Multimedia Development 2018

This wednesday was a big presentation day. Everyone got to present their final projects, and while it was very interesting to see them all, some felt very unfinished and rushed, which is understandable seeing how everyone had very high expectations.  There was a few working games which were good to see. The Tiny Farm being the top of them all, as it worked from start to finish, had many features including voice overs, music and hidden easter eggs. The illustrations were absolutely adorable and the game has an actual purpose - to help children with maths.  Ciaran's quiz game is also quite cool, even though it isnt the way he wanted it to be, but at least it is working and has features like timer. The questions are cleverly asked too.  The 19Sixteen was the most anticipated game as it was made in a massive group, so I thought it will be really well done, but it seems it had a lot of issues during the development.  From the less classical games, Darragh's Twine...

Due to certain circumstances, I had to fall back on my Plan B, which is easier but also less rewarding... But, once things calm down a bit, I will start working on proper Plan A again.  A bit more about Plan B - Painfully simple and very realistic twine story with multiple choices. 

Source So for this week, I been working again on the Game Design Document. This was mostly to make sure that the document is full of informations about my idea. It sadly takes a lot of time that could be used up for doing the actual project, but at least making the presentation is a bit more fun than just writing all the text on a plain white page or on the DunDoc website. Speaking of DunDoc though - the interactive story will be very strongly based on what I wrote on that website so it might be worth checking out - Click! If everything goes according to the plan, I will finally start doing the story this week. If things slide back, I will just abuse the easter break to do it, since then I will have free time and a good few other projects will be already done at that point. 

The following video is my presentation which talks about my idea for the project and the story for the interactive story. I think it includes everything that it was meant to be included and if not, I can always add in more. 

Storytelling has been used for many years to educate, pass down history, entertain and bond people together, so its no wonder that they had been written down in book forms or that it found its way into games, but the idea of interactive stories is new - a story where a user can change the outcome as he or she alters the paths, jumping from one to another in order to create somehow unique story. While its still fresh concept, it can already be seen in education, telltale games, simulation programs and many more. In this literature review, we will find out whether Interactive Storytelling has many benefits and if so, how is it used in today's society. Firstly, let's discuss about Storytelling in education environment.  Jason Ohler (2005)  talks about the uses of technology in an classroom environment - focusing on interactive or digital storytelling. The author believes that this work of storytelling has a lot to offer to an educational system, especially when done in the righ...

[Introduction] This literature review takes a look at storytelling in both interactive and narrative way, while also showing an increase in popularity for the said topic. [Body] Jason Ohler (2005)  talks about the uses of technology in an classroom environment - focusing on interactive or digital storytelling. The author believes that this work of storytelling has a lot to offer to an educational system, especially when done in the right order - focusing on the story itself first, and the technology later. He believes that this system will help students with critical thinking, writing and usage of technology. Jason Ohler believes that digital storytelling will allow students to better express themselves, not only at school, but also in work and in private life, while also allowing to uncover possible hidden talents in story writing, media production or art. Carolyn Handler Miller  shows how to create immersive and interactive stories using different media, platforms a...

Another set of annotated bibliographies. As I found it so hard to do them properly, I ended up watching some youtube videos about writing them up, which actually helped me understand it a little bit better. This time, I will be writing 6 bibliographies, as for the previous post I only did 4. Cavazza M., Pizzi D. (2006) Narratology for Interactive Storytelling: A Critical Introduction. In: Göbel S., Malkewitz R., Iurgel I. (eds) Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment.  https://doi.org/10.1007/11944577_7 In this article, the authors talk about theories that influenced further development and work on Interactive Storytelling, as well as critically looking into theories that would support further research and development of that learning area. While many other researchers already use IS, there is still a lot that can be done and researched. This article is meant to show perspective and few critical comments which could be useful when further consideri...

As part of the exercise, we made a mind map using Coggle to come up with words that relate to Multimedia. At first, the idea of mind mapping was a little bit confusing, but after few words were added in, it became clearer and easier to understand the purpose. Source Based on the Mind Map and my project idea, I decided to research Interactive Storytelling. I did another Mind Map, just focusing on that single topic to make it clearer. I have used some points from the version we made during the class. The next and final step are the annotated bibliographies. I have searched far and wide to find articles and case studies that would be related to the topic I picked but its very hard, as apparently interactive storytelling is often used in organizations and companies. December 2005/January 2006 | Volume 63 | Number 4 Learning in the Digital Age Pages 44-47 The World of Digital Storytelling Jason Ohler https://imoberg.com/files/World_of_Digital_Storytelling_The_Ohler_J._....

Team: Me. Just me. Idea: The main idea is to create a multimedia project, so that it includes an array of aspects. I had a few ideas for this module, but the most interesting ones didn't suit, so I decided to try out my third option - An interactive story. And, in fact, I might be adventurous and do two shorter stories. First for practice and getting hang of the software and second, more polished story. But I am getting ahead of myself. What is Interactive Story or Fiction? According to Wikipedia, "it is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user (also reader or player) experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story world." I don't exactly know what stories I want to use - whether they will be horror, fantasy, sci-fi, a mix of few genres. I rather wait and slowly brainstorm ideas than try to force it ...

The first video I watched isn't much of a tutorial, but rather an inspiration. I watched it and was in awe of what can actually be done in Unity... So far, all my terrains looks boring and forced, so watching those environment videos really help me realize the potential of Unity, as well as it gives me ideas of what I can do with my world... Second video goes through creating the start menu which is pretty okay to follow. It's something that I will probably have to add to my game sooner or later anyway, so might as well have a look at it now, since I decided not to go through with the crafting tutorial... That one was way too hard for a simple game and the time frame. 

This week's article talks about game testing - very important part in making a game. After you have designed your game, its time to test it. At first, you test it yourself, but you, as the designer, know exactly what to do and how to do, so instead, you send your game off to people. There are different types of testing: Bug Testing (or Quality Assurance) - The purpose of QA is to find errors in the game’s behavior relative to its design. Focus Testing - In a focus test, you bring together players that are part of the target audience’s demographic in order to determine how well a game serves their needs. This is normally done for marketing purposes. Usability Testing - In a usability test, players are given specific tasks to accomplish in an attempt to see whether they understand how to control the game. Balance Testing - The purpose of this kind of test is to identify imbalances in the game so that the designer can fix them. Fun Testing - A game can be usable, bal...

Personal images of my in-game. Personal images of my in-game. Personal images of my in-game. So here is my kinda-alpha... Still quite behind, seeing how much code I need to add into the game and instead I play with the terrain and water and bushes and flowers and all of those things. Its really hard to get everything needed just from the free assets and its quite frustrating when you imagine something one way, but then it's completely different due to restrictions... But it is what it is. I think it looks decent so far... Difficulties: Cursor - I tried like 10 different tutorials and I still can't get the cursor to work. I have seen tutorials where people just put in "Cursor.visible = true;", and it works perfectly... but sadly, not in my case. Dialogue - I tried using Fungus for dialogues, because it looked simple enough and doesn't require coding, buuuut... I don't know how to make it active when you click the NPC... Oh wait, I forgot I don...

I guess I will talk about the unity tutorials I went through to make my first playable game. The minimap tutorial was in the previous post, so I will skip on that - it was the first and probably last tutorial I found that didn't require any scripting for something interactive. And it took me 20 minutes to get it done... That was nice... very nice. And it looks impressive too! Anyway, onto inventory... Why, WHY did I decide to make an inventory? Why did I even think it will be quick and easy thing to do... I mean, a lot of games have inventories! Big, complex, inventories... You would think Unity has somehow, magically, included a pre-built version... But no. And such simple, well-known thing requires lines and lines of code. And errors. Lots of errors. I think some of my scripts decided to just die after the 100th editing session. "End-of-Life" fatal error doesn't sound too good... I was also going to add in the whole aspect of equipment but... no. Just n...

Created with trianglify.io Stoooories! Gosh, am I really excited for a reading? I guess so... I kinda am. The first article I read today is Level 9: Games and Stories . It starts off with the standard question, all of them articles always start the same way - What's makes for good stories? Well, apparently, game developers look at three certain works, and those are: Poetics, by Aristotle The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee Poetics by Aristotle... Used in games? That's quite interesting. Let's look into it a bit more.  Aristotle used a very different language compared to the one we know now, so poetics isn't actually about poetry, but more about writing tragedies, but it's not the way we know it, as a story with a sad ending, no, for Aristotle it was basically serious and lifelike writing - there was no superpowers or mythical animals. Tragedy is li...

"Tick tock, tick tock... Running out of time!" So, today I am presenting the somehow first playable... Though, I don't see why anyone would like to play it at this point, since there is very little to be done in the game. If I had extra 10 hours in a day, I would love to put it into the game, because I quite like it, even though it's stressful when codes don't want to work or drop a thousand of errors that make no sense. At this point, I thought I would have HUD done, and maybe some simple quest or two... But sadly, I'm not that far yet - stuck on the HUD and lines and lines AND LINES of code. I guess I got a working inventory in place, and a mini map, so that is a good start... I would still love to do a button to exit the game, access settings and inventory... whether I do that or not, depends on the time and complexity of the code involved. The next step, is to add NPCs, dialogues, quests and some new things to pick up... And of course give them an ico...

And the last post about reflecting - this time about progress. Looking back:  I am pretty happy with the progress so far, but there are a lot of tasks from which I didn't learn anything or very little, which is frustrating because I could have spent that time on something else.  When it comes to weekly routine... I used to have a good routine, but with all the posts and other assignments, I had to completely change it and add in more hours to do the work that is required. So instead of spending 5-6 hours on this module, I sometimes end up spending 8 or even 9 hours.  I have used the extra credit tasks twice, as image collage is an easy and quick way to get some extra points.  Looking forward:  Well, I would actually like to have time to make the game, without all the unnecessary writings and readings, even just a week or two without them would make me enjoy the module a bit more... The pitfalls... As long as I stay on top of the work, it will be a...

Reflecting on the feedback! Feedback in:  I must admit, I am surprised by the quality of the feedback and comments that I got on my blog. I think most people won't really try, but I was wrong. I got a lot of very positive feedback and they are nice to read. Feedback out:  When I comment, especially on game ideas, I try to give somehow constructive criticism and give the students some ideas that they can implement or maybe expand on. I try not to sugarcoat anything, because I know it won't be too helpful. There are times though, when I have hard time trying to find someone to comment on, as the randomizer gives me people who aren't doing their blog or those who have 10+ comments already.  Blog Comments:  I don't feel that blog is a space where I connect with people, but I did learn some things about others from their introduction posts. Looking Forward:  In a lot of cases, the feedback is forced, which isn't a good thing, so I would probably change it...

And so, the time to reflect and look back is here... And honestly, I don't remember most of the things I read throughout the last 7 weeks. All I know is that some articles were old, some mentioned Mario 64 and others talked about board games. Looking at it, week by week: Week 1: "Sometimes, you read an article, you follow the sentences 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 recognize them." So this was the first reading homework we had to do, and I can still say that the first article did an amazing job at making me hate the reading Tuesdays. I still have nightmares. The other articles... they were alright, but nothing really sparked my attention. I read t...

Well... I don't have much to write for this post, as Unity is being a complete rebel since I tried to download 3D Game Kit to use some of the assets included in there. So I am currently at the moment where Unity doesn't want to open up or it takes about an hour to open up... So can't screenshot the bit of pretty landscape that I have done. I will probably redo it tomorrow... Instead, I spent a lot of time looking at possible assets for my game and I have found a lot of very useful things - starting with textures, to materials, to rocks, trees, flowers, crystals, through potions, tomes, books finishing on houses, interiors and exterior. Some of the assets I also found a lot of amazing, paid assets which I would love to use... but I know there is no point paying 50$ for something I will use only once, so I will work from whatever is free. I am also including a screenshot of a landscape I have created for my tutorials - I have created something very similar for my ...

For this week. I got a chance to pick my own tutorials which was kinda fun. At least I got to look for something that will be useful for my game. At first I thought to follow the tutorial series by Jimmy Vegas because things mentioned there are pretty useful - like the particle system which is so versatile and vast, but instead, I decided to go with some of his other tutorials. I been thinking for a long, long time how can I include a minimap that would be displayed in the corner of my screen? It turned into a bit of my nightmare, because I wasn't able to find a lot of information on google and even if I did, it was confusing... so this tutorial helped me greatly. And, there is no coding which is even better for me, because it tends to confuse me. Source This video goes through npcs and textboxes which, again, will be something I will use a lot in my game... Once I somehow get the npc's in.  The tutorial starts off with downloading the NPC from the Asset Stor...