Mary's Blog

 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...