Wednesday 20 November 2019

Review Week Comments and Feedback

I haven't received that much feedback since I have not been consistently uploading blogs (I'm sorry!)
However, what I have gotten so far from people has been really constructive and helpful. I like that people aren't holding back, and are willing to give real advice and help to everyone on the blogs and about their game ideas.
I believe constructive criticism is really important when it comes from other students in the same boat as me, just as much as it is important to get feedback from the lecturers.
With the help of comments and feedback, I gain more inspiration and confidence in my decision making process, how I write my blogs, what I write about, and what my game will turn out to be in the end.
Having to comment on other people's blogs is a really good idea as I get to read and see what my classmates are doing, and what they are writing about, and seeing everyone else's blogs gives me an idea myself of where I think I should be at right now, and where I plan to be in the future. I take inspiration from reading people's blogs, as I have a lot of work to do from this day forward. By reading about everyone else in my class, I know what I have to get done, and I learn new things that I can talk about or add to my own blog.
I know that people really appreciate it when they receive a compliment or positive feedback on their blog, as do I, because it is a really good boost to get and makes you feel really happy to hear that people are enjoying what you've come up with.
I hope to remain consistent from this point forward with my blog uploads and get more comments and give more comments to my classmates and do the best I can to keep up with this module. I know how important feedback is to people, and I feel bad for not doing my best to give my feedback to others. I have also missed out on lots of opportunities for feedback that would've really helped me, so I need to step up my game now... (pardon the pun LOL HAHA).
Anyways, I don't know what else I can add to this post at this point, but I will leave it on a positive note - get ready to see more of my blogs because I have decided I would not like to fail this module. Thanks for checking out my blog, I know it's been a while.
Have an awesome day/night, whenever you check this out. Leave a comment if you want, even just come say hey.
Adios!

Wednesday 23 October 2019

Unity Tutorial 06

Jimmy Vegas talks about adding more UI elements to the game. He adds text to the centre of the screen, and then makes it into an "action text", which means the text will be a description on screen that tells you what you're doing in the game (at the time). I find this a very helpful feature to create some sort of guideline for the player. 
He then adds more cursor elements. The text can be applied to different objects, which I find really useful for labelling and identifying objects quite literally. These can be switched on and off depending on when you want them to appear and disappear. 
Pressing 'D' on the keyboard to "duplicate" is a helpful shortcut I learned in this tutorial. It will be helpful to my platform game when I make multiple of the same objects. 
These cursor elements help create enough UI elements to start building another script for the game. 
He decides to make this in a different way to the previous times (because of the additional UI elements). There are more options available in the script from adding more UI and cursor elements. 
I probably won't be using as much detail as Jimmy Vegas does with adding all of these UI elements, I would prefer to make something more simple. 



Game Idea Research

By definition, according to "game's mechanics are the rules and procedures that guide the player, and the game response to the player's moves or actions
I want to create a simple game, nothing too complex, as this is not my strongpoint in CDM.
I think a platform game would work well, or else an adventure game where the player collects some sort of reward as they travel around obstacles in the 3D world.
I think about Super Mario Bros when I start to brainstorm this idea, I think it would be a great base game to work from. 



The mechanics I need to apply for creating a game with such similar outcomes as (a much easier and simplified) Super Mario are;
Rules:
- The player must collect all (let's say... blue) coins along the obstacle course in order to win.
- The player must avoid (let's say... red) coins, because they lose if they collect 3 wrong coins.
- The obstacle course's main trap is leading people into thinking they've found a blue coin, when it's really a red coin, therefore leaving the player to continue their search.
- The obstacle course contains more red coins than blue coins, making the player explore more area to find every blue coin.
- The player may have a limited number of lives before starting over, e.g. if they collect one red coin, they lose a life. A life can be regenerated after collecting 3 blue coins.




I got some of these ideas from Super Mario, obviously. However the option of having limited lives, and losing one when collecting a red coin, was inspired by the game Fruit Ninja for android and iOS. There's a multiplayer mode where the players must avoid all the bombs that randomly appear on the screen, and if you hit 3 of them, you lose. 




sources:
YouTube Tutorial
Platform Game Tips

Thursday 10 October 2019

Unity Tutorial 02

To be completely honest, I struggle using Unity a lot. I find it very difficult to get my head around despite these tutorials being so helpful and easy to understand. Things just don't seem to work for me when I try to do them.
However, this doesn't mean I don't find the tutorials useful- I do. I still learn new things every time I watch a tutorial, and it makes sense until I try doing it on my own. This is something I just have to keep trying at, and it's my own personal issue.


In the first tutorial, we learn how to make an object make a sound, and then disappear as the player 'collects' it. We also learn that in the coding, everything is case sensitive. Colliders exist to stop us from walking into certain things or falling into things. There are box colliders and mesh colliders. Mesh colliders shape around the object perfectly, box colliders, quite literally just surround the object in box format. Adding "//" in your code makes the script think that something is a note, and not a piece of code, which allows you to refine what you want something to do.


In the second tutorial, we begin to look at UI elements, starting with a cursor for our screen. This is so we can define where we are looking/heading towards in the game. You can do this by adding a raw image, and anchoring its fixed position on the canvas.
We also learn about "raycasting"(shooting an invisible ray from a point) He uses a static variable, meaning it can be referenced from different scripts (which is very important).

Overall, these are very well-explained tutorials, but they are still complex for my understanding. I hope I will be able to make everything work by the end of it all. I'm enjoying learning all of this, but the workload feels overwhelming here compared to, and on top of other modules.


Tuesday 8 October 2019

Game Elements

"Every game has rules, conflict, goals, decision-making, and an uncertain outcome. Games are activities, they are artificial/safe/ outside ordinary life."

Formal elements of games are commonly known as the 'atoms', as they are the smallest parts of games that can be isolated and studied individually. 
Examples of these are;
  • Players - What is the relationship between players? Is there teams, or individuals? Can teams be uneven? Player structures include; 1V1 (solitaire), PvE  (world of warcraft), One-against-many (Scotland Yard) and Teams (popular in online 'Battle Royale' games).
  • Objectives - What is the object of the game? What are the players trying to do? Objectives include; 'Capture and Destroy', Collection, Problem Solving, Chasing and Building.
  • Rules - There are three categories of rules: setup (things you do once at the beginning of the game), progression of play (what happens during the game), and resolution (what conditions cause the game to end, and how is an outcome determined based on the game state).
  • Theme (narration, backstory) - Why bother? There are two reasons. One, the setting provides an emotional connection to the game. Secondly, it can make the game easier to learn and easier to play simply because it just makes more sense.

source: vrroom.buzz

There's a difference between a critical analysis and just a game review. A review is about user enjoyment and satisfaction, but an analysis is more about helping a consumer's decision to buy or not to buy the game. 
There is a 3 step process to a game critical analysis:
- Describing the game's formal elements
- Describing the results of these when put in motion
- Trying to understand why the designer chose these elements

source: lifehacker.com


Links of interest:





Review Week Comments and Feedback

I haven't received that much feedback since I have not been consistently uploading blogs (I'm sorry!) However, what I have gotten ...