Multimedia Development

So next up in the development of my game was the Alpha. Last week the things that I said I wanted to achieve were: Correcting Spawn Manager Introduce repeating scene of trees to complete my terrain Add Game Over message when Player impacts with obstacles What I did achieve was: Adding Mountains as Background Adding Collectable Rotating Coins Not going to lie this week was the toughest week I had so far with getting Unity to work and I'm disappointed with how little I got done. I spent about 2.5 hours on it and feel a little unmotivated at the moment because of the end result of this week.  The first thing I wanted to do was correct my Spawn Manager. I went to previous Unity Tutorials for help, the first time it didn't work so I completely restarted. I did the exact same process again, typed slowly, triple checked the coding but it still wouldn't work after nearly an hour trying so I gave up. My object is spawning on the spot at the moment but for it to be useful in my game ...

Finally !! The last week of Unity Tutorials this semester. From next week on I will instead use Tutorials that will further help in the development of my game. I have been some tutorials the past few weeks so I will be sure to include them in next weeks post.  So what did I think of the last Unity Tutorial? First off was Lesson 4.4 - "For-Loop For Waves". I actually got on pretty well with this one. It was one of the shorter ones we had to complete and there was only 5 actual steps to do to complete it. The steps were really straight forward and with the playback speed on the video increased x2 it didn't take long at all to finish it. The tutorial went over how to make multiple enemies spawn at once, I played around with this one and changed the number a few different times to see if it worked which it did. The picture below is when I changed the number to 3 enemies.  The next thing the tutorial explained was how to destroy enemies would they had fallen off the sides of t...

Instead of a Twitter Task this week we had to look back on our Comments and Feedback and talk about what our thoughts on it were.  The first comments we started to receive were on our Introduction Posts from Week 1. I thought this was a great start for us, it was an easy one to comment on and got us in the swing of things. It also made me get to know people in the course that I had never even spoken too! The comments I received were all really nice and it has actually made me gain a few more friends that I may not have ever spoke to without having to comment. I read back on my introduction blog post just now and although not very informative about me I still think it was a good post. Next time I think I should include maybe a little more about myself though, even if it's just my favourite Movies, TV Shows or other Hobbies I have. In my introduction post I spoke about drinking Sangria all Summer and I'm excited to progress to mulled wine during Christmas Break!  Image Informati...

This week it's review week and I am reflecting on the reading and writing tasks for the previous 8 weeks.  I think the Reading tasks have been okay so far. I much preferred the informative videos included in some of the weeks than the Academic Papers, I thought they were quite tedious and tough to get through. Although tedious they were helpful in the creation of my project and below I will speak about my favourite weeks. The first thing that I did was went to my blog and searched for all my blogs with the label "Reading". When I looked back on each one my two favourites were definitely "Game Elements" in week 4 and "Games GDD" in week 6. Game Elements was very informative and went into more depth about the different gaming elements. Games GDD was a really helpful one, it told us exactly what a Game Design Document was, how to make one and also what should be included in it. The project task for that week was to create our own Design Document so readin...

  Image Information - My Own Fake Tweet I tried to upload an animated photo of The White House as a profile picture for the fake tweet but for some reason Simitator wouldn't let me. 

I continued on with developing my game this week and spent about 3/4 hours working on it. I think it went really well and I can see my game coming along nicely.  One challenge I was facing this week and last week was that Unity was running really slowly on my laptop. I was constantly waiting for it to reload but thankfully I figured it out. During last weeks development I added the trees to make my jungle. It ended up that I had about 600 different trees spanning the length of the river, doing this used 65GB of memory and slowed the laptop right down. To stop this I deleted majority of the trees, instead in the next few weeks I will use a repeat pattern that was shown in one of the most recent Unity Tutorials.  Comparing the image of my game last week to this week it kind of looks like I went backwards a step but I feel like I got loads of important steps done this week! What I achieved this week: Corrected Glitches from Last Week Last week I set up a FollowPlayer script to my...

One week closer to finishing Unity Tutorials for this semester!! Just finished this weeks Unity Tutorials and  am actually pretty happy with how they went. I think they were a great recap on showing how to do certain things like creating Spawn Managers. They also introduced us to new elements like including PowerUps and Countdowns which I'm sure will come in really handy for a lot of peoples games. The one part of this week's tutorial I struggled with was in Lesson 4.1 on the 7th video. In it you had to Move in the Direction of the Focal Point. I must have typed out the code and deleted it around 6 times before I gave up, I just couldn't seem to work it. It would have let me Player move in any direction but unfortunately I had to just move on. It didn't cause too much hassle in the end and the game ran perfectly without that feature.  Other than that I didn't run into much trouble with any issues being down to forgetting to type a ; or () somewhere.  I will definite...

  Games can be described by the 3 components Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics (MDA) or otherwise stated as rules – system – “fun” . The three reading selections this week and the synopsis below all address the term “fun” in relation to game design. There are eight types of Fun outlined by the MDA. These eight are both a source of reference and player experience that blend together in many ways, and essentially what makes a game engaging and enjoyable. Figure 1: Eight kinds of Fun Both Oxford and Merrian dictionaries define Fun as an enjoyment, delight but within the context of a game it refers to a form of pleasurable entertainment. MDA papers define the '8 kinds of fun' sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression, and submission, remain a source of reference and possibly the most popular list of player interactions combining in various forms to attract each player to a particular game. Nicole Lazzaro presents four types of fun that are invol...

So this week we had to start creating our game. It's been a busy week so the first thing that I done was set a timer on my phone for 3 hours and sat down to get the work done. What I achieved this week: -Creating Project -Organising Assets needed -Creating River for scene -Creating Jungle for scene -Bringing the Player (boat) into scene -Creating FollowPlayer and PlayerController Scripts Creating Project The first thing that I did is the easiest part of the whole project - creating the project file in Unity. I went to Unity Hub and created a new 3D project which opened up my new scene.  Organising Assets Needed The next thing that I did was looked back on my Game Idea research where I had posted some different links to assets, I gathered the ones I needed and used them along with a few new tutorials to complete the headings below.  Creating River for Scene When making the river I created a new Game Object on Unity and under the 3D option I chose "Plane". I then went to Go...

  Video “In order for the player to be optimally engaged, challenges should be presented at a level equivalent or slightly higher than their current skill. Not too easy, not too hard”( Gigity McD ) The word 'flow state' was coined by Csikszentmihalyi (1975) also known as being “in the zone” This is when the player is fully engaged in the game experience. Csikszentmihalyi put a lot of work into observing and analyzing various groups of people. This theory is focused on the idea of how people should balance their skills and the demands of particular tasks. An example of Flow would be a challenge in a game that interests the player such as a puzzle or a boss battle meant to keep the player interested and not get bored. Csikszentmihalyi also states that flow is related to an ideal psychological condition when a person engages in a challenge-skill activity, often resulting in concentration and a focused emphasis on a task. A practical technique for improving Flow is to look at what...

 This week I started developing my Game Design Document. I created it using the website Dundoc which had me very confused at the start but once I got the hang of it I was fine! The link to my document can be found  here . I'm happy with what I have included so far and I I will update continuously over the next few weeks and my game develops!  Image Information: A screenshot of the introduction to my Game Design Document 

 I have written HTML before in Web Development 1/2 in first year. 

 I killed two birds with one stone for this weeks task! One of my twitter tasks was to also include a list so it worked out well for me when doing this extra credit task. I made a list of the members in my group so that I can easily see what each one of them has tweeted so far and it also updates so will continue refreshing as they tweet. I have never used Twitter Lists before this but they seem very useful. I'm currently non stop refreshing my Twitter looking at Election news so it could be handy for me to make a list with all different News/Reporters so I can see updated news. Here is a  link  to the list I created.  Image Information - Screenshot of my own list

The first part of this weeks Unity Tutorials focused on making a character jump. I found this tutorial quite straightforward and think it could be really useful in the future. It also showed how to have an obstacle spawn continuously using a Spawn Manager. This feature could definitely come in handy when it comes to making my game.  The second part of the Tutorials focused on a moving background and how to have it repeat throughout your game. I actually enjoyed doing this part of the tutorial because I can see how I can implement this in my game. In my game it will be a jungle type setting so this feature will be used.  The third and final part of the Tutorials focused on how to make your character move in different ways - this includes walking and running and also showed you how to adjust speeds. All these basic moves will be really helpful in the long run! Overall this weeks Unity Tutorials were probably the most straight forward so far. I didn't get stuck as I usually would...

What is the GDD for?   A Game Design Document (GDD) is a blueprint for the design and development of a game. The GDD is a way of being creative and documenting the approach to the development of the game.   Gonzale   (2016) states that “   the important thing is to have something that describes your game project   (or any other project for that matter)   before jumping into production .(   Gamasutra   ) It should help to plan out your game. Though it is recommended that the GDD should be short it needs to be detailed enough so as game developers and artists can coordinate the development of the game independently whilst still keeping to the design. The GDD is a blueprint for how the game is going to be designed and built, similar to a mind map. In conclusion, the game design document is vital to making a game and it is important to have in order to describe your game project.   Image Information -  Game Design Document How do we make one...