Games Stories.

This week, I've went onto read various articles on stories & games, where they explain the different storylines, different objects/items they used, etc. For example, Gamasutra's "The Blue shell and its discounts" (https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/218696/the_blue_shell_and_its_discontents.php), features everything wrong with the Blue Shell from Mario Kart, yes, that spiny blue shell power-up that's taunted players since its second iteration in 1996 (as you can tell I'm also a victim). It's a pickup item sometimes given to players who are far behind in a race, which hones in on the leader, bringing delight to any player that's far behind. While all of us refer to the Blue shell as such, it's actually called "Spiny's Shell" as explained so in the Mario Kart 64 manuals.

⤷ Another article I've read in relation to this topic is how Nintendo has doubled it's first-party game sales in 2019 compared to 2018 during the same six-month period (https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/353259/Nintendo_has_nearly_doubled_its_firstparty_game_sales_in_2019.php). According to Nintendo, they've sold approximately 14-15 million copies of first-party titles during the period between April and September of 2018, but in 2019 however, that number of games sold in the same time period has spiked to over 20 million! In the briefing, Nintendo's credited games like Fire Emblem: Three houses, Super Mario Maker 2, and the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for spiralling its growth.

⤷ And lastly, I thought I would mention this article aswell and also coming from Gamasutra, Nintendo has launched a monthly subscription for its free-to-play mobile game Mario Kart Tour that offers players to earn more in-game rewards in exchange for 5 euros a month! (and you are certainly right to assume I have that pass too)(https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/351131/Nintendos_freetoplay_mobile_Mario_Kart_now_offers_a_monthly_subscription.php). Those that buy into the Gold Pass receive access to a faster, 200cc mode in-game and can earn additional in-game rewards while playing the tours for the duration of their subscriptions, such as limited-edition characters/skins, more karts, gliders, or even its currencies! (coins and/or diamonds).

Source; Pixabay

Alpha.

Since last week, I have continued on with the development of my game, by altering the sky to give it a more nostalgic feel and giving it an endpoint (congrats, you win, here are other ways you can help save the planet!)

You win!

By adding this skybox, the lighting completely changed the feel of the game and the map. The grass and trees look more alive, and in the distance, there are buildings and a sea. As part of the endpoint, I have added this image to raise awareness on global warming;

How to help the earth.

If everyone started doing these simple tasks, the world would be a better place. I do however think my map is slightly too big and I need less trees and include a barn or a house someplace to include a hidden item of plastic.. or two. As of now, the size of the map is 600x600 (a simple square), but I should be cutting it by half, surrounding the area with mountains and playing around with more than one tree-type. I'm quite happy with how my game looks so far and I cannot wait to finish it!

Review Week Comments & Feedback.

Overall, I think I benefitted a lot from the comments and feedback I was receiving from other students in my class, as I can take constructive criticism very well and I can, in turn, use this to improve my blog posts and game. I find comments who express their own opinion towards my game or about me more beneficial as I feel like I can learn and grow from it, and I find its a great way for to help me reach my goals. I find looking at other classmate's game ideas and presentations beneficial, as they inspire me to add on and push myself to create a much better game. I try my best to be as honest and sincere as I can be when I write up feedback towards my college mates, and I hope it gives them an opportunity to see their actions from my perspective. I've also looked at videos they've recommended as tutorials for their game, and took some aspects to put into my game (https://wakelet.com/i/invite?code=cb8edba), such as the forestry terrain tutorials, creating a start and end pop-up sign, and even messing around with the sky block. A good feedback strategy I've discovered is being as honest as possible, as other's can really benefit from this to improve their game and also pull their weight a bit more if they've realised their slacking is getting noticed by us. After reading everybody's comments on some of my blog posts, it gives me a better insight on how I should phrase my own feedback towards others, being its more professional or more friendly, each person to their own preference, and that's totally fine. Reading others people's blogs and commenting and replying to each others introductions, I've learned a lot about my classmates, like their tv show preferences, career goals, pets, etc. really makes me feel like I am a much closer friend to them than I thought. I'm also delighted with how many responses I've gotten on my own introduction post and how people didn't know I was Eastern European (thought my name would give it away but anyway). I'm also amazed at how these feedback comments and introductions got me to be able to talk to my peers, as I feel my year is very secluded and clique-y. I do feel the word count is unnecessary when writing feedback comments for others or when others are required to do so on mine, as I sometimes struggle trying to find critiques towards a blog post/game idea that I feel doesn't need my opinion on. I'm quite happy with my blogs layout and the content provided, as (in my opinion) is very neat, with the labels on the side for easier navigation, and a very Tumblr-esque/aesthetic background of the view from an airplane window (if you didn't know, I appreciate aestheticism). I also try my best to find more aesthetically-pleasing non-copyrighted imagery to publish, display and link to, but struggle when I consistently get recommended to adobe stock and pay a fortune for some images that I can potentially recreate or find for free on websites that display a lot more than they do.

An aesthetically pleasing image.

Week 9 Reading & Writing.

Overall, I think the reading and writing assignments were working quite well for me. I've learned a lot about the different aspects of game design and there is much more behind it, ranging from GDD's, MDA's, MUD's and so on and so forth. I now know there is a lot more work put into game design. My favourite reading thus far would possibly be based on game elements, where I done further research on gamasutra.com, thegamesjournal.com and even on reddit.com, as I got to question myself on what really makes a game fun, what qualities it must have, and what unique elements a game must contain in order to be classified as "fun". Reddit has also taught me all the errors in a bad game and how to overcome them, from unclear and bad gaming controls, to unnecessary features such as ugly user interfaces. Some games even feature extremely long and unneeded tutorials, and if a player can't play the game fast enough, they usually lose interest. I'm definitely going to try to avoid this, as I'd like my game to be "fun" and fresh. The reading notes do help me in creating my game, as I've put more thought into coming up with my own unique concepts to include into my game, so it would then be more entertaining for  game players. Also learning about the design, development, technicalities and criticism of a game put me into a much more critical mindset so I could push myself to create a much better game. I've discovered doing further research into other articles aswell as reading the ones given to us, help me understand the topics a lot more and already answer my questions. I'm very happy with my game project idea, I think it's a unique concept and I haven't seen something done before (there have been similar concepts but I don't think there are any about raising awareness on global warming and becoming more sustainable). My biggest accomplishments for the class, would be creating the actual game. At the start of the semester I had no idea what unity was, how to use it, the complications of game design, all of it. I now have a much greater understanding on each and every one of these topics, and am quite proud of myself that I am nearly finished with a fully functional game on a topic that's relevant to me.

Reading, Week 6 image.

I chose this image as one of my favourite images from my previous reading notes, as it is very clean, and sticks to minimalistic colours. This image also represents how me and my friend, Ellie, usually work on assignments together (but instead of coffee and overpriced snacks, its a Caesar salad wrap and a Diet Coke for me, and good old Navan roll for her). I also love the artsy aspect to it, and the decorations are placed in a way the scene still seems neat (oddly enough?).  I'm very excited to do further readings and research that benefit my game, and I am as excited to complete it!

First playable.

This week I've finally started working on my game and let me tell you it was not easy (resisting the urge to purchase an assets pack from the unity store to have much better graphics was quite tricky). I've begun laying out the terrain and quite frankly am still confused by it all. I'm still stuck on this one big square when I want it differently shaped, surrounding it with water (somehow this was hard to find) and scripting the plastic.

Beginning.

I've somehow managed to create this dull look with just the original sky, but may make it darker and more spookier with some alternative settings. I despise the coding for a single. piece. of plastic. absolutely horrible. This took me more time than perfecting the terrain (somehow?). 

Finding plastic.

The constant research for different aspects of creating the game is making me lose motivation to continue, but it's actually turning out really well because of them (who knew Indian men from youtube were so cool?). I will admit that originally I had really high expectations for creating this game and I did think it would be a piece of cake but my god it's somehow turned into a piece of work. I'm quite happy with how the game looks and what it's turning into, but I do think I need to work on how the game starts and how it looks by creating a menu and several levels. I'm super excited to see how the game will turn out!

Unity Free Tutorial.

This week, I've decided to do some research and find other Unity tutorials rather than stick to Jimmy Vegas' series, as I'd like to find tutorials that are more specific to my own game. I've come across a You Tuber called 'Sherry Dragonair' who showcases a video titled 'Making a Terrain in Unity - Beginner's Tutorial'. In this video, Sherry goes in-depth on creating a much higher-quality forest/terrain than Jimmy Vegas, and I quite enjoy how he gets straight to the point in a 16-minute long video, rather than creating a whole series on different aspects to the terrain. Although he doesn't talk in the video, I did learn a lot about the terrain tool, adding textures, forming the ground, etc. I'm quite the perfectionist and I know I'll be struggling with the terrain more than the scripting (because it's much easier to find, copy and paste code rather than finding map formation tutorials). I also know I'm going to spend hours struggling creating the terrain to look like a mountain to suit my taste, I did however enjoy adding the trees and messing around with the grass textures to create a more forest-y feel to the game, making it look more realistic. Adding just hints of grey to the mountain tops and some greenery around the trees make the map pop that much more.

Mountains.

Game fun.

Not long ago, I came across several articles related to MUD games (http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm). An ‘MUD’ is a multi player real-time virtual world that’s typically text-based. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Most MUDs can be traced all the way back to Trubshaw's 1978 game called “Bartle, 1990” and “Burka, 1995” and, possibly because of this legacy, the vast majority are regarded as ‘games’ by their players (https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf). There are four things that people typically enjoy about MUDs. Achievement within the game, where players give themselves in-game-related goals, and set out to achieve them. This usually means collecting and disposing of big quantities of high-valued treasure, or cutting a through hordes of mobiles (such as monsters built into a virtual world). The exploration of the game is another one too, where players try to find out as much as they can about the virtual world. Another thing would be socializing with others, where players use the game' communicative services, and apply the role-playing aspect, as a setting in which to interact with their players (https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-7-introduction-and-readings). MUD’s also support a much more formal approach to design. This allows us to aim specifically towards specific design goals, and to expect changes that impact each feature of the framework and it’s executions. There are also three levels of abstraction, we can theorize the dynamic behavior of game systems. Understanding games as dynamic systems help us develop our techniques for designing and improvement, and allows us to control for any undesired outcomes, and tune for desired behaviour.

Gaming.

Prototype.

Since my 'Game Vision Statement', I have elaborated on my idea by developing some prototypes, such as drawing out a basic map of the game and some start and end points. 

A photo of my map.

➪ Considering the game is meant to raise awareness on global warming and our doom because of plastic, I wanted to go for a more greener feel, with plenty of trees, grass and scenery. I'm also considering creating a barn to promote organic products, and a home made from more sustainable materials. I'd also like to surround the land with trees rather than the player being able to jump into the water, but still be able to see water in the horizon. I won't be creating a player for the game, therefore it will be in first person perspective.

A screenshot of my starting point.

➪ To start the player off, I'm going to add very harsh lighting and vignetting so when the player starts off, they would be particularly slow and can only see the spot they are on, with a message saying "Find 10 pieces of plastic" so that the player's environment could improve. 

A screenshot of my ending point.

➪ Once the player has collected 10 pieces of plastic, they see a beautiful "nostalgic" sky with a lively environment. They will also receive a message to let them know they won and can continue to explore the area, and will get a pop up message on different ways to be more sustainable and help our world.

➪ What I am struggling with, is reducing the vignetting effect and altering the light by bringing brightness in for every piece of plastic collected as this involves scripting. I'm also struggling with coming up with objects to include in my map, I am however open to suggestions if you'd like to comment them down below!

Unity Tutorial 06

This week I've decided to continue on watching Jimmy Vegas' tutorials on creating a game using Unity (I've watched episodes 9, 10 and 11 which can be found here). I've found the next few episodes much more useful and easy to use, and I'll be incorporating some of his techniques into my own game. First of all, the lighting techniques he showed, when messing around with the sky, adding different hues to match the scene with the background lighting, and creating a dark atmosphere. For my own game, I wanted to have the player start off with a more gloomy and dark feel (everything is pitch black apart from a light that follows the player around) and then eventually when the player collects pieces of plastic, the area gets brighter and more lively (robbing his "nostalgic setting" feel). I also really like creating a black fade-in screen for when the player joins in, but I'm not too sure if it'll suit my game considering the game starts off completely dark other than where the player is (his only source of light until he finds some plastic). I did enjoy learning about collecting an item as well, but do find the C# sharp aspect of it confusing. Watching these tutorials make me even more motivated to continue on in creating my game. 

clouds.

Games Decisions.

A little while back, I've come across some articles talking about decision making and the flow theory (https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-6-introduction-and-readings), that I find quite interesting. Lots of difficulties associated with making a huge multi player online game, comes in several parts. An ‘MMO’ (Massive Multi player Online game) is particularly delicate to create due to technical reasons involving ‘server scaling’, as well as designing issues involving scaling economics, politics, level design, pacing, persistence, and progression. (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2247/e6a3f394bf389c7ffe1c8dbbcf05eff86265.pdf). Many early ‘MUD’s (Multi-User Dungeons) involve populations of dozens-to-thousands of people and still have vibrant communities thus far. Minecraft, for instance, is wildly successful, despite its reliance on relatively small, instanced server, and other games, such as Fortnite, that successfully limit their focus to matches of 100 or less. There are plenty other game genres, in particular action and strategy games, that haven’t been successfully scaled to the massively multi player realm thus far. The main reason is that these games meet different requirements in terms of scalability than an already scalable role-playing genre: in particular, it’s player densities. When researching to make human-scale systems, there are several key concepts based on social psychology, each providing a set of restrictions on social design (https://lostgarden.home.blog), and it’s quite obvious it all comes down to friendships and social circles.

Friendship.