My first official MOOC course and I am happy to experience it with #AdobeGenPro. I chose to get involved with a course in Game Design with a focus on not only creating assets for a game, but also how to create a class or curriculum in games. I have to say I am pleasantly surprised with the interface provided in the LMS housed in Adobe Education Exchange. It’s easy to follow step by step lessons followed up with reflection and critique within the class forums. I can also see a list of students and read their profiles and choose to follow them or share experiences with them. Each user can make a simple profile with some basic information and linkage to their social media and personal websites. The coolest thing about the profile is that it displays different badges you can earn by taking courses and participating in the network. You can check out my profile here as an example. If you are an educator or student, especially one who uses Adobe, you have to check the Adobe Education Exchange out!

We are three weeks into the Game Design course and I already feel so rewarded. I’ve learned a lot and used Unity to make a basic terrain level that can be experienced as a simple character in the actual game environment. What’s great about Unity is that it is robust, yet simple to average users to grasp and instantly build assets. We were tasked to create an island level, however I did not want to create the typical tropical or desert island. Instead, I wanted to make a glacier level. I found the challenge of creating interesting ice and snow rewarding so I would not be tempted to use the standard textures and assets in Unity. The trick is to create several tiling textures and blend them together with various painted techniques in Unity to make something interesting. It took a little while, but I think I pulled something off. What do you think? You can check out a brief video of my level with some physics assets and see my screenshots to let me know. If you are interested in this course, since it’s a free MOOC, you may still be able to join and catch up with us. You can see the course page here.

Screenshot in Unity editor

Screenshot in Unity editor with interface