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.

More Unity Free Tutorials

Image from here

This week I specifically looked for tutorials on coding characters to move and interact in Unity as well as coding the game camera to follow the character as these are the two things in my game that I am having the most trouble with.

 The first video I found details how to code a character to move and attack. I learned that in order to have my character to move you have use code and animation. I hope that by following this tutorial I can get both my main character and the enemies walking around the map and attacking each other.

The second video I found showed how to make the enemies in the game drop items when they are killed.

This video goes into a lot more detail with the loot drops than I really need in my game like how much loot to drop and stuff like that however I plan to follow along with the code that was used to make the enemies drop the loot in the first place and not worry about the other stuff.

Hopefully these tutorials will help my with finishing up my game.

Game Stories

This week we were given two articles to read this time about story in terms of game design and development.

The first article was all about how the Hero's Journey could be applied to game development. The Hero's Journey is important because myths are important and myths convey the values of society and can guide our actions.

The Hero's Journey is a list of events that a hero goes through in nearly every book, created by Joseph Campbell. However just because Campbell made this list it doesn't mean that every story with a hero should have all of these events in them. Start with a premise for your game and, step by step, build your story from there. If you would like to know the other steps in this process click here.

The second article goes more in depth into story in games and what story is. As games have developed the demand for more in depth stories has increased because story is a universal human experience.

There are a couple of very good reasons for game developers to know about classical story structure:

It's simple and it works. Story is all about conflict, the conflict between characters, the conflict of the characters mind any sort of conflict. If you apply this to a simple three act structured story you should greatly improve it.
Story has become a crucial part of games and any game developer should work just hard on story as on the graphics in a game.