Multimedia Development 2018

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...