Mary's Blog

 For this weeks Unity Tutorials we were assigned the tutorials: Lesson 4.4 For-Loops For Waves (50 mins) Challenge 4 & Quiz Soccer Scripting (60 mins) In the first tutorial 'For-Loops For Waves' , we wrap up our lesson 4 game by putting the final pieces together. In this tutorial we had to enhance the enemy spawner so that multiple enemies would spawn randomly on the map, and we also learnt how to enhance the power up so that the player would have a better chance at fighting against the enemies. We also learned about new concepts such as for-loops, we learned about the increment operator , we also learned how to create our own custom methods with parameters so we could keep track of the number of enemies to spawn and finally we learned how to use FindObjectsOfType. Overall I've found these tutorials super helpful in creating my own game. The timer function and camera control will be super beneficial when creating my game and also the spawning of enemies etc. Lesson 4.4 ...

Feedback 1. Feedback in: So far I find that I have gotten a lot of really useful and great feedback from my classmates, which I am super appreciative of! Its really assuring and nice to see so many of my fellow classmates enjoy my idea and have taken the time to read my blogs to understand what I am trying to create with my game idea. Some people have even given me resources with similar game concepts that I can gain inspiration from which I would've never previously known about so that has been really helpful! Following up on that point it's great that there is so many people in our course that enjoy gaming because they can really help in giving the people who don't game as much resources, tutorials, ideas etc. and its really nice that we can all work together in helping each other out! I have really enjoyed this aspect of the module as it feels like a little community we have all built over the blogging space and I am getting to interact with classmates who I have never s...

  1. Looking back: Personally I have found the readings for this module fairly achievable each week, one thing I've struggled with is the writing as I find academic writing quite difficult but I also find reading and writing up on the readings each week has helped me with this. So far I think that my favourite reading has been the readings on the game design documents, for this reading we were assigned with    Communication and Game Design Documents ,    How to Write a Game Design Document  and   BenderWaffles  video example of a GDD. I found this weeks readings to be the most beneficial and interesting for me personally as I was unaware that so much planning and research/development goes into creating games. A GDD is essentially a document with a variety of headings that help with memory aid in creating games and useful for group work and working in a team so that everyone can get their ideas across and communicate them  efficientl...

 For this weeks Unity tutorials we were tasked with doing : Unit 4 – Gameplay Mechanics (Sumo Battle Prototype) Lesson 4.1 Watch Where You’re Going (60 mins) Lesson 4.2 Follow the Player (60 mins) Lesson 4.3 PowerUp and CountDown (60 mins) In the first tutorial we were given a map of an island that could be customised, we were to add functionality to our game like moving the camera around to face the right way for the player and make our player move around the map. We also learned about different things like textures, putting our camera as a child object so that it moves with our player, we learned about global and local directions and how to implement them. In the second tutorial we had to create an enemy to challenge our player. We have the enemy follow the player on the map and so that they spawn at a random location, we also added effects so that they bounce off each other. We learned about physics materials and how to use friction to slow down or speed things up. For the ...

 For this weeks readings we were tasked with reading up on fun in games and with the papers:    Gamification what has fun got to do with it? ,    Putting the “Fun Factor” Into Gaming: The Influence of Social Contexts on Experiences of Playing Videogames  and the video  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sZJYA06z7Y  . In the context of games and gamification fun is 'pleasurable engagement' which provides a useful distinction with regards to the more passive aesthetic pleasure and entertainment.  Marc Le Blanc's 8 types of fun :  Fun is described as being a learning space that grabs our attention, challenges us and reveals infinite depth. A denser possibility space gives us much more to learn and engage with. Fun is a dopamine in our brains that fires when we are presented with a new challenge to learn from. Fun is the feedback the brain gives us when we are absorbing patterns for learning purposes. Games can be fun, but they also can be abo...

 For this weeks Unity tutorials we were tasked with the tutorials: Lesson 3.3 Don’t Just Stand There (60 mins) Lesson 3.4 Particles and Sound Effects (60 mins) Challenge 3 & Quiz Balloons & Booleans (60 mins) In Lesson 3.3 Don't Just Stand there we learnt how to use animation, to make our character run, jump and even die to add more life to the game. We also learnt how to time the running, jumping and death so that it would make sense in the gameplay. I really enjoyed this tutorial as I feel it will be super beneficial in creating my own game and think it adds a lot of life and realism to the game. It's also a lot easier than I would've assumed to add animation to the game which is a relief!  In Lesson 3.3 Particles and Sound Effects we learn how to implement music, sound effects and particles into our game play. Another really useful tutorial that will benefit us in creating our own games as it adds so much life and dept to the gameplay. Just by adding a few sound ...

 For this weeks readings we were tasked with  Building a Princess Saving App  ,    Flow experience in computer game playing among Thai university students   and with watching the video   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H8pQyyXxHg.  In this weeks readings we learn about flow theory. Flow theory is the psychological theory to keep players engaged and entertained whilst playing a game. Game designers create challenges in the game to match the players skill level so that the game does not become to anxiety inducing by making it too challenging or too boring by making the game too easy. The structure of flow experience can be divided into two flows being cognitive flow and emotional flow. The cognitive flow reflects on qualities such as evaluation, expectation, control and decision making and consists of 1. challenge skill balance, 2. clear goals and 3. unambiguous feedback whilst emotional flow consist of 1. action awareness merging, 2...

Designing a game This week for the project task we had to make a Game Design Document, I used Dundoc   to create mine. This website had an amazing layout to use which made making the document a lot easier to fill out. I feel I have a lot more insight going in to making my game now. Here is a link to my Game Design Document on Dundoc!  https://www.dundoc.com/project/7854

  game design document For this weeks reading we were tasked with  Communication and Game Design Documents ,    How to Write a Game Design Document  and    BenderWaffles  video example of a GDD. Essentially a GDD or a Game Design Document is a document that helps to unfold memory aid and communication tool. As developing a game takes a significant amount of time, designers tend to forget their original or early on designs, so they use a GDD to record early on ideas and designs. As you are most likely working with a team to generate ideas and designs a GDD is also used to communicate these ideas with the rest of the team.  A GDD is broken down into these headings:  Game Design Overview Detailed Design Doc Story Overview Technical Design Doc Pipeline Overview System Limitations Art Bible Concept Art Overview Game Budjet Story Bible Script Game Tutorial and Manual Walkthroughs Some of the rules in creating a good GDD include knowing your ta...

  Screenshot from my Unity workspace For this weeks Unity Tutorial we were tasked with doing: Lesson 3.2 Make the World Whiz By (70 mins) In this lesson we learnt how to repeat the background seamlessly to make it appear as if the world is running by. We also learnt how to make the game stop if the player collides with an item and have the game say Game Over! We also learnt how to stop the background from moving and the obstacles from spawning. Finally we had to learn how to make all all the objects destroy after they get past the player. I found this unity tutorial quite easy to follow other than the last part, for some reason my code would just not work even though I read over it multiple times and everything seemed correct. I find this to be the most frustrating thing in using Unity as it is so difficult to spot small mistakes in code and if you cannot find it the whole game will not work. It makes it a lot more time consuming and confusing. Overall I'm enjoying them and learnin...

Screenshot from my unity workspace  For this weeks Unity Tutorials we were tasked with 3 different tutorials:  Lesson 2.4 Collision Decisions (50 mins) Challenge 2 & Quiz Play Fetch (50 mins) Unit 3 – Animation, Sound, & Effects (Run and Jump Prototype) Lesson 3.1 Jump Force (90 mins) This week was definitely the most challenging tutorials and I can see as the weeks go on how much more challenging and time consuming the tutorials are getting. In lesson 2.4 I had to finalise the 2nd lesson by making the animals spawn randomly on a timer, I learnt how to add colliders to all of my objects so that when the food would fly into the animals it would be destroyed and finally learnt how to add a "Game over" message once the game was over. It was nice to finalise the second lesson and have a functional game.  The challenge 2 was definitely the most challenging and about debugging a game that was already made and then finally in the last tutorial we started the 3rd unit and...