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

Unity's Own: Unity Tutorial 03

This weeks tutorial guided us through coding the controls for the truck in our game so that the player can make the truck go forward or backwards, left or right. This was something that I couldn't figure out when making my game last year so having it explained so well step by step from the beginning really helped me to understand where I went wrong.

Screenshot of my Unity Truck Game 

These tutorials also have challenges and quizzes after each unit to test you on what you've learned. The challenges are games with bugs that you have to fix and the quizzes are just simple questions. This units challenge was to fix a plane that that couldn't be controlled and was moving in circles at a fast speed. 

Screenshot of Plan Challenge

I think that these challenges and quizzes really help to solidify the information you've learned over the course of the unit and there are hints available for you if you get stuck on the challenge.  

I'm looking forward to seeing what the other units have in store and what other things I can learn about making games in unity.

Reading 3: Doing your research

After I found my research questions it was time to start doing the research. This is the method I used when researching.

When researching there can be a lot of results for sources that don't really relate to what you're writing about and reading through all the results when not all of them are ones you need can waste a lot of time that you need to write. So when reading through your findings it best to use the three-pass method.

The first pass should be a quick scan of the source, read the title, the abstract, the conclusion and the introduction before reading the headings and sub headings. Look through any images or figures and skim the references.

Screenshot of title from here 

Screenshot of image from here

If after the first pass you think that this source could be useful to you then you can start your second pass. Engage and carefully read through the sources text, images and record relevant references for later reading.

The third and final pass is when you identify and challenge the assumptions of the authors, consider what you would do differently as the researcher and record ideas for further work. 

While you're doing the passes of your sources you should be highlighting and making note of quotations to use.

Untiy's Own: Unity Tutorial 02

This week we're back again with another unity tutorial, this time from the actual unity website itself. The next few tutorials will again be focusing on the fundamentals of creating a game by making a simple driving around or into obstacles game.

These new tutorials or a lot easier to follow and are explaining all the steps very thoroughly so that there is very little confusion about how or why you're doing something.

In my previous assignment I had struggled with the coding aspect of making a game and no matter how many tutorials I watched I couldn't seem to figure it out. Following these tutorials so far I have coded a truck to move at a certain speed and hit obstacles. I also coded the main camera in the game to follow along behind the truck as it hits into these obstacles.

Screenshot of my Unity Truck Game

I am looking forward to learning how to create the code to control the truck in the game so that you can avoid the obstacles on the road because I'm sure with these tutorials that I'll be able to figure it out quickly.

Reading 2: Planning Your Approach

In order to plan my approach for writing my section of the book this semester I first had to pick the two topics that I would be writing about from the list of topics. The topics I chose were Other forms of expression and Game modifications in the chapter Type of Play.

Based on these topics and the purpose of the paper I then had to create my research question so that I  could begin my research. My questions had to narrow down my field of search and give my research a direction.

The questions I came up with are:
-How and why do player communities modify games?

-How do players express themselves using games and other mediums?

Per the video on crating a search strategy, to help myself with researching the questions I went through and found the key words in each question and proceeded to find the synonyms for these words in order to find different resources in my search.

Picture of Synonyms

After coming up with questions to search I had to create a place for me to keep all the resources I might find while researching so that I don't lose them. I do this using the matrix method shown to us which organises all my research into for neat folders. Like so.

Screenshot of Matrix Method folders

Even More Unity Free Tutorials

This week I went back to my good friend Jimmy Vegas for my first tutorial to help refresh my memory on some the things that I want to put in my game, such as gems to be collected and having the gems make a noise when you pick them up, stuff like that. While I have watched this tutorial before and followed along to it it was still interesting to go back and watch it again. I think that I may make my collectables a different item to the gems that Jimmy has in his tutorial so that it suits the theme of my game better.

My screenshot of Jimmy Vegas tutorial

The second tutorial I found was on how to have the enemies in the game only spot the player when they are a certain distance away, giving the enemy a field of view, and then having the enemy pursue the player until they leave their field of view. I hope to implement this into my game by following along to the tutorial and of course using C# scripting.

Games Testing

Image from here

This weeks reading was an article about constructive criticism and how to give constructive criticism.

The most important thing to keep in mind when one is giving constructive criticism is to make sure to keep the criticism valid and unbiased. In doing this you make sure that the person receiving the feedback gets the feedback that will help them improve upon whatever it is they're working on without feeling like you have insulted their idea.

Valid feedback is feedback that is tangible, credible and well-founded and unbiased feedback means feedback that is feedback that is free of individual opinion or personal tastes. This means that any feedback is concrete instead of based on personal taste or opinions. Another important thing to keep in mind when giving constructive criticism is to make your criticism clear, understandable, and relevant.

In closing not every bit of feedback can be implemented so don't take it personally if someone doesn't change their project based on your feedback. Remember when done correctly, criticism can result in positive benefits for all parties involved.