Multimedia Blogs

  Learning C# On this week's Unity tutorial, I learned how to make the animals spawn at timed intervals so that the player would't need to press a certain button to just spawn the animals over and over. I also learned how to add hit boxes to the animals and the food which means that once an object collides within an invisible box in the game, the items will disappear, which is also the whole point of the game. I also learned of a feature that prompts a game over message when an animal gets past the player. One thing that keeps scaring me the more and more I go on with learning C# is how in depth and complicated everything gets with it and sometimes I have difficulty wrapping my head around it. At least that was what I experienced when I was doing the challenge. The hardest part for me was making the dogs spawn at intervals as the game wouldn't be fair if you could just spam them. Another thing that I was struggling with as well was trying to remember the code I used to spaw

My Game Statement   Bow: To No One is a first person shooter powered by Unity engine which challenges the player to use strategic skill to use the given resources for their bow to strike through their targets in a challenging level system set in a fantasy medieval time. The game doesn't allow you to move around the map, but instead you can move around your perspective as a bowman where you are presented with a target, an ironic target: an apple. You start to learn basic control of the bow and to carefully aim it at the target. You cleanly penetrate the target with no issue, and demonstrated your understanding of the intricacies of the bow, but now, your challenge has truly arrived. Source You have acquired some special fire arrows, capable of destroying any obstacles and luckily there are a few in your way so it will be great to test them out but you only have a limited amount, so make sure that you use them wisely. Upon entering the area, you notice something different. The target

  The Experience On this unity tutorial I got to learn a lot of interesting new things in unity. I got introduced to prefabs which are basically copies of the game object that you want to use over and over which would be very useful in the game I want to make. I also managed to learn a few things for C# like the 'If' inputs which make it so that if a certain condition is met, the computer will follow the line of code you give it. It certainly adds more difficulty the further I progress but it'll also be good to learn more as I go. One thing that I'm still struggling with with the coding aspect is all the vector and number type of line of codes which is something I'm hoping to wrap my head around soon. I also do feel like I'll be struggling with the 'If' commands further down the line, especially when it comes to adding the 'else if' command which you can use alongside the 'if' command. SO overall with the tutorial, I did learn a decent bi

  Bow: To No one After presenting my 4 game ideas last week, I decided to go for the bow game as it seems fun to make and more of an idea I leaned towards than the other 3. As I said in my previous post, the game is a level based game where the more you complete the levels, the harder the levels get. There will also be a system in where you can upgrade the bow or you can buy a new and stronger one all together which will give the player a sense of progression and the urge to play more to unlock the new bows. So for the 3 mechanics for the game, I decided to keep it simple as it is a pretty simple game design-wise. For the first game mechanic, it's drawing the bow. So when you start playing the first level, you learn about drawing the bow and firing. The longer you draw your bow, the faster the shot travels with not much of an arc and the shorter you draw, the slower and the more of an arc the bow will have. At the start of the game, the user won't have to utilize this mechanic

Le Strategy of Feedback   For this week's reading of feedback, I went on to read  Be a Mirror  which went over the different ways you can give feedback which includes 'being like a mirror'. When I think of a mirror, the mirror only shows whats in front of it with no judgement, which is what that type of feedback is based on. If you don't mention the mistakes that the person makes and instead just highlight what they did do, that could show them what they really flourished in and what areas they have room to improve in and that will also lead to a growth mindset.  For me personally, I've always been in a fixed mindset until recently. I tend to keep a growth mindset especially when it comes to drawing and I think that will also help in other aspects such as college and my future. The second article that I read was  Why Do So Many Managers Avoid Giving Praise?  which went over the reasons why you don't hear praise from managers and the article even showed some stat

  Thoughts on Tutorial After completing the tutorial, I finally learned how to implement controls into my game so that the player could control the vehicle. That system of movement is used in most games and is pretty easy to use. The tutorial also taught me how to rotate the vehicle in the direction it's turning which would be useful to me in any future projects I decide to make. It felt nice to fully complete the tutorial and shows me that there is a lot more to learn in unity and I can't wait to do so. The only thing that there is going to be difficulty for me is the coding aspect of the whole thing as there is still so much more to learn and the different variables and numbers could sometimes get confusing to myself. https://www.rts.ch/2014/10/10/11/20/6212182.image?w=1280&h=720 On the Unity challenge that I did, I found some difficulty in but I did manage to pull through. It's always nice to see what you learn when there's no one showing you what to do. The most

  Exploring Game Elements After watching 'Introduction to Game Design: Prototype your Game', I got to learn the different ways to start prototyping the game I'm planning to work on. The video explained that you start physically drawing your ideas, use page cut outs to see things at a different perspective seeing if they work or not, what else you could to make the game more interesting etc. I think it is very effective way of experimenting and prototyping different ideas and I'm definitely looking forward to putting it into practice. The other article I read was 'What are the qualities of Games?'. In this article, I read about the qualities that make a game a GAME and how to critically analyse your game to see the things the game excels in and the qualities that are lackluster. I think the article will help me in the coming weeks when I'm going into the design phase of it and will help me out if I self critically analyse my piece of work. The last article th

  Coming up with Game Ideas When it came to thinking of the following game ideas, I read this article to help me out with the whole process: https://gamedevelopertips.com/game-ideas-create-game-ideas-in-5-steps/ For my first game idea, it is a very simple game. The game is basically a bow and arrow game. The game is level based, and the aim of the game is to simply hit the target. But as you progress throughout the game, it obviously gets harder. The game will start introducing moving targets, the target getting smaller,  obstacles such as wind or using different types of arrows such as fire arrows, rubber arrows etc. There will be also an upgrade system for the bow or you can even unlock new bows which would help you out in the later stages of the game. Overall, this idea is my favorite one out of the other three and am looking for feedback regarding it to decide whether I should proceed with this idea. My second game idea is a tower based game. Basically, you start off at the bottom

  Responding to Feedback The word 'Feedback' gives some people anxiety when they hear that word because to them it has a negative connotation to it. For me, I don't mind feedback, whether it is positive or negative and I've rarely had any anxiety with it, unless it's for something big like an exam or applying for a promotion for a job. In terms of school from past experience, I never really got much of feedback but more of you got this wrong and you should study harder. That's more of a "do better" than showing me where I could improve on. I feel like the classes where I actually got feedback in were the classes I did well in such as math class, and technical graphics, where they pointed out the areas I could improve on and what areas I excel at. I also feel like when it comes to feedback, it should never be all negative, but mostly positive and also acknowledge the negatives as well. After reading 'Neil Gaiman's advice on the creative life'

  Playing Around with Unity So, after playing around with Unity and doing the tutorials I wanted to give my thoughts on my experience and the overall experience on the game engine. To be honest so far, it was pretty easy to grasp and understand but I do know it will only get harder from here on out. I learned how to add objects, add scripts to the objects so that they would operate in certain ways for example the obstacles would move when being hit by a vehicle and so on. To be honest all I can say is that I'm excited for the coding aspect of this as usually I do enjoy coding when you make something work the way you intended or even better. I am excited to learn all the different bits of code and scripts you could add to make objects operate differently and so forth. I am looking forward to this module and all the things I am going to learn.

  Learning Game Design Fundamentals After reading "What is a game anyway?", it gave me a new perspective of what a game actually is. I've always had a straightforward way of thinking about it. I always knew it was an art as there are so many masterpieces of games out there, but there are so many different elements that actually make a game what it is. In order for a game to function as a game, it has to have rules, activities, goals, decision making and so many more aspects. All of the games that I have played or that are out there have these elements and are the reason why they exist. I have also learned that people have different interpretations of games and what they are, but to me a game is where you get to forget about the outside world and immerse yourself into the experience and enjoy yourself. Learning how to come up with ideas whether they are good or bad is also essential to game design as you have to go through all of the options you have. After reading "T

Managing my Time When it comes to managing my time, I'm pretty lack luster at it. I've always tried my hardest to get better at it but I never got better at it. I've always managed to get around without managing it as I've come to accept that I never follow certain schedules that I set for myself and it has always worked out in the end. For this semester, I'm taking a similar approach as in work whenever I can and not setting myself back with schedules and other things. For this module I'm taking a similar approach as I am more comfortable with it and I find I work more effectively that way. I still do think that time management strategies are useful for other people as many people have many different strategies that work for them and help them with this semester but I'm just not one of the people that it would work for. Overall, if you don't have any time strategy skills or any strategies that work for you, just use whatever has helped you before, no ne

  Technology Tools Since I use desktop a lot, I also use Google Chrome a lot and I browse through many things a day so I've gotten quite used to using features such as bookmarks to find sites and other things I use frequently. It's pretty handy to get to where you wanna go at the click of a button rather than trying to remember what the site was called, going through that process of typing and all that stuff. So I do recommend it'll help trust me. I also do like using google docs and even using Microsoft excel for certain things if I'm playing a game, keeping a list of something, or whatever else it is that I be doing, so using it for college purposes would be a good habit to get into and would definitely help me out throughout this year. Another thing I've been messing around with is graphics creation on my off time so that is something else that would prove useful for this course. Overall, I think this online environment would help me improve on some aspects that

  What's to come Right so now that week 2 is coming to a close and we got our task overview of the next coming weeks, I just wanna give my input and thoughts of this overall module. To be honest, this is probably the module that I'm most interested in. I've had ambitions to get into game design in secondary school but it died down but since I'm here, maybe it could respark my dreams again. I'm honestly excited to dig into Unity engine and see where it goes. As Shaun said, it can be used for many other aspects than just game designing but I'll probably just stick to game design and see how that goes. I believe learning it will be a fun process and useful for the future if I want to pursue something out of this. It'll also be useful for the group project module so it's a win win situation overall. Another thing that I'm looking forward to is the project because I just know me Eddie, Aleks and Fineas will finesse it as we are just the dynamic quartet ev

  I believe Growth Mindset is a brilliant idea to implement into todays education systems and even other areas such as games etc. as it always makes you think and know that you can improve and not just demoralize you. In the Ted Talk with Carol Dweck, she goes over the issue in education and grading systems where a failing grade or when people are presented with difficult tasks, children get demoralized and look for work arounds such as cheating or even just running away from the task itself. Personally I've been affected with it as a person who has a fixed mindset and I have definitely felt those effects from receiving a failing grade. But I've also felt how it was to receive a 'Not yet' type of result and that has personally inspired me to work harder and get to where I wanna be. It has also made me feel that regardless of the level of my intelligence, I am still as good as anyone else and that feeling of being on the same playing field as everyone else doesn't de

  What I enjoy Hola 'tis me. I'd like to talk about what I enjoy doing in my free time and my future aspirations that I have. A thing that I've been getting more and more into is music. Music is a daily part of my life and sometimes it is hard for me to get by without it. For example, I always have to listen to music when I'm doing work or sometimes when I'm playing a game where game audio isn't important at all. My artists that are on heavy rotation are The Weeknd, Kanye West and Jay-Z as they have most influenced my life through their music and their personalities. Music has also inspired my future aspirations. Currently I can't choose if I wanna go into music as a career or animation as I love drawing(although I'm not too great) and have always wanted to improve on my skills. Those are like my dream career paths and I honestly should be working much harder to work towards my dream job. I want to eventually leave Ireland for Japan or somewhere where bu