Games Decisions Hi again, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be writing about readings to do with decision-making and flow theory. Unfortunately I was unable to get the readings "Theory of Fun for Game Design" and " Challenges for Game Designers" off Amazon for this week. Instead I read an article from Lost Garden by Daniel Crook. In this article, Crook talked about making a Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO). An MMO is is an online game with large numbers of players, typically from hundreds to thousands, on the same server. I had never heard of this term before. Creating a game with more players costs more money and takes more time. A lot of people think the more players able to play, the better the game. Crook gives examples of games such as; Multi-User Dungeons and Fortnite, to counter this statement. I personally I enjoy video games that involve loads of players but after reading this article, I have no...
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Unity Tutorial 05 Hey guys, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be talking about three unity tutorials I watched and learned from. Image 1: Unity Logo In this first tutorial Jimmy Vegas looked at some more UI elements and a dynamic cursor. I created a script so that I could pick up a gem rather than just walking through it. This was super handy to learn because I hope to have this in the game I plan to create. I also learn...
Game Idea Research Hi again! After brainstorming a few ideas for my game, I have decided I'm going to stick to an adventure style. As I've said before in previous blog posts, I gained a lot of inspiration from the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro series. The user of the game will be able to walk around a virtual world. They can collect gems which will add to their score. There will also be different type of keys hidden around the world. Each key will unlock another part of the world to explore. Once the player unlocks an area, they will have to fight small creatures that are walking around. As the players score increases, their strength will increase. This allows the player to fight tougher opponents as the game goes on. The player's health will take a toll if hit by a creature they are fighting. The aim of the game is to beat the creatures and collect all the keys to unlock the entire world. Image 1: Minecraft Virtual World I hope to learn enough...
Reading Hi again! Today I read about initial design which is the first step of the iterative process. I first read an article by Greg Aleknevicus where he spoke about what makes a game more appealing. He discussed components, boxes, themes, cards and rules. I learned that the visual aspect of components can have a great impact on the game I create. Both colour and shape are important to look at when making them. I never took into account that many people suffer from colour blindness. After reading about this, I looked into what colours would be the least distinguishable. They mainly have difficulty with seeing green, red and blue or a mixture of these colours. Adding different shapes depending on the colours can also help people distinguish between the components. Icons can also help users quickly understand what each component means. Another point Greg made was to try and not crowd the components. I definitely think games with less clutter are more visually ...
Unity Tutorial 05 Image 1: Unity In this tutorial, I learned how to make a clock. This tutorial was explained in text rather than video. I prefer the video tutorials because I find it easier to move along with whats going on. I found this tutorial very difficult and time consuming. I first started with a cylinder to make the clock, which I changed into a disk and it became to face of the clock. I also attempted to add hourly indicators on the clock. I found it difficult to align them correctly so it was a bit off. After creating the object, I started on the scripting. I don't particularly mind the scripting part, although it is quite tedious. It took me a while to get my head around some of the coding but after some time I got it. I made a few simple mistakes in the code which threw the whole thing off but I managed to fix them. I am looking forward to creating more objects with Unity!
Game Brainstorm Game 1: My first game idea is to create an adventure game. As I said before, in blog about my favourite video game, Crash Bandicoot was my number one. A game similar to this would be ideal. There would be one character travelling through worlds, collecting objects and fighting villains. Other games similar to this are Ratchet And Clank and Spyro. I like the idea of the player having their own character and being free to travel around the world they're in. After watching some Unity tutorials, I have gathered knowledge on how to create the basis of these games. I have a lot more to learn, but I am looking forward to broadening my skills. Image 1: Crash Bandicoot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7G91RjVmvk Game 2: The second type of game idea I came up with is a racing video game. I've taken inspiration from the playstation game "Micro Machines" and Nintendo game "Mario Kart". The game would have both multiplayer and solo options...
Unity Tutorial 02 Image 1: Screenshot of Unity Hi again! Today I will be talking about my experience with the second Unity tutorial by Jimmy Vegas. I found this tutorial very interesting as I got the opportunity to learn about all the components used when making a collectible object for a game. Vegas explains the process very descriptively and i found it easy enough to follow. The box collider is useful to know for this part. I learned how to code in the objects, so they would work in the game. I think referencing the objects with a name rather than using "this" was easier for me, and i could understand the code better. I enjoyed playing around with the different textures and making the objects look more realistic. After adding shadows to the game, everything looked slightly better. I had never heard of ray-cast before these tutorials. This is what we use to show what the player in the game is focusing on. This was useful to create because before it wa...
Game Elements This week's readings game me an insight on the questions that must be asked when thinking about; p layers, objectives, rules, resources, game state, information, sequencing, player interaction, theme and games as systems. I found the examples given for each of these very useful and gave me an idea of all the variations there are. Image 1: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/948574 I think the "Three step process" given for critically analyzing a game will definitely come in hand: "1. Describe the game’s formal elements. Do not interpret at this point, simply state what is there. 2. Describe the results of the formal elements when put in motion. How do the different elements interact? What is the play of the game like? Is it effective? 3. Try to understand why the designer chose those elements and not others. Why this particular player structure, and why that set of resources? What would have happened if the designer had chosen differently?" ( h...
Unity Tutorial 01 I had never heard of Unity before now so this was a whole new concept for me and I was very excited to learn about it. The way that you can change your game to suit any platform is really handy. I learnt that most gaming software use C Sharp coding. Java Script is slowly not being used at all. I found the colour co-ordination used for each axis very convenient and made navigating around the objects and the screen easier. The terrain tools are really cool and allows the game to be very versatile. I was slightly confused when I tried to add texture to the terrain in my game. The original textures were easy enough to add. It was when I tried to change the textures to be more realistic , that problems began to arise. After playing around with it for a while I became more comfortable with the tools. I noted that it is always good to make sure I have set the height and width of the terrain before creating objects so they don't str...
Game Design Games cannot be described through one definition. After examining different definitions one could say a variety of things. Games are an activity, with rules, conflict and goals. They include decision-making in an artificial, safe world outside of ordinary life. "The components are the hardware, the rules are the software. Both define the game. Both can exist independently from each other, but separately are not a game." - Wolfgang Kramer ( http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/WhatIsaGame.shtml ) In my opinion, this is a true statement. The rules and components define a game but if one varies, the game is completely changed. Image 1: Chess Board Game https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1544607 After reading about iterative nature in " Pulling the Plug: In Defense of Non-Digital Teaching and Learning" by Lewis Pulsipher, ( https://gamecareerguide.com/features/602/pulling_the_plug_in_defense_of_nondigital_teaching_and_learning.ph...