Tech Task

 

Unity Tutorial 09

This week for our Unity tutorials we had to continue with the lesson we started last week. We have implemented a rotating camera, a powerup and an enemy chasing the player. In this lesson we will make more than one enemy therefore they will spawn in waves and a new powerup. When there is no more enemies left from a wave a new one starts and by each finish the enemy count increases by each wave. I found the custom methods with parameters to be a difficult. I found this tutorial to be enjoyable as I didn’t have that many difficulties and I got the tutorial done around the estimated time for this task. If I could redo this task I would spend less time on the tutorial and focus on the challenge or perhaps begin with the challenge instead.

For Challenge 4 I couldn’t get passed the bugs as I still don’t know how to fix them since the plane tutorial. Therefore this challenge will be left as incomplete. After reading the steps I had to undertake under the challenge I feel like if I knew how to fix the bugs I would easily continue. For week 10 I will focus on the upcoming tutorial and on this challenge.

Review Week Comments and Feedback

 For this week we have to reflect on the blog feedback/comments we have given and the feedback/comments we have received from fellow students in our course. Overall I personally feel like the rating of the comments and feedback I have received are a ten out of ten. They are very motivating and the feedback especially helps me with my project therefore I find the feedback comments to be the most useful for my growth in this module. Although I find the comments/ feedback useful I personally feel the some of them could be a little longer as some do not meet the minimum word count.

Similarly I would rate the quality of my comments and feedback that I have given to my fellow students in this course to be a ten out of ten. “Treat others how you would want to be treated”. I give feedback that I would like to hear myself. I motivate the student but most importantly give the best advice I could give regarding their project. 

Here I am presenting an example from a task to give feedback to a fellow student. I chose Mimi that week and as it is seen in the above image I used the W technique we have learned that week. I really enjoyed giving feedback/ comments and I personally would like to give more feedback to people especially with their projects to help. If I had to redo my feedback I would perhaps research information for the individual from articles or videos from platforms such as Youtube and by doing this I would learn from this research. In my opinion the feedback strategies we have learned in this module work the best and I get good ideas for my own work as I write feedback for other students.

Last week when I started my “First playable” I had to learn from my mistakes and had to make a testing game hence implementing assets there first before importing them into my first playable as things can go wrong. I gave this advice to Jack Roche. I feel like the blog comments were a great foundation to new friendships. There was a sense of connection and it was very uplifting to see all the support. I am happy with my introduction although I found it hard to write to the standards of the minimum word count. I feel like this was pressurising and that task shouldn't have had a minimum word count. Overall I feel like blog is a place where people can get to know me. If I could make any changes to my blog or redo it in a different way I would perhaps word my introduction better and include more of my art pieces and maybe the layout of the blog as when I went on my phone to see what everything looks like on the blog it did not look professional and aesthetic.

In conclusion there are pros and cons in the feedback/ comments I receive and the ones I give to my fellow peers.

Week 9 Reading and Writing

For this week we have to reflect on our readings and overall I do find the readings to be helpful at times for example my favourite reading is the YouTube video for week 6. It helped me construct my own Game Design Document and it was really well explained however the written articles are not my strongest suit as the authors commonly use difficult to understand language. I found the Games MDA article to be the most difficult to process and to this day I have no clear understanding of this concept. I would rate the readings to be a four or five out of ten as it wasn't all unclear as I did find useful work strategies that I will frequently use. I am getting good ideas for my own writing and project after analysing the best best reading segments.

Looking back at the tutorials I feel like some are necessary but most of them if not nearly all of them took up a lot of my time every week and this sabotaged my progress in this module and other modules. I wouldn’t say the reading helps me every week with my game but it does at times. Unity tutorials help me with my game project every week more than the readings. I have made a strategy for my future self as I write my readings and this consists of me saying what I learned, what I found difficult and what I found to be useful for the other tasks or my game. This means I can look back at this and remind myself of the information I have previously learned. I am happy with my game project although it’s a little different from what I originally envisioned but what I thought of would require more time for this kind of development. I consider my game to be my biggest accomplishment in this module. If I had to redo the readings I would spend less time trying to make lots of paragraphs for my blog as I would run out of time for the time estimate. I wouldn't absorb some of the information this way as-well.

I chose this image from my blog post from my “week 6” label on Blogger because as I mentioned before this helped my with my Game Design Document. I really enjoyed this video from the reading as it is my favourite and I am recommending it to my fellow students who chose the articles over the video and people from outside of this course that are perhaps interested in it.

Looking forward from now I would like to have more videos included in the readings just equally as much as there are articles to have a variety of options just like we do for the written articles. 

In conclusion after looking back at the readings there are pros and cons started in the above therefore I am 50:50 with the readings and how much they help me with my project and my knowledge/ skillset in this module.

First playable

 I find it very difficult to design my game for example the logs in the first part of the obstacle game is very hard to make as the player will fall off immediately. I found making the terrain quite difficult at first but after tutorials on Youtube I made mountains surrounding the start of the obstacle. I made a testing prototype to see what works and what does not. In the testing prototype many of the assets did not work and I’m glad I made this because otherwise I would have ruined my first playable and I would have to restart. I’m meeting my targets by watching YouTube tutorials and the Unity tutorials I have previously done. I am also learning by my mistakes I find that some of the tutorials on YouTube give me errors therefore they are not all reliable. I found this week to be the most productive week in my learning for this module for my project and now I find Unity to be much easier than in the beginning. The challenges I keep having to face are the scripts. For the following week I will try to figure out a way to implement the camera mechanism I strive for and if not then the current mechanisms will remain.

Unity Tutorial 07

 In this lesson I learned to make the camera rotate around a focal point and the player can activate this by using horizontal inputs. In point six I made a mistake with the word "speed" and after saving and going to Unity I had 999+ error and around 40 warnings and when I tried to fix it they didn't disappear therefore I had to restart the prototype as I previously did in the past tutorials. I feel like this tutorial can help me in the coming week with my project as I originally planned to use Roblox controls that include this mechanism. New concepts we have learned this week are texture wraps, camera as child object, global vs local coordinates and get direction of other object. New functionality includes camera rotates around the island based on horizontal input and player rolls in direction of camera based on vertical input.

In this lesson we create an enemy for this sphere to have a purpose in the game. We gave the enemy a texture, created an enemy script to follow the player and most importantly “a method return a spawn point”. This can also help me in my project and this lesson out of the three given lessons was not difficult for me.

In this lesson I learned how to make a power for the sphere that will highlight it and then disappear after 5 seconds.

Tech Task

 

Game Fun

 

The visualization of the gamification design process by Gamified UK founder Andrzej Marczewski shows how all of those elements result in the outcome of “fun” therefore you do not see this word included in the visualisation. I agree and disagree with the statement that fun cannot be a building block as what would you consider it if the developer finds fun in developing/ designing a game? I found the 4 keys to fun to be very interesting in this reading and I never considered what kind of fun my game for my project is. The "5 Groups of Fun" are similar to Nicole Lazzaros 4 Keys and personally I learned more from Nicoles 4 Keys as I found it less difficult to absorb the information.

Prototype

This is an image from my prototype. I came to the conclusion that my original plan to implement Roblox controls into my game is impossible as I cannot find any information on how I can do this. I tried coding it myself but I had multiple errors therefore I restarted my code and I used tutorials on youtube to help me. I went back to the Unity tutorials to help me aswell and I found that this helped the most. The player character has perfect controls now and they can use either WASD or the arrows to play my game. I am more happy with this as the user can choose whichever controls are more comfortable for them. 

 

Games Decisions

Readings

Article 1

In this article in the second attempt I learned that simplicity is key to a successful game when it comes to the features/ skills. I was already going to implement this into my own game as I am using the Roblox skills/ features. In this section the writer of this article states that you should use the skills people already know but I personally disagree because personally people like myself like a challenge and learning new skills would fulfil this. When it comes to features I will be using the Main Menu for “Play, Settings and Quit” for the buttons.I connected with the learning curve for complex Webb apps section as whenever I fail the advanced features I begin getting frustrated. I learned that you gain the knowledge and skills of using advanced options over time. You need to learn the basics and also seek help in articles or tutorials. I will do research on books like that online and buy them to grow my knowledge in Multimedia, Website Developing etc. I learned that the learning curve for the game grows faster steadily as the user obtains more information because it’s fun.

Through this article I have learned that this is called "exploratory learning".

Game Design Document

I am worried my idea will be too complex but I will try my hardest to fulfill my ideas and make this user experience calming and fun. Here is my GDD for my game that will go by the name “Lucy”…

https://tudublin-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/b00136778_mytudublin_ie/EbngjURH1CpDvxMIDq-ivrIBj7I6tQzqT_fBzJO3bb5pfw?e=Qt2a5U

primary source: 

the main character:

Lucy

Unity Tutorial 05

This week we are making the world around the character "whiz by":

New Functionality

• Background repeats seamlessly
• Background stops when player collides with obstacle
• Obstacle spawning stops when player collides with obstacle
• Obstacles are destroyed off-screen

New Concepts and Skills:

• Repeat background
• Get Collider width
• Script communication
• Equal to (==) operator
• Tags
• CompareTag()

In week 5 I had a problem with brackets in the application "Brackets" and on Twitter my professor responded and suggested to use Visual Studio therefore I installed it and I am trying it out for week 6. My professor suggested to watch the tutorials during my one and one with her to understand the codes I did over the reading week and I still don't understand them. This week I had a similar problem with brackets in Visual Studio and I think this occurs because I place the brackets in the wrong place or somehow they don't link. I enjoyed this weeks tutorial because even though I had difficulties I learned from my mistakes from week 5 and I was up for the challenge to learn from them again. I recently find myself spending more time than recommended for these tasks but next week I am hoping to time myself and be punctual with the time limit I should be spending on this.

Games GDD, Game Decision

 Reading

Article 1

A game design document is something new I have learned this week, I thought it would be a great way to communicate my ideas for my module but I have now learned it’s for memory aid too. Before reading this I questioned if I can in fact make my game design documents in various different ways and this article has answered my question especially with the embedded tweet of somebody’s game design document that is a journal. I found the design docs section to be helpful as it explains each section in detail, When I went onto the Project task for week 6 before reading this I had a difficulty understanding what I have to do but as I said this made it clearer and I will come back to this section if I find anymore difficulties. The rules for good design documentation made me realise I might not use Dundoc as suggested for my GDD, This section mentions “how to create design documentation superior to that used in the concurrent industry” therefore I will prioritise these rules and make them my checklist for my task. Keeping your words short is my favourite point as it showcases “less is more” and many times in my tasks I forget this and write as much as possible. Point number seven confused me as I didn’t think about including any code in my GDD as I don’t have any yet but after I finish this reading task I will look further into this point. 

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Using a Game Design Document | BenderWaffles Teaches RPG Maker Tutorial HOW TO #2 Guide VX MV MZ. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/1JopXec177w [Accessed 7 Nov. 2021].

Tutorial

From article one I learned a GDD is great for memory aid but in this tutorial the creator stated that a GDD is important because you might get "backed into a corner" and not know what to do next. I will use this template for my GDD Project task this week I find it to be the most helpful reading task this week. I wish there was a video for this reading week on abstract and derived classes for GDD because that confused me.