Month: January 2018

This week I will be talking about the “Forest”, basically its another survival game like “Rust” or “Arc”. Unlike Kalen’s blog, I will fully avoid the story and focus on the multiplayer aspects.

In my opinion, this game is lackluster. Compared to Kalen, I bought the game solely for multiplayer. If you bought it for a single player horror adventure, congratulations this game is for you. Unfortunately, the multiplayer is meh. If the host has a bad connection you will lag. If your host (the player that has all your progress) is not on, you’ll need to start a new game on your own. As you can see, the “Forest” is not built around multiplayer. I think this might have been better if it was a drop-in drop-out system. However, it is not.

Instead of talking about lag and connection issue, what about the map. Unfortunately, compared to games like “Rust” or “Arc” the map is pitifully small. The good thing though, is that everything is handmade. All the items, location, etc are placed by the developer. This means no random generation of land and less chances of z-fighting. I am fine with this, however, a well-experienced player can collect all the best equipment in a matter of hours. For example, the katana is an amazing weapon which can be obtain easily with map knowledge. A game that has a similar system but fixes this is Skyrim. This game also has weapons that can be obtained with map knowledge. However, it punishes the player by lowering the weapon to the players level. This means if you get the weapon too early, it will become useless later on. The “Forest” doesn’t have a system like this, therefore the katana and other weapons will remain OP (overpowered).

Overall, the “Forest” in my opinion is a game best played by your self once. I would also talk about the graphics. However, I can’t compare the “Forest” graphics to a 60 dollar game like “Rust”. If you like games similar to this and have nothing better to do with your money, buy it. In the end, its a much cheaper “Rust” with a story and horror aspects thrown in.

Next week will be exam week. This week, I will talk about how I study for my exams. On the first couple of days, I looked at the textbooks. I knew this wasn’t the best way to study, but teachers still hadn’t handed out review test. This didn’t help because only science had a textbook. For the other subjects, I could only study from past work. Meanwhile, in school, I was still doing work in Science, Computer science, and French. The last period (Computer Technology because we finish the curriculum and have nothing to do), was free time. I ended up using that single period to study for all the subjects.

Soon, the teachers released the practice exams. Unfortunately, most people finished these pretty quickly. This again left me with almost no study material. Then Mommy reminded me of the stack of study notes Sammy and Tiffiny left me. After sorting out the sheets with mommy, I began studying. I ended up studying Science and French this was because there weren’t too many sheets on my electives. For the rest of the week, I studied in 1-hour intervals and took 30 min brakes. Each hour I would change subjects.

Overall, my studying had a rough start. However, by the end of the week, I had a solid study schedule. With this new, schedule I had a much easier time studying. This schedule helped me achieve an 83% on my Science practical exam. In the end, I think this schedule is helping my grades.

This week, I am going to talk about my final programming project. It is due next Friday but I have completed most of it. In this blog, I will talk about what I have done.

The original assignment told us to make a Zelda like game. However, usable sprite sheet was limited. We couldn’t use any 3d or side-scroller. Eventually, some students basically just decided to do a side-scroller. I was one of these students. I had two reasons for doing a side-scroller. One was the lack of sprites. The second was the similarities between Jacky’s projects and mines. Throughout the year Jacky and I have been helping each other a lot. In the end, our projects end up being pretty similar. This time, I did a side-scroller and Jacky did a Zelda game.

On my second day, most people were focused on sprites. I was busy trying to understand gravity. Although we received many lessons, gravity was not one of them. This means everyone who was doing a side-scroller needed to figure out gravity on their own. I ended up searching up tutorials on youtube and it worked. By the 5th day, I had the level design, enemy animation, projectiles, and obstacles figured out. Five days after winter break, I was essentially done.
However, our teacher moved the due date to next Friday. This was because we had exams and missed a work period during a snow day. My most recent addition to the game was background music. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can and much more. The website we submit our project to has a limit of 50,000 MB.

Overall, I had a lot of fun working on this project. I managed to incorporate almost everything I know. I even added some other stuff like music. Even after the project is due, I still want to expand it. In the end, I manage to make something that resembles a game by the end of the semester.

This year, my family and I went to Montreal. Every year we go to Montreal to meet with family. However, on this year, my grandparents didn’t go with us.

We had to wake up early in the morning. I mostly packed up the night before. That day, we drove to Montreal. The ride wasn’t too bad. It took around 6 hours to get to Montreal. When we got there, Kalen and I headed to the basement. After a few hours, our uncles arrived. We then played Mario Kart until dinner started. Midway through our session, Harrison arrived. Then we continued after dinner. The first day just getting to Montreal and playing games.

The next day, was the Christmas dinner. Again, Harrison, Kalen, and I where busy playing Mario Kart. Soon it was time for dinner. At dinner, there was potato, beef, chicken, stuffing, and a bunch of other food. I mainly ate potatoes with some meat. After we ate Kalen, Harrison, and I went back to the basement. However this time it was just us. the Uncles didn’t really join us until late into the night because of the party. That night, we played Mario Kart and Bomberman on the switch until 1-2 am in the morning.

On the final day, we again played a lot of games. Harrison again came over and we played a 48 round Mario Kart marathon. That was probably the most noteworthy thing we did that day. After dinner, we played this new game. I forgot the name but was a telltale story. The players basically had to find clues, and choose options that would affect the story. The telltale story was the last thing we did at Montreal. The next morning we packed up our bags and left Montreal.

In the end, I had a great time. I meet with family and I got top to play with the switch. My favorite thing to do there was probably playing with the switch. Overall, I had a great time in Montreal.