Multimedia Development 2018

Link to the DunDoc For the game design document, I have used dundoc - a very interesting and useful website that helps creating such documents through templates. Even though I picked the starter template, I was overhelmed by the amount of things I need to write about. That was especially hard, since I have no experience in game creating and I didn't understand some of the terms used, like abstract classes or derived classes - what are those?  I will keep adding and changing things as I go on and learn new things. 

This week, I went through 3 tutorial videos. The first one was extremely useful as it covered dynamic UI and setting up controls for different actions, which I will probably end up using for my video, so I decided to bookmark it. The coding part of it wasn't particularly difficult, so I managed to get through it without messing it up too much. Screenshot from Unity The second one is another useful one, because it mentions adding in a bit more of environment and weapons, and animations. Even the code part was decent, but the animation part was the most fun. I expected it to be quite hard, confusing and time-consuming, but actually, it was really straight forward. Third tutorial was about layer clipping and adding in a way to control the axe, so that it doesn't swing all the time. I failed quite badly on the code part, and had to copy it from Jimmy's website, as it simply wouldn't work for me.

I have read the article Design Considerations by Greg Aleknevicus, and it seems to be mostly talking about actual board games and something that has a box, and within the box, rules and the components needed to play the game. The article talks about designing a box, and what should be included on it, like the name of the game, to pay attention to what sort of photographs are put on the back of the box, as they can often be misleading, and finally, to print one side of the box as horizontal and the other as vertical. Then, he also goes over making components for the game and how they should be smaller than the place they will occupy, be different colors and shapes. Also, how you should include few extra components in case they get lost.  Then he moves onto cards, and mentions that they should have a white border,  use large indices and index cards on all four corners.  The theme should work with the rules, instead of against them.   And so, onto th...

Game Genre: Witch's Apprentice is an adventure role playing game set in fantasy medieval times. The player gets to live a life of fourteen years old girl who is essentially forced to stay with a Witch - one of the very few still alive and practicing the magic. In order to survive and to eventually leave the Witch, the girl needs to learn how tough a life can be - not only for her, but for people around her. To please the Witch, the girl will practice collecting resources such as crystals, gems and plants, as well as potion making, trading and understanding the history behind witches and their profession. Possible map idea. Gameplay: Witch's Apprentice will be strongly connected and grounded on a story - one that will make the game feel immersive and make the player feel connected to the world, history and the main character. When it comes to the world, it will consist of a woodlands area with a river going across it, few mountains and a small village. While the story...

This tutorial was surely far more challenging than Jimmy Vegas' tutorials. I apparently made mistakes in the code, even when I copied it word for word, after my third attempt didn't work. As I constantly got an error on "const", I decided to download the code that came together with the unitypackage provided with the tutorial. The difference in my code and the one provided is visible, but I never through indention would make a difference to the code. Screenshot of the code - left is downloaded from the website, right written by me. Overall, I did manage to make the clock, even though I struggled with the code, and didn't quite get it right. I will try to work a little bit more on the actual understanding what each line means - I really dislike copying material without knowing what each part does.

MDA stands for "Mechanics", "Dynamics" and "Aesthetics", and are extremely important when designing a game, they are essentially the aspects that make the game "fun". Each of the words of the MDA framework are described as: Mechanics - Rules of the game. Dynamics - The play of the game after the rules had been implemented. Aesthetics - Player experience rather than visual elements of the game. They are all connected, as you can't have one without the other. When talking about the gameplay, most people think that the game is either fun or not fun, but what exactly is "fun"? According to the article, there are 8 types of "Fun":  Sensation - Game as sense pleasure  Fantasy - Game as make believe  Narrative Game as drama  Challenge - Game as obstacle course  Fellowship - Game as social framework  Discovery - Game as uncharted territory  Expression - Game as self-discovery  Submission - Game as pastime So, bas...

The first article I read was " The Trouble with “Amazing”: Giving Praise that Matters ". Many of us, students, have heard feedback such as "amazing", "great job", "brilliant". After all, it's an easy way to give attention without too much effort. Sadly, from reading this article, I have learned that such feedback not only doesn't help but can be harmful. While it might be nice to hear that our work is nice, such feedback carries little to no weight to it. This article refers to it as "Paula Praise", from American Idol.  This kind of feedback is also unspecific - we learn nothing from it. We have no idea what was really good and what needs improving.  The author also talks about how a person should be commented on their effort rather than their person or talent. I think that both should be commented on, because they are equally important.  Source: Pinterest The second article was " How to Give Feedback Without So...

 - You are possibly the worst I've ever trained. - Thank you for encouragement. I liked all the ideas that I came up in the previous post, but the one that made me the most excited was my second idea - Witch's Apprentice (Title may change in the future.) Description of the game from previous post: I don't even know how to describe this game... but it would involve witches, and plants. And potion making. So, basically, the character is a young girl who is forced to stay with a witch to learn all about the witchy stuff. Plants, potions, spells, rituals. Why is she forced? Hm, maybe because she was causing problems to her family? Maybe she was an orphan? Maybe a thief? Maybe a witch is highly desirable profession in the world of the game? I will have to think about it. Most of the gameplay would involve doing missions, follow recipes to make certain potions, go out to find the ingredients and so on, so forth. I know it is quite an ambitious plan and will take a l...

Why do you write like you’re running out of time? Write day and night like you’re running out of time? Ev’ry day you fight, like you’re running out of time! In this week's tutorial, I learned how to import and add a sound, collider and trigger to an object, as well as how to implement water into the terrain. The first video was very useful, as Jimmy discussed elements that are in most, if not all games, like the ability to collect objects from the ground. This will prove useful when I start working on my own game, as I wanted the player to be able to collect items... Thought, I would like that there would be a time bar that shows how long it takes to collect specific item. The water part I have learned on my own when I was working on my terrain after first set of tutorials. I originally planned to make a waterfall, but that required assets and coding... Speaking of coding, or programming... this will be the hardest part of the project and of the video. While Jimmy tries to...

"What is a modern computer game made of? It fuses a technical base with a vision for the player's experience." Today, I have read the Formal Abstract Design Tools article by Dough Church. It talks about "modern games"(article from 1999, so its definition of "modern" is a little bit outdated.), but anyway, while the games had evolved a lot since then, the basic tools or ideas haven't really changed. This article believes that all disciplines - like audio, art, design, levels, code, etc - are involved and used to create a game. It is true for all of 2018 games too.  The article tries to develop a common, shared language that could be used to describe whether a game is good or bad, and what is it that makes people think this way. Source: Pinterest The game example used for the article is Mario 64. A game where players know, based on their decisions and actions, what will happen next. They have limited controls and abilities, so they can plan...

Source: Pinterest Feedback. Negative. Positive. Constructive. So many people talk about feedback, yet they don't know how to do it properly or how to receive it. I had a lecturer who used to say that feedback is like a sandwich. That you start with the strenghts, then you provide criticism and, lastly, you reiteration the positives and add in the positive effects that can be expected when you act upon the criticism. Only to never do it that way. Not once through two years. Why talk about it and how important it is when you will never do it? The best feedback I ever recived was a constructive feedback, which wasn't all negative, but it really showed me a lot of way I could improve whatever project I was doing at the time. It kind of opened up my eyes to all the small, silly mistakes that I have made. I didn't make them the next time. The worse feedback? The one I never recived. The one where I only got a grade with no idea what I did good or bad. Just a blank grade ...

Fear is cancer's preservative. Cancer's embalming oil. And you, oh Accuser, are fear's oil salesman. You're a snake. A serpent. A dragon with snuffed out coal on his breath. Molting, talons broken from the struggle to free yourself of your own skin. Research: That Dragon, Cancer.  It is a 2016 game created by Ryan and Amy Green and the small studio of Numinous Games. It is based on Greens' experience of rising a son who was diagnosed with terminal cancer at twelve months old, and althought he was given very little time to live, he survived for four years, before eventually passing away in 2014. Source: Steam I particularly like this project, because it isn't quite a game, it's more of an experience - one that will make you so insanely emotional even if it isn't something that you personally went through in life. I really enjoyed the way it told the story, as it wasn't just plain text at the bottom of the screen that you have to read to un...

"Welcome to Unity!" I have roughly watched the videos before opening Unity, which made me more confident when I finally downloaded it onto my computer. At least I wasn't scared by all the controls, options and numbers. So once I got it, I went back to the tutorials and started working on my little world as I was listening to the instructions. Jimmy has really calming voice and is really good at passing on his knowledge, so it was easy to follow what he was doing. I liked that he had included a link to download all of his textures, scripts and assets, but I wish it would come in as a one big pack that I can download in one go, because having to stop the tutorial to download was a bit of a mood-killer for me. Downloading them one by one was time-consuming, but I think it was worth it overall. After watching and practicing the three tutorials, I had decided to create a new project and try to remember all the things that I learned. It was great fun, I must admit, and playi...

" 52,405 characters. 8,699 words. 377 sentences. 122 paragraphs. 35 minutes reading time. "   Sometimes, you read an article, you follow the sentances with your eyes, letting the words sink into your brain... and then you realize that someone is just so terrible at writing that reading is impossible. Greg Costikyan is one of those people. In the article "Don't be a Vidiot", which is also his speech from 1998 game conference, he talks about games so old that most students won't even recognise them. So, due to complicated language and very old information, I have decided to go straight to the next article -  The Essence of Euro-style Games . Euro-styled games are tabletop games, which used to be extremely attractive back in 1990s. At first, Euro-games were the ones that were created by European publishers - which makes sense - but those games have their own, very specific requirements to be even considered Euro-games. Those rules are as follows: Rarel...