Feedback Thoughts

Penny For Your Thoughts

 For this post I will be talking about feedback thoughts and how I relate to it. The two articles I will be talking about are seven ways to crush self doubt and how to get past negativity bias. 

When I read the first article about crushing self doubt the first thought that came into my head was "Remember when I didn't want to go to college", like I said in my Introduction post, I didn't want to go to college because I was unsure about what it is that I wanted to do and I was also self doubting myself whether or not I would be cut out for it or not. I had constant negative thoughts if I should do it or not until one day I just went for it. There is a very good Ted talk in the article about shame and vulnerability and I can definitely relate to it when I think about my first college experience, I felt that I would not be good enough and that others would cast judgment on someone who is twenty seven returning to education and as Brene Brown talks about in the video, I felt extremely vulnerable about the whole situation. As time went on though it got better, needless to say I made a whole bunch of mistakes at the start but looking back now I can say that I learned from them. I found this article to be a very good read and would recommend you to watch the Ted talk by Brown.

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The second article talks about getting past negativity bias and this was another article that I found relates to me. It talk about the role the human brain has to play when it comes to development and gives tips on how to wire or rewire a persons thoughts for the better. It talks about how people are reluctant to focus on positive things that they do and scrutinise themselves over something negative that may have done. I can relate to what is being said in this article to a part of my life, that part being the sport I play. When I first started to play football(Soccer) at the age of 11 there was a football match where I had scored a goal to tie the game at 2-2, I had a chance to score the winning goal near the end of the game and completely skied the ball, I'm not even joking when I say that it was harder to miss than to score. The game finished 2-2 and even though I had scored to make it a draw, that miss was the only thing I could think about for days. After the game my manager could see that the miss had affected me and he said " A good striker doesn't think about a miss, he just thinks  about the next goal" and that stuck with me for life when it came to playing football. Every footballer misses chances to get goals, its part of the game and when it happens to me I do just that- think about my next goal. I can honestly say that it has helped me when I am in a game because I can have seen what it can do to some people who don't think that way about it, iv seen players curl up after missing a chance to score a goal and their confidence get depleted. I can safely say that I have dealt with my thoughts on the matter and trust me Iv missed many chances since but scored 10 times as many.   

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Game Brainstorm

 Calm Before The Brainstorm

Knowing that I am going to be making a game in Unity this semester was a shock to the system. Never had I imagined that I would be making a game on this course but I am actually looking forward to doing it and get some insight into the creative process that comes with it. Being a fan of video games for many years now I am hoping that my excessive up till all hours gaming sessions will have not been in vain and I can take some of what I think I know to be a good game into this task. In this post I will be talking about four games that I like and draw inspiration from when the time comes to make my own. I'm a huge fan of  sci-fi games and first person shooters but I don't think that I will be able to make a game of that magnitude just yet. I have a 10 year old nephew who is forever on his tablet playing video games that are of a much simpler concept such as temple run which I find oddly addictive, so I will be aiming to maybe make a game along those lines for my project. Anyway, here are my four games that I will be looking to for inspiration.

1. Copter

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Copter is a free to play arcade game that anyone can pick up and play. The concept is simple, get the helicopter as far as you can without it crashing. There is no end game to this as it just keeps going and going. The aim is for the user to try and set a high score then try to beat it again. The score is measured by the distance that you travel and as you can see from the picture it has a simple scoreboard, on the left it tells you how far you have gone in your current game while on the right it tells you your best all-time score. The controls could not be more easy to use, with the mechanics of the game constantly having the helicopter going down(crashing) and the only way to send it back up and keep it airborne is by left clicking and holding while letting go sends it back down, also there is no control over whether or not the user goes backwards or forward as the game is designed to only have the helicopter going in one direction. There are simple obstacles along the way that the user must avoid hitting or this will result in a game over. The level design and the object design in the game is fairly simple and looks like something that could be achievable with the skills I am learning in Unity.  

2. Geometry Wars Evolved

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Geometry Wars is a top down multi-directional shooter game made by a company called Bizarre Creations. It was originally a mini game that a person could play in the car game known as Project Gotham Racing 2 before becoming its own fully fledged franchise. I first played this game on my Xbox 360 and spent hours upon hours trying to beat my high score, also on the 360 you can earn achievement's by completing in game objectives and there is one in this game that still bugs me to this day that I was unable to complete. The game itself has a very simple concept with the user taking control of a small ship that is shaped like the letter c as you can see in the photo and survive for as long as possible while building up there score at the same time. The controls again are fairly simple to use with the left thumbstick the user can navigate around the rectangular map while using the right thumbstick to shoot the enemies. The game starts of at a small pace but it does not take long until you are bombarded with enemies on the screen and are left wondering how on earth am I going to beat all of these things. The user starts off with five lives and three map wiping bombs that will clear the map and give the user a chance to breath as getting touched by one of the enemies will result in you loosing a life. The game overall looks like one that I could possibly recreate using unity as it has a simple level design and mechanics.

3. Stuntman

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I would love to be able to make a car game, they provide a felling of their own when it comes to video games and always keep you on the edge of your seat. Stuntman is a car game that is not like any other car game, yeah sure you drive a car very fast in it but there are other elements to its also. The user plays as a stuntman and has to complete various objectives on each level in order to be awarded a gold, silver or bronze medal at the end. The reason I loved this game so much in the past is because it didn't just test you to see if you could finish in first place, you had to learn how to be fineness with the vehicle you were using. Depending on the movie you could be driving a regular car, a monster truck or a motorbike. The scenarios that the game put you in were fun to play for example one of the missions you are on the movie set of a spy film, its like a car scene from a James Bond movie. You get to control a car that can fire missiles and shoot machine guns which was incredibly fun. While I don't think I will be able to make this game giving my limited skillset it would be cool to make some sort of racing game. 

4. FIFA  

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FIFA is one of if not the number one most played sports game across all platforms these days. Being a massive football fan I would love to know how a game like this is made one day, just so that I would never loose at it and avoid the countless times this game would break my heart by conceding a 90th minute winner. But being serious , FIFA has come on leaps and bounds since I first started playing it back in the day. It has had huge success over the years with the game building on itself year on year. The great thing about this game I feel anyway as a fan is that you know what you are getting when you buy it, there is usually only one drastic change to the game every year and that is the gameplay mechanics. The concept of this game is not hard to grasp and I don't think there is a person alive who doesn't know what the objective is in football. While I get that I will not be able to make a game of this stature with my current skills , It would be nice to maybe create a simpler version of a football game using Unity.       

Helpful for getting started

I did some research into what would be helpful to get me started in using Unity and came across a helpful article that you may also like, you can find it here.

  

Unity tutorial 01

 My First Unity Project

This week I had to learn how to make a simple functioning game using the game developer engine known as Unity. After downloading everything that was needed, I was on my way to making my first ever game. Along with Unity I downloaded a code editor called Visual Studio, this would be where I would write my code that would make my game function. To make things function for the game I was using a programming language called C#. The programming that was necessary for this project seemed simple enough but I imagine that it can get very complicated for much bigger projects such as a triple A game title. The tutorials for this project were very helpful and easy to follow along with, the instructor is very clear in what he wants you to do and how to do it, which is a massive positive giving how daunting it was when I first learned that we would be making a game and having to use a programming language. I will end this post by talking about another fear I had at the beginning which was the user interface, I had pictured in my head that the UI for a game engine would be extremely complicated and take a lot of time to get the grip of but I could not have been more wrong. The UI, while I have only explored a small amount of it seems to be very user friendly and easy to navigate. The instructor of the course guides you through it and puts your mind at ease which in turn gave me confidence going forward with the project. I look forward to using and creating more games with Unity in the future. 

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Game Design (reading, week 3)

 Game Design & Idea Generation

Having read the articles for this weeks task I have learned a great deal about how an idea for a game can be brought about. For someone who is not in this line of work I would imagine that the task itself would seem tedious and one that would prove to be quite the challenge. On the other hand ,game designers who have a passion for making games and coming up with fresh new ideas thrive in this environment and have a plethora of ways to get from point a to b. I have learned that there is not really a wrong way to go about getting the creative juices flowing , just that some ways may be better than others. Game designers have both formal and informal ways of coming up with ideas but the study suggests that many of their initial thoughts for a concept come from life experiences be that a tv show, movie or even a game that they have played in the past . There are quite a few techniques that designers can apply in order to further an idea for creation. For example some people work best when they are in large groups bouncing ideas off one another and brainstorming ideas. Some people prefer a more informal approach by doing things such as changing their working environment from time to time or even just taking a walk to get a fresh perspective on things. There are also game designers that believe that the main element of the game should be the mechanics and I would have to agree with that, being a fan of video games for many years I have come to understand that a game can be a 10/10 visually but if the mechanics of the game are boring or feel like they don't belong then the game can be a complete failure. Some designers like to come up with new mechanics for games or improve on already existing mechanics before they delve into coming up with what the game's story is going to be or how the game will look. When all of this is brought together and the concept is finalised some things may change along the way in order to improve it, these can be drastic changes such as the core mechanics of the game or somewhat smaller changes such as visuals. Overall the generating of ideas and the creation of a game is a process that takes time and effort but in the end the juice is worth the squeeze and we are blessed with something that will entertain us for hours upon hours.  

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