Unity Tutorials

The first Unity tutorial I watched this week was a very short one, by Jimmy Vegas, just about bringing audio into your game and where to get it from, the first website that he talks about is 'incompetech' where you can get free music from Kevin Macleod, you just need to credit him. The second one Jimmy Vegas talked about was the asset store, which we are all familiar with. I want to go explore into different sounds and Audio to find out which suits my game best.

The second tutorial I followed was one about getting hurt and losing lives, resulting in the game being over. In the tutorial, Jimmy Vegas set it up that a spider could hurt you resulting in losing lives and the game being over, I didn't really concentrate on the spider hurting you and taking away lives as this wont be an element in my game, but I did learn how to create a game over screen, by adding a new scene, and this is an element that will definitely be featured in my game.

First Playable

This week I had some more issues with Unity on my laptop, after reading loads online about other people having the same issues I tried loads of different suggestions to fixing it and I finally got it working, however my older work had been deleted and I had to start over, so this week was more or less a repeat of last week for me, with a bit extra.

So I just had to re-create my terrain again this week, but I added in the features of my bananas being collectables, I more or less followed the tutorial in which we made the gem spin, disappear when being collected and make a noise, but with a banana instead. This was all I had time for this week as I had to do the extra work for next week, but I will be catching up on this early this week.

Week 8 Progress

Make Things Happen, Pixaby

From looking back on this semester so far, I think I have made a huge amount of progress, at the start of the year I missed a good few blogs, including the 'Schedule planning' one, so thats a blog that I can't look back on and reflect how well I have stuck to a schedule. However as the weeks have gone on I have gotten into more of a flow to get the blogs completed and it is a process that I have gotten used to. I don't feel I have gotten into a weekly routine with regards to the blogs however and I do still struggle trying to find time to do certain blogs during the week while trying to balance assignments for other modules and also holing down a job. However I am determined to keep up my grade and complete all of the blogs in our final few weeks! I also haven't been taking full advantage of the extra credit tasks, and I am going to start doing a couple of them each week so I can get a better grade at the end of this semester.

Looking forward I just think that my main focus should be on time management and setting aside a certain time to complete these blogs as I feel that was my main pitfall this semester. I think next semester might be a bit easier for me, as I kind of know what to expect and have learned how this modules runs, as it is ran differently then any other module I have done before. I just want to get the work done from the start next semester. Another thing that I think would be useful is to attend the labs now and again, because this semester if I was struggling I didn't take advantage that help was there, and we should use this help to our advantage.

Overall, I feel I have come along way from the start of the semester and I am happy with my progress, I look forward to seeing the end result for my game! And I am also excited for a break from the blogs over the Christmas break..

Week 8 Comments and Feedback

Comments and Feedback; Pixaby

Today I reflected and read back on all of the comments I have received and also given. 

I have mainly received comments on my project posts, which is very helpful because this is where we could use some more ideas and reviews on our work. By getting comments and feedback based on our project, it helps us to get even more ideas for our project. It is through some of the feedback that I have received that I have been able to further my game ideas, I have definitely been given some good suggestions from people in my comments that I have brought into my game. It is a good idea that we have had to comment on peoples blogs because a fresh pair of eyes is always useful, and other people will have ideas that you couldn't have come up with yourself.

Commenting on other peoples blogs hasn't been my strong point as it is something that I haven't done enough of throughout this process, but I am going to commit myself to doing it from now on, because I find it useful from getting peoples feedback so others might find it useful from getting mine. What I have found about commenting though is that it is quite hard to give negative feedback as I wouldn't want to make anyone feel bad, and from reading the comments I have received and also other peoples comments, I think most people feel like this as a lot of the comments can be very generic and nice. I think most people would just feel bad giving people negative feedback.

I have definitely learned more about people from reading their introduction blogs, fun facts about people that I maybe wouldn't have learned from talking to these people on a daily basis. I don't feel like my introduction blog tells a lot about me as a person, I more so wrote about stuff that was currently going on in my life, I didn't actually realise that other people would have access to our blogs then I was slightly embarrassed when I found out everyone in our course had access to this, as it was a bit cringe.

Going forward I definitely want to commit myself to commenting and giving feedback on more peoples blog, as it is a process that is useful for both me and the person who receives the feedback. The only thing I would change about my blog is my introduction, to make it a bit more relevant for people who visit my blog can get to know me better.

Week 8 Reading and Writing

This week I took a look back and all my previous blogs and reflexed on them. Looking back at all the reading blogs I do feel my writing skills have improved as I haven't done a huge amount of writing within this course so far. One of my favourite reading so far was the one titled 'Games Decisions', within this post I mainly discussed 'cosy games' and how in these games there will not be much presence of danger and risk, by reading different articles about cosy games it really brought me back to my childhood as I used to play cosy games such as Animal Crossing, so it was cool to read the actual reasons behind why certain elements are they way they are in that game.

From looking back through my project blogs, its really interesting to see how much my game ideas and decisions have come along within the last few weeks. The original game idea that I went with was an world roaming/ role play game. My ideas for this game were for the player to create their own character, which will then be placed in a world that I was going to created, the character would be free to roam around this world freely discovering new places and new things to do. However my game has changed a lot from this concept as it is now an adventure and time limiting game, objective of this game is to feed the monkeys insatiable hunger, in order to keep his energy levels up and to keep the monkey alive. The player will be required to collect bananas which are scattered around the forest in which the monkey lives in. There will be a bar at the top of the screen which represents the monkeys energy level. Each time you collect a banana the monkey energy will rise, if you go a long time the energy level will decrease, and the monkey will die once the energy bar is empty. It is every useful that we have our GDD for our game and it is assessable through our blog, but it is also very nice to have the process in which our game has developed written out where we can go and look back on it.

Monkey Goes Bananas - Pixaby

This is probably one of my favourite pictures that I have used throughout this process, this is an image that I just happened to come across and it is what gave me the inspiration and idea for my game, I think it captures what my game is all about.

Overall I have found the project blogs a lot more useful and interesting then the readings. As someone who isn't really into games that much, I found some of the readings quite boring and a task to read as I just wasn't interested. However, I do feel that they were useful as I learned some useful information about games and game design that I would have never learned if I didn't have to read the articles. 

I am really enjoying the process of designing and discovering my game, I am excited for the final piece!

Game Prototype

This week I began the prototype for my game. When I tried to start this, for some reason my Unity wasn't responding and it wouldn't load properly on my laptop, so this was an issue, I had to delete and re-download Unity, which took much longer than it did last time. Even when I downloaded it, Unity still wasn't responding on laptop, so I had to wait till the following day to use a Mac in college.

Once I finally got access to Unity, I started off by creating my terrain. This week I wanted to  just focus on the aesthetics on my game. My game is based in a forest as this is a monkeys natural habitat so I wanted to create a terrain that represented this. I started off by going back to the basic skills that we learnt in the first few unity tutorials, I used textures to created grass and I placed trees and pathways over my terrain to make it look like a a forest.

I then went to the Unity Assets store, and I found a fruits pack of 3D models, in which they have a banana and I think it suits my game perfectly, so I added the bananas into my game, and made the player be able to collect it when you walk through it, just like we did with a gem in a pervious Unity tutorial, I haven't done it yet as I couldn't find the appropriate noise for my game, but I will be adding a noise to the game when a banana has been collected.

3D Fruit Pack - Screenshot

So far I am happy with my prototype and I look forward to adding more features to my game.

Screenshot of my Unity

Unity Choice Tutorials

This week for our Unity Tutorials, we had to chose our own videos to follow which we felt were appropriate to our own game.

The first video I chose to follow was one which you learned how to made a health bar. I felt this video was appropriate for my game as this is a feature that I hope to have in my game as it will show the energy levels of the monkey, and will decrease when the monkey has not eaten any food. After following this video I am confident that I will be able to use it as it was a lot easier then I thought to would be.

Jimmy Vegas - How to make a health bar

The second video I have chosen to follow, is one which shows how to make a collectable and scoring system in #C. This is a technique which I am definitely going to use in my game, as my character will be collecting bananas, with a reward of energy and points. In this tutorial, we used some skills that we have used before, like collecting the stars to make them disappear and make a noise was just like the tutorial we followed with the gem, but it was more in-depth coding in how to make your score go up, and there is a lot of messing around with the code to get it to work. I am glad I done this tutorial as I learned skills that I will definitely be using in the coming weeks.

Jimmy Vegas - How to make a collectable and scoring system in #C

Final GDD

This week I completed my final Game Design Document. It has definitely improved from last week but I found it hard to expand anymore than I have done, I feel this will change over the coming weeks and I will definitely be able to expand on it even more as the process goes on.

This process has made me excited to continue on the development of my game.

My Final GDD

DunDoc

Game Fun

FUN AND GAMES, Source

The concept of 'fun' has been around since early pre-history, when humans were at the hunter-gathers had to learn many skills in order to survive and reproduce. If they found certain skills 'fun', they were more likely to practice them and pass them onto the next generation, we are still like this today.

According to Falstein, there are three kinds of fun;

• Physical fun  - useful for any physical feats that allow us to fight or escape danger.
• Mental fun - the problem-solving part of the brain that gave us such useful things as the wheel and fire.
• Social fun - the benefits of banding together in groups for mutual survival, and reproduction.

But this theory of fun can be separated into different categories of 'kinds of fun', 

Sensation - this includes physical movement and looking and hearing things that are interesting

Fantasy -  this allows our brains to come up with novel ideas as we think of the 'what-if'

Narrative - this is useful so that we pass on useful information such as survival skills.

Challenge - This is a way in which humans can show dominance over one another in a relatively safe way.

Fellowship - This opens up the possibility of new food sources, it also allows us to pass on genetic material.

Discovery -  this is what makes us want to explore our nearby territory, the more territory we know the more potential places for us to find food and shelter.

Expression - this is how we can communicate efficiently, through language and expression.

Submission - this demands the attention of the player.

https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-7-dot-1-evolution-of-fun-sans-pokemon?module_item_id=44564

I then read another article on the topic of 'fun' called Natural Funativity by Noah Falstein, this article talks about the differences between education and entertainment, and Falstein believes there are no differences.

Falstain talks about how we share basic drives or survival and reproduction with our fellow creatures. It is in both ours and animals nature to practice the skills that we have to survive. Animals will practice their skills to fight and hunt without a second thought, as they need these skills for survival.

As humans, a way in which we can practice our survival skills, in an educating yet also entertaining way is through games which allow us to use these skills in maybe situations that wouldn't occur in our everyday lives.

Unity Tutorial 05

Unity, Source:wikimedia

I learned a lot in this weeks Unity Tutorials by Jimmy Vegas, what I really enjoyed about this weeks tutorials was all the experimentation that there was, with colours and so on. As I followed the first tutorial, I learned how to place an Axe to make it look like it was sticking into a tree, I then used code to allow the player to pick up the Axe into their hand. Even though I only had to copy the code which Jimmy Vegas was using, I always find the code side of it quite challenging and I always seem to make small mistakes which stop my code from working as it should, but I got there eventually. I am glad I learned how to collect objects like this as it is an element that I think will work well in my own game.

In the next tutorial we learned how to make a fade in fade out for the game, which is something that I hadn't even of thought of for my game but it makes it look a lot better. Experimenting with the colours for this was enjoyable and I found some very interesting colours which gave me inspiration for my own game. It was hard to get my head around the animation within Unity as we have never used this before but it was very effective.

I enjoyed making the house look different as you could change how the textures look on the outside and changing the light make such a big difference to the way that the house looks. \

I look forward to next weeks tutorials and creating the inside of the house.

Games Decisions

Cosy games are games that evokes the fantasy of safety, abundance and softness. Within a cosy game there will not be much presence of danger and risk, there is no element of high-risk or a big amount of threat. It is often that activities within a cosy game will be opt-in, so the player never feels the threat of coercion. There is also a sense of abundance within cosy games as lower level needs from Maslow's Hierarchy of needs are being met, with this including things such as hunger, thirst, shelter and safety. This provides space to work on higher up needs, such as deeper relationships, appreciation of beauty, self actualisation, nurturing and belonging. Cosy games also use strong aesthetic signals to tell players that they are in an almost stress free environment and full of safety.

Animal Crossing, Source: Flickr

An example of a 'Cosy Game' is Animal Crossing, this is a game that is very stress free and the player is free to roam around the world however they may please. The player can opt to complete some activities such as fishing, or visiting a friends house, they can also buy and sell furniture to create their house however they please. This game allows the player to enter a reality that has very little or no threat and they players has basic needs that already met which they don't have to worry about such as food and shelter.

When creating a cosy game there are many common game mechanics that could be added that are very easy to accidentally disrupt the players feeling of coziness. Here are some examples;

• Responsibility: Responsibility requires emotional labor: the effort to plan, think, and execute on a plan to resolve something. Being responsible generates high priority need/expectation. Examples include any form of mandatory maintenance, needy pets, companions, or entities that require constant, non-optional care.
• Danger, fear, threat: Any sense of impending danger triggers biological responses in the player. Their sympathetic nervous system kicks, adrenaline floods the body, and memory suffers. Often times, cozy spaces are presented as reprieve or refuge from these dangers.
• Non-consensual social presence: Anything non-consensual removes a player’s feeling of safety, but this is especially relevant in social situations. An uninvited presence can feel threatening, or just suggest an unsought expectation of interaction, reciprocation, or responsibility.
• Distance: Vast spaces eliminate a sense of safety by being unknowable. However, it is still possible to create very subtle or natural thresholds that establish a cozy space within the context of something broad: like a campfire in the middle of a wood.
• Confinement: Many small spaces are considered cozy since you can quickly inspect them to see if you are safe. But, this sort of coziness requires choice, and in turn inescapable small spaces can instead be seen as claustrophobic and controlling. A prison cell is generally not cozy.
•  Extrinsic reward: Almost any form of extrinsic reward generates a pressing transactional short-term need

Coziness overlaps with many other different aesthetics and themes;

• Cute 
• Childlike 
• Small world
• Romance
• Home
• Party
• Politeness
• Wealth

A cosy game is a very desirable type of game as it gives people a sense of comfort and lets them enter a game that gives them no worries.

http://www.lostgarden.com

In another article called 'Designing for Coziness' by Tanya X. Short I read about 'Cosy Aesthetics' and how the audio and visuals within the game really help with the coziness of the game as the images or sounds may evoke image or memories that the player has of safety. Some cosy aesthetics included;

• Abundances of plenty and generousness, including plenty of food, drink, joy, and warmth, especially in spaces like taverns, kitchens, cafes, and bedrooms.
• Smooth transitions and gradients can add gentleness to cozy areas, though clear thresholds may also preserve the comfort of a distinctly cozy area, such as coming in from a snowstorm into a log cabin, or ducking into a cave behind a waterfall.
• Protection and support signalled, such by as a relaxed guardian animal or character, communicates to the player that they are free to pursue their higher-order needs.
• Focus and elimination of interruptions or pressures can create a familiar, comfortable, intimate space.
• Mundanity and familiarity will always be cozier than something alien or exotic, as its safety and abundance is clearer. 
• Refuge & Escape: if there is an “outside”, this place is a clear shelter.
• Human-centric: rooms and objects are scaled for human comfort and belonging.
• Welcome: the player is explicitly welcomed and given freedom and safety to express themselves however they wish, without responsibility or pressure to perform.

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TanyaXShort/20180305/315179/Designing_for_Coziness.php