Unity Free Tutorials

Hola, this week for our unity tutorials we were allowed to go off and select our own tutorial to take a look at. Last time we were allowed to this I selected a tutorial that showed me how to create a usable health bar within my game, this week I've chosen a tutorial that talks about how to add fire and smoke into your game. The tutorial itself was pretty straight forward, walking us through the process step by step, from creating the fire itself to making a particle effect to imitate smoke.

The reason I chose this tutorial was simply because it was relevant in my game. In one of the games 5 levels the theme of the world is the element fire, therefore learning how to create fire and smoke in unity is of great use to me. I also think it would be interesting to mess around the this mechanic and try out a mixture of colours like purple and pink and if it looks as good as I think it will i'll find a way to incorporate it into the game, since a big part of my game is for it to be aesthetically appealing.

(Thumbnail of the tutorial I watched)

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Week 9 Progress

So far I'm happy with the progress I've made in this module. My weekly routine is pretty solid, it mainly includes me doing the work on the day its due and then spending a whole day catching up whenever I fall behind, but so far I've gotten the vast majority of my work done. Out of all the assignments I probably enjoy the unity labs the most despite popular opinion, they feel a lot more useful and relevant than the readings or especially the blog comments. Plus, even if we're stuck on a specific part of a unity tutorial we can leave it till later as long as we've spent an allotted amount of time on the work, this is really useful for me because it allows to me to be more flexible with my work schedule and revisit the complication at a later date. I haven't used any of the extra credit options yet but I think I will work through some of them soon, as soon as I figure out how to check my current grade and see if the extra credit work will be necessary, but I do suspect that I'll be using plenty of them by the end of the module.

In terms of looking forward to the future I think I'll be more or less sticking to the same routine, I am cautious of one or two potential pitfalls however, these include running into technical problems with my unity game and also not having enough of the blog posts done to get a good grade. otherwise, everything is going well.

(Doge)

Source: Wikipedia

Week 9 Reading and Writing

Overall the reading and writing assignments that we've been given for this module are going pretty well. Ive been able to get the vast majority of them done and they're a lot more straight forward then other work we do for this module. My favourite reading by far has been the reading that we've done regarding the elements that make a good game (objectives, rules, themes etc.) and how they effect the aforementioned game, mainly because it's an aspect of games that i've never thought about and when you take a good look at it it seems trivial. One example that caught my interest was that the theme can make the rules of the game a lot more clear, in chess if a piece is called a knight it gives no indication that it moves in a L shape, however in a game like Civ 5 if a farmer is called a farmer, its pretty clear that this dude farms.

In relation to the game i'm creating the readings haven't been helping much, mainly just because they're irrelevant to my game since the majority of the mechanics we discussed aren't applicable to said game. However, I have learned a new way to approach games that i'll very likely adopt in the future. Overall i'm happy with the progress i've made on my game so far, i'm still a little bit behind on my 1st playable/alpha but I still think i've done well up to this point. My biggest accomplishment has probably been uploading every post on time for the first 5/6 weeks since i'm now having to neglect doing some posts in favour of working on other modules, those first 5/6 weeks though probably should of gotten me a big percentage of my grade.

(Regarding my favourite image so far i'd probably go with this one. Theres very little images in contention for this coveted award so this one takes it. Reason being is that its from a reading I did that talked about how Diablo 2 is considered a MMO game despite hosting a maximum of 8 people. Just something that caught my interest and something to relates to the fundamentals of what makes a game a certain type of game.)

In terms of looking forward to the future in this module? I'd probably say that i'm interested in how my game will turn out and I think it'll be a lot of fun to finish. I'm still pretty rookie with unity but I think a few more Jimmy Vegas videos should solve that. Otherwise I don't think I have any worries going into the final stages of the module.

First Playable

So this blog is about my first playable prototype for our multimedia development project. Overall I

don't think the project is going too badly however I have run into a couple of difficulties working with Unity game editor. For example the editor wont let me apply textures to terrain for some reason and as terrain is the only entity in the game that can be reshaped i'm unable to add things like hills or rivers into my game for the time being. I'm also a little bit behind in terms of progress on my game but this is mainly down to juggling the work with other modules and will get sorted out in time. 

In terms of whats going well for me so far? I am actually enjoying making the game, after messing around with it for a while I've come up with some cool aesthetic combinations that I think can make the game look appealing and unique. As aesthetic design was going to be a vital part of my final game I think that's a distinguishable step. I'll be catching up on progress later this week and then I should be up to date but otherwise i'm meeting my targets for the assignment and although i'm still unsure about some things regarding the Unity game editor i'm still optimistic that I can get the game done the way I want it done.

(Screenshot from my first playable)

Unity Free Tutorials

Hola, this week for our unity video game tutorial we were to go out and find a tutorial to review ourselves, we needed one that reflected a feature or mechanic that we wanted to include our game. I chose to use a Jimmy Vegas tutorial that thought me how to produce a game over screen as well as a working health bar. The link for that video is right here Jimmy Vegas video #387.

The reason I chose this video is because my game will feature a multitude of hazards within each level. From enemies to fall hazards there are a few different ways to cause a game over screen. Due to that there's kind of a necessity for a game over screen, otherwise you couldn't really die, unless the game just repositioned you at the start of the level, but using a game over screen is just smoother.

In the video ol' Jimmy boy talks us through making the health bar, we essentially just make a red bar and use script to make it smaller every time you get hit by an enemy. When it becomes non-existentally small the game will produce the game over screen ad the player will be forced to go back to the start of the level.

(Example of a game over screen)

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Unity Tutorial 6

Back at it with these Jimmy Vegas videos, this week we looked at 3 tutorials about skyboxes, fade screens and environment respectively. The first tutorial covered skyboxes, this is essentially what the sky looks like within your video game, you can simply get a texture from the asset store and apply it to the sky of your game. As simple as this all sounds this is actually going to be hugely important in my game, since there will five different levels I have to make sure each of them differentiate from eachother and I think a good sky texture is the perfect way to do that, plus since my game relies on being aesthetically pleasing the sky is a huge factor in my game, as it makes up 50% of what the player is seeing. The video also touched on wind zones, which may also play a significant part in my video game as one of the levels takes place in a forested region, with plenty of grass and trees to be moved by the wind.

The second video covered fade screens as well as how to pick up objects. My game will feature collectibles so the ability to pick up an object that the player doesn't start with will definitely be necessary, fade screens will also play a big role in my game, given that there's multiple levels there will be a lot more transition from location to location in my game then in others, so a fade in screen will definitely help smooth that transition for the player. Finally the last tutorial covered environment in general, this includes placing bushes on the map and how to import an asset such as a log cabin from the asset store into my game. This along with everything else covered in this weeks tutorials are going to be vital to my game, and I think that they'll have a significant effect on my final product.

(One of the Tutorial videos)

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Games Decisions

For our own research we looked at readings about game theory and other core aspects of video games, one such reading was Building A Princess Saving App by Dan Cook. In this article Dan and several other game designers and producers talked about the mechanics of small scale MMO games, one such example that they mention is the MUD Minecraft, which still has a vibrant community despite its usage of small servers. Dan discusses how a core aspect of these kind of games is the ability of players to connect with each other and form bonds and friendships, therefore a social structure with activities and incentives to come together as a group are necessary in such games. The articles than goes into detail on other mechanics of  these games such as enemies and buffs before discussing the issues that come into play when randomness and RNG are introduced to such a game.

A second reading that we were touted to look at as part of our research was Decision Making and Flow Theory . However the link we were given just provides several other links, mainly for the amazon pages of several books. So i'm not quite sure what to do with it.

One final reading that I looked at was Rethinking the MMO by Neil Sorens, this article discusses the core fundamentals of what makes an MMO game. One interesting note I picked up from this article was that the term MMO and is actually a lot like a marketing term more so than an actual genre. For example compare World of Warcraft to a game like Diablo 2. World of Warcraft can host hundreds of players on the same server, meanwhile Diablo 2 can host a maximum of 8, however both are considered MMO and Diablo 2 is even known as being a major example of a successful MMO.

(MMO Game "Diablo 2")

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