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 "A 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

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.

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:

• Elements Of Games
• Qualities Of Games
• gamasutra.com

Tech Task

For this tech task, I learned how to make a fake Facebook post simulator.

Wow i'm actually so funny, I should make a meme page this is honestly so funny. Leave a comment if you laughed, also, leave one if you didn't, I'm working on this whole 'criticism' thing, so.

Feedback Thoughts

Article 1: Why It's So Hard to Hear Negative Feedback

This article describes the physical and mental impact of receiving negative feedback, describes the biological reasons, and how we can trick ourselves and change how we react to it.

"We tense up, our breathing gets shallower and our ego becomes so threatened it begins to limit the information that is let into our brains" 
- Adam Grant

They explain that humans have evolved to become unable to actually deliver negative feedback themselves, in order to train us to be better in work and life amongst other humans. 
They firstly advise to have faith that the other person means well, and isn't trying to offend or upset anyone. To trust they have the best intentions at heart. I agree that false praise grows people into being too superficial for their own good. 
In this article, we are told that any sort of feedback will result in self-improvement, which is a very positive way to see things, whether it feels good or not. 

Some examples of feedback I received when I was younger, that helped me grow into the person I am today mainly came from my mother and father, showing me how to do tasks and chores, giving me tips to improve, essential life hacks, just the typical stuff. 
It didn't really feel like negative feedback, as I guess you have a sort of automatic appreciation for your parents because you know they just want whats best for you. 

source: Modern Family

Article 2: Why Rejection Hurts So Much

The pain of rejection can be paralysing. I can relate to this pain from being fired from jobs, breakups and makeups and re breakups, and, as superficial as it sounds, not getting a text back after reaching out. I feel like we all understand this pain in some way or another. 

But why do we feel this so intensely? Brain scans have actually shown that rejection lights up the same parts of the brain that show up for physical pain. I wasn't even surprised when I read this, it kind of just- made sense. 

Rejection destabilises our human need to belong. However, we actually do this to ourselves. 

During these times, we just sit and feel sorry for ourselves, whether we admit that or not. We allow ourselves to self-hate, thus harming us further. 

A tip they advised was to think with logic in order to develop a zero tolerance for rejection. 

Don't think about what you did wrong, think about what you could have done differently.

Stay connected with people who make you feel good about yourself.

Building all of this up will help you recover sooner and sooner from every rejection as you move forward with your life. 

source: buildabizkids.com

Game Brainstorm

4 Game Genres:

• Platform Games
• Adventure Games
• Sports Games
• Puzzle Games

What is a platform game?

Until beginning my research, I had no idea, but, seeing examples and the definition cleared that right up for me. A platform game is, well, according to wikipedia (I trust them on this one), when "the player controlled character must jump and climb between suspended platforms while avoiding obstacles". Most people would be familiar with this type of game if they have ever played the global sensation Super Mario, which is one of Nintendo's most viral games of all time. It would be cool to simplify this down and make my own version, and go behind the scenes, and basically make a skeleton of Super Mario in terms of design and layout. Including obstacles and power-ups.

Super Mario Bros. Gameplay (source: nintendo)

What is an adventure game?

For the most part I think that the main RPGs that I play are adventure style. But what exactly is, by definition, an adventure game? Well, according to idtech.com, "In adventure games, players usually interact with their environment and other characters to solve puzzles with clues to progress the story or gameplay. Aside from an occasional mini-game, adventure games rarely involve any traditional video game action elements." Examples include: fantasy RPGs and storytelling games, like The Elder Scrolls/Fallout/The Witcher series or, the Life Is Strange series. They use lots of writing to add lore and backstory to game being played, you just want to find out more and more as you play. It would be interesting to lean towards making a game where the more information and clues you find, you get to the main goal at the end, only if you find every clue.

What is a sports game?

It's not as obvious as you'd think. Sports games are really just strategy games in disguise. I say this because the objective is to win, or complete a task using physical and intellectual skill. Sports games aren't actually sports, but because so many strategy games are designed or inspired by real sports (soccer, pool, basketball and so on), they get their own category. Most examples are in mobile phone games, or social media mini-games. The biggest example for me is Miniclip's 8 Ball Pool. I take a lot of inspiration from this game, I want to design a game that looks and feels similar to a pool game, with cues and pockets.

What is a puzzle?

I assume that everyone reading this knows what a puzzle is and has played one, and probably solved one at the very least once in their life. Puzzles are like brain workouts, they make you think hard and use your logical skills to clear an obstacle or an object, mostly getting more difficult each time, as your skills keep increasing. Puzzles can be relaxing, like the app Unblock Me. Or filled with energy and intensity, like Smash Hit. I personally want to create something more relaxed, perhaps a recreation of Unblock Me - where you have to move obstacles out of the way to clear your own.

     

Unblock Me (source)                                  Smash Hit (source)

Game Design

In this reading I learned about what games are, by 'definition' and what game design is. I learned there is no fixed way to describe what a game is, but the writer of this week's reading defines it as a "play activity with rules that involves conflict", but my favourite definition listed was "voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles". This is what makes most sense to me, as a player of many single player roleplaying games. The main elements to games are rules, resources, actions and a story.

Next, I learned a tip for starting the process of designing my own game by just drawing some things on a page. I was able to make an actual playable game within a few minutes with just a pen and paper. This shows how making simple games doesn't require money, a huge amount of creativity, or even much time.

I read that game designers are massive risk takers. In the reading it says;
-There is design risk, the risk that the game will not be fun and people won’t like it.
-There is implementation risk, the possibility that the development team will not be able to build the game at all, even if the rules are solid.
-There is market risk, the chance that the game will be wonderful and no one will buy it.

For making my own game, my first goal will be to have a playable prototype as early as possible in the development stage, and make it as non-complicated as possible. Something easy.


                                     
(Above: The 3 main playable characters in Grand Theft Auto V, 2013)

Items of interest:

gamedevelopers.ie
A game design studio here in Ireland with some information on cool gaming events happening in the upcoming weeks

How To Make A Simple iPhone Game
I enjoyed checking this out and I definitely want to design an iPhone app or game in the future, so this was cool for me to see.

Video Game Trends 2019
I felt like this would be useful inspiration for coming up with some ideas for my own game.