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