Reading 04: Conducting and writing your analysis

Now that we've done our research and found some sources its time to start writing our analysis.

Writing an analysis means that I have to identify the themes that have emerged while I have been researching and weave them together into a coherent thought that answers both of the research questions that I have previously put forward.

In my analysis I hope to be able to answer both of my research questions and explore the common themes amongst both of the questions as well as explore the topics separately.

While reading through my sources I found that my two topics have a few common elements, one of which is that the players often use the games they are playing and modifying to express themselves and their interests. Sometimes these modifications can be the changing of a characters appearance to look wacky and sometimes they can just be simple bug fixes.

One source I found stated that players enjoy games that are open to being modified because it helps them to feel like they were part of the creating process of the game itself. It also helps the game stay relevant for longer in the eyes of the public because the games only limits is the imagination of the player.

I would like to write more about this common factor in my analysis because I think that it helps to answer parts of both of my research questions and I think that it will help to integrate my sources into a wider conversation.

Screenshot of one Review Matrix 

Unity's Own: Unity Tutorial 04

Another week, another set of unity tutorials. This week we start another unit of tutorials, this unit taught us how to make yet another type of game.

This game is about being a farmer and throwing slices of pizza to woodland creatures while they are running at you from the top of the screen. The assets were provided for us but we had to make our own code following the tutorials just like in the last unit. 

For this game we are taught how to code for items to shoot when a key is pressed, for instance when the space key is pressed a piece of pizza shoots across the screen, and disappear once they are outside the bounds of the game, so as to not clutter the game and possibly break it.

We are also taught how to have the game spawn the animals at random from the three animal prefabs that are present, a moose, a deer and a fox and to have them spawn in a wide area around the player. These too disappear once they leaves the bounds of the game.

I look forward to seeing what else this unit has in store as I really like the idea of this game.

Screenshot of Animal Game

Feedback Strategies: Feedforward

Image from Pixabay

Feedback can be both negative and positive but all feedback should be constructive to the work and the person that is getting feedback. Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback goes into detail about this.

Feedforward is all about changing the future and not dwelling on the past, the advice that is given is to help the person in the future, so it's showing them what to do right instead of telling them what they did wrong which people find much easier to accept.

Feedback is often taken personally no matter how it is delivered and many people find it hard to accept, where as feedforward involves no such personal critique since it discussing the future and so people find it easier to take on the advice and it would be more helpful then someone praising them in order to soften the blow of critique, this technique is known as compliment sandwich and most often doesn't work.

Praise is all well and good but as is explained in The Difference Between Praise and Feedback praise can also have a negative effect on developing children in the long run. That's not to say that you shouldn't praise your children, there are just more constructive ways to go about it.

When one is giving praise it is best to praise the process rather then the finished piece, for example, telling a child that they must have put a lot of work into their painting instead of just saying that its a nice painting and that they're very talented.

However even this form of praise can be tricky and it would be even better if parents would engage with their children by asking them questions about what they've been doing or pointing out one thing about the finished piece that they can see the child improved on. For instance, if the child plays football and the parent goes to watch they should ask the child what their favourite part of the game was or remark on how they can see that they have been practicing their kick.

Giving feedback and praise are good things, they can help people grow and learn, but only if done right and the right way is often the harder way. But this just means that the outcome of said praise and feedback will be even greater.

My Game Idea Research

Image from Wikipedia Commons

Last week I brainstormed four potential game ideas that I could create for my final project for this year. This week I have picked one game out of the four that I liked the most and researched deeper onto the mechanics and development of my game idea. This article explains a lot about some of the things I plan to add into my game.

My game idea is that of an open world fighting game. The player controls a character who lives in a village that is terrorised by monsters and the character must try and find the source of these monsters while facing a multitude of beast along his journey.

The main area that the character will be exploring is the forest around the village where most of the monsters come from. I hope to put a map into the game so that the player doesn't get lost or stuck and knows how to get to the next area of the game.

The character starts out with a small weapon and throughout the game as the character kills monsters they collect parts that they can use to create better weapons to defeat stronger monsters and enemies. There will be a variety of enemies with different abilities and appearances, from these enemies the character will have the ability to learn new moves based on the enemies skillset. This also mean that the player will be able to form strategies to defeat the enemy based off its attacks and its weaknesses.

The character and enemies will have a health bar displayed and different enemies will have different amounts of health. As the character moves through the game and gets stronger by defeating enemies they will also add on to their health bar in order to make sure that they have enough health to defeat stronger enemies.

The game will start with a tutorial for the player to explain the dedicated buttons, what they do and . The player will have three main buttons, one to attack, one to dodge and one to block. Depending on what weapon the player has equipped at the time the attack will be different and cause more or less damage.

The game will end once the player has found their way to the boss of the game. The player will have to use all the skills they learned from previous enemies to conquer the boss and beat the game.

My First Game Design: Unity Tutorial 02

Image from Pexels

This week we had two more unity Tutorials to watch and follow along with. The first was 20 minutes and the second was 16 minutes. These video carry on from the three video tutorials from last week.

The first video begins by showing you how to put sounds into the game and assign them to an object. Using script the video also shows how to make sure that the sound doesn't play on a loop as soon as the game starts and instead only plays when the character collects the gem/object. The tutorial then shows you how to place a box collider around your gem and make it whatever size you need to fit it around the gem.

After that the video moves on briefly to explaining how to add water into your game so that you can make a little lake if you want, to do this lower part of the terrain and then using the water asset that comes in unity to fill the dip in the terrain and create a small lake.

In the last part of the tutorial we are shown how to add more realistic textures to the game by creating a wall using a cube and scaling it into a wall and adding brick textures. The video then explains how to make the texture look less gritty and finally before the end of the game we are shown quickly how to add shadows into your game.

In the first few minutes of the second video we are shown how to create a cursor so that the player can always see where the characters focus is on the screen. This is done by creating a canvas and then scaling it down to an appropriate size on the screen, the canvas can have textures and colours added to it depending on what type of game you're creating.

The rest of the tutorial is dedicated to breaking down and explaining Raycasting or Playercasting. The video breaks down the beginning of the code that is needed for Raycasting. Raycasting is a way of defining how far away an object is from the object it's looking at, for example how far away a character is from the wall they're looking at.

This weeks tutorials were very interesting if not a little bit harder to follow then last weeks. hopefully next weeks videos will be just as interesting.

Discussing Game Elements

Image from Wikipedia Commons

This weeks readings went more in depth into the vocabulary of game design by discussing how to analyse a game and figure out what makes it fun and the types of tools there are and can be used to create good games. This links in with the post I wrote about last weeks reading, which was about the lack of vocabulary that there is to help explain games without using comparisons to other games.

Most people when asked about their opinions of a game will either say that the game was fun or that it wasn't fun. This does not help designers to pinpoint what makes the game good however, most people don't know how to explain the elements of themes that they like or dislike because they lack the vocabulary. Some of the things designers can look at while making a game include players, how many players can a game support and how does it effect gameplay, objectives, what is the goal of the game and rules, the rules of the game.

Formal Abstract Design Tools (FADT) by Doug Church goes over some of the tools that designers use to create games while using examples of real games such as Mario 64 and Tekken to help in explaining these tools and how they help the player have fun in each game. He begins by explaining the types of things that fall under "formal" "abstract" "design" and "tools". This article doesn't go over every tool but it does go over a few good ones that will get the players enjoying your game and it gives an overview of the ideas behind FADT.

Mario 64 , which is used as the first example, has an element of open-ended exploration while also having a clear direction to the goal of all areas of the game but the player is allowed to decide which path they want to take first through the worlds, usually starting with the easiest path first.

The game also has a set amount of controls that always work in that set way. Because of this the player knows what they can and cannot do in terms of gameplay, and while there is different environments to explore and conquer the player does so with those set controls. This means that the player can look at a situation in the game and formulate their own plan using these controls, allowing the player to feel involved in the game.

This lead to two tools under FADT, intention and perceivable consequence. RPG's often use the perceivable consequence tool, often not in a clear cut way, but RPG's also use another tool under FADT, story. The story is revealed through the characters interaction with the world and other people in it. The game may lack the player involvement if the designer chooses to priorities story over perceivable consequence, which works for some games but not all.

These are some of the tools discussed in this weeks reading. These tools are there to help game designers create good and enjoyable games and to help players understand what it is they enjoy or don't enjoy about the game.