Multimedia Development

Unity Tutorial 04! To start off this week's Unity tutorial, we were continuing from last weeks tutorial, so this was lesson 2.4- Collision Decisions. In this tutorial, despite the fact that Unity kept crashing (which made me get really impatient) I learned how to instead of pressing 'S' to spawn the animals, they will have a timer that allows them to be spawned so that they show up every few seconds. Next I added colliders to the prefabs and made it so launching a projectile into an animal will destroy it. I also learned how to add a 'Game Over' message if any of the animals were to make it past the player but if the player hits them with a projectile to feed them, then the animal will be destroyed. Lesson 2.4 In the challenge part of this weeks tutorial I had to program a few things such as: - Allows for the balls to spawn randomly at the top of the screen - Program a dog that spawns and runs to catch the ball - If the dog and the ball run into each other then t...

Unity Tutorial 03! To start off this week'Unity Tutorial I created a new folder and in this folder I added a new project called Prototype 2. In the Lesson 2.1,  I chose a character which, 3 types Food Fight of animals and a food type to feed the animals. I gave the player basic side to side movement, similar to prototype one but instead this one will use if then statements to keep the Player in place. In the Lesson 2.2, I learned how to allow the player press the Spacebar and launch a projectile prefab into the scene, which destroys itself when it leaves the game’s boundaries. The animals were removed from the scene when they leave the game boundaries. In the Lesson 2.3 I allowed the for w hen the user presses the S key, a randomly selected animal will spawn at a random position at the top of the screen, walking towards the player. This week's Unity Tutorials took no more than 4 hours, but my Unity kept crashing and deleting everything so that was very frustrating. I hope next...

Game MDA! What is Game MDA exactly? According to  Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek's paper, MDA is a formal approach to understanding games and the difference between game design and development, game criticism, and technical game research. MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. Game MDA Mechanics: the components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.  Dynamics: the mechanics acting on the player's inputs and each others outputs over time.  Aesthetics: the desirable emotions in response when the player interacts with the game. What makes a game "fun"?  According to this paper there are 8 characteristics that make a game fun, they are: 1. Sensation- sense-pleasure  2. Fantasy- make-believe  3. Narrative- drama  4. Challenge- obstacle course  5. Fellowship- social framework  6. Discovery- uncharted territory  7. Expression- self-discovery  8. Submission- pastime The second paper I read is...

Feedback Strategies! Last week we discussed the importance of receiving feedback, but we did not talk about how to give that feedback. Well this week we will be talking about exactly that! Feedback Giving feedback is the fundamentals of growth, the way you phrase things and the wording you use are so important. As ”feedback” can be so easily taken as negative criticism and on the contrary, positive feedback can be taken as praise, and that could get to the individuals heads as they would think their work is perfect. So as anything there is a balance needed, the right amount of praise with things to improve on. Different Strategies Our lecturer provided us with a list of articles to analyse and I have chosen two that I see as impact full.  The first of them being " The Difference Between Feedback And Praise " by Anya Kamenetz. Anya discusses the negatives of phrases such as ”good job” or ”good girl”, as this doesn't really allow the children to develop and grow. It gives t...

Game Elements! In todays blog post I will be discussing my reflection on the two articles I read "What are the qualities of a game" and "Game design research". I will be reflecting on how games work, what goes into making a game and the qualities of a game which will help me create my own game. The first article I read is "What are the qualities of a game" by Ian Schreiber. There are atomic elements of a game (which makes it sound so scientific). Schreiber states that the definition of a game isn't "perfect" but a lot of similar definitions appears which show what we need to create a game. The atomic elements of a game are as follows: Game Design Players  Objectives (goals)  Rules  Resources and Resource Management  Game State  Information  Sequencing  Player Interaction  Theme (Narrative, Backstory, Setting)  Games as Systems What is a critical analysis? According to Schreiber's paper critical analysis does not mean  “fault-fi...

Growth Mindset! Today I will be discussing the importance of feedback, and Growth Mindset one's attitude towards negative or critical feedback. Whilst also discussing the dangers of positive feedback. As my lecturer says, we have been programmed over the years to be ”punished for mistakes” in school. We have been taught from a very young age to almost not take feedback in a positive light, which I personally believe is ridiculous. I mean how are you meant to grow if you can't make mistakes? How can you keep someone accountable for mistakes he/she has done in the past? Upon reading A fixed mindset could be holding you back — here's how to change it by Anna Kelsey Sugg and Ann Arnold. I found myself agreeing with many things that was written in the article, Anna discusses how overly praising someone can actually make a person ”brittle and fragile” I find this to be very true. As I have encountered many different individuals during my time in school, I found that many people f...

Growth Mindset! The article I read is called “A growth mindset fuels Positivity   creativity in youth”. Right off the bat I agree with the title of this article as I can relate to it, whenever I have a positive mindset I also am more creative, for example last year whenever I was feeling negative I wasn’t really as creative, since I left everything to the last minute as I was always busy. In the article it mentions “Five Ways to Foster a Growth Mindset in Adolescence” I see connections. I am open to new ideas. I bow to my mistakes. I embrace diversity. I live in a human-virtual world. I feel like by following those 3 steps it would make doing college work so much more enjoyable and bearable.

Unity Tutorial 01! In today's post I will be discussing my process through the Unity Tutorial. To start off, I've never done anything related I can't believe someone actually created this, wowww to game design in my life and had no idea where to start, I thought this would be a really hard process but it ended up being very easy but also VERYYYYYY time consuming. In the tutorial videos, the narrator said to watch his videos and then start to do it but I just did it while listening to him, I found that easier,(I don't know if this is just me but I feel like doing these tutorials on a computer would be so much easier as opposed to a laptop) So in the first lesson (Start your 3D Engines 1.1) I learned how to position a vehicle and obstacle on the road and to set up the camera perfectly behind the vehicle, I also learned the basics on how to zoom in/ out, focus on the object, look around the object ect.  In the second lesson I learned how to make a driving simulator come a...

Game Design! I never really understood how Games were made or how much work goes into Progress of Game Design making them, since I don’t really play games but after reading the articles I was assigned to read, I realised there was so much more to Game Design than what I thought there was. I gained an appreciation for it like I do for Art History, since the making of a game is an art in a way. Our Professor, Shaun,  provided us with many articles regarding Games/ Game Design. The first of them being What is a game? (by Ian Schreiber)   As I started to read and analyse the article, I quickly understood that it wasn’t as easy as just googling the definition of a ‘game’, which according to Google the definition of a game is ‘ an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun’, which made me laugh because I spent so long reading different articles on the definition of a game to read what Google’s literal definition was .  Although there is a definition for a game given by ...

Time Management! When it comes to my schedule, I have a very hectic lifestyle, as well as college, I have a part time job that often turns Time Management into a 30/40 hour work week due to my managers calling me in for work after college. Due to this it becomes extremely hard balancing work and college at the same time as well as trying to fit in some me time, but due to my work ethic and schedule, I know it’s possible. I sometimes try to complete the assignment or task assigned almost immediately. I believe this works best for me as it relieves some of the pressure on me. As I am human I often fall behind and see myself doing last minute assignments quite a lot due to my job, “part time job”. I really like what Shaun has mentioned about changing your schedule on a particular week. I've had to do more work on certain days in a week as I had another assignment due later on and work on the same day. Learning from my past mistakes, I have learned to always try and split a large task ...

Class Tools! When it comes to this course there are a lot of tools/     Apps + Tools apps we use, using softwares and or websites is much easier and more convenient than carrying heavy books but sometimes I miss having an actual book to read from or use. Blogger is an app we used a lot last year, to keep track on how we're doing with assignments, our progress, plans etc. It's nice to look back on sometimes and see my way of thinking.  We will also be using Bookmarking, which is a tool that keeps Blogger track of all the websites and pages we use. This sounds very useful as I often forget what website I used, but is that not what the history is for?😂 Nonetheless I think this is a great tool and can't wait to start using it. When it comes to Image Editing, I'm not the most knowledgable but I somewhat know how to use Adobe Photoshop. I used it for Studio Photography and Image Manipulation last year, so I'm glad I'm familiar with this tool. I have never heard of a...

Class Assignments! Today’s Blog post will be talking about Class assignments, for Online Assignments this module to be exact. I like the system Shaun has put out where we’re given a certain amount of tasks to do weekly and they’re spread across the week. I can’t do the same thing for hours straight, I’d get too bored or start to get distracted, so I really like the fact that I can do 2 or 3 of these tasks daily. For this module I can tell I’m going to be using blogger more than ever, I’m glad as it’s not only an app that I’m familiar with but it’s also kind of fun to write about how I feel, I also really like that it’s informal. How I feel when doing assignments To start off each week I will have to do a reading task where I will be reading a material given to me by my lecturer, Shaun, and then writing about it. I’m not too sure what I will be writing about, perhaps a summary, but that doesn’t sound too hard and I guess can be enjoyable depending on the topic I will be reading about, s...