AI Programming Guide in your Game Design

Artificial intelligence or AI can be referred to as scripted algorithms that have preset data embedded into them so that your system/ program behaves in a certain way under controlled environment. AI creates a realistic and fun experience in game designs. It’s an evolutionary process. If you remember, earlier games, computer opponents  had less options/actions, but today, there can be as many in numbers. From firing to dodging to hiding, all the reactions/responses they produce on your gaming screen can be attributed to this software program only. Whether your game will be a success or failure depends a lot on the quality of its AI today. You can go to a design college in Singapore to get some amazing tricks. But before this you can explore some expert advices here.

Work on AI from day1
Experts recommend that developers should not treat AI as the last thing when working on game designs. In fact, it has to be on your mind from the very first day to ensure ease of functionalities.

Implement AI along with Game design
AI and game design has to be implemented together and not in isolation for best results. To ensure this, both design and AI roles have to be performed in tune with each other. Whatever constraints and possibilities exist have to be thought through in conjunction with each other.

Focus first on Behavior 
Explore your game design to see what AI behaviors you want to include in the game and what not. On the basis of this, your game design team can decide what behavior they desire their AI to exhibit to the player. Once it is sorted out, you can divide the AI in different layers of strategy, methods and control, where strategy consists of long-term goals, methods refer to decision making at every point and control concerns the stop-motion control over the AI character.

Keep a Separate Testing Ground for the AI
According to programming gurus, designers need to keep their elements simple and generic because even after extensive planning you may feel the need for adding some more of them. And since AI not always works the desired way, they recommend you to create a distinct testing ground away from the core game for this so that you have full control over the functionality of the AI.

Be Careful with your Selection of Methods
Since how good or bad, your game will be received by your users, depends largely on the quality of the AI used in it. You have to take special care while using a particular method. For a clear idea, you can take resort to some software called “Decision Trees”, “Behavior Trees” or “Stack-based State Machines”. These tools enable you to tweak and alter elements easily for a better AI experience.

These advices along with training in a reputed design college in Singapore can prove fruitful for your career as a game designer.

How to Create the Perfect Logo for a Tech Company?

A logo is an epic symbol of your company; it represents the face and soul of any brand. Think of Apple’s logo for instance. What do you see when you close your eyes and imagine about this company? We bet that your mind conjured up the image of its logo and that too in less than a second.  A logo is that important. When it comes to designing a logo for a tech company, you have to make sure your purpose is clearly conveyed through it. For this, you have to observe every minute detail while designing, right from color, font, aesthetics, use of negative space and much more. A reputed graphic design institute Singapore can give you the right expertise to achieve this. 

Nevertheless, here are a few pointers that you can follow as a logo designer.

Be Simple and Clear

Your logo has to be bang on the message your brand wants to convey. You have to ensure its design is such that people see your company as a high tech one and that it is a trendsetter. To communicate this through your logo, you first have to understand the nature of your brand. What impression do your brand needs to create on its target audience? Start with a list of keywords, like – strong, sporty, elegant, feminine, fun, etc. The moment you identify a few critical keywords from the list you can begin your designing work with an amount of clarity.

Be Eternal

Your logo needs to have a timeless property to it. For this, you have to think beyond current trends and focus on elements that will reflect your brand identity many years down the line. It will save you the cost that goes into bringing in a replacement design. A wise approach in this direction is keeping the foundation elements of your logo intact so that when your startup undergoes any major shift you just have to do minor tweaks in the design.

Fonts and Colors

Fonts and colors are the two critical elements of logo design. Let’s first look at fonts. A font can easily communicate the idea your brand stands for. It can impart elegance, strength and everything. So make sure the font you select for your company is descriptive of its image. Don’t ignore its contribution to the overall design.

As far as color is concerned, we all know every color has its own personality and thus, can create a deep impression on the mind of the person seeing it. Try to use this attribute of the colors to your advantage while designing a logo. However, for this, you have to understand the impact that a particular color is potential of creating. If you study colors and their impact, you will realize that color blue generates a soothing and healing feeling, orange conveys energy, etc.

You can achieve success in making a perfect logo for a tech startup by paying attention to these details. To get more insights and knowledge on logo designing, you can even do a course in a renowned graphic design institute in Singapore.

Jumpstarting Your Creative Career

Is your creative career in a rut? It might be time to shake things up a bit.

Let’s be honest, taking the path to become a creative can be a road filled with disappointment. Like myself, the majority of the creatives who are just starting out find that the reality of it is not as rosy as one may have pictured. Those who choose the creative path are often lured by the idea of not being deskbound, and are avoiding the humdrum of a 9 to 5 job. Perhaps the idea of chasing after a passion, of doing what they liked for a living also helped to draw them into their field of choice. For those who have already taken the leap, like myself, can tell you that the reality of being a creative is bleak for those who come unprepared.

For starters, the competition out on the freelance market is simply astounding. The market is filled with cutthroats who are willing to cannibalise on their brethren’s work, and undercut prices to the point where it devalues the work of their fellow creatives. For example, a case study recently done on graphic design, took the service portal known as Fiver into question. Fiver is a website where logo designers can promote their services online, for cheap, some promising design services for as low as five dollars. If that did not sound dubious enough, the case study revealed that many of these designers were blatantly stealing or taking designs and altering them slightly from existing logo designs (what creatives refer to as cannibalising). The case study touched on two main topics; how the general public viewed design work to be of little worth, and how websites and some unscrupulous “designers” themselves are compounding the matter by undercutting the market.

Creatives can also tell you that there is little to no freedom as a creative working in a firm. Forget 9 to 5, creatives are often expected to slave away long hours without overtime compensation in most cities, and are grossly underpaid for their time and effort. These creatives, who often have crippling student loan debts to pay off, often lose heart in their first two years within the industry, and often cite feeling undervalued as the reason for leaving and jumping to a different industry. Career progression and job satisfaction is also a large issue; most creatives find that there is no difference between what they do, and the humdrum of a 9 to 5 desk job. Firms often do not take input from the creatives, often directing the project based on their own or client needs. The creative thus finds himself nudged out of the creative process, and leading the life of a disgruntled worker. In fact, designers and artists who work in firms have often described it as working in a “factory line”, where they are just given a task and a deadline to complete it by, with no questions asked. Financially, a job in the creative line is nothing to hoot about either – designers can expect a starting annual salary of as low as 20,000 USD in some developed nations!

With both freelancing, and full-time employment facing such issues, the creative industry is facing an ever shrinking pool of talent – with larger numbers leaving the industry every year. But all hope is not lost yet.

My advice for aspiring creatives, is to start out by working in a firm. This will allow an iron rice bowl for at least a year or so, while easing you into the long hours of being a creative. Don’t get too comfortable though, because the idea is to essentially meet potential future clients during your time there and removing that cap on your earning power.

When you’ve made the leap into being a freelance, remember not to underprice your services! Creatives who are just starting out fear that due to the lack of their experience, clients may not feel justified to shell out a decent sum for their work. However, this is no excuse for offering a measly sum of money in return for your skill and time. You’ve spent years learning your craft, and your work will take time to do, so charge in accordance to the amount of hours you will be spending on your work. Remember, if you charge obscenely low prices for your services, you are not just devaluing yourself, but hurting the image of all creatives in the field.

Lastly, remember that as a designer, learning never stops. The advancement of technology demands that we keep ourselves constantly updated with the digital tools that are out on the market, and picking up a new skill doesn’t hurt your chances of making it in the industry either. For example, considering how most industries are moving away from print media, graphic designers may want to consider looking at motion media courses, in order to be able to integrate their design principles into dynamic media platforms, such as the web, film and television.

Game designers can also take a leaf out of their book. Game development with Unity 3D, the revolutionary engine that takes programming languages out of the equation, allows designers and artists to easily pick up the scripted language in order to effect changes without the help of a programmer – shortening the development pipeline to more than a quarter in the case of most games.

With that, I hope to wish my fellow creatives the best in their future endeavours and to not buckle under the initial harshness. Speaking from experience, with a  little bit of luck, your hard work will pay off, granted you make smart choices along the way. Here’s to a fulfilling career as a creative. Cheers!