Thursday 29 November 2018

Unity Free Tutorials



Almost there!



Hello everyone!

This week I looked at even more youtube videos , here are 3 that really helped my in my game!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHnq2MOY0bU- How to set up my character ready to move. I set up colliders, a camera to follow them, first person controller script, move script and a camera follow script. This was all using this tutorial. It was really helpful but I needed to find another few videos to help me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov9ekwAGhMA-A really good video to help start up a game. Goes into depth on how to set the game up and the character itself. I found it super easy to follow this too. It was used to make my character move in a simple way. I also used this to set up the first person camera. I attached the camera to my character and it follows him around the world.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZNsc-jWk9g-multiple choice questions and buttons. This helped me be able to make my game to completion.

Overview: A few bugs with the buttons I will need to get a bit of help but I am surprised and happy with my progress this week. In a week I made a fully functioning game. Yeah it was worked on for the whole semester but now I understand (mostly) what I am doing and things don't take half as long.

Lets see how it works out for this weekend before testing next week!

Monday 26 November 2018

Games Stories



 Gaming
Gaming



Hi!

Welcome to this weeks blog post! This week I will write on articles I found helped me when making my game follow more of a story then a boring game of rules.



1. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130742/into_the_woods_a_practical_guide_.php: This article is all about making a story to back up your game. A game becomes more fun once there is a story behind it. For example , mythical games make you feel like you are in the game. They create a story which the characters can interact with other characters. Now the article explains the obvious, this is what happens in a game anyway. However, with the implementation of a backstory which the characters can interact with each other and complete the game thus creating a story. ( e.g. mythical characters interacting with each other to collect gems in order to pass the level .)

This sounds kind of half explained so here is how they broke it down on how to make your own story in your game:

First, pick your myth e.g. magical land.

Then, create your character and its enemy's e.g. elf and a wolf master who controls his wolfing's to hunt down any elf in the mythical land they live in.

Create the characters world.

Disrupt the world e.g. they turn the corner and wolflings attack them.

Make them fight the enemies and fight the big boss. The games concept.

Finally, collect rewards and pass levels!

This shows how a story brings the game along and allows you to execute your concept of a game.

2.http://www.gamasutra.com/search/index.php?search_text=What%20Every%20Game%20Developer%20Needs%20to%20Know%20about%20Story%20(Links%20to%20an%20external%20site.)Links%20to%20an%20external%20site.&num_results=1192&page=29. This article is al about how a story is conflict. This conflict can be a problem the character has to face, a problem which occurs out of no where or once the character passes a level, another problem occurs. Conflicts drive a story from start to end. Just like a movie.


3.http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/330300/Opinion_Return_of_the_Obra_Dinn_is_a_work_of_art.php. An article showing how this wrks in real life with a real life game. They found the game predictable and the designs amazing. However there was a story. The story followed the concept of the game. The concept allowed the character to be able to play out the game following the story. This makes it predictable yes, but interesting.

Over all I enjoyed. these readings and will apply them in my game.

Till next time!

Sunday 25 November 2018

First Playable

Example of my game

Hello!!!


Today marks the day my game is up and running fully!

This weekend we had to make a first playable! I found it fun but a challenge!

I am happy with it but I know it is glitchy and not 100% the best. however, I really did try my best and im proud of it! You can move my character about the game, there are sounds, there is a fade in screen and a fade out one. Also, most importantly , the character can collect maths questions or formulas to help them in the big boss question to pass into the next level!


Overall I find game making fun , its time consuming and harder then it should be at points as you cant learn off loads of code in order to make things work, you've to go through tones of tutorials to fin an answer for something that takes 5 mins about 2 hours later.


Bit frustrated to be honest but I will get there,

Till next time!!!

Thursday 22 November 2018

Week 8 Progress

 How I feel
Hello! Blog time again!

I actually needed this review week. Really shifted my tiered brain into gear.

I can taste the Cadburys chocolate Santas already but theres still a month.

So how do I feel about my progress, this multimedia semester and my game so far?

I was happy with my progress till last week. Had a bit of a disaster week which shifted some grades into a bad way and so pushed my well thought out plans for getting assignments done (which usually work weirdly enough) towards the end of the week. My prototype was indeed a prototype but like the most raw form. I struggled a lot! It wasn't the time pressure more the brain power wasn't there as I felt so overwhelmed with it I started doing the most basics like setting the lighting and camera up wrong. The concept was there and by the end I could see where my game could go. Throughout this week , even with guidance from my lab last week, tutorials and friends helping me , I still struggled. So up till literally a few minutes ago I was a bit lost. I think what I will do now inorder to get my game into a proper working first level which is what I am producing in the next few days, is take it bit by bit. I am happy with my progress and I know exactly how to fix things. May be a late night before a 12 hour shift and a few days of hard work , but im determined to get this game up from where it is now to something I know can be done. I loved the reserch we did and my game has a lot of child learning fundamentals behind it so I feel a story will be really clear as the game is based on absolute logic, but also fun ( as much as maths can be!??!) I aspire to do my idea justice as its taken a lot of work and staining at my computer for ages wondering "why is my whole terrain pink...now why is it blue...why won't it just be the texture of white paper I set it as?!?" Anyways in all, my progress has been up and down. A real adventure. Probably less dramatic then a stick man stuck in a copy book answering maths questions just to travel through many worlds to get to the 3-D world, but none the less I have learned a lot!

I would love to avoid a stressful time like this one for semester two. I need to keep focused and keep to my plans. With out them I tend to fall down. However, like I have been doing I will keep them simple and with plenty of space incase things take longer then I think. A level head and realistic goals will keep me on track next time!

The photo above is amusing and will definitely make me push through!

Heres another, can never have enough motivation!






Monday 19 November 2018

Week 8 comments and feed back





This week is reflections.

I find the feed back comments really good. Especially when they tell me honesty about my game. It is very encouraging to hear people think my game is cool and makes me feel like I can do it. Unity and gaming terrifies me as its new and I have never done it before. These comments help stir me in the right direction. This gives me tips on audience, how to better my game, allows me to be on track of what is missing in my game. I can improve it straight away. This means I will get way better grades at the end of the year as I know where im wrong or write at the end of the semesters.


I love giving feed back out to people. It helps me see what they do , especially people more experienced then me. Also, I like to help people who are struggling or just to support the class as this is the best way we can encourage each other to work to our best. It can help people get back on track if they are falling behind. It can also point out things they are missing especially if they misread the brief. You can help them in this.

I felt awkward at first doing the comments at first but its nice to get to know people in the class. I liked letting others know about me too. My introduction post is very informative and I wouldn’t mind people getting to know me through this.

I dont think there could be anything different with this section. The word limits for feed back and the blog is a really good way to keep you on track and get to genuinely help others. It makes me a better learner and team member as you see so many strengths and weaknesses of others. This is helpful in that we can all help each other improve as well as learn to listen to others and gain their help. This help makes them become the good game designers they want to be. It also helps me to be encouraged to learn, re cap over my work and make sure I am doing my best. Feed back helps you see what a real audience thinks of your game. This is more user testing and a lot of the suggestions made I tested out for my game. This was put into the Game Design Document I created in Dundoc. This created the holy bible ( essentially) for my game. I found it easier to make my game and am on the way of getting to where I need to in it which is really helpfully. These comments let everything be less stressful in the long run of making the game.

Week 8

Hello! Welcome back!!!


Overall the reading and writing assignments have been really beneficial and have helped me get into the right frame of mind.My favourite reading has been last weeks where you read about player MOBS. I never knew there were so many different types of players in game. This thought me about the phycology on  players so I can use this info in my own game.


These readings and blog notes are the sole reason I actually understand about gaming. These set my mind and give me research I can use in my game.

I think I have improved my literacy skills. Also I have been given tips on mindset and so on. This helps in all areas of my course.

I am happy with my progress but still need to fix errors and learn a lot. Im happy and open to do this though. I can't expect myself to be a pro just yet! 😆


Fave pic
This is my favourite image as not only is it entertaining, it is also thought provoking. What if we live in a video game ? Obviously this is not real but its a good way to get. into the mindset of your audience. They want to be engrossed in a game.

Overall these readings were extremely helpful. May be good to give us more time then a weekend to do large assignments or cut the blog comments at the end of the week as theres no point in putting these twice a week. I really wouldn't mind either way though as guidance in this module is the best.

Till tomorrow!

Sunday 18 November 2018

More on the prototype

I have a lot of errors and I don't know how to fix them. Also for this stage I have my character walking and collecting boxes. The next stage I will need him to be better designed (swell as the boss) and for pop up maths questions to be able to be answered. This will require research which I will do this week.

Prototype blog

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Wednesday 14 November 2018

Unity Free Tutorials



                                                      What do I need for my game?

Hello! This week we are to look at 2-4 tutorials we found that we need to make our game.

Here is an evaluation of the unity ones I have mentioned in my other unity blogs and what I need from them:

For the past 7 weeks we have been looking at unity tutorials, making notes on them and making them as part of our lab work in unity. From those the following would be handy for my own game:

Firstly Jimmy Vegas tutorials. In his unity tutorials 1 and 2 he spoke about terrains. I will need this tutorial in order to create the physical environment my character is in. I will need two long rectangle objects on each side of the character and the rest of the environment will need to be a copy book. I will use the terrain inspector option in order to attach a mesh onto these objects so the character doesn't attach to them. I will also need to make the different levels e.g. the last level which is full of cars and so on. This is all shown through these tutorials. 

More specifically, I will need tutorial 2 for making textures and materials in the environment so the worlds look realistic.

Jimmy Vegas's tutorial 3 is all about players and movement for players. I have five characters so I will need to make sure they are correct and scripted correctly in order to move and interact with the environment.

I will use tutorial 4 when making sound effects and other objects as this tutorial shows how to add in music for interacting with objects and other characters. This is important in my game to make it more realistic, fun and interactive for my audience playing the game.

Number 5 teaches us on ray cast for lighting of the environment. This is important in order to make each level look the way it is meant to e.g. the vortex level should be dark.

Aswell as Jimmy Vegas , I will need cat like coding's tutorial on looping the game so I don't need to make a huge terrain I can just keep looping it as you run along jumping over things, unlocking boxes and doing small maths questions before the main boss.

Back to Jimmy Vegas, his 7th tutorial is all about adding text. I will need this for pop ups. This tutorial teaches us how to use animation for this. I would need it to allow my characters to interact with things and see the questions posed to them.

I will need tutorial 8 to add commands for walking, jumping and rendering the the character unlocks a question.

I will need tutorial 9 to change sky lighting and wind in order to create an all around environment for my game. This will allow my game to be as animatic as I would like it to be especially to differentiate the many levels from each other. E.g. the last level will be calm but the vortex level will be really windy.

I will need tutorial 10 and 11 in all my scenes in order to fade the screen. Tutorial 10 and 11 allows us to transition  in order to change scenes.

11 also show to add in bigger objects and fix bugs in my script. Basically to clean up the environment made, character movement and object interactions


But what else do I need?

So I have my environment, characters, lighting, wind, sound, transitions , movement of the character, code in order for the character to work the way I want, how to add in any object I want, I even have a link to the commands and the character.

But there are a few more things I need:

1.How to make a pop-up scene? interactive so people can draw on it?
First you will need mane a fade screen. Then you need to rename it. Add a mesh component to it. Fill in the text mesh component settings. Choose font style, size and colour etc. This creates the pop up itself. 

2. How to collect answers after 3 trys?
This tutorial explains how to do this. To start you go to the project folder and make sure all of your assets are in this. Then you select all of the scenes and drag and drop into the build settings window. Click the scene you want to make, add assets into this and position them right. This is all to create an object you can make as an asset to the game. So how do I collect them? Add in your question. Click “to disable”. Keep making in this way till you have it done. Add script to animate this. 

3.How to make a character run?

Import your assets. Make the character and put it into unity as an asset. Set up the camera so you can see the character and set it up in the correct dimensions through the inspector window. Set up an animator controller. Right click and make another state. Fix the animation settings in the inspector panel and in the character . Make a run tag, set the FOOT ix as run. However I want my character to continuously run. In order to this you click the run asset. Go to the animations tab of the inspector panel. Loop the animation. Set an animator asset for our character by adding it as a component. This is all set up in unity itself. 

4. How to make the pop up interactive for a user to write answers?
Create an object that is going to be interactive. To do this create a canvas , make an object, attach a UI element to the object, transform and set up using the inspector tool. Click on the asset in the project file every time you want to add it to a scene. Create a scene for this , Name it, put text on it , anchor it, set width and height and font settings. Set alignment , right click on the canvas and create a new ui button. This makes it clickable. Add script to this object to make it actually animated/interactive for the audience.



Monday 12 November 2018

Reading: Game fun

Link to pic
Hi !

This week for reading week I read a few articles on including fun into games. Sounds easy? Well its a lot more than you think.

Here is what I found.

1.http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130573/natural_funativity.php:

Here I read an article by Noah Falstien. Noah mentions that the MDA fundamentals describe WHY a game needs fun and basic fundamentals of fun describe HOW. He has a theory on how these two come hand in hand as a theory.  His boss when he started out named Steve Arnold, was originally a child psychologist. He understood the mind of a human , especially children and how to implement his games towards this. Mr Arnold knew how to scientifically form fun. Mr Falstien mentions in his introduction to this article that his boss would ask them to categorise their games into different "fun" categories. This is a mad concept for both myself and Noah as who knew you can categories something so natural as fun.

The article went on to explain this. Our instinct are primarily prehistoric. The basic human is a hunter, gatherer at heart. Mr Falstien explains that these natural instinct to survive is strong. From this we thrive for games which peak our love for fast paced, challenging and interesting things.

Through this ancestral past, we humans ,like animals, thrive for danger and a thrill. Even now people drink alcohol and eat sugar even though it is bad. We thrive off it anyway. A good game should be as if not more addictive. Not only do we thrive for a treat we also love to learn. Espessially children. This would mean we would take risks in a game and so this curiosity needs to be accounted for.

So far Noah has spoken of work and survival as fun activities and these instinct being met in a fun addictive game. But also, relaxation or fun itself, has and importance in making a good game. He explains an analogy of three prehistoric humans.

One prefers to relax, one goes out and hunts no matter what and the third likes to keep their mind busy and continuously learning but also having fun. This seems random ...its not. It links with all said above. A gamer needs to be stimulated in the way they are essentially psychologically wired. Through rewards, hard work, breaks and fun engaging tasks all through out. The two types of fun-theory and practice, learning and engaging.

2.The second article I read was http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm. This article is by Richard A.Bartle. Mr A.Bartle explains the four different type of gamers within MUDS. These approaches show aspects of a inter-relationships with in games.

So what does this mean?!?!?!

MUDS have been around since 1978. No matter how structured the game, its basic aim is fun!

Essentially, this whole thing came from a heated debate amongst professional players. They couldn't decide what was the best or worst aspects of the game. However, the author of the article Richard A.Bartle, has expressed there are 4 main categories of players.

A. Achievements amongst other players. Their main aim is competitiveness comes with goals and fighting to win.

B.Creating their own game. They do this by exploring the games world and figuring out how to get through it.

 C.Socialising with others. through working together in chats to pass a game

D. Completing tasks with others. Going on solo adventures in a team on screen with other users.

So whats the point? To know your audience and inter audience interactions. Essentially there are 4 main types of gamers. The social, killers , explorers and achievers. Each have their own likes and dislikes. Us as designers musty attention to this and make our games in a way that any player would like things in it. We must delve deeper into their interactions also. This is so interesting and really makes me understand how to make a game and to be smart about this.Achievers love to move past challenges and win. They can win agains killers, be killers or just love to achieve no matter what. Killers love to achieve, socialise in order to kill and win , or just solo kill on their own with no interactions. Socialisers tend to socialise with each other in order to complete their goals, could be killers in a game or task orientated groups who want to win or even individuals who talk and strategies in order to win. Finally, Explorers. Explorers love to wonder as they please. They can be competitive killers, just plain goal setters or even like to socialise as they wonder.

Within the 4 areas of player interactions , there are inter links and solo aspects of all. Just like personalities gamers also are different from person to person.

3.Finally, for my last article, I read about the specific fundamentals of MDA. Found on this website: http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf. MDA stands for Mechanics Dynamics and Aesthetics. Aesthetics are the designs which go alongside the games story arc and characters. Each of these elements all link in with each other in order to visually give the viewer an idea of what they are playing. Secondly, Mechanics, algorithms and rules which shape the games concepts. Without these the player would have no fun figuring out the game. Thirdly, Dynamics. This is game run times, behaviours allowed, progression in the game through player inputs and out puts.

To evaluate this, a game must have rules, perfect design and other technical game elements in order for the game to progress. This is all well in good but players need to be able to move the game along themselves through the algorithms of the games.


GDD update


Picture of my feelings right now

Hey!

So a few of you have told me you can't access my GDD doc in dundoc! (NIGHTMARE)

It was set to active but I may have given the wrong link !

Here is one that may work better if not please let me know and I will sort it ( some how...).

Thank you !!


Saturday 10 November 2018

Final GDD


Screen shot of my dundoc


Hello everyone!


This is a blog on my final GDD document. This is the bible for my game which I will follow to the tee. Hope you enjoy!

Link to dundoc: 


Hope you enjoy and let me know your feed back!


Wednesday 7 November 2018

Unity Tutorials 05

screen grab of tutorial
Heyy! Welcome back to the blog!

We are really getting along in unity and creating our games!

This week we learned how to add sky by going to assets, downloading a sky, editing it in unity and saving it. We used c# to properly add it into our game. This is really cool as we could change the lighting of the whole game just by editing the sky asset. This brings more life to the game and a more realistic look also.

We also learned how to hide an ob jest. This was an odd process as we make the object as normal, created code for it, then made black tags in order to hide it.

A third thing we learned this week washed to add a fade in screen. This could be an intro or exit of one level or scene to another. This is really helpful as it splits the game into pieces for the gamer which is more fun. We used animation though unity to make this which is a very interesting and easy process.We used more complicated c# code however, just like the previous two, its copy, paste and change some tag names. This was great as it didn't take long and wasn't confusing. Yet it made sure a big difference in the game.

Thanks for reading!

Till the weekend!

Monday 5 November 2018

Game Decision's



image link


Welcome back!!

Heres about game decisions and flow theory, making a perfect game.


Practice makes perfect. You need to understand the audience and game your making 100% before even making a prototype. There is a lot of research, idea generation and specifying exactly what you want your game to look and feel like. You need to express this in a way that someone else could make your game.


You need to first research what is out there already and once you've decided your story of your game, you will have to make a story board.There should be many iterations of this in order to make your game the most fun, interactive and addictive you can. You need to include all of the elements such as, colour, design genre, style etc.

You need to know the technology elements  and what codes you use. e.g. you need to know how to actually create a game using unity and c#. You need to make sure you are fulfilling your audiences needs and that your game can fit into a niche part of the industry by creating an unique and fun game. People wont play it otherwise. You need main goals and a theme which you can build your game off of and build it up into a perfect game. Your game needs to have goals as well as you as a game designer. Your characters need to build from these goals and the setting must show this also. You need to essentially build a story from this information.

You will need many prototypes and iterations once all of this is sorted. Then get feed back on those examples. Finally, from this feed back you will make your game.Key things are a set design, cost, elements etc .


Thanks for reading!


Last post-Favourite game

Hello all! This is my last blog!!  I loved everyones projects and there was a lot of work done by all. There were...