Unity Free Tutorials

As for this week i decided to work on my game project. For this tutorial i looked at how to make first person character jump. An image below is my code on C# for jumping. I had no problem working on these and i find it very easy to get around it. Things i like to improve is the jumping motion. As mine is not very smooth jumping, maybe it is because of my laggy laptop.

C# for jumping

First person screenshot

Screenshot of player jumping

Further tutorial i have edit my countdown timer to more suitable position which i think is top right. As shown on screenshot below

full landscape

I also decided to add collecting items. My plan was just made 4 prototype items, which right now is just a cube. I had 4 cubes layout near the player to test what happened when the player triggered them. I made an UI with text of the number of cubes in the scene, which is 4. So after the play triggered the cube the number will start to decrease. I ran into lots of error on this as after the cube collected the number did not decrease and it stays as 4. 

items

Game Testing

From reading the article that was giving to us, i strongly agreed that most people when are being asked about their thoughts on something they most likely to say "i like it" but deep down they might not like it. And it's in our nature to let our emotions speak first and our logic second.

The article tells us why giving a criticism is a good thing. It is known as constructive criticism and it refers to feedback both positive and negative. Giving constructive criticism can help to assist individual by giving  feedback on things that they can improve on and things to avoid. What i have learned is that constructive criticism can keep feelings from being hurt by focusing on things that they can improve while avoiding personal insults.

The article also gave us tips on how to give a good constructive criticism such as :

- focus on valid and unbiased feedback
- make your criticism clear, understandable, and relevant

Some example:

Bad ways of giving constructive criticism:

1. That logo design sucks, who the heck would pay for something like that?
2. I hate red and green, why not use black and white instead!

Good ways of giving constructive criticism:

1. The balloon font used in the logo seems a bit too playful for your business, do you think a serif- font might be more professional?
2. There isn't much contrast between the background and text color, and the font size is a bit small so the text is hard to read.

I think this photo can represent the words constructive criticism

Interested link :
constructive criticism
https://personalexcellence.co/blog/constructive-criticism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_criticism

Alpha

As for previous tutorial i have made the landscape of the game project. I took further look at more design ideas and have came up with the final landscape.  I created the terrain and lift up the surface about 10, then shift to lower the terrain to add water and to build land and smooth then out evenly to created sandy landscape mix with mountain and rocks.

The landscape consist of sea surrounding the island with mountains covering the island. In the middle of the island has large tress and grasss and fill with rocks, The player will still have a path to follow. For further development i will use mesh collider around each area so the player can not go through it.

I have also created C# script with the countdown clock and after the time runs out the screen will appear as "Game Over". I will look at further detail on creating to make it more unique and well design

View of the island

Timer and Landscape of rocks

Game Over C#

Entering path for the player

Unity Free Tutorials

From the last tutorial i made a countdown clock but ran into error so i decided for this tutorial i will just focus on making the landscapes of my game project. I started by making the terrain and added grass. I added grass to the whole terrain. I have followed tutorial from the previous ones that i did for week 2 - 3 on Unity but adding different texture and assets. I created a path and add mountains around the paths and have forest in the middle of the mountains. The reason i decided to created the path is have the player to follow the path to find the gem which will be hidden in the forest.

For the next tutorial i will look at more detailed on making for landscape and adding rivers to the scene, countdown clock, action buttons and mini map.

Error that i have encounter during this tutorial was that working with first person controller. What happened was my first person have a very large circle around it when i click on it. After pressing play my character started by dropping down from the sky at the very end of the terrain map.

Screenshot of the lanscape

Screenshot of the gameplay

Games Stories

From reading articles i understand that game stories are very important to the game and the player. Game designers often reference three works in particular that tell us how to make useful stories that apply directly to games. These work are Poetics by Aristotle, The hero with thousand faces by Joseph Campbell, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and Principles of screenwriting by Robert McKee. Aristotle, Campbell and McKee provide some of the most often-cited advice for storytellers in general, so i think it's a good idea to apply their advice to my games.

Identification between the player and their characters, avatars, tokens and so on is a common way to get players to be emotionally engaged with the game.

The article tells us the guidelines for how to tell a good story within a game.
One important thing that Aristotle really hammered on is that each scene should follow the previous ones with a logical cause-and-effect relationship. Weak writing goes like this: “X happens, then Y happens, then Z happens.” Stronger writing is more like this: “X happens, and because of that Y happens, and because of that Z happens.”
Aristotle defined a stage play as being comprised of six elements. These are Plot, Theme, Character, Diction, Rhythm and Spectacle.

GTA V
I think the game story of this game is very good and interesting

Link of interest:
https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-9-dot-2-mckee?module_item_id=44583
http://www.gamasutra.com/features
https://www.thoughtco.com/write-the-short-game-story-2074328

Week 8 Progress

With the progress i am mostly happy with all the blog and unity tutorials. I really enjoyed doing unity tutorials but with all the reading and writing is a bit much for each day today as there are many work from different modules aswell. I do have a routine to do all the blog and unity work. I mostly get the work done on the day that is due but the time that i spent was sometimes more an hour or two everyday. The assignment i enjoyed the most is working with unity and getting to learn many new things that i can do on unity. It always surprised me with a click of a button can do to the game and how many things can changed or have different effects. For the extra credit  i did not use any of the extra credit as i had no time to work on them. But whenever i am free i tried to do one or two of them.

There are lots of things i want to change on the second semester. First i want to change my routine of work progress. I want to finish the work that was given as soon as possible to make time for other modules. Second is to change my habits of being lazy to read. And last i want to practice more and look up more tutorials on unity during during my breaks before going to second semester for multimedia. There are things that i want to avoid such as overthinking and trying something first before saying no to it. Something new that i want to try for second semester is to go more in depth with game design and try using new software.

Here's an image that i think it will motivate me

Week 8 Comments and Feedback

For feedback in, i find it very helpful by getting feedback from other students. All the comments are very positive and was very interesting to read what other has to say. I want to rate this very high quality of comments and want to thank all of the people who have given feedback to me. All of the comments are all helpful. They made me see things that i don't see on my own and the mistakes that i made and was pointed out from the comments. It was tragic to see the negativity on my post but it helps me to do better on my next blog. To be honest i was a little bit ashamed on myself that i could have done better.

For feedback out, i was always not sure if i should said this or that when i thought they could improve on a certain things. I did not want to be mean or made the blog writer feels bad about their blog. Most of the comments i have written was very positive comments and i think instead of saying this is bad idea, i tried to avoid it by saying something else instead such as " maybe you could try this it might help your design to look much better". I would rate my feedback and comment 5/10 because i feel like i could have given more feedback and read more on their other blog posts. I found some good feedback strategies by reading the articles that was given to us on reading every week and by reading other comments from different users. I got a very good idea on my own writing as i analyse other's people writing. From my writing which makes no sense sometimes, i think it makes more sense now as i got a few ideas on how to write from other's people writing. 

I got to connect with more people through their blogs. I think it is a very good idea. At first i thought it was kind of stupid to comment to other's people blog, there is no point. Now i see why we are doing it so. I was happy with my introduction post although there are lots of things i wanted to change or write more about myself to get more people to connect with me and tell them more story about me.

I look forward to read more articles and more blog post from other's people student.I feel that if i read and write more i can give much better positive and helpful feedback or comments towards myself and others. There are lots of things i want to change on my blogs. I would like to rewrite it again to give more information and make it clearer ideas. But i think i'll just leave it there to look back to so it can help me how i went wrong on a certain topic and how can i improve it better.

Thanks for all the feedback and here's a smiley face to let you know that i'm thankful for your comments 

Week 8 Reading and Writing

My overall thoughts about  reading and writing assignments are working very well for me as i get to practice more on writing to improve my writing skills and vocabulary as well as reading. Although sometimes i do think it's too much to read some of the articles and most of the time i just got lost in the topic itself.

My favourite reading so far was near the first or second reading week, which is about mindset. I really enjoyed reading the articles as it also helped me with my mindset. 

Reading notes helps me each week with my game because every time i went back to read them, i always come up with new and different ideas from previous game idea. I think it's really good idea to go back and read few things over because you never know that you might have a better idea than before.

I have discovered many new readings and research strategies such as things i would never have done it myself. Looking at tutorials on unity is my new discovery. I never knew how game were made until watching unity tutorials.

I am very happy with my game project. Although there are some parts that i am not sure how i will make it work. I will start to prototyping my game project by first making the game architecture. i will do this by looking up more tutorials on YouTube. I feel like my game is not to bad in terms of the game story and the game objective. Writing up blogs about my game every week really helped me a lot as every week i always came up with new ideas and design from previous blog. I guess that's part of designing as you always have new ideas every time you write or design.

What i consider to be my biggest accomplishments for multimedia are working with unity which i have never used or heard about it before also writing blogs. When i first started using unity i thought to myself, there is no way i'm going to be able to make a game or even tried to make a game. After a few weeks with unity engine i started to get to know the basic of the software and what it can do. I was very interested of how amazing it do, it is like i'm creating my own world where can customize everything as i like. Writing blog and reading a lot of articles was a thing that i never wanted to do at all but for this class i had to read and write. At first it seems really boring and takes too much time but as i get to read and write more i really enjoyed it. Getting to have new ideas through reading articles and changing my ways of thinking was i think my accomplishment for this class.

I choose this image to be my favourite image because i think it is very cool to make a special item or gem in a game. Every game have a special items for the player to collect and i find it  very interesting creating my own gem.

I look forward to read more and write more. I want to improve and commit myself to do more readings and writings because it will help me in the future.

Prototype

For this week I started prototyping my game design. I started by making a timer on the scene.

 I used Ul and created a text after that I looked up C# script with countdown time tutorials.

After created the script I had a problem with adding the script to the text. For further detail, I liked to design the the layout of the text and make the visual text looks more appealing when playing the game.

As for the architecture of the scene I have only created a sample floor plan. I plan on to add more floor and make it bigger and longer environment and to add trees, forest and mountains. I will look up more tutorials on how to add such as beaches and adding rivers to the scenes. Also having it animated.

Timer Clock

C# Script

Floor Plan

Unity Free Tutorials

For this week Unity tutorials we are able to do any tutorial as we liked on unity. I choose to learn about about materials and looked at RPG games as it may apply to my game project. I've only started first and second tutorials. 
For the tutorial i created textures and lighting. Going back to the basic helps me a lot in controlling the scenes or navigating through the game platform. I got  better understanding from learning the basics again.
I was able to create texture and material very easier and adding normal maps to materials. I've tried out different shader to grass and dirt to give different looking to the game. I also learnt a new thing today from the tutorial which is tilting. By applying different number to tilting gives different look to the object which can be very useful.

Texture + Materials

Game Fun

From reading through the articles I've learnt that games are created by designers/teams of developers, and consumed by players. They are purchased, used and eventually cast away like most other consumable goods.

The difference between games and other entertainment products (such as books, music, movies and plays) is that their consumption is relatively unpredictable. The string of events that occur during gameplay and the outcome of those events are unknown at the time the product is finished.  
The MDA framework formalizes the consumption of games by breaking them into their distinct components and establishing their design counterparts.

MDA Components

Definition of the components:

Mechanics
Describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.
Dynamics 
Describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others outputs over time. 
Aesthetics 
Describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.  

Link to Sources:
dmonline.pbworks.com/w/page/128058585/CDM Online
http://www.gamasutra.com/features
https://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/09/03/mda-game-design-framework/

Final GDD

For my final GDD I would like to add some thoughts and more ideas towards my game. For this blog i want to talk about the Technical, System Requirement, Game Architechture and User Interface ( control ).

Technical

I'm planing to create the game using Unity engine software. I plan to use a lot of art design which will be involve in the landscape of the game such as the ocean, the beach, the jungle, trees, rivers, hills and mountains. For special item like the rudder or the hull of the boat that required the player to collect, I will try to make it as realistic as possible. As the character I planned to use first person character as I want the player to feel that they are actually stuck in the unknown island. 

The physical require to play the game is the collect the items to pass through each level to reach the goals. For rules of the game, the player is only allowed a certain time to complete the mission. If the mission failed it would be game over.

The platform on the game will be on PC.

System Requirement

There is no system requirement, any PC or Mac can run the game with the minimum of 2GB Ram required.

Game Architechture

The landscape will be an island fill with mountains, hills, rivers and tress of the skybox I like to just stick with just one tone of the sky colour which will be bright sunny day light. For character, the player will just see 2 arms from the screen as it is first person player.

User Interface ( control )

The character can be control by the keyboard or with the joystick attached the PC. The player can only move left, right, backward and forward by pressing "A" to go left, "D" to go right, "W" to move forward and "S" to travel backward. With the help of the mouse the user can travel to all direction as the user desired. The mouse represent the first person character if the mouse is hover to the left which means the person is looking towards the left side.

Link to Dundoc : https://www.dundoc.com/project/4790/game-design

A Visual Design of the Island

Unity Tutorial 05

For this week tutorial on unity I got to learn how to apply lights to my game using lighting and skybox. Skybox provide a lot of different types of skies and on lighting windows you can then edit the lights such as changing colors etc.

My unity game

For second tutorial that I've watched and tried was quite easy to do so as it was the same as the tutorial before where picking up object such as gem but this time it was picking up an axe.
Second part I also did the fade in scene. It was very interesting starting of the game with the fade in screen. I was able to play around with different colors of starting scene as well.

Picking up an axe

Fade in scene

Game Decisions

For this week reading blog, I've read an article called "Cozy games". The article gives an overview of what coziness is. They explore more into depth on the word "cozy" and have found out many different meanings in cozy such as coziness can help your game appeal to broader audiences or coziness helps retention by giving players control over pacing while still maintaining engagement during periods of rest. 

What is cozy?
The article refers coziness itself to how strongly a game evokes the fantasy of safety, abundance, and softness. Coziness defines as safety, abundance and softness.

Example stated on the article: 
"Safety: A cozy game has an absence of danger and risk. In a cozy game, nothing is high-risk, and there is no impending loss or threat. Familiarity, reliability, and one’s ability to be vulnerable and expressive without negative ramification all augment the feeling of safety. To maximize safety, activities should be voluntary and opt-in so that players never feel the threat of coercion."
"Abundance: A cozy game has a sense of abundance. Lower level Maslow needs (food, shelter) are met or being met, providing space to work on higher needs (deeper relationships, appreciation of beauty, self actualization, nurturing, belonging). Nothing is lacking, pressing or imminent."
"Softness: Cozy games use strong aesthetic signals that tell players they are in a low stressenvironment full of abundance and safety. These are gentle and comforting stimulus, where players have a lower state of arousal but can still be highly engaged and present."

Cozy also fulfill needs  as i think people play because it allows them to experiment with a particular set of skills and activities that would otherwise be expensive or impossible in the real world. The opportunity to fight off attackers might not exist, but a game lets them practice those skills safely and easily. 
Human is motivated to fulfill various needs. For example, when we get hungry, we are motivated to find food and eat. Players seek to fulfill their emotional and psychological needs within games. Each game taps into a highly specific set of motivations. For example a survival game such as ‘Don’t Starve’ is very upfront about the fact that it, let’s player explore the planning and tactical issues around getting food. 

"Don't Starve"
Gameplay

Link to sources: 
http://www.lostgarden.com/
Theory-Fun-Game-Design
https://www.klei.com/games/dont-starve

Game Design Document

Story: 
The story of this game is the character was lost in an unknown island and his only way out is to find items to build his escape. These items consist of a boat parts. So the purpose is to find those parts to complete each levels.

Find items before the time runs out. The setting will set on a small island fill with trees, mountains, river, difficulties and hidden items/objects around the island.  After collecting all the items the player then pass to the next level. Each levels has a certain time for the player to collect the items.

Character:

The character will be third person. I much prefer to do it on third person more than first person player. I feel like the game play will be more enjoyable as this and personally i like to play third person character. The character costume will be just a plain white t-shirt fill with holes as the character has been lost for a certain time now and with blue shorts. The character will not have any shoes this will also make his movements slower as well but there are shoes on every levels that the character can find to increase the character's movement.

Environment/Level

The environment would be during the day time. The reason i choose day time is because during night time it would be very difficult for the player to find the items and will be already difficult during day time. As for levels, each level will have about 3-4 items to find within the given time. The duration will change depending on the levels.

Gameplay:

Example of gameplay: for the first level, the character will be placed in the middle of the island. The character will be surrounded by mountains terrain, river and grassland. Once  the character is on the map the time will automatically starting to countdown. As for first level i think the duration of the time would be around 3-5 minutes long to find the items. I also wanted to add shoes for the character to run faster as well as extend in time such as adding 30 seconds more. 

Art Description:

The game color will be mostly green as it is an island and unknown. The game will have mountains with flowing rivers, fill with forest and high grass. I also wanted to add sandy beaches and sea with blue sky.

Sound:

For sound, i want to add exciting music, sound effects as the character is searching for the boat's items. Few seconds before the time run out i also wanted to make the music more intense with the countdown clock example: 3, 2, 1...!

Link to my Dundoc: https://www.dundoc.com/project/4790/game-design

Escape from bug island
My inspired idea

Unity Tutorial 05

For Dynamic Hub tutorial I was able to learn new things in unity. I was very interested in making text and adding text to the game. I think it helps to identified objects easier. Being able to edit different cursor is very fun to do too. 

I ran into a problem with the C# scripts, i was able to do all the coding  but i could not find how i went wrong. The image there showing the "PlayerCasting" it does not exist in the context.

Problem with C#

As for making weapon. I was very excited to watch the this tutorial. Adding the axe to the first person character was kind of tricky as my axe was not shown when pressing play mode. I got all the animation working but it is just shown on the screen. Being able to animation the axe is very cool. I had no idea you can do animation on unity. Also on this tutorial i got to learn how to add object such as fences and add component such as box collider so player can not walk pass through. 

Animation of Axe

Game GDD

From reading the article, what i think game design document is that a game design document is a highly descriptive living design document of the design for a video game. A GDD is created and edited by the development team and it is used in the video game industry to organize efforts within a development team.These documents are created by the development teams such as artists, designers and programmers to guide throughout the game process.

As reading through, made me realised how much components can have huge affect towards the player and the game. An example of this was " Imagine playing Chess with flat, cardboard counters. It's still the same game but would it be as enjoyable an experience?". The components consists of making the tiles smaller than the spaces they're placed upon. This means that they can be slightly bumped and moved without disturbing all the others. Use highly contrasting/distinguishable colours for player pieces.

The box. 
I think most first impressions of a game come from the box. It does not matter if the game is good to play but if the box does not look attracted then there will be no one to buy it. There are many ways to get people's attention through the box.
Examples :

List the name of the game on the side of the box.
Make sure any "back of the box" photo shows a legal game position. 
Print opposite sides of the box horizontally and vertically.

Game rules are very important to the game design too. Stating your rules to the game  it's a very difficult procedure and one of the hardest things to get right.
There are an amazing number of very common questions that many games fail to answer
Examples:

When exactly does the game end? 
When do you reshuffle cards? 
Is a player allowed to bid more money than she has?
What happens if a player runs out of money during the game? 

There are tips to that a game designer can do to improve a game that does involve spending a money such as support your game online, make replace parts available and include extra components as replacements.

Interested links : 
Design Considerations
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bochalla/5248915179
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_design_document

The image on the game box can attract many buyers.
The design of the box has nothing to do with how the game plays.

Game Vision Statement

3D Runner-Vision Statement

For my vision towards my game is the game will be one player game. 

3D Runner is adventure, simulation and strategy game set on the lost island with lots of adventures and obstacles you will be facing.

Game play is similar to Temple run or other types of running games, with the added twist, interest and excitement of treasure hunting game.

Full 3D game, with 3/4 view camera.

Very fast paced running, with lots of action such as jumping or roll under.

You play as a strong central character who grows, with light RPG elements including: character levels, experience points, stats, and skills.

Collecting items to clear the level, in order to gain access to new area.

link for source used : https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/69514/top-10-treasure-hunting-games

Treasre hinting game

Unity Tutorial 03

As for tutorial 03 I thought it was going to be working on making the game from recent tutorial. But this tutorial will teach us how to make animated clock using unity engine game.

Making an animated clock is very interesting and fun to do so. I find it much easier now from before such as using game object tools, making parent child or using the transform but still having trouble with viewing different kind of position on the scene panel. 

The tutorial thought me a lot more in coding. i was having trouble with the time such as coding hours, minutes, seconds and making it to rotate. The code that I work with the clock is much different from previous tutorials. It has more commands to it.

During making this project i got confused on adding object into parent child but once i read over and went over my work carefully i was able to figure it out. The lesson that i learned from this is that you must pay attention to even a small detail which can make a huge difference in your project.

What I'm looking forward to next tutorials is to work with more coding as i want to be able to have more practice in coding and to learn more in unity. I can't wait on what i will be doing next!

My Project- Clock

Games MDA

   What i have understand from reading and watching the link that was provided for us on cdmonline is in game design the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics framework is a tool used to analyze games.

 It formalizes the consumption of games by breaking them down into three components: Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. These three words have been used informally for many years to describe various aspects of games, but the MDA framework provides precise definitions for these terms and seeks to explain how they relate to each other and influence the player's experience.

-   Mechanics are the base components of the game - its rules, every basic action the player can take in the game, the algorithms and data structures in the game engine etc.

-   Dynamics are the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player input and "cooperating" with other mechanics.

-   Aesthetics are the emotional responses evoked in the player.

There are eight type of Aesthetics as stated by Hunicke, LeBlanc and Zubek:

1. Sensation (Game as sense-pleasure): Player experiences something completely unfamiliar.

2. Fantasy (Game as make-believe): Imaginary world.

3. Narrative (Game as drama): A story that drives the player to keep coming back

4. Challenge (Game as obstacle course): Urge to master something. Boosts a game's replayability.

5. Fellowship (Game as social framework): A community where the player is an active part of it. Almost exclusive for multiplayer games.

6. Discovery (Game as uncharted territory): Urge to explore game world.

7. Expression (Game as self-discovery): Own creativity. For example, creating character resembling player's own avatar.

8. Submission (Game as pastime): Connection to the game, as a whole, despite of constraints.

Condra Game

Example is Condra Game. X has some data like a position and actions such as jumping. Since his piece of data its a Mechanic and since jumping is an action is also a mechanic.

This image contains numbers of mechanics. Firstly you can see some data. X himself has a position and as well as the enemies. When x touches the enemies he takes the damage.

link informations:

http://acmlm.kafuka.org/board/thread.php?id=8460

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf

http://gamedevelopertips.com/mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics-game-design-theory-behind-games/

Feedback Strategies

Feedback Strategies

Feedback is about giving information in a way that encourages the recipient to accept it, reflect on it, learn from it, and hopefully make changes for the better. Being able to give feedback is a skill that is useful in your personal and professional lives. 

The two article that i want to write about are:

Be a mirror and Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job"

Be a mirror

I like the phrase "Be a mirror" as i think it is very catchy phrase. I think being a mirror to someone is to understand and gain their importation information. After knowing their information we then can give feedback on our thoughts about their information or share our own experience. We are not meant to judge them as the mirror job is to reflect back. 

one of the quality feedback is to focus on the process and the work on the reader put in. When we focus on the process. We can show their effort on the work and it is valued and important.

Giving feedback can make plenty of changes in their work such as improving or understanding more of the concept.

Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job"

From reading the article there are topics that i liked reading and want to talk about them.

Losing Interest:

For example of this is when a kid is doing something as painting or drawing.  Stop saying "Good Job" and say "Good painting!" may get children to keep painting for as long as we keep watching and praising. It encourage the children to do well  and to complete on their drawings. 

It is said by Lilian Katz, one of the country’s leading authorities on early childhood education, "once attention is withdrawn, many kids won’t touch the activity again." Indeed, an impressive body of scientific research has shown that the more we reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. 

Now the point isn’t to draw, to read, to think, to create – the point is to get the goody, whether it’s an ice cream, a sticker, or a "Good job!"

Be a mirror

The mirror is reflecting/ showing the care to safety path.