Mary's Blog

  Traffic light image The purpose of a vision statement is to communicate the vision in detailed terms. In this post I will be discussing my game ideas vision and components in more detail than previous.  Introduction The name of my game is going to be "Traffic Light" , this game is going to be a single player game where the main goal is to race to the end. You will need to have quick reflex's for this game and move quickly as it's very fast paced! You will be set in a 2D world where there is a traffic light at the end and a timer ticking down. The one rule being you can only move when the light is green with the objective of getting to the end before the timer runs out.  Description Starting off in a 2D world you will first get to pick your character from a variety of choices, once your character is chosen you will start the game. There will be compelling background music playing to add to the tension of the game. Once you press start the timer will begin at 1-2 minu...

Generating memes for tech tasks

Screenshot from my Unity  For this weeks Unity tutorials we were tasked with  Unit 2 – Basic Gameplay (Feed the Animals Prototype) Lesson 2.1 Player Positioning (60 mins) Lesson 2.2 Food Flight (70 mins) Lesson 2.3 Random Animal Stampede (60 mins) I found that this weeks tutorials are getting a lot more challenging and time consuming. I was at these lessons for pretty much the whole day trying to get them right. I struggled most with Lesson 2.2 and with creating the #C script 'DestroyOutOfBounds', for some reason I could just not get this to work after many attempts and retrying it.  This week we had to have a player moving left to right in a scene, three animals ahead of the player that would eventually randomly spawn throughout the scene moving toward the player. The player also had to shoot out food using the space bar toward the animals.  I find the most challenging thing with these tutorials is getting the code correct. One small mistake and the hole game breaks...

  Puzzle This week we were tasked with reading ' MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research ', 'Design, Dynamics & Experience(DDE for Game Design)'  and finally to watch this video. The first paper I read was 'MDA a Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research'. MDA standing for mechanics, dynamics and aesthetic. This paper presented the framework taught as part of the game design and tuning workshop at the Game Developers Conference, San Jose 2001-2004. MDA is a formal approach to understanding games which attempts to bridge the gap between game design and development.  According to this paper gameplay differs to other sources of entertainment as games are unpredictable. The MDA framework breaks this down into their different components. Rules > System > Fun a.k.a Mechanics > Dynamics > Aesthetics. By moving through MDA's 3 levels of abstraction we can better understand gameplay and design. Resulting in overall more improve...

  Traffic Light This week for the project research we were asked to choose our favourite idea from the brainstorm last week and continue researching that idea to further see if it would be a game we would enjoy making. From my brainstorming last week the idea I think I would enjoy the most and also be the most capable of making is the traffic light game. After re-reading my brainstorm post and considering all ideas I think this was the most structured and planned idea and would work well for this project.  Since my last post I've further researched this idea and thought of more ideas for it. One of my ideas is to have it single player game with a start and finish line. The game will begin and there will be a timer counting down, a player at the start line and a traffic light at the finish line. The player is only allowed to move forward when the light is green. If the player moves when the light is red they will either be sent back to the start line or eliminated. The game wil...

  Screenshot of my Unity software For this weeks Unity tutorials we done Lesson 1.4 Step into the Drivers Seat . The aim for this lesson was to be able to control the movement of our car in the game, for example moving forward, backwards, left and right. I found this lesson quite easy to follow and was successful in the end. I managed to get through the tutorial quite quickly with only a few minor issues, like typing in the wrong code (spelling it wrong, putting it in the wrong place) a few times. But I quickly realised where I went wrong and was able to fix it easily enough.  I'm really enjoying how quickly I'm learning how to make a game, I find it very cool how two weeks ago I didn't even know any software to make a game and now I know how to make something move in a game using code. I never thought this would be something that I would be interested in yet I'm really enjoying it so far! I'm excited to see whats next in the lessons and how much further I can exten...

Game Elements For the readings this week we were set with a few readings to further discuss the vocabulary needed for games.  Firstly I read What are the qualities of games? , in this paper the atomic elements of games are discussed. This paper states that there is no one way of describing a game and none is perfect but there is almost always a recurring theme that sheds light on the things we need as designers to create games. Here is a list of game elements listed in the paper that almost always occur in gameplay: - Players - Objectives(goals) -Rules -Resources and resource management -Game state -Information -Sequencing -Player interaction -Theme(Narrative, backstory, setting) -Games as systems This article also states why critical analysis are important for designers to understand why or why not the games they make are enjoyable or aren't enjoyable. In the  academic paper I read Game Design Research  , game studies, games research, game design and design research ar...

Feedback Source:  https://pixabay.com/photos/return-feedback-news-board-chalk-1825515/  The two articles I decided to read to learn more about why feedback is important were ' A Fixed mindset could be holding you Back' and 'How to get past negativity bias'  Firstly I read 'A Fixed mindset could be holding you back' , this article discusses how praising children for doing something right can actually backfire on us. That this doesn't create resilience in the long run and instead we need to celebrate both failures and successes. This is what we call a fixed mindset. "When the world starts to be a bit more honest with you about what your strengths and weaknesses actually are, and you start hearing negative things about yourself, if you've developed a fixed mindset you become very brittle,".  On the other hand a growth mindset is somebody that believes that intelligence and abilities can be developed through practice and feedback. This creates a ...

  Ideas Source:  https://pixabay.com/vectors/question-questions-man-head-2519654/ General Overview From somebody who has never really been into gaming I definitely found brainstorming ideas for possible games quite difficult, especially considering I have no idea what I will be capable of by the end of term. None the less I got out my notebook and began brainstorming. I juggled around with a few ideas but the four ideas I've come up with are: A Racing Game with Cars: Something that stands out to me from my childhood is watching my cousins play racing games on their consoles. Although they would never give me a shot (because I was a girl, I know how times have changed...) I always wanted to try it out. So one of the ideas I've come up with is to have a few cars racing in a lap to a finish line. Ideally it would be two to four cars with a countdown and then once the countdown is done they would all go and race. The lap would include different scenery along the way. It would cons...

Screenshot of Unity application Source: own image This week we began to use Unity and C#. We were tasked with 3 tutorials from Unit 1- Lesson 1.1 Start your 3D Engines, Lesson 1.2 Pedal to the Metal and Lesson 1.3 High-Speed Chase. From first impressions and installing Unity I was already confused and lost. But after taking a minute to properly read through instructions and try different solutions I finally got the application up and running. Getting through the different tutorials proved to be time consuming and challenging as it was all new things that I was learning, but eventually I began to get the hang of things and by the last tutorial I was flying through the videos! I found the tutorial videos easy to understand and follow which definitely helped in me understanding the application better. I also found that it had a similar layout to the adobe platforms which really helped in me understanding this new application. I found moving the trackpad around in viewing the gameplay quit...

  Gaming Consoles Source From my readings and analysis of this weeks readings on game design I feel I have learnt a lot about this topic, firstly there is no 'one way' to define what a game is. But generally games have activities, rules, conflict, goals, involve decision making, and they are a form of art.  To create a game seems like an extremely challenging thing to do, but from my readings Im starting to believe that it might just be something achievable for anyone with the right motivation and love for game and design. To create a game is an organic process that involves a lot of idea generation. Game designers draw inspiration from just about anything! some examples include watching TV, movies, playing other games and even taking walks in nature when they get writers block. There is a lot of brain storming involved and designers often have group work sessions to get the ideas flowing, or, after generating an idea go to a colleague for feedback.  I learnt that generat...

 I feel everyone is guilty for letting deadlines build up and procrastinate everything they have to do until the last minute, I can raise my hand and admit to this. Thats why time management is so important! Sure, last year was definitely a lot easier for time managing when everything was online and we were in lockdown. But now this year having to balance college, assignments, work and our social lives I think it's really important to get into the habit of managing our time.  This year I will be managing my time personally by aiming to get all my college work done during the week so that I can go to work on the weekends without the stress of having to come home late and complete assignments. The two articles I decided to read for this blog post were How to beat procrastination by Caroline Webb and 3 Steps to Recapture Time by Joynicole Martinez I really enjoyed reading How to beat procrastination by Caroline Webb as I myself am a procrastinator and need all the help I can ge...

 Surprisingly I am not so familiar with a lot of the technology tools we will be using for this module. Of course I use some of them often like Pinterest, Mac Preview etc.. But just as I am familiar with some, I have not heard of the others before. But I am excited to see how they can help me with my assignments and further on in my career. This online environment is different to other modules, in my opinion, because i feel its more interactive with each other on an online basis than an in person basis. Instead of giving each other feedback face to face were giving it via commenting on each others blog posts and tweets. Some technical skills I would like to work on this semester is being more organised online, and designing my blog better. Tech illustration Source

Some of my first impressions for this module... Well this module is definitely a lot different to the others and i am excited about taking on a new type of learning and grading. I think it will be a nice change to the usual routine.  Some of the assignments I am most intrigued by are the Unity 3D tasks as I've never looked into that before so it will be exciting to learn something new. I also like the way that we get to interact with one another by commenting on each others blog posts and following each other on Twitter etc. Some of the extra credit tasks that I am intrigued by are the tech tasks and Wikipedia trails. I usually enjoy web based technology so Im excited to learn more about that and think that getting to choose something we enjoyed from class and further research that is a great way to learn and get extra credit! Study space source