Multimedia Development

This week I feel as though I have made great progress with my game.  Firstly I added my main menu. (I learned how to do that here ) I got the background image here . (I added my own effects to it)  Image - Screen shot of my main menu - My own image Secondly I made that the 3 doors that open with keys work. So basically when you collect the first key the first door opens, collect second key and the second door opens and so on. This was the most difficult thing have added to the game so far and it did take me a long time but I got there in the end. (I learned how to do this here ) Then when this was all done I added my sound effects to the game there is a sound effect on the menu and a separate one in the game. ( Sound effect asset ) They were my goals for this week so realistically I could've stopped but I wanted to add some detail to the spawn room too see how it goes. (Furniture asset 1 , Furniture  asset 2 ) Im...

Image - Unity Challenge (my own image) This week I completed the Unity lesson 4.4 and challenge 4. I found the lesson to be easy enough and I didn’t run into any errors or problems. The lesson itself was interesting and it was nice to add more to that game, I was wondering how I would create that more enemies spawn when the waves end and this week taught me exactly that.  The challenge I didn’t find too hard except I did get stuck on some parts of it for a few minutes which required me too to look at some of the hints to get it done.    This was my last week of following the Unity tutorials, from next week I will be finding my own tutorials that help me with my game. This is something I am really excited for and I feel that at this stage it will help me a lot more with completing my game. I have enjoyed doing the Unity tutorials even though I had some ups and downs with them I got there in the end.    As I was saying I’m really excited to start my own tutorials ...

Image - Feedback GIF Overall, I think all of the comments I have being receiving from students have being really nice and helpful, they also have formed a community between the students which is always a great thing but with covid there is never a better time to have that. I find the comments on my project blogs to be most useful as it nice to get someone else’s opinion and take it on board and as well as that if someone has something nice to say it gives you a good confidence boost.   When it comes to commenting on other people blogs, I think it’s really helped me give my opinion on certain things without sounding bad about. As well as that I think all of us understand that were all just trying to help each other out which is a really nice thing. The WWW and TAG strategies have helped me to comment on people’s blogs as they helped me give some positive feedback, find out something I may be confused on and as well as that give my opinion in a nice way, before I started to lear...

Overall I feel as if the reading and writing assignments have seriously benefited me. Posting blogs has made me more comfortable writing and I also feel as though my reading and writing skills have improved a lot. So far, my favorite reading has being the reading in week 5 on games MDA, I think it was a great read and that it really thought me a lot of new things I never knew. The reading notes are helping me when creating my game because they have thought me a lot about game developing, I have being a gamer my whole life really but I have never really learned about creating games I’ve always just played them but these reading help me view games from a different perspective. When I started doing the reading tasks I was literally reading every last bit of the readings which I think was a mistake for me anyways because it was almost an overload of information, I learned that I should of course read but if there’s parts that are kind of repeating or if it’s something not going to benefit ...

This week I added a lot on to my game from my first prototype, first of all I finished the outline of the top floor of the house.  Image - Screenshot of my house (my own image) Secondly I added all of the doors except the front door and the last room door.  The doors all open when the player walks over to them and I got the script to do that from here . (I got the doors in this asset pack ) I also added keys and the two ghosts. (I got the key asset here and ghost asset here ) The only reason I didn't add the front door and the last room door is because them doors have to open with the key and the keys at the moment aren't doing anything I just have them laid out. The spawn room door will also open with a key but I just wanted to add that door there to see how the game feels when I spawn.  Video - Screen recording of my gameplay (my own video) This video shows exactly how everything is so far.  Right now I feel as if my game is in a good place as I am setting goals e...

Image - Screenshot of my game (my own image) This week’s unity tutorial I enjoyed and I learned a lot of new stuff. I recently updated my Unity because I was getting errors on the 2018 version but the assets on the 2020 version didn’t work for this week’s tutorial, so luckily I still had the 2018 version and I was able to use that and I got no errors. That was the only little set back I had this week apart from that everything was fine.  The tutorials this week were something really new and different compare to what we have done before, I found it interesting when making the enemy follow the player and when giving the player a powerup. These tutorials thought me a lot of new things that I could see being useful for me in the future.   The powerup that we added was something really new to what we have done before and if you told me you have to add a powerup I would have thought that it would be a lot more complicated than it was as well as that we added timer to the powerup so ...

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 four types of fun that are involve...

Image - Task GIF This tech task learned me how to embed google maps in to a blog post. I just used my place of birth as an example: Learn how to do this here . 

  Image - Screenshot of my Prototype (my own image) When creating my first prototype I spent a while messing around with some of the building options because I just wanted to get used it, from there I went on and created the players character. The players character is just a red cylinder which is in the image above but the player will not be able to see the character at any point.  I made that the player can roam around in first person mode being controlled by WASD keys and the mouse. The code I used to create this I found here .  Video - Screen recording (my own video) As well as creating this I created the outline of the ground floor of the house so now everything is ready to be added downstairs.  Next week I want to have the outline of the top floor complete and also the two ghosts placed in the house.  This was all difficult as this is the first...

Image - Reading GIF “In order for the player to be optimally engaged, challenges should be presented at a level equivalent or slightly higher than their current skill. Not too easy, not too hard”( Gigity McD ) The word 'flow state' was coined by Csikszentmihalyi (1975) also known as being “in the zone” This is when the player is fully engaged in the game experience. Csikszentmihalyi put a lot of work into observing and analyzing various groups of people. This theory is focused on the idea of how people should balance their skills and the demands of particular tasks. An example of Flow would be a challenge in a game that interests the player such as a puzzle or a boss battle meant to keep the player interested and not get bored. Csikszentmihalyi also states that flow is related to an ideal psychological condition when a person engages in a challenge-skill activity, often resulting in concentration and a focused emphasis on a task. A practical technique for improving Flow is to ...

My GDD took me a while to complete as I knew what I was putting in there really was important information and I wanted to take my time with it to do it to the best of my abilities.  My game is a horror / scary game named "House 666" and this GDD covers everything you would need to know to go on and create the game. ( Link to my GDD ) Image - Scary Game GIF I used Dundoc to create my GDD and I found it really useful, once you spend a few minutes on it you realise how simple it is to use.  There was some small pieces I left out as I wasn't to sure on them at the moment and I also may add some sketches and screenshots time goes bye. 

This week I found the Unity tutorials really interesting, but I also ran in to a lot of problems. I started to get some errors in places that just weren’t making sense I had exactly what was in the tutorials and it still wasn’t working I spent a long time going over and over trying to fix it but I couldn’t so I reset my PC to see if maybe that was the issue and it wasn’t. What I ended up doing was deleting and re doing a lot of it and it worked so basically I did some things twice.  The most interesting thing I feel like I learned this week was when making the game stop when the player hits an obstacle and I also found adding the running animations and death animations was really interesting and it was something completely new that we haven’t done before.   This was definitely the longest and toughest week I’ve had doing the tutorials because I ran into a lot of problems so I hope next week goes better for me then this week. This weeks tutorials weren’t exactly difficult it wa...

Image - Class Work GIF What is the GDD for? A Game Design Document (GDD) is a blueprint for the design and development of a game. The GDD 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.  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 a GDD. These includ...