Annotated Bibliography

My topic in relation to the medium is game. I would like to continue to my previous game project. I feel like i can do better to improve the unfinished survival game.

coggle mind map

5 annotated bibliographies

Level Design is a discipline of game development involving creation of video game levels, locales, stages or missions. This is commonly done using a level editor, a game development software designed for building levels. Level design is both an artistic and technical process. In early days of video games, a single programmer would create the maps and layouts for a game, and a discipline or profession dedicated solely to level design did not exist.
Link to source: Level Design

Theory : game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise or experimental purposes. Game design creates goals, rules and challenges to define a board game, card game, dice game. casino game, role-playing game, sport, video game, war ticigame or simulation that produces desirable interaction among its participants and possibly, spectators.
Link to source:: Theory

Constructivism : Game-based learning is built a constructivist type of learning. Constructivism posits the need to provide students with the necessary tools so they can build their own procedures in order to solve a problem. This implies a participatory process by student, who interact with their environment to solve the situation that is being set out to them.
Link to source : Constructivism

Behaviourism : Behaviourism is one of the four lenses of game making, and is the school of thought that prefers experient, rule-driven designs. It is inspired by behavioural and motivational psychology, and considers all games as challenge, anticipation and reward engines.

Behaviourists model their games on psychological hooks that open loops, draw engagement and encourage emotional attachment to outcomes. They use repetitive actions to complete those loops and deliver rewards. The anticipation of a loop’s end, and the reward, has a powerful effect on the human mind and can engender feelings of optimism.

Link to source : Behavourism

Constructivism : Constructivists stress the idea that the goals of education is to enable learners to understand by constructing that meaning for themselves. They content that understanding comes about as part of a transformative process, whereby new knowledge and experiences transform pre-existing structures in the mind referred to as schema.

Link to source : Cognitivism

Brainstorm Multimedia 2

I am still unsure about whether to work on my game idea or to stick with my original idea. I want to make another game where now i know how i went wrong and i think i can improve if i try something new such as making new games. I am think of creating RPG type of game or shooting game which is totally different from my first semester idea. Which is why i think i could learn more if i try something new and to use what i have already known from last semester to my new idea of the game.

I also  would like to work on my last project to further develop the game visual design and more action involving the player. I will look at more tutorials and more graphic design on the unity. I'm hoping to add levels aswell after all the gems are collected, add more obstacles and improve the graphic on the gems.

I am hoping that i can make up my mind soon so i don't waste too much time thinking.

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