Unity Tutorial

 In this weeks unity tutorial I am finding more and more that as weeks go on I am feeling a lot more confident with them which in return makes the tutorials all the more enjoyable to do!

Although I said I am finding them easier than I have been and more enjoyable, I won't lie I am still struggling and spending a lot of time on each tutorial, which I am working on but not sure I am improving an awful lot😞 

This week there was a lot of code and script to look through which makes it all the more challenging, but I suppose we're some what used to that by now. I like the challenges test so you can find out how much you really know and what you should be working on, and that helps! 

I will try use some of the new features I learned today in my game. That is all for now.

Time Strategies

 So to be honest I am not great at time management.. I find it really hard to switch off and take some time for myself so I am really trying hard to manage my time well this semester. I was thinking of having a full day for a module each day so that I can just focus on that module and nothing else so I don't get overwhelmed and get everything done. This article really helped me as I learned to manage my time and I will be better at prioritising it now. She speaks about lots of different things, like procrastinating (which i am the queen at), leaving the worst things to last (which is actually should a bad idea). Anyway from today on I will be better at managing my time! 

Technology Tools and Website

 I am not very familiar with the tools we will be using for this as I have never used Unity or Padlet, but I am excited to get to use them and learn more about them! Also as for online college I love some things and hate some things about it, I love not having to travel up and down to college and being able to spend more time at home and have my lunch etc at home, but I hate that I'm finding it so hard to divide my time and switch off from college work and take some time for myself. That being sad, I'm looking forward to the rest of the semester and seeing how I get on!

More About Class Assignments

 I really like the layout of this module as I am enjoying doing some blogposts and having the options of doing extra credits incase you've missed anything. I am also getting used to using new software like unity and having to complete tasks each week makes it really fair and easy to keep on track.

Growth Mindset

 This week we are learning about Carol Dweek and growth mindset. Although I have never heard about growth mindset before I did find it quite interesting. I love how she spoke about how different people have different mindsets, and how she explained the children's reaction from failing, I feel that would be similar to myself as I would be fix minded! 

Introduction

 Hey,

I am 20  years old and studying Creative Digital Media. I finished school in 2018 but I didn't know what I wanted to do so I took a year out and saved up and bought a car and passed my test so I could drive myself to college and make life easier! I decided to move out of my parents house during the summer as I like to have my own space especially because I knew college would be all online. I love having my own place but I do miss living with my parents (sometimes 😅). Also forgot to mention that I live in a small parish in Meath called Skryne and always have lived here. I enjoy spending time with my family and friends and I love to cook! My favourite thing to do by myself is go to a gym class or for a run! 

I recently got a new little puppy and named her Skye and I love her so much she's the sweetest! Here are some pictures of her, myself, my boyfriend and our little boy.

Hope you enjoyed getting to know a little about me, although its not too interesting!

Favourite Game

 My favourite game is 8 ball pool. I decided to pick this game as literally everyone I know was playing it and I thought I would join in! I love the game as I feel like its realistic but very addictive, although I am not great at it. I enjoyed it so much as I found it was a way to get me away from social media (which I need) Anyway I would highly recommend to anyone! 

Review Week Comments and Feedback

 Hi,

For this evenings tasks we were looking at the comments on our blog posts and trying to learn from them. Overall I am finding the comments on my blog posts very helpful and encouraging. To be honest when I first started about my game design ideas, I was slightly nervous about it as the idea of celebrities driving cars like Mario Kart can sound pretty wild, and although I love the idea and think its fun and different I wasn't sure if anybody else would feel the same. I suppose that is what its all about right? Taking a shot and hoping its successful. Anyway, from readings through all my comments which to be completely honest I have not read them in a week or so, so to see that everyone had positive things to say about my game idea, it is so reassuring and made me feel great about my decision and game idea! I am happy that one of the tasks was to do this commenting on each others blogs as it is actually a great way to get feedback and stay in touch with our fellow classmates as I for one would probably not reach out and ask them for their feedback if it wasn't for the random commenting. So thank god for that! In saying that, i found the most helpful comments the constructive ones that went like " I like this idea but I think you could..." this is the best type of feedback as it gets you thinking and exploring other options. I had a couple of these comments which have really helped me and I am grateful for them. I also think these random comments are absolutely great as it keeps us connected with each other and getting to know more people from our group as I feel it was almost like an invite to text them privately if they have commented on my blog!

Anyway, I will leave it for now as I think it is clear that I enjoy the random commenting and find it great and extremely helpful.😊

Reading

 Hey,

This week we are going to be reflecting on our previous readings and talk about them in this weeks instead of doing more readings. I looked back on my blog posts from the readings and realised my favourite was the game design and elements was my favourite and one that I found most interesting and one that I feel I learned the most from and I'll always remember and will benefit my game design. With that being said, from reading my previous blog posts, I could have written a bit more on each topic as I know I read them  thoroughly and took information from them and learned a lot from them, I just sometimes struggle to put what I read into words and from my readings of my previous blog posts I have learned that. So from now on I am going to apply that in my future blog posts for my future readings and I am glad this task came about so I had the chance to reflect on my previous work. 

Unity tutorial 7

 In this weeks tutorial I was more confident than the previous weeks. I am starting to enjoy doing them and I found myself coding ahead as I had learned from previous tutorials. I am definitely not completely confident with it or amazing at it but I’m slowly getting to know the gist of it and each week feeling more confident about creating my game. 

`Game Fun

Hey!

From todays readings I learned that when it comes to designing a game we first think of trying to make the game fun. We think its so important to have a "fun" game and then focus on that. 

Definitions of Fun-

I learned that Oxford and Merriam-Webster both define it as enjoyment and amusement while the former additionally refers to 'light-hearted pleasure', the latter adds the idea of entertainment.  

Nicole Lazzaro's 4 keys to fun-

1. Easy Fun (Novelty): Curiosity from exploration, role play, and creativity
2. Hard Fun (Challenge): Fiero, the epic win, from achieving a difficult goal
3. People Fun (Friendship): Amusement from competition and cooperation
4. Serious Fun (Meaning): Excitement from changing the player and their world
   

As stated by Nicole, these four reasons why people play games are how best sellers create more emtion in their game and keep people interested.

Unity Tutorial

Hey, 

In my blog post this week I will be speaking about the unity tutorials that I completed and how I found them. I learned a good bit more about the effects and animations in unity, which was interesting. Another thing that I done that I found fun and cool was adding the audio to the game, so like in my personal game I could add audio to the overall game but also when the cars were racing or if they crashed it would have a different audio and so on. Overall I picked up some fun and cool new skills and learned a lot while having some fun doing so. I then moved onto the challenge for the balloon which I found a lot more challenging and time consuming as I had to do a lot of going back and fixing it. Although I found I was applying some of the past tutorials to this, which is good as I got some practice in and actually used what I had learned.

Game Decisions

This week I watched a video called " Flow experience in computer game playing among Thai university students". The video explained Game Flow.

I learned that game flow is what the game designer does with the game that keeps the player interested and makes them want to keep playing and "in the zone".

When new games are created the designer must create it to previous experience of the potential players. If its too hard the players will become frustrated and quit and if its too easy they will become bored and quit. Therefore its important to find an inbetween and have different levels.

I also learned that there must be a mixture  of skills and challenges to keep the players interested and wanting to play. When designing the game it is important to challenge the player but not overly challenge them as this could cause them to quit. This is why games have different levels that are more advanced to keep the game flow.

This is a chart showing the game flow of the player throughout the game.

The y axis is the challenge and the x axis is the players skills. When you first start off playing a game the challenges are easy and straight forward to get you in the flow of the game and then as you progress the challenges get more intense to keep you interested and the game flowing. With this the players skills will progress and become more advanced.

Games GDD

In my readings this week I have learned all about game design document and what it is. Game design Document can be described as a highly descriptive living software design document of the design for the document. It is created and edited by the development team. I learned that game design document has a bad reputation in the gaming industry as there is many myths connected to game design document. The purpose of game design is twofold

Memory Aid- When designing a game it is so easy to forget all your ideas and development stages, so designers use design documents to record anything they are doing for their game so they can't forget.

Communication tool- When designers are working together on a game it can be hard to communicate and get your ideas/opinions of there. Therefore designers need to come up with an effective tool for communicating with each other.

 

I also learned all about the different types of design documents. Some of them are-

Game Design Overview- The game design overview is usually a few pages providing a high level overview of the game.

Detailed design document- This is where designers describe their game mechanics and interfaces. This helps the designers remember all the little details and communicate them with others.

Rules for good design document-

Here are the rules of game design document and what I learnt from it.

Know your target. When doing a design document it is very important to target a certain audience and know who your target audience should be.

Keep it short. The last thing you want is a long winded document that gets boring and hard to read so you should keep it short and relevant.

Prioritize the design. It is recommended that you break the game design into phases so you can clearly distinguish between them.

Illustrate. Where possible a picture is a great idea as it gives the designers a visual idea of what the game is going to be like.

Don’t tell others how to do their jobs. It should not have criticism in it from the others.

Use user stories. You should explain the gameplay stories from the players point of view.

Separate code from content. Make the text and information as clear as possible in tables so they don't have to go searching for information.

Invest in a good format. Find a suitable format for your design document and it will make your job easier.

Use clear terminology.  Try to use plain clear language instead of jargon to keep the document clear 

Kill redundancy.  Don't copy and paste sections in the document, make them all original.

Avoid weak language.  Try and avoid misleading and unsure language and u

Capture your reasoning. When creating a game make sure everything makes sense. So make sure if there's something the player can't do they know why.