Multimedia Development

Review week comments and feedback! So in today’s blog post I will be talking about comments and feedback I’ve received on this blog and comments and feedback I’ve left on others blogs. I think the quality of the comments I’ve been receiving on my blog are very high and detailed and I definitely have benefited a lot from the comments and feedback I was receiving from students in my class . When it comes to constructive criticism, I take it very well which helps me to improve my blog posts and game.  A lot of comments on my post are of my classmates agreeing with me, what I’m doing and being in similar situations, which reassures me about not doing anything wrong but then again it’s so frustrating having to be in situations like with Unity shutting down while midworking on my game. I find these kinds of comments most useful especially since I wouldn’t be the most interested in game design or even the best so when I see others having the same problems as me, that way I know I’m not t...

Unity Tutorial 08! So I just finished this weeks Unity tutorial at exactly 3:25 am, and that's on dedication😆 despite all the times Unity crashed on me, I tried to stay patient and get the two tutorials done. Here's what I learned what to do this week. So in this weeks tutorial (lesson 4.4- For loops for waves) I learned a few things firstly I learned how to add a player that rolls around, controlling the cameras rotation, to create a power-up that gives strength and how to spawn enemies that chase the player.  For the challenge (Challenge 4), as soon as it starts, I forget everything I have learned, so I never enjoy them but this isn't about enjoying it right? AnywayI struggled a little bit and made some mistakes but I am so glad I could use the hints.   Challenge 4 - Unity So for this quiz I had to: Make enemies move towards the net, with the power of being able to move them away How to apply Power-ups which gives strength boost that disappear after a few seconds How to ...

Reading and Writing Reflection! In this week’s blog post I will be reflecting on the reading and writing assignments, they have actually been working well for me, surprisingly they’re what I enjoy/ed doing most in this module. I enjoyed it most because I like writing and am good at summarising things, although I have never written this much about Game Design in my life, it’s been nice learning about it.  My favourite reading so far has been the Game MDA one, it’s my favourite because it helped me further my knowledge on Game Design while also understanding the point and definition of a game. I divided my notes into summarised bullet points since that helps me learn easier.  My notes have been helping in a way and that is of understanding what the meaning of a game is, why people play games, what makes it fun, what my game should consist of etc, in that way, not really in a way of knowing how to design the game but that’s what the lengthy Unity tutorials are for, right? When it...

Unity Tutorial 07! In this blog post I will not talk about my negative experience with Unity, like I do every week but instead I will JUST talk about what I learned. So in this week's unity tutorial (4.1 - Watch where you’re going) I learned how to adjust the camera to make it rotate evenly around a certain point in the middle of the island, supplying the player with a horizontal input. A textured sphere will be controlled and moved forward or backward by the player in the direction of the above point. In tutorial 4.2 (Follow the player) I learned how to create a textured and spherical enemy that will spawn on the island at the beginning, in a random position decided by a custom feature. When they come too close, the player is chased across the island, bouncing them off the edge. 4.2 - Follow the Player  In tutorial 4.3 (PowerUp and CountDown) I learned how to create a powerup that spawns in a random location on the map, waiting on the player actively. The powerup vanishes once th...

Reading Week 8 “Game Fun" 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 fou...

Growth Mindset! This week I read an article about Fixed vs Growth Mindset and found it very interesting  especially the experiment Carol Dweck had carried out.  Which  has  taught  existing  hypotheses  about  why  appearance  is  more  critical  than  praise  in  educating  kids  to  maintain  a  positive  connection  with  accomplishment,  examines  how  these  mindsets  are  born, very early in life that  Dweck  and  her  peers  gave  four year olds an option: to either remake a jigsaw  puzzle  or  attempt  a  tougher  one.  These  young  children  too  conformed  to the  features  of  one  of  the  two. Fixed vs Growth

Prototype! This week I’ve been working on the prototype for my game, I was keeping an open mind before starting this despite my lack of interest and enthusiasm for the game. When starting the prototype I had so much trouble with Unity, it was so frustrating, I kept restarting my laptop, it would work for a little while then shut down again. It got to a point where everything was deleted so that was really annoying but If I had more work done on my prototype I would have been angrier about that. For my prototype for this week, I worked on the homepage of the game. Prototypes

Unity Tutorial 06!  Before I start writing about what I learned this week on Unity I just want to say how awful this experience was, I gave up on the tutorial twice but somehow convinced myself to stay patient. Unity kept crashing, freezing restarting and losing my project, it's starting to get really annoying, I can't wait till I finish these tutorials and never have to do them again😡. Now to talk about what I learned... This game is starting to look better, but it’s missing something- Sound effects and Particle effects. Sounds and music will make the game more life like, and particles will make the player’s actions more dynamic and eye-popping. In this lesson, I learned how to add sound effects and particles when the character is running, jumping, etc. Unity Challenge 3 In the challenge part of this tutorial I had to: Make the balloon float upwards as the player holds spacebar Make the background repeat, to imitate the balloon’s movement To make 'Bombs and Money' tok...

Tech Tips: Hashtags and Retweets! I chose the #KamalaHarris as she would become the first woman to be elected as Vice President and the first woman of colour to become Vice President in the USA, a fact that influenced her victory speech and brought tears to the eyes of many women and girls watching all over the world especially given that the USA has a history of white men having the position. The image in the tweet also caught my attention as it shows a young girl looking up to Harris, influencing the girl to not let anything or anyone hold her back.  Tweet : https://twitter.com/4nikkolas/status/1325552959552303104?s=21

Unity Tutorial 05! In this vlog post I will be discussing the process I went through while making these 3 lessons. In lesson 3.1 I started off by  creating a new project and imported the starter files, after that I chose a background and a character, allowing the character to jump by pressing the spacebar. I chose an obstacle for the player, and created a spawn at timed intervals. In lesson 3.2 I learned how to create a background moves smoothly with the obstacles, but when the player crashes into something the obstacle will despawn with a 'Game over' message in the console log, stopping the movement of the background and the spawn manager. Lesson 3.2 In lesson 3.3 I used animations for the first time , we’re going to give it animations for running, jumping, and death. I also tweaked the speed of the animations, timing them so they look good in the game environment.   I learned a lot from this weeks tutorial, this has inspired me with my own project and is the first week I s...

  What is the GDD for? A Game Design Document (GDD) is a blueprint for the design and development of a game. A game design document 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. Example of a GDD 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 used to create ...