Unity Tutorial 9

 More Unity

I have been a small bit behind on developing my game and have only got round to doing some actual work on it today, I have the structure of my game set in place it is just the programming side of it that I need to implement now.

While I know I should not be spending much time on how my game looks visually I cant help but try to make it look aesthetically pleasing , so I have been playing around with different backgrounds and different game object to see what works best for the game. 

I have been doing some further unity tutorials to find out what would work best for my game , currently I am doing a flappy bird game tutorial. It is very informative and has shown me how I can implement the programming needed to get my game up and running.

Week 9 Reading and Writing

 Overall Thoughts

This weeks post is about how well the reading and writing these blog post are working out for me. So to give you the straight up answer, yes I have enjoyed writing up the blog post as they have helped me reflect on the things I have read about in previous weeks, where usually I would just read something and then move on with my life, the blog post have been a nice way of looking back on the information  in my own words and take it in that bit more.

While I have enjoyed that aspect , the amount of reading on the other hand coupled with having to complete other modules for me felt a bit much and I struggled to find the time to get them fully complete which was a shame because I am very interested in it and would have liked to have had more time to read through them.

Learning unity: To be honest I am struggling with unity, I don't like learning from online videos as I do have so many questions as to why this works or why that works ect, saying that though the unity tutorials have been easy to go along with I just wished they explained things in more detail. I am a fussy learner and I am set in my ways unfortunately and learning to make a game this way, which in itself is a task and a half has caught me off guard and I am suffering because of it. While I know that the help is there if I need it from my class tutor, I just feel like I am going to be an annoyance if I was to ask for help.  

Looking forward though I am still currently in the early stages of developing my game and I am hoping to get it finished as I don't like starting something and not see it through, my game may not be the best but if I get it completed to a stage where it is playable then I will call it a success. 

Other than the unity tutorial being pre recorded videos to learn off there is not much I would change with how the module is being delivered, there is much information to digest in what seems like a short period of time and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by it solely because of the time constraint.

If there is one thing I could change about the module it would be the way that we are being thought unity, like I said previously I don't do "online" learning the best and know that my learning is taking longer than what it usually does as a result.      

Prototype

 Prototype

This week I began my unity adventure which is putting what I have learned so far into practice. I created some basic objects that will be my player and my obstacles as well as my scene where all the action will take place. I then coloured them in and added some code to the player to give it some basic movement. My game is going to have a rise and fall mechanic for my player but as of yet it does not have this applied to it as I am still currently researching how to implement it. I have spent some time trying to find information on this and so far have not been able to find anything that coincides with what I am trying to achieve. I did however find a discord server that is for Unity beginners that is populated with tons of information about how to do things, hopefully this will help me as I feel a bit lost without the help of the tutorials if I'm being honest.

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Game Decisions

 Game Decisions

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This weeks reading was about Flow in video games, it is a theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It is applied when creating a video game to keep the user engaged.  

What is Flow? Flow is a psychological theory that game developers incorporate to keep players playing. It is a way of getting hold of a player and keep them playing  for hours upon hours, that is the hope of course. Flow can be implemented by presenting a challenge to the player based on their skill level, it usually starts off simple so as to not scare the player into thinking they are not going to be able to play on but instead make them feel like the are learning how to play and are feeling a sense of achievement from doing so, On the flip side the challenge cannot be too easy as the user may get board and made feel like they are not being tested enough and stop playing. If the challenge being presented to the user is proving to be adequate and is keeping them engaged then the player will be in a state of hyper focus, which is the state of mind that game developers want you to be when playing their game. Once the player is in this state any external awareness is rendered mute to them as they are fully focused on completing the challenge that the game is presenting them. Developers must be conscious of how they try and implement the flow state in video games as it can be the make or break of the game being fun or not.

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I have looked at this topic further and have found some useful resources should you look to delve deeper into it.

the first is another blog post about flow theory and what surrounds it, you can find it HERE!  

second is an article that goes into detail about the cognitive psychology around game design, you can find it HERE!    

I found this nice video about flow and how gamers enter into it, you can watch it HERE!

Unity Tutorial 06

 Unity Tutorial

This week in Unity I learned how to apply animation to my character to give it some movement that made sense. It would start of in a running state then when it jumped he would do another animation where its legs and arms would change, I also learned how to apply an animation to the character for when the player gets a game over. I added the code for these in my player controller script using some new methods like SetTrigger, SetBool and SetInt.

In the second lesson I added some particle effects to the character for when it was running and for when it crashed. I also added in some audio effects for when the character jumps and crashes along with some background music.

I was really happy that I was able to complete these lessons as I had run into some issues early on with it and to be honest I got a little frustrated with it, non the less though I kept plugging away at it and eventually got there. So far I have found the tutorials very helpful and have not had any issues with them, the problems that I was encountering were on my end and it was up to me to figure out what was wrong,, which I eventually did.  

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Game Design Document

 GDD

This week I had to learn about and create my Game Design Document. To create my one I used Dundoc. Initially I had no clue what I was looking at when I first created my first project but as I played around with the elements I learned how to use them and what to add into them. You can view my document HERE!. This will be updated as time goes on and I figure out what content will be in my game as right now I am a little sceptical about what to include in case it my not be viable.

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Unity Tutorial 5

 Unity

This weeks Unity task was a continuation from the previous tutorial where I had to further complete steps in order to have the game running successfully. This blog post is again a late one as I was stuck on the previous one which resulted in me being behind for this one.

The tutorials for this were easy to follow and thank god I didn't run into any problems with my code other than a few spelling mistakes that resulted in it not working. I learned how to repeat the background of my game so it looks like the player is constantly running, I also made it stop when the player hit an object which resulted in a game over. There were some minor issues with the objects being spawned after a game over which the tutorial showed me how to fix and there was a problem when the game was running where the objects being spawned would just continue to remain in the game which can result in performance issues if they are not dealt with. The tutorials showed me how to reference other scripts and I now understand the difference between a public and private variable...I think. I learned a new operator which is the == which is known as "is equal to".

Overall this tutorial was very informative and explained some of the questions I needed answering as to why certain things are the way they are.  

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