Intro to Multimedia, Let's make a game.

Stories in Games  Controler photography Image source Reading 1 by John Sutherland Reading 2 Case Study Video about storytelling A good story in-game is a key factor to raise the quality of your game. Looking back what story has turned out to be successful in former story games is a good starting point for your story in the game. It is important for the developer to know the basics of storytelling when approaching this topic. Over the years the digital games have matured massively and raised the level of potential high.  There are many important features that the developer of the game must consider and focus on in their story. There must be a protagonist which is often the main character that the players engage with the most and love. To give a reason for the story an element of an inciting incident must be added which will apply the main character to have a function or a role that must be completed towards the end of the story game. This can also be the object of desire that t...

 It's Fun Screenshot of my Unity Project I have done a lot this week getting closer and closer to achieve my first game. I didn't think I will enjoy this so much, I don't know is it the fact that I can create and then interact with the objects, or is it the fact that it is my first time making a game and I'm just finding it interesting at the moment but I'm having lot's of fun making the whole course. To make it better for myself I have focussed a lot on coding for the first few weeks to get everything working first before I move on to the exciting things like making the obstacles. I am very pleased with how much of the code I have already done and it all seems to be working well. I have added in a restart button for the player to start the game over when he or she wishes to however, I have also added some coding for the ground that if the player falls and lands on the green flat area the game is automatically restarted. Therefore I think I might remove the self...

Onto the Next Level Unity Challenge 4 work screenshot We are moving on and getting more into Unity as the weeks go by. This week I have completed lesson 4 and tackle the challenge that came with it. There is more code being involved as we make more impressive and fun things in the game. I am finding my way around Unity easier now and manage to work out some tasks on my own which I am happy with.    I didn't have much trouble with finishing up lesson four this week, I have only skipped a point in one of the tutorial videos but as soon as I noticed that something wasn't working correctly I then went back through the video again. I quickly found my mistake and which then fixed everything else for me. I found the code a little bit overwhelming this week and felt like there was too much of it which added some difficulty in finishing the game. I found the challenge quite hard to do and it took me some time to complete. There was a lot of code and scripts to look through and since we...

Looking back Multi-tasking Image source It's not easy to comment on other people's work especially if you know them well and you don't want to criticise the person but help them. After those few weeks, we have been thought about how to properly give feedback to people so they can improve from it and don't treat it as a negative thing. The feedback from other students should be like an inspiration for you to want to improve and make your project enjoyable for others rather than just yourself. Most of my comments sounded helpful however some have been added a bit too late as I might already have moved on or had a specific thing done. The students really tried to help and had some good ideas however the majority of the time I felt like it is was too late as it would completely change my game idea which would be fine if I only started. It would be better if the feedback could be given much earlier. Despite this, I have considered some of the feedback I've received and c...

Reflect Week Game controller  Image source It is not so long ago that I started here in the second year but it feels like it was only a few weeks ago. the time flies by and along with it my progress that I have made so far. I definitely feel like I am improved my academic writing and spell checks, not only because I downloaded Grammarly which helps me and teaches me but also because I have had a lot of practice so far. I don't think I'm great at academic writing but feel like I have improved and more often now, I try to sound more formal and think about how I'm phrasing my sentences. Despite the improvement and the practice I have I still don't like the readings and find some of them difficult as they can be very descriptive. I managed to do them myself but found it very helpful when we started to do the readings together, it was also a nice way for us all to work together and to change the way we work. After doing the readings together I feel more comfortable with them...

  My Meme   Meme created at  Imgflip

First Gameplay   Screenshot of my Unity This is getting better and better with every element added. I feel like this week I really progress with the work on my game and I'm moving forward. I really like how it is coming along and enjoy the little gameplay I can already get. I like how I can control what and how I want to make and create this project not having to follow a tutorial from step 1. It gives me a lot of freedom and allows me to be more creative. This week I have managed to fix the controls that I had a problem with last week. The ball was bouncing around and only the forward and backward movement worked. I am happy that I managed to fix those controls and make a proper, fully working script for the ball that now can move 360 degrees using the keyboard keys. Screenshot of my Unity As seen above I have done some experimenting to see what works and what I could add to my game to make it more fun, so far everything is working for me greatly and I am getting more excited abou...

My favourite Unity Game so far screenshot of my unity work This week in Unity we have done some game that took us to the next level of game development. I will definitely find these unity tutorials very useful for my own project as it involves a lot of the features that I was interested in my own game. I feel more prepared for further developing my own game prototype and think that with those skills I learned in this week's Unity I will be able to take my game to a better level and they could really improve its functionality.   We have created a game about a rolling ball that has powerups to collect and the ability to knock out an enemy. I found this game the most interesting to make out of all the ones we made before. However, this meant we had to use more code and it got more complicated. I didn't have much trouble following the videos but felt overwhelmed by the amount of code we started using. I really liked how we have changed the controls slightly in these tutorials, we ...

What is Fun in Games?  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 type...

  Mathematics of Cookies 

  Twitter Lists Twitter Follow image Image Source Link to my Lists I have just created my first two lists on Twitter. They were easy to make and turned out to be very helpful in organising your Twitter tweets. You can create a list for every topic and interest. I have never used or created Twitter lists before but will start from now on to help the content I find on Twitter more organised and together.  

Making a Start Screen Shot of my game This week was my first time working on Unity on my own without following the video or having hints on how to make things work. I have begun to work on my own game this week, it will be a challenge to complete but so far I am not doing too bad. I am a little bit stressed with the coding and how successful I will be in bringing my whole idea to reality in Unity. I feel like I may not have the skills to achieve exactly what I want but I will give it my best shot. I started off by setting up my own project in Unity and played around to see what I know and get to explore Unity on my own a bit more. I have to be honest I was slightly blank at first because I had no assets or tutorial videos that I had to follow like we do every week, I got this huge freedom of doing in my own way and how I wanted. I made a sphere and other objects and then used the previous unity tutorials to see what I can do and what will work in my game. Using the tutorials from lesso...

Game Flow   Game Controller Image Source “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 ...

  About my GDD Document Overview sketch of my game idea  Close up sketch of my game idea Link to me GDD  My GDD Document Dundoc I found the document fairly hard to start as I wasn't sure if I am putting in enough information and whether or not I lack a lot of content. I decided to try to make a game design document on Dundoc. It took some time to get to know the website but I managed to learn the basic steps very quickly. I like how Dundoc offers you two different templates that help you out to begin.  I have started some work on my Game Design document on Dundoc. I have set up my account and proceeded to work. To help visualize my game more and make it easier for myself to explain, I have drawn some game sketches. I have applied colour to some to show what colours I am hoping to use in the game. In the Dundoc, I picked the most important and obvious headings and in those heading, I have explained my game design and provided the sketches in the image section. I have ...

  Improving at Unity screenshot of my finished game Unity is getting more and more into details, there are constantly new things we learn and then the challenges are getting harder and involve more thinking. This week the challenge was very challenging compared to last's week. I am glad we have the hints and the previous tutorials because otherwise, I don't think I would have an idea of how to approach them. This week we learned how to add in music in the background and around effects. I am pleased with this because I was planning to use audio in my game so I am glad we had a unity tutorial on this. I like how it is not too complicated and fairly easy to understand the steps taken in order to get the sound in. I felt that even the code for the audio wasn't too bad to follow and then do in the challenge. I really enjoyed playing around with the different effects that them fixing them up in the challenge. I think that this week's Unity tutorials are going to be very helpf...

My first meme on Cheezburger My meme from Cheezburger It was a fun little task and I found it very easy to use the Cheezburger. 

 Another Unity Tutorial Screenshot of my work from Unity I am shocked by the amount of progress I have with every Unity tutorial. They're are starting to get more complicated at times while other things start to be more clear. I still don't like and don't feel very comfortable with the coding but I enjoy all the things we create and start to feel more comfortable that I will be able to make my own game. I can see how it is all coming along slowly and already have learned bits that I need for my own game. In this week we have made a new game where they have to jump over the obstacles that spawn on their way. We have used the spawnmanager again this week which gave some more practice and made it a bit more clear. We then had to use a lot of the coding again to further develop our game and then towards the end we have looked at some animation features where we made the player look like running and jumping. I found this area interesting to learn and understood this part of the ...

 This week I made a Quote   Quote made at  Canva This is one of my favourite quotes. I have made it on Canva using my own photo that I found and thought it fit in perfectly for this. It was a fun and relaxing task to do that I enjoyed.

 All in This together Screenshot of our document 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 (1999) 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. How do we make one? There are a variety of tools that could be use...