reading 6

For this weeks reading we are focusing on writing our body paragraphs for our chapters.

My two chapters are:

• What is game balancing?
• Managing difficulty

After researching into my chapters/subjects more and from gathering information about game balancing and how to manage difficulty in relation to gaming/producing a game I have created a plan as to how I am going to shape my paragraphs.

I have been looking for more information I can use to write up abut my chapters. A lot of stuff that I have read into about my topics are repetitive, which means I will be using a lot of that information as it keeps popping up and seems relevant.

I will start with an introductory into my two chapters and give a brief over view of both.

I'll then follow on with information that supports my topic. Books/articles/websites that I have been using for help in writing about my topics.

I will then talk about what I have found useful in conducting my research and what I thought has helped me a lot.

To wrap it all up at the end I will summarise up my research and see what I found most useful to me and what has linked in well in writing up about my chapters.

I have found several things helpful with this, small little things such as 'tips' on how to balance gaming and how to manage difficulty in relation to gaming. I will not be using these as my research sources but just for myself I have found them to be very useful and beneficial.

That is all for now!

unity tutorial 5

This weeks tutorial was following on from the one last week. We learned how to spawn the animals a bit last week and following on this week we were shown how to make them spawn without having to press 'S'.

 

This week we also added in colliders to our prefabs to make it launch a projectile into the animals in order to destroy it. The step by step videos I find are very beneficial, although sometimes they go off tangent a little bit, they definitely make it easy to follow.

The visuals of the game didnt really change that much, it was more so adding a few more bits of C# script to make it spawn, and add colliders etc. Following on from this then it showed us how to make it be 'Game over' when an animal made it past the player, which like I said before is good to know as this can be applied to any certain game.

All in all it was easy to follow which makes it a bit easier for us as were not constantly  messing it up or making mistakes.

The second part was the "Challenge 2" which was kind of building on top of what we had which confused me a bit but when I looked through all of the steps it was super easy to follow and always quite fun!

Just took a close up screen shot of it as you cans see the similarities 

Unity tutorial 04

I didn't submit my blog for the 4th unity tutorial in time as my Unity was not working for me on my laptop so I swapped to my PC as that's what I used to use for unity in semester 1.

This tutorial was fairly straight forward, I didn't come into too many difficulties apart from the fact my player was in the air and it wouldn't allow me to move it down to the surface for ages. Which made it fairly difficult as it wouldn't let me move from side to side (which was one of the main objectives)

The C# script was also fairly handy too as it showed you step by step, and also showed you the code at the end to make it easier to follow. The script we had to do was simple and also was useful to know as there are many elements that can be used for any game your making!

This is my game below ↓

Unity tutorial 03

Like last weeks, this tutorial was also handy enough which I am so grateful for 🤣

It was mainly based around #C script, and the video made it easy to follow it bit by bit.

This weeks tutorial was mainly focused on the movements of the car that we made, how to move it right, left, back forward etc. I was so glad I got this on point as previously I always had problems with the basics of this kind of thing..

The second tutorial was different as it was a small challenge where we had to make the code and fix the camera so that it would make the plane move and go forward. The first tutorial was a lot more handier as it showed you what to do whereas the second one you had to use more of your initiative, which I did like because you see how certain things in Unity actually work and make things move etc


Like last weeks, this tutorial was also handy enough which I am so grateful for 🤣

It was mainly based around #C script, and the video made it easy to follow it bit by bit.

This weeks tutorial was mainly focused on the movements of the car that we made, how to move it right, left, back forward etc. I was so glad I got this on point as previously I always had problems with the basics of this kind of thing..

The second tutorial was different as it was a small challenge where we had to make the code and fix the camera so that it would make the plane move and go forward. The first tutorial was a lot more handier as it showed you what to do whereas the second one you had to use more of your initiative, which I did like because you see how certain things in Unity actually work and make things move etc


All in all though I didn't so much mind these tutorials because they are easy to follow and tells you where or how you could go wrong so its easy enough to watch back and figure it out.

Looking forward to doing the tutorials for next week 👍

Unity tutorial 02

Getting back into unity I just watched a quick video to refresh my head a little bit as last year it was quite confusing for me but I want to be able to get the hang of it properly this time around. 

This tutorial for me was done well as it brought you step by step through everything which I found very helpful. I started up by doing the basics, importing files, setting it up etc, and then just followed the steps bit by bit.

The videos were all fairly straight forward and I got it quick enough but I had some trouble at 1.3 part as my code/script kept going wrong and I kept having to switch back and from the video to see where I went wrong. I just cleared a bit of my code for the last part and started again as it was getting all jumbled up. 

I felt good after this tutorial in Unity as I finally got the hang of it properly and didn't make any huge mistakes. 

Looking forward to doing the next one.

week 3

For this week we had to research more on our chosen topics, we just had to look into it a small bit more and write/draw down our ideas on what we have read up on.

I found that my matrix structure really helped me with this week as I had it all laid out fairly clear for me, not only the basics but the good, the bad and possible questions about out topics.

Not going to lie at the start I was fairly confused about this and didn't really know where I was going with it but then I realised what I was meant to be doing and found it a lot easier and knuckled down on it.

I looked up different articles about it on  Google scholar and TU Dublin's archives and I found a lot of more insight into it. I want to research more into it and fully identify what it is that im focusing on.

I am still not 100% sure that I am doing this right, but I'm just going to see how it goes and get feedback to see if I am correct.

reading 2, start of a new semester

Im not going to lie I found this very confusing and I had to keep reading back through it and make sure that I was actually doing the right thing 🤣

I hope in the end I got it right? This time around we are building up to producing a book, the the two topics that I chose are:

• what is game balancing?
• managing difficulty 

I started off with just looking up the basics and looking up 'game balancing' and 'how to manage difficulty in relation to gaming' and just had a look around myself to see what I got and it definitely made it a bit easier for me.

The best term that I got for game balancing was ' Game balance is a video game design concept where the strengths of a character or a particular strategy are offset by a proportional drawback in another area to prevent domination of one character or gaming approach' 

Im glad that I chose these two topics as they are very relevant to gaming. I already have done out my matrix structure and it has definitely helped me out a lot.

Keywords that helped me with my research:

1. balance
2. gaming
3. equal
4. testing
5. strengths
6. weaknesses
7. limitation
8. management
9. planning
10. domination

I hope that I done this correct and if not all I can do is work from it!

Beta

So I'm not going to lie I was falling behind a little in relation to the game but when I had it completed it erased it all as I obviously didn't save it properly.

So then I had to start from scratch all over again, so I decided to simplify it a lot more than the game I had made as I want to have it done in time for the deadline and pass this module.

 I am writing this blog on the MACs in college and I am using my mams laptop for my game so I don't have a screenshot of it on me now but everything is functioning well, hopefully it all goes smoothly. I was having problems with my character moving around in the game but I am working on that.

In relation to meeting my targets: It is going well, feeling a bit stressed as there is so many big assignments due now so I am just trying to get it done as fast as possible. 

Unity Free Tutorial

As my game has been working on and off and it had erased completely when I tried to open it up again during the week I knew myself how to re start it up again. 

I had to re do it so I looked up how to export it properly again (obviously) and I used this video to make sure that I didnt make the same mistake again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx52hMxn0FY

I also used : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnKKaL5iwDM
to learn and add in coins into to my game for my character to collect 

I have used nearly all of the tutorials I need for my game if im being honest but I looked at this video to ensure all of my game contains the main components for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5QFW12utdU

Throughout this module Jimmy Vegas has definitely helped me out a lot, and Im sure everyone else doing their game thinks the same. 

Although it is annoying and time consuming having to flick to and from the videos to Unity after a while you get the hang of it after a while. They have helped me a lot from learning the basics to finalizing the game. 

Learning challenge, happiness jar

 

I wrote a blog post a while ago about the Happiness Jar and I researched into it and read articles about it. I said on the day that I published the blog that I would make one and write one thing a day that made me smile or made me feel grateful, so I did.

Following on from that post, it said to return in a week, but I found that it was so good I actually wanted to let it build up for a bit and I can truthfully say that I really felt that it was beneficial. I have really focused on the small every day things that are normal every day life but that also add to my happiness. A lot of these things ive realized have been family and friends. And after focusing on these I have realized to not take these for granted at all.

Growth mindset

 

I chose to read the article "What having a growth mindset really means" as it just caught my attention.

Basically what I got from it is that people who believe that they can do better or think their talents can be developed have a growth mindset as they want to develop themselves. People with a fixed mindset think that their talents are innate gifts.

To continue to want to grow and to learn more we must avoid having a fixed mindset and thinking that it is just about praising and rewarding effort. 

Wikipedia Trail

I seen on the homepage of Wikipedia a section called "on this day" that lists everything that happened on that day. I found this very interesting and then I continued to look into the events that happened on that day.

• On this day in 1920 the Chinese army expelled UN forces from North Korea. This was the withdrawal of United Nations forces from North Korea that took place from the 2+25th of December. I looked into this and read what it said on Wikipedia and it was very interesting, I learned that there were 13 commanders and leaders in this.
• On this day in 1989 The Malayan Communist Party and the Malaysian government signed a peace accord to end the 21-year Communist insurgency. The communist insurgency was also known as the Second Malayan Emergency, this was an armed conflict that occurred in Malaysia from 1968 to 1989 involving the Malaysian federal security forces.
• On this day in 1971 Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah, Dubai, and Umm al-Quwain form the United Arab Emirates. This is a country in Western Asia
  at the southeast end of the Arabian Peninsula on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman to the east and Saudi Arabia to the south and west, as well as sharing maritime borders with Qatar to the west and Iran to the north. On that day they all formed together to make the one.
• On this day in 1985 an English poet, Philip Larkin died. I studied him in school for my Leaving Certificate and his poems were always very interesting to me.

tech tip- twitter follow

Tech Task

 

I joined twitter quite a while ago and I only follow around 40 people. I began following RTE News (don't laugh) because I never feel that I am up to date with the world around us and I wouldn't ever really go out of my way to read a newspaper so I followed it and I allowed notifications so I get a notification every time a story comes out.

 

I am really glad that I followed this as I know feel that I am up to date and I am aware what is going on around me.