one post at a time

This week I have read more into the "story" part of games. Up to now, the readings have been expressed from a perspective of a system of rules that when followed, would create a game that was "fun". This week I looked at what makes a good story in a video game, and how it makes us enjoy a game more. A stronger story as opposed to a weaker story works on a cause and effect, for example en event happens, and another event happens because of it. The reading talks about a 3 point story structure and it reminds me a bit of what I learn in my Digital Video Techniques as movies are so story focused. It reminds me of how you'd write a screenplay. 3 Act Story Structure Aristotle laid out six elements that makes up a stage play:    However, the article also mentions that generally you don't create a good story by following a formula or a template, but you can look at patterns of what makes a good story and apply them yourself. Then you must create ei

This week I am trying to create the first playable stage of my video game. I have found it quite difficult because I find Unity quite hard to use. So far, following the tutorials is okay but sometimes I run into a problem that I can't fix even if I follow the tutorial word for word.  The good thing is it often works if I try again and again and go back to videos I've already seen and try what didn't work before again. I am doing a bit of the game every day to meet my goal but as I said sometimes it is quite difficult to get the game to work especially the parts where I need to input C# code. I feel as though I am quite bad at this. I'm a bit further than where I was last week but it's still very difficult to get it to work for me.

So far with the progress with my game, I feel like I could be doing a lot better in terms of developing the game. A lot of the time, I am mostly running into errors and trying to fix them.  On a weekly basis I usually work on the game in evening Labs or at home. The class assignments I enjoy the most are the readings because they are very interesting and they teach me a lot about game theory in general and have taught me a lot about creating your own video game. I think for next semester I definitely want to plan out my game better so that I can find the necessary tutorials that I need to make my game.

So far, I have the feedback feature to be quite useful. The comments I have recieved have actually been quite helpful, especially on my GDD. It helped me get a new perspective from the outside, and helped me make some changes to my GDD where I realised I could fix something that I previously didn't think was a problem, but then looked back and realised I could make it much better. I find comments with constructive criticism most useful for this reason - they provide a lot of unique insight, and everyone's perspective is different, which is great. I really like giving feedback to other people in the class because it gives me a chance to take a look at so many people's ideas and see how they're getting on with their game. I've seen some great unique ideas from some people and it makes me look forward to seeing their development.  When I leave comments for other people, I try to say what I liked about their idea and why, and what I disliked and why, and if I have an

This week, I am looking back on my blog and reflecting on the various readings on game design and development that I have written about.  So far, I like the reading assignments as they always cover relevant material to the course and to the game I am making. I like that they don't only tell you just how to make a game, but why certain games are made in certain ways and how this is decided and researched, for example, I quite like the readings on the concept of "fun" in game - it seems obvious on the surface what "fun" games are, but diving deeper into the theory and concepts is very interesting.  It's definitely taught me a lot about game development and now I find myself looking at games I am playing in more detail and asking questions such as "why do I found this game so fun?" or "which of the eight types of "fun" does this game have?" and referring back to the readings. I think my biggest accomplishments so far in this m

This week I have begun to work on my prototype for the game. Today I began to work on a "skeleton" of it, using free assets from Unity, implementing a simple character and some platforms. I began to work on the basic controls mandatory in every 2D platform game, for example, the character being able to stand on the platform without falling through, an object, in this case a coin, being present, and basic movement. I used the tutorials that I watched earlier this week to help me with this. While during the tutorials I only really experimented a little, today I constantly went back and forth on the instructions to try and learn what the controls do so I can apply them later without needing to refer back to the tutorial. So far, the basics are all working and I haven't found it difficult to follow any of the steps. It's very fun to learn all these controls because I definitely see myself being able to make a simple game by just practicing all these controls.

This week I have begun to look at my own Unity tutorials as I start to develop the prototype of my game. I will be making a 2D game so I looked up some videos to help me as I have never done anything like this. This is the first video I watched  https://youtu.be/on9nwbZngyw    It was a concise tutorial and very easy to follow for a beginner. I didn't have any trouble with most of it except for the part where you had to add the coin in. I couldn't get it to spin on the platform, then I tried the settings again and it worked - it was a little bit confusing having so many settings in as I have never worked with making a 2D game until this tutorial.  Some of them are different from the 3D settings, but some were familiar, such as the box collider, which made it a bit easier as I already know it's functions and what it does to the game. Besides the trouble with the coin, besides that it was a really good tutorial and I've got my first steps into creating a simple 2D