Reading 06: Writing your introduction and conclusion

This week we have to write the very beginning and the very end of our papers, otherwise known as the introduction and the conclusion.

Writing the introduction after writing the body paragraphs might seem a bit backwards to most people but the introduction is just the statement of what you're going to discuss in your body paragraphs so it makes sense to write those first.

As I'm writing just a section of a chapter in a book the introduction and the conclusion will have to be about the entire chapter and not just my one section. Which means that I will have to discuss the other topics in the chapter with the person writing about them in order to write a proper introduction and conclusion about the full chapter.

The purpose of an introduction is to give the reader more contextual information of your topic so that they can understand the analysis that you make throughout the paper. It should state the scope of your review, give your objective and tell the reader how your review is organised.

To write a good introduction you should make sure to avoid giving too much detail on whats in the rest of the paper, you want to hook the reader, highlight the importance of the topic that you're discussing in your paper, try to convince the reader that even if this is something they're not particularly interested in that its something they should still read.

Image from here

The purpose of the conclusion is to summarise everything you've said in your paper so far for the lazy reader who didn't want to read more than one hundred of the words on the page. The summary should include your key themes, the overall findings and the relevance of the topic to current knowledge.

In case your introduction didn't work and your reader wasn't hooked, this is your second chance. If the reader has skipped the body paragraphs to read the conclusion the summery of your paper and your topics should hopefully be able to convince them to go back and read what you've written .

Unitys Own: Unity Tutorial 06

This week we've moved onto another unit and another game to create almost from scratch. We had to follow along with three of the lessons from the unit which took me roughly three hours.

The goal of this weeks unit is to set up the basic gameplay for this yet another prototype. We of course start by importing the starter files that unity provides us before we start. This game will be all about the character jumping over obstacles as they come at them from off screen.

Screenshot of Jumping Game

Next we had to choose a background and a character from the selection in the starter files, and code to allow that character to jump when the player hits the spacebar. We also had to choose an obstacle for the character to jump over, and create a spawn manager that throws them in the player’s path in intervals.

Now that we have that done we have to deal with that the character appears to be running for the first few seconds, but then the background we chose just disappears. In order to fix this problem we need to have the background repeat to make it look like the character is running non-stop. We also want the game to stop when the character hits an obstacle, triggering the background to stop repeating and the obstacles spawning.

Now we need to have the character actually run and jump instead of just sliding across the ground, we to give it animations for these things. We will also have to adjust the speed of the animations given in order to make them look for natural in the game.

These three lessons were just the beginning of the unit but I'm excited to see where this game is going.

Game Design Document

Image from Pixnio

For this weeks project assignment I had to create a Game Design Document using the website Dundoc.

Dundoc was easy to use and already had a template for a game design document that I could use to create my own, using this template I filled in the information necessary and relevant to my game idea.

Here is a link to my Dundoc game design document- https://www.dundoc.com/project/5847

As the weeks goes on I will be adding onto this document with updated information on my game concept and idea as I create my game.

My First Game Design: Unity Tutorial 04

Image from DeviantArt 

This week we went back to using the video tutorials from Jimmy Vegas with three more videos to watch.

The last video we watched went over how to create a cursor so that the player could see where their character was looking at all times and in this video we are shown how to put text instructions for the player underneath the cursor for a period of time. These instructions tell the player what button to press to perform an action. We are also shown how to place a little extra flare to the original cursor by putting rectangles around it on each side to form a box around the cursor.

These elements are then turned off so that they're not being displayed all the time before creating a C# script to make the text and extra cursor appear when the cursor hovers over the gem and make it so that when the button is pressed the gem is collected and a sound is played to let the player know they collected the gem.

In the second video tutorial he shows us how to add more things into the environment wich was explained to us in the first few tutorials we watched weeks ago. The rest of the video is dedicated to adding a weapon to the game and animating it, teaching us the basics of animating in Unity. But before we get into animating the weapon we must first contain the weapon within a cube to make the animation of the weapon swing look more realistic. The animation process in Unity is all about key frames and where you want your object to be on which frame.

The final video shows us how to create a C# script to make sure that the swinging animation doesn't just loop infinitely and to add a swinging sound to the weapon when the animation does play. The script makes it so that when the player presses the left mouse button the weapon swings and a swinging sound is played. This script can be used in the future if you choose to add more weapons to your game.

Games GDD

Image from Pixabay

This weeks reading focuses on the smaller more look over aspects of game design, the physical presentation, especially in board and card games. These are not concrete "rules" for designing games merely suggestions as this article says. Though many of these suggestions sound like common knowledge for a board game some games look over these small details.

First we must focus on the components of the games such as the tiles, cards and the board. Each tile should be its own distinct colour and should be distinguishable from one another so that people know which piece is theirs as many people suffer from some form of colour blindness. As for the board part of the game if there are spaces for the player to put their tiles on then they should be bigger than the tiles themselves to avoid the pieces being disturbed too badly if there's more than one tile on a space. In the same vein the starting tile should be clearly marked and printed in a different colour.

When it comes to the box and packaging of the game the design can be very important because it gives you the first impression of the game inside therefore a good design can really sell the game. The name of the game must be distinct and eye catching and it should be printed on the side of the box as well as the front. The sides of the box should be printed vertically and horizontally so that the boxes can be displayed both ways on a shelf and still be legible, this would greatly help shop owners.

The theme of your game should work with the rules that you create for the game and the rules for said game should be clear and concise. Don't write intentionally vague rules that the player are meant to interpret for themselves, if the player wanted to make up their own rules they would just make their own game. The rules you do create should be blind tested on people who haven't had the game explained to them by the designer and only have the rules to go on to see if the they answer the fundamental questions. The rules of any game should answer the most important questions about the game.

The things that usually get overlooked when making a game are the small things that may seem unimportant but are actually some of the most important things. One should always test their game with others.