Kyoto – Page 7 – RITs International Game Industry Course for 2023

“Fashionably” Late

Yesterday was the final day of our Game Jam with the KCG students! While we weren’t sure if we were going to get out a remotely finished product (and I think most other teams felt the same way), I’m actually really proud of what we ended up making and all of the other teams made some really awesome products too!! The whole experience was a really interesting look into how game development works and how important communication is, and it’s the first real game that I’ve worked on that wasn’t for a school project made by myself.

The game that my team chose to make was called Café Lingua! The idea was that the main character has just moved to a new country (either Japan or the U.S. based on your native language / country) and opens a cafe, but they can’t understand any of the customers that come in to order. In order to play the game, customers would order in Japanese if you’re an English speaker or vice versa, and you’d have to use trial and error to figure out what phrases match to what products you serve them in order to form bonds with your customers. It was a concept that I came up with that I really want to refine and eventually make my own project based on in the future.

Once the Game Jam was over, we said goodbye to our new friends and prepared for the rest of our day. Unfortunately, the otter cafe had slipped through the cracks and we wouldn’t be able to go, but a large group of us were very excited to head to Osaka to visit the stores there, as this would be our last chance. We got to visit the Pokemon Center there (number 5!), and one of only two Nintendo stores in Japan, the other of which we’ll visit this week in Tokyo.

While I spent a bit more money than I expected to, I’m really happy with all the stuff I got! I got a couple of stuffed animals that I’d never seen in America, some cute sticker packs, and the Splatoon 3 art book which was my personal favorite item. We also got food at this Italian place in the shopping center, which had some really good pizza. Another interesting cultural difference between America and Japan is that waiters won’t automatically come to the table and ask what you want to order— they always wait for you to call them over when you’re ready. It honestly makes more sense, but it makes some weird situations where the waiter is awkwardly side eyeing us from across the restaurant waiting for us to decide what we want.

After we had returned from Osaka, a majority of our group gathered in Pavel and Fabian’s room to take a celebratory “shot” (it was more of a third of a shot) of sake for finishing the Game Jam and having fun on our last night in Kyoto. We played Jackbox games (short assorted game packs made by the Jackbox company), specifically Quiplash and Tee K.O.. Some of the combinations we came up with were absolutely hilarious, and some of them were funny just because they didn’t make any sense. I really love the group of people that I’m with for this trip, and it’s so fun to spend time with everyone outside of the super rigid planning that we’ve had for the last week.

Today we are headed back to Tokyo for the rest of our trip. I think that this half will be a lot less structured, which I’m really excited about because it means we won’t feel like we are zooming from place to place constantly. Hopefully my blog post for today won’t be a whole day late like yesterday’s!

5/28 – The Great Game Jam Finale

Our final day of Game Jam was upon us! We got up bright and early again and rushed on over to KCG, in order to have as much time as possible to finish our games.

Coming into the final day, I still had about 8 animations to do and only 4 hours to do them, not to mention I still needed to push my changes to our GitHub. Luckily, Megan helped me learn the basics of GitHub and I was able to push my changes, but that’s when I realized the importance of having the same version as my peers; I was using UE 5.1, as I thought I would only be testing locally and then just sending my files off to someone else to import. However, I didn’t know how useful the ability to push your own changes was before committing to 5.1, and so when I pushed my 5.1 assets, they couldn’t be read on the 5.0.3 machines, and so they became phantom files and created saving issues. Megan was able to revert the changes though, and I then was able to import and save/push the assets correctly using her laptop, but man, I really wished I had just done the work earlier of trying to download and switch my Unreal version, then I could’ve used my own machine and not had to pilot hers and make it more complicated.

By this time it was now almost 10:30am, and I still had 8 animations to do, so I was starting to freak out a bit. But I steeled myself, and just got straight to work. I powered through the rest of the animations and knocked them all out in about 2 more hours. Miraculously, I finished all the animations we needed for the game. They were a little scuffed and not super polished, but I thought they were good enough to get by and support the game. At this time, though, we were 30 mins out from presenting our games, and we still hadn’t built yet. I was a little nervous that none of my assets would get implemented despite me sending them in, but at this point I just wanted the game to function and so didn’t push the issue; if they were in, great, but if not, I still had the files for later and could try putting them in myself.

There were two guest judges that came by to view our games when it was time to present, one from an independent game studio in Japan, and another from Epic Games’ Community Outreach, which was really cool! They came around and gave us feedback on our games, but when it came time to present our game, disaster started to rear its ugly head. Our game wouldn’t connect with controllers, so we couldn’t play it to demonstrate. Shoma and Reo went right to work trying to figure out why, but the presentations had to move on, so we ended up waiting to go until the very end. By that time, Shoma and Reo had gotten the controllers to work, and so Shoma and Megan were able to play Co-Op and show off our game! It actually came out pretty nice, despite not having any of my models or animations in it yet. The core gameplay seemed to be there in some sort of base form, which was really cool to see. So overall, not too shabby for a 14 hour game jam in my opinion!

Reo was able to put in my work for Character A after the jam, so here’s a little gameplay sample.

Once the jam was over and we all said our goodbyes, we were free to do what we wished for the rest of our last day in Kyoto. So a group of us took the subway with Toshi-sensee and the judge from Epic Games back to Kyoto Station, which was pretty cool! I got to talk with the judge for a while, in both English and a little bit of Japanese, which was awesome. Once we got back to our hotel, we offloaded our technology and then headed back out to catch a Shinkansen to Osaka!

We visited the Nintendo store, Pokémon Center, Capcom outlet, and One Piece store, all in the same floor in a building right above Umeda Station. Osaka is a very interesting city, and after visiting it twice, I noticed just how similar to NYC it was. The buildings are all tall, the shops are more reminiscent of ones found in NYC and sometimes a bit more luxury, but I feel as though the area was not the same level of clean as other parts of Japan I had been to so far, I did find a few more things on the ground. I think it may just be the part of Osaka I visited however, and overall it was still a great place to shop and look around!

Once we finished shopping, I grabbed some takoyaki from a nearby small shop in the basement floor of the building, which was delicious! It was probably one of my favorite foodie moments here so far. The takoyaki was hot, and the broth inside was so super and flavorful, and then followed by the octopus, it combined to create a really unique and fun sweet but tangy flavor!

Takoyaki (fried octopus balls) and a fruit sandwich!

Finally, we all returned to the hotel and packed up our things. We had a lot of fun playing some Jackbox games together too, before heading off to bed late in prep for our trip back to Tokyo the next morning. And so, our Kyoto chapter comes to end, just as our next chapter begins!

A Free Day in Osaka! (5/26)

We had a free day today, and despite yesterday’s exhaustion, I thought it would be cool to venture into Osaka with one of my group friends, Fabian. Our mission? To savor the famous fluffy cheesecake from Rikuro’s, a treat exclusive to Osaka. We had seen this thing all over the internet before, and were so excited to see how it tasted!

Before we got there though, we spent some time strolling through the streets of Dotonbori. It felt like Times Square with its crazy billboards and massive, over-the-top displays. A bunch of high class stores, crazy displays, neon signs, it was crazy! My favorite sights included a golden phoenix statue elegantly displayed in a store window, an intriguing watch sign, a mammoth fist sculpture with a golden “2025”, and an ultra-modern building with a peanut-shaped indentation which (quite randomly) housed a rock climbing wall! Just when you thought you’ve seen it all, man.

Our wanderings took us to the bustling Ebisubashi-suji shopping district. Despite it being so early, it was a whirlwind of activity, from colossal stores filled with an assortment of items – claw machines, appliances, and more food than you could ever eat – to the tranquil temple nestled amidst the urban hustle and bustle.

When we finally reached Rikuro’s, we found ourselves just late enough to miss out on the opening of the sit down cafe (despite being 15 minutes early, the queue was just too long. Waiting another hour wasn’t really an option, so we opted to grab a hot cheesecake and an apple pie for the walk back. My verdict? Absolute heaven! The cheesecake was more eggy than I had anticipated, but delicious all the same.

I decided to round out our trip with a visit to the Osaka Pokemon Center, perched on the 13th floor of a towering building near Osaka Station. Still no luck with finding a Gengar plushie, but I did snag some nifty Snorlax chopsticks. Fabian decided to stay behind, since the Monster Hunter store was on the same floor.

After a bit of confusion finding my way back to the correct train station (Osaka’s transit system is a whole beast unto itself), I boarded the Shinkansen back to Kyoto. It was a wonderful day of exploring, but I was exhausted by the time we got back. Before boarding, I wanted to try something I always saw: Station Bento! Was really good, would definitely have it again! Finally getting to experience that was unforgettable.

But the day wasn’t over yet. Following a brief rest at the hotel, we joined the others and headed over to KCG’s brand-new building. The fresh scent of construction materials still hung in the air, and the classrooms were seriously impressive. You could write on the walls, there were cameras to make online classes more interactive, and the whole vibe was just very modern and efficient.

We even got a peek at the staff area and the roof, which offered an amazing panoramic view of Kyoto. Seeing the mountains in the distance, framed by the skyline, was simply awesome!

Finally, after another busy day, it was time to crash. I headed back to my hotel room and fell asleep immediately yet again.

Unreal Engine – 1, Vincent Le – 0

Our first day of the Game Jam started at 9:30 AM, so, naturally, I woke up at 6 AM. After a tired awakening, I showered, got breakfast, and hopped on the bus towards KCG. As soon as we got there, we meet with our groups. My group, Group 5, had some decisions to make concerning our game, such was gameplay and art style, but it was quickly resolved.

The Game Jam started with our team making a Google Drive and my long initialization of Unreal Engine 5. I was worried about this Game Jam because I had never used UE5 before (nor any of its previous versions) and I was hesitant about the use of Google Drive as version control. But, I decided to throw myself in the deep end for the sake of ease for the KCG students on my team who were used to this workflow.

I was put in charge of movement and character controls, but I also wanted to work on local multiplayer, which would be my biggest mistake. After getting some quick controller inputs working with the characters, I started working on the local multiplayer aspect. Unreal Engine 5 is pretty new, and there are a lack of videos and articles that could help me figure things out, and it’s documentation isn’t as helpful as, say, Unity’s. So, many of the tutorials and articles I saw were for Unreal Engine 4, which had many different systems that I had to try to adapt to. I was not a fan of the module-based coding and found myself very confused on how to actually interact with the “code.” So, I tired hard-coding it, but the C++ aspect of UE5 is to compliment it’s blueprint system, not replace it.

After several hours of trial and error and no success anywhere near, I decided to put it off and work on other things like collision and hitboxes. Luckily, one of my teammates, Kento, took off where I left, though he struggled just as much as I did. As I was putting together collisions, I, once again, ran into many issues, and time was running out. Eventually, I was defeated by Unreal Engine 5, and, Kento eventually explained to me that we were doing local multiplayer correctly, but the version of UE5 that we were using had bugs in that specific area that blockaded it from good use.

The Game Jam ended and I went back to the hotel, beaten and exhausted. Though, determined to learn UE5 so I could win the next round. Whether that happens in the time before the second day is questionable, but not impossible.

My Wallet vs. UNIQLO (2023)

On Friday, we had a free day until 4 PM, as that’s when we would have our first introduction to the KCG students. Brody, Esther, Maddy, and I wanted to go to the Toei Studio Park, where there was a big Evangelion attraction. We asked others if they wanted to come, and Sten ended up straggling along.

We got the park and went straight to the attraction, which was a large statue that you could take pictures with, and even enter and go up towards the top. After a couple photos, we entered and explored the inside, which had cut-outs of many of the characters and a pilot-aptitude test in the form of a multiple-choice personality quiz.

Standing in the hand of the Evangelion attraction

Afterwards, we explored the park a little more, going to get some Evangelion-themed ramen, and going around the many stores. It was getting around 2pm and was a 50 minute journey back, so we left the park and hopped on the train. Once we got to the station, Brody, Esther, and I saw that the AEON Mall was right across the street. The thing about AEON Mall was that there was a very special store in there: a UNIQLO. Sten and Maddy went back to rest as we went into the mall with only the intention to look. How wrong our intentions were. After seeing how cheap the clothes were compared to their US prices, and the different and more diverse designs, we found ourselves on a shopping spree.

Our spree, however, was cut short by time, and it was starting to approach 4 PM. We rushed back and got ready for the bus ride to KCG. Our introduction started with a tour of their newly-built building, which had a minimalistic design to it that I really loved. It was not a very large building, but the facilities were luxurious, especially the teacher’s lounge and garden.

Part of the garden outside of the teacher’s lounge

After our quick tour, we met with the KCG students and shared some Japanese pizza with them. My teammates were really nice, and with the help of one of the translators, Quan, we were able to get along quite well.

We went back to the hotel and some of us got together for a small group hangout, but with the early morning and day-full game jam the next day, it didn’t have its full rager potential.

A Day in Hiroshima (5/25)

The day started bright and early as we rode the bullet train to Hiroshima. A trip that would be 5 hours by car is cut right through by an hour and a half on the train! I certainly appreciated the extra Z’s that I caught on that thing. This whole week has just been so tiring.

After disembarking, we were quite hungry, so our first stop was a small building with a few restaurants nestled in the Hiroshima Gate Park. I and a few others decided to go with Shimauma Burger. Their main burger boasting Awaji beef topped with a deep-fried ring of Awaji onions was calling my name (Well, calling around 6 of ours’ names. We were all curious!) It was such a hard burger to handle in terms of cleanliness, but in my opinion, the mess was totally worth it. And don’t get me started on their DIY soda system – you dispense a soda extract and then add the carbonated water yourself. Never had a fresher, fizzier soda before! I gotta say peach soda is one of my favorite flavors that I can’t seem to find anywhere else!

After calming down and readying ourselves, we took a walk around the A-bomb dome, where the horrors of history and impressive display of historic preservation left us in quiet contemplation. It’s needless to say that we all felt quite unsettled. (Oddly enough, we were the ones that had to shoot down the instructor’s idea of a group photo. Read the room, man!)

We also found certain monuments such as the Children’s Peace Monument and the Hiroshima Victims Memorial Cenotaph. They were beautifully constructed monuments, and the backstory behind them was even more heartbreaking.

Our next stop was the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Walking through the museum, seeing the photographs and remnants, and learning about the grim event, was a truly impactful experience. It’s hard to put into words the sadness you feel in your heart, but it’s an important part of understanding the history and the resilience of the city. I already didn’t support these bombings, but seeing the raw, unfiltered trauma that occurred that day just made me resentful of the times in high school history class where we had to debate that these were “necessary.”

Coming out of the museum, we all ended up wanting to discuss the experience and some way to beat the heat, so we went inside to a small counter selling shaved ice. It was on the more expensive side for the treat (still only around 5 dollars), bit it was absolutely worth it. No cheap syrups, but instead pure delicious strawberry goodness.

As we continued our exploration, we stumbled upon a group of Japanese students. (Well, more like they stumbled upon us!) They were so friendly and excited to chat with us, which really warmed my heart. For it to happen right outside the museum, I think it shows how far American-Japanese relations have come and the mutual interest in understanding each other’s cultures. Peace perseveres.

Roaming around the streets of Hiroshima, we found a vibrant plaza and an amazing colorful mural. The street art here was something I found really beautiful. It was amazing to see the city thriving and full of life.

We then made a slight detour to Hiroshima castle. It was quite the sight with hundreds of yellow lanterns lining the paths and around the torii. There was something so tranquil about the whole place, and the giant koi swimming in the pond added to the experience!

The evening was rounded off with an Okonomiyaki dinner. Nothing says Hiroshima like its famous layered pancake! Mine was filled with noodles, cabbage, pork, topped with a delicious sauce, while I was also able to try some with cheese and mochi. It was unexpectedly quite good!

After dinner, some of us broke off to visit the Pokemon Center Hiroshima. As a major Gengar fan, I was a bit bummed that they didn’t have any plushies of him (Second try and still nothing!? I thought this guy was supposed to be popular!) In the end, I wound up buying a bunch of other goodies to gift my friends back home, and some cute little socks and accessories for myself.

Our return journey to Kyoto was quite the adventure. We got a bit lost, thanks to public transit, and ended up sprinting 30 minutes back to Osaka station. My legs are still giving me grief, but it was a mad dash we all found hilarious in the heat of the moment.

At the station were a station bento place, and a whole mini 7-11! Something I found interesting was how the sign on the left was spelt almost entirely in kyūjitai, old forms of Japanese characters. There’s no old form of the second character, but everything else was changed. Gives it a more traditionalist feel!

広島駅弁当　→　廣島驛辨當

Finally, we were on the Shinkansen, heading back home to Kyoto. Though it was a long and tiring day (nothing but the journey the whole day), the memories we made and the experiences we had were totally worth it.

Cosplaying a Sound Engineer

Bento box for lunch during game jam 😀

Today was game jam day! We started by opening up Unreal and downloaded the repo our team made beforehand. The game our team decided to make was a 2.5D puzzle game in which two players must work together to solve puzzles. The characters and environment is 3D while the backgrounds are 2D. The narrative follows 2 space explorers from different galaxies that find themselves stranded on the same deserted planet. They must work together using the various strengths that they acquired from their different cultural backgrounds in order to find their way home.

For the jam I was the designated team manager and sound engineer/composer. Seeing as how I don’t know how to make sound effects nor music, creative commons was my best friend. I also made the Trello for our team to keep track of tasks necessary for completion. The main 11 hrs of the day for me were spent finding sound assets, editing then in Audacity, asking the team members if they liked them, then repeating. The japanese students on our team seemed to really like the background music I found for the game, and I was pretty happy with the sound effects I found for each character. My goal was to differentiate the players in sound, so the technical based character had more futuristic sounding effects compared to the spiritual character. It wasn’t my job to impliment the sounds into Unreal, but I did it anyway try and learn the program a little bit, but I undid my changes before pushing the repo.

During the jam we had to communicate via both google translate and DEEPL, which was a bit challenging but not as much of an issue as I had initially thought. One of our group members spoke pretty good english, which made a huge difference, but one of them was also remote since he hurt his leg. The challenge of working together to complete this game in such a short amount of time was the real highlight of the experience. It was a bit jank and unorganized, but thats part of the fun I think. We had bento boxes for lunch/dinner which were super yummy! After working diligently for 11 straight hours and reaching a point where we thought we could wrap up in the morning, it was time to head home for the night. We bussed the KCG students over to a train station and then headed back to our hotel, where all of us hung out in one of our hotel rooms and played Jackbox games on the switch, which was really fun. After hanging with everybody for a few hours I played some Zelda and went to bed. Overall a really fun and unique experience! Excited to finish up the game tomorrow and present it to our special guests :).

5/27 – The Game Jam

Today has been all Game Jam, all the time. We woke up at around 6:15am, got breakfast at around 7:30, and then headed on over to KCG at around 8:30. We touched down on campus at around 9:30, and then we were off to the races.

We immediately went to work on our games, and my team (Team 2) was hitting the ground running. Shoma, one of the KCG students, had put together a spreadsheet detailing out our game and providing more descriptions for our planned features, and so since we had had this since early this week, we already knew what we wanted to do and the rough idea of how we were going to get there. So we went straight to work, and from then on (for me at least) it was about 10 hours of straight modeling and rigging. I had to utilize a base from a previous character I had made to create our new character, Character A, and once that was done I then moved on to rigging both Character A and the character I had created before, Character B.

Character A is on the left, and Character B on the right.

Rigging took a long time, btu overall it was good experience, and I learned more about just how fast I can position joints and perform emergency weight painting. It took about 8 hours, but I finally completed Character A and rigging Character B, so now I was ready to start animating. During this time, Shoma and Reo, the other student from KCG, were hard at work programming and designing the levels for the game, and Shoma was also working with Brody on finalizing sound. Megan was working on UI Art, and was able to finish it fairly quickly even despite the fact that she was unfamiliar with Unreal Engine and its interface. Slowly but surely, it appeared that our game was taking shape.

Lunch and dinner during the jam, onigiri and a bento!

Communicating with the KCG students was interesting, as although we both spoke a little bit of each other’s languages, there was still a language barrier we had to naviagate around. I tried my best to speak in Japanese, but there were always one or two or a few phrases that I didn’t know how to construct, and so to get around it without losing too much time, I defaulted back to English. And although Shoma knew some English, there were still a good deal of words that didn’t quite click, and so the two of us had to take a few tries to simplify what we were trying to say or let DeepL translate for us. It was an interesting experience though, and one that I think helped me understand more the nuances of cross cultural communication.

We even came up with a name for our game, Kinniku Brain!

Once it hit 7:30pm, it was time to wrap and our main Game Jam day had come to a close. I of course continued to do some animating on the bus ride back, but once I got to the hotel I sort of just crashed from the tiredness. On to the last day of Game Jam!

A test of my running loop animation I did tonight!

Game Jam Day 01

05/27/2023

Forgot to add this to my last post, but LOOK AT THIS TINY FRAME IN ONE OF OUR ROOMS.

Perfection.

Anyway, today was the big day! Our team had somewhat communicated before meeting, and we had decided on a concept to expand & build upon today, which I was grateful for. While we didn’t communicate as much as I would have liked, at least we didn’t have to scramble for a concept.

My breakfast at Anteroom Kyoto was pretty light today. We headed out a bit late today but still got to campus on time with a few minutes to spare before the Game Jam officially started.

We had from 9:30am till about 8:00pm to work on our games. The entire time I was wracked with anxiety as to how I could contribute to my team. As a photo visual media major with a million hobbies, I could only call upon my self-taught skills in art & audio to contribute to our team. I was constantly trying to find little things I could do.

Cameron handled the heavy lifting for visuals, Chloe handled the UI icons & menu designs, while our Japanese team members (Takato-san & Kiri-san) handled just about everything else regarding the actual building of the game. I was designated project manager of visuals (and facilitated some conversations between our team members) & sketched out drafts of background music that we could use. A few hours before the end of our session, Chloe and I ended up taking on the task of designing our other player character while Cam was hard at work on the asset art.

It had been a while since I last drew digitally, but today was a day of trying many new things in order to pull my own weight! With our combined braincell, we had designed the character together (wirh input & advice from Cam) and Chloe sketched out a very simple walk animation for us to digitize.

Baby’s first……walk cycle animation……..

We laughed so hard at this that we started crying.

Here’s the second attempt, less than half an hour after the first try! You learn fast when you’re embarrassed of your work.

(Pictured above: our poor teammate being brought back to work by his friends while Chloe cheers him on (?) ft. Cam)

Another sideways photo but here’s our western styled bento that we had for dinner! I asked Kiri-san (pictured above) if he could read the box’ packaging label for me to see if I could understand the text verbally but after he read it, I nodded politely while my head stayed empty.

We wrapped up after many long hours and headed home shortly after 8:30pm. Otsu today, everyone!!

Free Day ? KCG campus tour

05/26/2023 (Friday)

Since I slightly passed away from our tiring journey yesterday, I slept in today while my roomie Megan and a few others went out for an early morning kimono dress-up session. I went to breakfast at around 8am and came back and napped until around 1pm.

I headed out with Jess to Kyoto station to grab some new clothes from uniqlo & order from mister donut for the first time! We also managed to squeeze in lunch before rushing back to the hotel to head out again at 4pm to check out the KCG campus.

Here’s what Jess & I ordered wrow! I embarrassingly went into the wrong storefront after getting the menus mixed up and we apologized while going to the store to the left of the menu instead….

Pretend the image is properly oriented I can’t believe wordpress doesn’t have this option included in the base post editor

The food was so yummy…..katsu perfectly cooked & juicy, didn’t feel oily or greasy at all. I could drink a gallon of their miso soup too…

Baby’s first time at a mister donut!!! It’s been 2 days and I’ve yet to eat what I ordered but I’m sure its delicious.

Arrived at KCG’s graduate campus for a quick tour!

We then headed to KCG’s main campus to meet the students that would be game jamming with us! Shoutout to nametag guy ?

It was nerve wracking to meet our teammates for the first time, but I was excited to practice my japanese! One of our team members ended up not hanging out with us as often due to being nervous, but I have faith in him for our actual game jam. They brought tons of snacks for us to try, and we also had pizza-la delivery! I’ve heard of the chain name before but I was not expecting the pizza to taste so…sweet? Many of us ended up sharing similar sentiments after the dinner meet.

We shared a very crowded bus with the KCG students on our way back to the hotel & also saw Kyoto Tower!