Unity Tutorial 05.

Recently, I've went back to continue Jimmy Vegas' Unity tutorials, and have watched episodes 6, 7 and 8 (which can be found here). This week, I've learned about scripting an item in order to collect it (with text appearing on what button to collect it), and providing the player with a weapon (in his case, he used an axe, providing it with a sound when it was being used and an animation). I found them quite useful, as he does go in-depth with the tutorials by providing a step-by-step guide, but unfortunately I don't think I'll be using weapons in my own game. However, I do like the idea of scripting an item in order to collect it, but I do find using C# sharp confusing and very complex. I did enjoy messing around with the materials, textures and "normal map" buttons in order to create a more realistic look by adding shadowing by the sun and making it look less "baron". I'll also end up taking some of the steps from creating a weapon, and incorporating it into making someone less dangerous for my game, as I don't plan on making it multiplayer or a fighter-type game. I love Jimmy's tutorials and am excited to continue his series.

Games GDD

I've recently come across several articles on the early stages of the designing process (https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-5-introduction-and-readings). When deciding what to include, I tend to constrain my own ideas and concerns that don’t actually need extra time (i.e perfecting it to a T). Something I really love about games is their physical presentation, I'm more likely to appreciate one that has a lot of thought put into its design principles, such as its box, its rules and its components. The design mechanisms can go a long way in shaping how much a game can really be adored (http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/DesignConsiderations.shtml). For the most part, the design of the box really has nothing to do with how a game is played, but there are still problems to take into account. A lot of first impressions of a game come from the box ,and so a good design will go a long way into advertising it. Keeping in mind, but writing clear and short rules to a game does seem like it should be a simple task, until one really tries it. In fact, I think it's a very tough process and one of the trickiest things to get right. No matter how great a job I do, somewhere, someone is going to misunderstand them. With this in mind, there are some overall principles that can help minimize problems. Examples of this would be to include a detailed list of components and to not intentionally write vague rules, as this can make it more difficult for gamers to understand the controls and objectives of your game (http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/1415/the_game_design_process.php).

Designing.

Game Vision Statement.

Introduction
⇨  As for my game, I envision a very typical spawn-in game where the player collects a few coins and wins, but putting my own twist to the game. I originally was planning to create either a Sandbox RPG-type game, where the player spawns in and can freely explore their surroundings with some side tasks (they choose whether or not they can complete them), or a more stealth-type approach, where the gamer has to hide from one big target to avoid punishment, as from my experiences I much prefer these gaming styles, but thought this would be a better route, as it is based off something that is more meaningful to me.

Game idea
⇨  As part of my idea, I'm considering basing it off a character who spawns into the game, who starts collecting plastic off the ground to save the planet, as we only have a few months to live before the world has irreversible side-effects. To start off, I'm going to call it "Pepe saves the planet", Pepe being the name of the character, who's main objective is to attempt to save the planet. This would be a more educational-type game aimed at anyone and everyone who wants to make a change. There is also no age-restriction on the game as well, which opens up to the vast majority of our population. I am thinking of having the game play in first-person view, and adding really harsh vignette to it, and for every piece of plastic picked up, the vignette effect starts to fade away, and once all pieces of plastic are collected, the vignette is completely gone. I also plan to have the scenery look more lifeless i.e. dead trees, brown grass, overall an unfriendly environment to begin with, and for every piece of plastic collected, the scenery improves until it eventually becomes a bright beautiful sky with trees and grass full of life. I'll be getting my inspiration for the scenery from various games on Roblox and Minecraft, as I'm quite familiar with plenty of their game modes. I'm also contemplating setting the game in a forest, as in today's world, plenty of our animal's habitats are being completely obliterated by bulldozers damaging our forests and harming our environment for our high demand in wood and meat. At the end of the game, I plan on creating a pop-up message/window that's rather aesthetically pleasing and sticking to a beautiful day's colour palette (white's, brown's, green's and blue's) listing out ways one can help save the environment, such as going for reusable straws, avoiding use of plastic, promoting sustainability by shopping at charity/vintage stores, or even going vegan for a few days. I'll be using the programme "Unity" to create this 3D-based game, as I am quite familiar with the lay-out of the application, and if I am ever stuck on a specific aspect of the programme, I can always look up tutorials that will most likely solve my problems for me. This will be the games only objective, and as simple as it sounds, I hope gamers can understand the message and take something from the game. This game is a great opportunity to educate everyone about the effects of global warming/climate change, its side effects, and ways to prevent it from happening again. (https://www.ted.com/speakers/greta_thunberg)

Inspiration
⇨  I originally got inspired by Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenage environmental activist on climate change whose campaigning has gained international recognition. When she began her protest outside of the Swedish Parliament last year at the age of fifteen, she sat next to a wooden sign that was painted in white with the words "Skolstrejk for Klimatet" shown in black paint. She also had leaflets available for people who passed by explaining what is was she was protesting for, in which she responds; "I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future". As her protests have gained recognition, she was then invited to give speeches at several forums which enabled her to expand her horizons. Thus far, she has initiated four themes; that our humanity is currently facing an existential crisis due to climate change, that our generation of adults are responsible for the climate change, that it also has a disproportionate effect on the younger generation, and that not enough is being done about the situation. I got a lot of my research for my game idea from different articles online that helped me go more in-depth with my creative thinking, and I hope this, in turn, creates an amazing game for people all around the world to enjoy.

Reusable coffe cups.

Unity Tutorial 03

This week, I've learned how to create a clock using simple objects, and scripting it so that the arms of the clock could rotate to show the time (https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/basics/game-objects-and-scripts/). I found this webpage quite helpful as there are images for every step of the way, but I still find scripting rather confusing as I am only new to it. The layout of creating the clock using simple objects, is the same as Roblox Studios, Cinema 4D and Blender, so I was already quite familiar with it. The terminology in Unity does put me off, like "Albedo" and "Mesh Collider", thankfully, the website does have external links underneath the imagery to explain what they mean, which is very convenient. Luckily, java scripting from this tutorial is very similar to coding for a website using html and css, with a simple copy and paste, and you're good to go. The terminology, again, is rather advanced/difficult and even I struggle to try and spell words like "Quaternion" (had to copy and paste that one), so this will be a challenge for me. As for my game, I don't think I'll be including clocks for the moment, but it would be a nice little addition to it. 

Clocks.

Games MDA

Recently, I've came across a few articles talking about the different mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics of games (https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf). MDA is a much more formal approach to understanding video games, and differentiates game design and development, the technicalities and the criticism of a game. Reading webpages like these really get me thinking as to what makes a game "fun"? Any game can be labelled so, but there's a much more in-depth explanation for this, such as if the game was more sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression or submission-based. 

⇸  http://gamedevelopertips.com/mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics-game-design-theory-behind-games/, shows the dynamics of a game. Dynamics work to produce much more aesthetic experiences, for instance, challenges created by the likes of time pressure and rivalry-gameplay. Friendship can be encouraged by sharing information between specific members in a team, or even providing winning conditions that are much more difficult to achieve alone (such as capturing an enemies base). 

⇸  Lastly, https://medium.com/@jenny_carroll/using-the-mda-framework-as-an-approach-to-game-design-9568569cb7d, goes into the specifics of mechanics in a game. The mechanics describe a particular component, action, behaviour or control mechanisms of a game, using the level of data representation or even algorithms. Together, with the games content, the mechanics maintain the overall game's dynamics. In conclusion, I believe it's a much more helpful technique as it's given me a better understanding on how too categorise games and how changes can impact each aspect of a game's structure. In addition, I am now better at being able to break down those experiences, and use them to create new designs, research, and critique respectively.

Mechanics.

Unity Tutorial 02

I've since continued Jimmy Vegas' series in Unity (can be found here), and I now find Unity slightly more confusing with the whole scripting aspect. I am quite unfamiliar with Visual Studio, I know I'll struggle at first but hopefully I'll get the hang of it sooner than later. I do however find the "creating gems in order to collect them" quite interesting, and I may end up taking this idea and using it in my game, as I most likely will create either a stealth-type game or a sandbox-rpg game where the player can collect something a little more unique (possibly pages, bags of goods, or even hints). I'm also quite excited to be messing around with the terrain tools to be creating my own rivers/lakes/ponds, mess around with the colours around it to make it a little more realistic, and even include fences as a border around the entire map so players cannot go over the boundaries and into oblivion (or maybe they could, who knows). Unfortunately, I am quite disappointed with episode 5 of his series as I don't understand the difference between the before and afters of ray casting. I feel it was a waste of an episode, but I'm open to learning more useful techniques to use in scripting.

Into Game Design.

Game elements

I've recently came across some articles talking about the atomic elements and the qualities of a game that I find rather interesting. Games do have a repetitive theme, and each game has its own set of rules, it's own conflict, various choices, and its own goals.

↬ https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3357/formal_abstract_design_tools.php  discusses the formal abstract design tools and whether a game is "fun" or not, which I quite agree with. Whether a game is fun or not comes from a thorough and unbiased outlook on a game, and simply stating if a game is "fun" does not actually tell designers why it actually is entertaining. In turn we should be able to a pick a specific game, choose a single cool aspect from it and apply it to our own game, or even take a game that we love "if it weren't for one annoying aspect" understand why it bothers us, and make sure we don't create a similar mistake in our very own games. I think this is a very interesting approach to game design and I'll definitely be sticking to it.

↬ http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/WhatMakesaGame.shtml covers some very interesting topics on what actually makes a game good. For instance, it would have to be an original concept and has to possess unique elements that have never been used before, otherwise gamers would be considering playing other games as they would have the same concept with a more advanced approach. The freshness and replayability of a game makes its players want to play it again and again, and it should feel exciting each time it's played as it was the first time.  Games lacking this quality will soon becoming boring. Games should also be enriched with surprised and repetition in sequence, progress and events should be strictly avoided.

↬ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/64z7w8/what_are_the_qualities_that_make_up_a_bad_game/ features all the errors in a bad game and how to overcome them, from unclear and bad controls, to unnecessary features like ugly user interfaces. Some games also feature extremely long and unneeded tutorials, and if a player can't play the game fast enough, they'd lose interest, meaning your game is probably too complicated/complex and you'd need to tone down the specifics. 

Complex Terrain.