Learning Challenge:Review your schedule for this class

Looking at the schedule that I had planned for myself at the start of the semester, I definitely haven't managed to stick to it. I think my time management has improved because of the weekly scheduled blogs but I still find it a little bit hard to fully stick to what I had planned just because of all my other modules having big assignments or my part time job taking up way more time than I had anticipated. I think there is a lot more work I can do to try and stick to schedules and manage my time better but I'm am happy I've made some improvements. Maybe I should try to be stricter with myself when I make plans not to let them pass me by!

Time management meme

Growth Mindset:Explore Growth Mindset Beyond School

This growth mindset challenge is to see try and look at aspects other than schoolwork where you might show a growth mindset. I don't think i've ever really had a great growth mindset when it comes to college work but i know i've definitely shown this sort of mindset in other aspects of my life. When it comes to exercise I love pushing myself to work harder, or be quicker or to learn a new skill. It's also an aspect of my life where I won't quit when i get tired or find something hard. I also used to have this sort of mindset when I used to play football but unfortunately there wasn't enough people for a team but I'd love to be on a sporting team again where I can work on having a stronger growth mindset. I do believe if you practise having a certain mindset about some aspects of your life it's definitely easier to carry that mindset over to different aspects of your life.

Growth Mindset

Tech Tip:Twitter Widget

This weeks tech tip I added my personal twitter account to my blog. I followed the instructions to customise the height of the widget as otherwise it takes up the whole page.

Unity Free Tutorials

Jimmy Vegas' Tutorials

This week i continued to use Jimmy Vegas' tutorials as I find them easy to follow I watched another two of his tutorials on adding buildings and different textures to make the city more realistic. I found these tutorials really helpful as I wouldn't have known where to start with trying to make a city for my game without them. 

I also watched two of Jimmy Vegas's other tutorials on his car racing game. I put in a countdown so when you press play you have a countdown from 3 before the game timer starts which was done using C# Script. I put in a countdown so when you press play you have a countdown from 3 before the game timer starts which was done using C# Script. I also continued this series of tutorials and managed to add different camera angles for the first person controller also using C# Script. The player can now press the C key on their keyboard to switch from different camera angles while driving their car. This tutorial helped me add some options that the player can choose what they prefer which I feel like my game was lacking slightly. Next I want to add in a Menu before the game is played and I'm hoping to be able to do another option for the player so that they can choose between player under the timer or just freely driving around.

Learning Challenge:Watch For Empathy

A person that I observed showing empathy was my boss in my job. I work in a pizza and pasta takeaway in Coolock and its a small business. A homeless man came in over the weekend and was asking to charge his vape and if we had any spare food for him. My boss had already been  slightly pissed of at this homeless man because he had come up to the shop a previous day and had emptied all the rubbish from the bin onto the ground in front of our door and left it all there. My boss showed empathy by charging his vape and cooking him whatever dish he wanted and giving him free drinks to bring with him. The man was so appreciative and was nearly in tears getting a big pizza was really nice to watch.

Growth Mindset:Try Everything

This weeks growth Mindset challenge that I picked was watching Shakira's video 'Try everything' which was made for the animated film 'Zootopia'. I had never heard the song before but after listening to it and reading the lyrics its obvious that it has a  lot of great advice about the Growth Mindset. The line 'I wanna try even though I could fail' shows a big growth mindset  as from my previous readings on the growth mindset people with fixed mindsets are afraid to fail so won't try things that scare them where as this song sings about doing the complete opposite. They don't care if they fail or fall or mess up in anyway they just want to try everything.

Try Everything Lyrics

Tech Task:Pinterest Board

I created a Pinterest board for this weeks Tech task. I have used Pinterest before mainly for inspiration for college in particular for getting inspiration for graphic design and branding. I like to  use it sometimes for looking at interior design pictures or DIY ideas. Here is the link to the Pinterest board I created for this task.

     https://www.pinterest.ie/aislinglbrennan/gd-portfolio-ideas/

Alpha

This week for my project I worked on getting the timer and triggers functioning properly so that It was actually a playable game instead of driving around the terrain. I also worked on adding buildings and better roads and paths and a train station to create the city portion of the terrain. nothing has gone wrong so far while i'm working on my game but I would like to fix the way that you can see the grass developing as your driving towards it while playing I had originally thought I had already addressed and fixed this problem but I've began noticing it a lot and it makes the roads slightly confusing to follow when the outline of the road and the grass is only showing as the players driving by it.

This week coming I need to work on respawning if you get stuck somewhere over a couple of seconds as if you have a bad crash you can get stuck somewhere you don't have to restart the whole game when you have time left on the countdown.

I am starting to worry about meeting targets I don't know if its just that I'm spending far too long on one specific thing I want to complete but I am starting to worry if I'll manage to get everything that I originally planned complete. I am really enjoying the process though.

Terrain

Game being Played

Buildings in game

Unity Free tutorials

The Unity Tutorials I watched this week were 3 of Jimmy Vegas' 'How to build a visual city' because I wanted half of my track to look way more city like and I thought this tutorial would give me a lot of useful tips. I used these tutorials to spruce up my car race track and have it look like the player is travelling towards a hospital. In this tutorial I was shown how to create roads and paths out of 3D cube objects and and how to create shops just simply using another 3D game object. This tutorial also reminded me of how much simpler parenting the hierarchy correctly makes navigating unity. I also got a recap of scaling textures so that they don't look stretched out on different sized objects. I then also played around with different colours and changing the materials slightly for each object so that they were exactly how I wanted them.This weeks unity tutorial was mainly focused on trying to create the feel and mood for my game in the city area and I enjoyed recapping on things I had already learnt at the beginning of the semester.

Improved City Roads I worked on

Learning Challenge: Deskercise

The Learning by H.E.A.R.T challenge I did this week was the Deskercise challenge which was under Health/Happiness. it was to read an article about the different kind of exercise you can do while sitting at your desk, and to see if I wanted to try any out. The one I was most surprised was considered an exercise was fidgeting, as I'm literally always fidgeting even when I'm talking on the phone I find myself pacing and I'm constantly asked to stop shaking my leg so I'll definitely continue to fidget now that I know it's considered an exercise.
All of the exercises seem pretty easy and handy to do so I might try and give them a go and see if I feel more positive when I've been sitting in college all day.

Growth Mindset:The Effects of Praise on Mindsets

The growth Mindset challenge I completed was watching Carol Dweck's Video on the effects of praise on the mindset.

Carol Dweck's Video

The video is about a group of 9 and 10 year old kids in America being given puzzles to do that started off easy. Every time a student completed a puzzle they were either praised on their intelligence or on the effort they made. After the children are given much harder puzzles that they might not be able to solve, according to the video some of their confidence' immediately dropped and they started thinking never mind i'm not good at this after all where as other kids continued working on the harder problem. After all of the student's were asked if they wanted to go back to the easy ones or try to keep going on the harder ones. Carol Dweck found that the kids who had been praised by being told they were intelligent at the beginning really wanted to go back and continue working on the easy puzzles when they had been told they were smart, which is an example of a fixed mindset. Where as the children who had been praised for effort leaned towards continuing doing the harder tasks, this is an example of showing a growth mindset. People with a Growth Mindset believe that intelligence can always be worked on, it's not set in stone. They feel smart just when they're working really hard on something difficult and they can progress. 

Carol Dweck then goes on to say that she believes that people are really sensitive to whats going on around them, what other people value and what they're being judged on. I definitely agree with the research in this video, I know myself I can definitely have a fixed or a growth mindset around different people, because I'm aware of what they may expect of me already or I don't want to feel inferior in front of  certain people but it's also definitely true that trying something difficult over something you find easy is always the better option as you can't improve without being challenged.

First Playable

This week started of pretty shitty with unity, it crashed and everything I had created for my game already had disappeared  so I had to start from scratch again and make sure I press save every time I move the mouse. Other than that everything I've attempted so far has been working perfectly. I think I was getting a bit distracted in trying to make the terrain look good tho instead of firstly trying to make sure I could get all the rules and the actual game itself would work. So I haven't really met my target quite yet but I am happy with how it's looking so far. This week I made the terrain and track and added trees and grass and the car, I also added fences and dirt to make the starting position. and I wanted it to look like the player was leaving their own front garden. I got a bit carried away trying to find shrubs and flowers for my game. I then added a canvas, panel and text box and made the countdown box in the top right hand corner. I am also halfway through building shops and city like buildings for further on in the track when the player gets closer to the Rotunda.

Start point for player

 

The next step is add the HUD with the wife's happy meter and change the appearance of the car to be brighter. I need to try and remind myself that I can fix up little details of the terrain and overall appearance at the end and to try and push for the rules and coding to be complete before getting distracted on small details.

Tech Tip: Add an HTML box to Sidebar

I've added a HTML box to the sidebar of my blog. I have just put a short introduction about me so that people don't have to go routing to find my introduction in Week 1 to know who I am and what my blog is about.

My blog

Week 8 Progress

After looking back over my blog and looking at my points I'm quite happy with how I've done I've put a lot of time and effort into my blog and unity and designing my game and I've enjoyed doing it. It's definitely a massive step up from last year which was something I really wanted to do for myself. I feel like if I keep up what I've been doing and just try to do a tiny bit more, I am well capable of achieving an A in this module which I'd love to get for myself.

I feel like the module this year benefited me a lot in relation to time management, it's a skill I've always been extremely bad at as well as putting things I don't know how to do off and then never doing them. Okay I'll admit there were definitely a couple of times I took advantage of the grace period but all in all I'm quite happy with the progress I've made and I feel like hopefully I'll be able to  take what I've learnt and apply a more weekly and balanced work schedule in all of my modules.

I think the tasks I enjoyed the most were the unity tutorials, which I found quite fun to my surprise and the first couple of readings we did about time management and feedback and the growth mindset as they were all readings where I could have a look at how I am in these areas and try and improve. I found them really quite beneficial.

Going forward I still have a a lot of work to do on organisation and time management in not only this module but all of them. I'm going to try and make sure I complete every upload and declaration on time and try not to leave them  until the last minute as I have done. I want to make sure I continue to put the work in for the last little bit so I'm not disappointed looking back. 

Motivation meme

Tech Task:Animated GIF Maker

I made a gif using pictures that I took at a charity event that I was asked to be the photographer for in Limerick.

I used http://gifmaker.me/ to create this gif!

Prototype

This week I began trying to prototype my game, the main aspects i was trying to prototype was the look and feel of the game. I created the terrain and added in a grass and rock material and a black road like material that I will be using for the roads. I also added in the trees and grass to make it look more real. I had a long browse on the assets store to try and find a skybox I thought would fit with my game and picked a bright colourful sunny one which I think fits nicely especially  because of the fact I wanted it to look like a city and this particular skybox has buildings in the background.
I also spent a while trying to decide what size the car should be in comparison to the roads. I think most of it looks well but there are some things that i visioned looking slightly different that I'm not completely figuring out yet.

My game so far.

I want it to look more colourful, with it really popping out how bright it is which I am finding slightly difficult as when I try and brighten the skybox everything goes white. I'm currently unsure if this is because of me needing another look at the skybox tutorial because I'm doing it wrong or whether I need a different one all together. I also wanted the road material to look smoother and more road like but for some reason its unity isn't giving me the option to change the metallic or smoothness of the material when I add it to the terrain. The final issue I'm currently having is that in the console errors I have the same error appearing 999+ times that appeared after I made the C# script for the car and main camera and I really have no idea what the issue is as on visual studio the code is perfect and everything works the way I want it to. I'm just weary to continue and let issues build up.

I'm actually really enjoying creating my game so far and it's really rewarding when something you've spent a while trying to look nice or work properly works. In relation to meeting my targets I think I'm a little bit behind as I thought my game would be further along but I'm going to really work this week and get large chuck done!

Unity Free tutorials

This week I started using tutorials that are aimed towards my sort of game.
I watched three of  How to make a driving and race game for free.

This tutorial started of the same as the previous ones had but I thought I could do with the recap and fresh start completely for my game so I started from scratch with a new terrain and new textures. I chose was  sore of height i'd like part of the terrain and proceeded to add dips and hills. I then painted the terrain to look more car game like than the hills in the previous tutorials had looked. 

I followed the tutorial and added in a car from the standard assets pack which I can go back and customise later. I then put the main camera under the car on the side hierarchy so that it was focused on the car and then had a go playing the game and see what camera angle I liked for my game. After playing around for a while it was obvious the camera settings weren't exactly correct. I used a C# script to align the camera up correctly to that it followed the car nicely without any glitches or anything when the car crashed.

I enjoyed these tutorials and i'm exited to get right into developing my game.

Final GDD

I have completed my GDD and attached a link below I hope it is really clear how my game will work by reading this.

My plan is to work weekly on Unity gradually creating this game until the end of the semester. I'm going to follow the Jimmy Vegas tutorials he has up on creating a racing game to help create this and use a lot of the Unity we have already learnt to create surrounding and the environmental aspects of the game.

my DunDoc Site: https://www.dundoc.com/project/4789

Unity Tutorial 05

This weeks Unity tutorial's began with changing the appearance, mood and feel of my game such as the lighting, with a free downloadable skybox from the asset store. The sky chosen is pastel, light, relaxed and has a sunset which would give a relaxed sort of aesthetic to a game. Vegas also showed us how to customise the skybox that was downloaded to make it your own. I learned how to create a directional light around the character so it follows them while they play.

Next we looked at adding a wind zone to the game. To create the right kind of feeling to your game you can adjust the pulse magnitude and frequency to what you like. We learned how to make it that only the trees and grass around the character would have the wind zone.

In the second tutorial we started progressed being able to interact with objects using the same C# script that was used on the gem in a previous tutorial and using animation and a different C# script we were able to fade into a scene which just adds a bit of style to the appearance of the overall game and I thought added to the overall feel of the game quite nicely.

My Skybox 

Game Decisions

The reading this week 'Decision - making and Flow Theory' covered decision making and flow theory in games, it is the interactivity between players and systems that sets games apart from most other traditional media. "Decisions are the core of what a game is", when giving feedback on someones game you have to pay attention to what the decisions are in the game for the player, what effects these decisions create and why they're there. You're more likely to be a better game designer if you can properly understand the effectiveness of the different decisions in a game. Without decisions you don't have a game, they are the main essence of the game itself. The only exceptions are the rare gambling games as the core of these games is to win money, without the thrill of getting lucky and winning money the game becomes extremely unappealing. There are a number of games that despite having a number of decisions to make they can still be rather boring e.g battleship, so how do you make sure that you're games decisions are compelling to a player?

Things to avoid when creating your decisions in your game:

1. Meaningless decisions - Decisions that have no purpose and don't contribute to the experience of the game.
2. Obvious decisions - Decisions where the choice that the player should make is extremely clear, there is no challenge at all, defeats the purpose of the decision existing.
3. Blind decisions - Decisions where the player doesn't really know what the decisions are or what effect they'll have on the games. Players end up having to make random choices defeating the purpose of the decision.

Things that make a good decision:

1. Resource trades - give up an asset you have for a different asset. Both are valuable. Player must make a judgement on which asset they think is more beneficial to they're game experience.
2. Risk Vs Rewards - One of the choices is safe, the other choice gives a reward if successfully completed but has a much higher risk of failure than the first choice.
3. Choice of actions - There is a number of choices the player can make but they can only make the decision to complete one of these actions, player must determine which choice is most beneficial to them.
4. Short term Vs Long term - Player can have something right now or something even better later on it's up to them if they want to wait or not.
5. Dilemmas - Player has to give up one of there assets, they have to determine what they can play without.
6. Social information - Players can choose between player honestly or dishonestly for example playing dishonestly may get you want you want at the time but could have later consequences.

Decision making factors

As a player learning a new skill by completing a challenge or making the right decision is extremely rewarding and leaves a player in a flow state.

"Flow states are an intensely pleasurable state for the brain to be in" a large part of the fun that players experience playing a game comes from being in a flow state. A psychologist called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about a flow state and describes it as being in a state of extreme focus of attention where you tune out of everything except the task your concentrating on. You become highly productive and your brain gives you a shot of neurochemicals thatbis pleasurable. Being in a Flow state gives you a natural high. He also identified 3 requirements for a flow state to exist:

1. Creating challenging activity that requires skill.
2. The activity has to provide clear goals and feedback.
3. The outcome is uncertain but can be influenced by your actions.

Additional Readings:
http://www.lostgarden.com/

Unity Tutuorial

This weeks tutorials consisted of a number of new skills in unity starting with adding text into the canvas, a display and text. We had to position the text correctly so that it wouldn't be on top on the cursor we had previously made. We also made an extra cursors and grouped them together in the hierarchy. A C# script was then made and I followed the instructions to create the action for the Gem the script that we wrote was to be able to press the e key to collect the gem and also to be able to have the cursor over the gem and for text to display. I found the c# script the hardest one yet and although I could obviously copy what he was doing it was hard to completely grasp what each exact component of the script was for.

My game screen shot 

The second tutorial we started by placing a fence into the game to add to the world, we followed the normal steps that we do dragging and dropping and adding a texture. Afterwards we added an axe for the player to have a weapon. We learnt how to create a swinging impression  of the axe. I enjoyed adding the axe and animation as it was my first time doing any sort of animation in unity. We finished off by making our first player taller to give it a more realistic look. 

In the third tutorial we learnt how to add a separate camera to different layers in the game. We rendered a camera to only pick up whats in the axes layer view. We added sound to the axe when its swinging using a C# script.

Overall I enjoyed completing these tutorials and feel like I learnt a lot but I don't think I would know how to do it all again without the tutorial so I'll need to have a look back again to try and make everything stay with me more.

Games GDD

The first article I read this week was https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-5-introduction-and-readings which talks about all about the beginning of designing a game and idea generation.
This article gave a structure to designing games and coming up with ideas. When tackling your initial design and your ideas you should start with thinking about the aesthetics, try thinking of your favourite game, why is it so enjoyable?What do you like about it? also thinking about what rules led to that experience. Rules or systems should be the next step you can take inspiration from everyday life looking into what daily systems could make a good game? for example service games such as cooking craze are inspired by real life service industry jobs.

You can also look at existing designs, games that you though had potential but didn't quite hit the mark. think about how this could have been improved, what didn't you like?
Narrative is also one of the most important parts of generating ideas, start with your story and then design your game rules to fit the story. Other idea generation starting points are: Market research, technologies, materials and combining some of these when beginning.

The reading also talks about how to overcome designers block. The strategies to help with designers block are playing lot's of games and thinking about what you think is good and what could be improved. Writing down all of your ideas, your narratives and mechanics even if they don't initially stand out as good ideas you can always come back and build on them. another useful strategy is thinking of something random and trying to find a way to integrate it into your game.

Creative block meme

This article also takes about how important prototyping is in the process of game design. When prototyping make it as simple and unattractive as possible completely focusing on the mechanics and rules. You can go back and constantly improve the design and touches after the gameplay is perfected! 

The second article http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/DesignConsiderations.shtml discusses design components and how important all the different components are to determining a players enjoyment.

Game Vision Statement

Brief description:

My game is a 3D world race car game called "The Rotunda Run" for the PC. 

My game is a time based game. where the player is driving their pregnant wife to hospital but only has a certain amount of time to do so. If the player hits people or walls their time will decrease but when they find any gems on their journey they can get extra time added onto their countdown. The game is lost if time runs out and the player hasn't managed to reach the Rotunda with their pregnant wife. As opposed to if the player reaches the destination within the time slot they win the game. I got some inspiration for this sort of game from 'The Simpsons Hit and Run' and 'Grand Theft Auto' These are both two of my favourite types of games so I would enjoy being able to create something slightly similar. 

Simpsons Hit and Run

Genre:

My game falls under the genre of Racing. It is a car racing game.

Gameplay:

The game is a single player time based racing game. It will start with a menu screen with settings and a start button. It will then go to a screen where you can select your type\colour of your car and then you will begin the game. There will be a countdown from 3 to begin the time and then it's up to the player to try and reach certain gems to gain more time and to try not to crash. the controls will be:

SPACE bar to drive

> to turn left

< to turn right 

ENTER to brake 

BACKSPACE to reverse.

The gameplay follows a narrative there is a little freedom for choice but not so much that it changes the entire game for the player.

Resources:

For creating this game the main resources i'll need are:

Time

Tutorials

Unity

The internet 

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMRhUK7bY7w

https://poki.com/en/car-racing

 

Unity Tutorial 03

In this weeks Unity tutorial we learnt how to make a 3D clock and programme it to display the current time. I learnt a lot in this tutorial including a new layout, parent and child game objects and a lot more depth into the C# scripts. I found the first part of the tutorial simple and easy to follow and enjoyed designing the clock, but the programming the clock was a little more challenging. I had to re-read the instructions a couple of times to fully understand why I was typing something into the C# script but I was definitely much more confident after completing it and going over the tasks again.

Screen shot of me completing tutorial

Screen shot of me completing tutorials

Overall this tutorial was a bit of a change from the 3D world tutorials we've been doing but had similar components such as in adding in the game objects and making Materials. The main difference was just the level  of depth into the scripts and the result of the tutorial. For some reason I found it more rewarding finishing the 3D world tutorials and being able to walk around after. I still really enjoyed this tutorial and I definitely picked up a lot of new skills that I will be able to put to use in my own game.

Games MDA

Week fours reading was all about MDA in gaming. MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. It is the formal approach to understanding games.

Mechanics are the rules of the game for example when does the game start and finish, what actions can players take, what effects do these actions have and how is resolution determined.


Dynamics describe how the game is played. What strategies emerge from the rules? How can the players interact with each other

Game Mechanics and Dynamics

Aesthetics is a players experience, what make the game fun.

There are eight types of fun that fall under aesthetic:

1. Sensation - Game as a sense of pleasure
2. Fantasy
3. Narrative
4. Challenge
5. Fellowship
6. Discovery
7. Expression
8. Submission

The article by Clint Hocking talks about intentional play. Games can be much more entertaining and diverse when the player has more options of things they can do with different game objects.

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf

https://vimeo.com/288331391

Feedback Strategies

The first article I read on giving Feedback was Why do so many managers avoid giving praise. I could relate to some of the information in this article for example i agreed with the fact that sometimes it feels like a manager can be "quick to criticise slow to praise" and sometimes in the work place this can make you feel very unmotivated. From this article I learned that there could be a reason behind not giving very much praise for example a manager might see them selves as being weak or soft by giving too much praise or they may actually not have time or even realise they haven't been giving positive feedback. This article also talked about the fact that a large percentage of managers felt anxious when giving feedback and how managers may only feel like they need to give feedback on things that need correcting instead of things that are up to scratch.

The second article I read was How to give feedback without sounding like a jerk by Adam Grant. This was my favourite out of the two articles and I picked it because I thought it would be useful to me. I am one of the senior staff in my job and I often have to train in new staff, I find it difficult to give feedback and almost feel a bit afraid to try especially when I am giving feedback to someone who is a lot older than me, I find it awkward and also feel like they don't take it very well when I do try so I'm definitely going to attempt and use these techniques from now on. I didn't realise how transparent it must sound to try and sugarcoat feedback and to only throw in positive feedback to make you feel better or sound nice. I liked the idea of making it obvious that "i'm not perfect, i'm trying to get better too" so that whoever your giving feedback to doesn't feel inferior and that it's obvious your trying to improve yourself and the way you give feedback. I feel like this overall makes it easier for both parties and gives the person receiving feedback to also give feedback on how they think you have feedback.

Honest Feedback Welcome

Overall I feel like i've benefited from both of these articles and I will definetely try and put all of the techniques to use. I think feedback is really important, without feedback it's hard to know where you stand or how to improve.

Learning Challenge: Happiness Jar

So I haven't been very good at this challenge so far so  I'm going to start fresh from day one again...

Today I was happy and thankful because my nanie brought me out for lunch and an old friend I used to work with came into my job to visit me.

Game Idea Research

My game idea that I would like to develop and create is a 3D car racing game. The Story of my game is the player is trying to rush his pregnant wife to hospital to give birth but is being chased by the police while doing so. My idea is that the game will start with the main player and his wife getting into their car and trying to race to the hospital through the busy traffic and crossing pedestrians  and if any red lights, drive too fast or any road rules are broken the police start pursuing you. Your wife is adamant that she will not give birth in the car so your aim is to ignore and escape the police until you arrive at the hospital. If the police catch you you've lost. Meanwhile there is a meter with your wives happiness/comfort at the top of the screen that you must also try and keep high, this meter decreases if you drive too crazy crashing into things or going over bumps or driving too slow. If you get to the hospital without being cause then you have won the game.

The Mechanics I am hoping to use for this game are: Sound effects and music, Controls and score.
For sound effects and music I want to have fast paced exciting music player in the background of the game to create an the fast paced atmosphere for the game and also have sound effects like horns from other cars and sirens for police cars in pursuit. A good example of sound effect from other cars and police is from the game Grand Theft Auto.

My idea in relation to controls are:
> is turn left
< Is turn right
SPACE bar is drive
ENTER in to brake
BACKSPACE is to reverse.

The idea behind the scoring is the have a meter at the top of the screen with the colours green yellow and red and a photo of the wife's face on top of the meter that starts of in green every time the player drives too slow or crashes the wife's face moves further down the meter to yellow and eventually to red, if her face reaches the bottom of the red on the meter then the player has lost the game. The player can also increase this meter by driving fast and not crashing. I am taking inspiration from the game Cooking Craze which is an ios game. In Cooking Craze if you don't serve the customers quickly enough their meter goes down until eventually they leave the shop.

Cooking Craze customer score

In conclusion this is an Idea I would love feedback on whether it could work or not and be able to develop more.

Learning Challenge: Happiness Jar

I have decided to try the Happiness jar challenge through my blogs where everyday this week I will take note of something that made me happy or thankful, I will then talk about how I found the challenge at the end of the week! Im hoping I will find this challenge rewarding and become more grateful for all the good things that happen on a daily basis.

Growth Mindset:Multiple Intelligence

This week I watched Multiple Intelligence  by Mark Bennett, I found the video really interesting and enjoyed watching it. I found it very useful learning about The growth Mindset in Week one so I thought it would benefit me to try and continue learning about it. I never knew that researchers had identified 8 different types of intelligence or that there where so many components that make up each of these intelligences. I like this thought process as it appreciates the fact that people are intelligent in different ways and that all the different intelligence's work best together. What I understood from this short animation was that just because your intelligent in one form doesn't mean your more or less intelligent than somebody else who strives in  other things. For example just because schools teach you that linguistic and mathematical intelligence is the most important, you really need more than just those to be successful and there are so many skills that you can work on developing and improving on!

There are Multiple Intelligences 

Tech Tip:Google Map

The Google map I'm sharing of Trà na Rossan, Donegal, is of one of my favourite places I've been to. I went  there about 3 or four years ago with my all of my cousins. One of my cousins friends owned a house near Downings in Donegal and Trà na Rossan was literally right outside the house. We stayed up there for about our days and everyday made our way down the hill and onto the beach. It was so sunny and the water was so clear it was definitely on of the nicest beaches I've ever been on. There was rocks and hill blocking where we arrived onto the beach from the other bigger side so we basically had our own private beach for the four days.

Photo I took on Trà na Rossan 

Here is the Google Map:

Unity tutorial 02

I really enjoyed the first tutorial this week and found it easy enough to follow. I liked getting to customise the different parts, just even going so far as choosing different colours or heights for the different game objects and terrain is fun and is getting me more exited to create my own game. I did find making the water sit on the terrain and look good a bit difficult and had to spend a while changing the level of the terrain and the size of the water to make it look realistic when playing. I also found it slightly difficult to get the walls to line up correctly together but using the tutorial it was easy to just pause and rewind until I understood and was able to correct it.

I found the second tutorial a bit more confusing than the first adding the curser in was simple to follow but adding in the raycast to the game took a bit longer to wrap my head around and get it completely right, the scripting was slightly confusing. It felt good when I did manage to get it working correctly but I feel like I'll probably have another recap on this tutorial before I start week 4 Unity tutorials just to make sure I fully remember how to add them as I feel like it will be very useful when designing my own game.

Overall I am really getting into Unity now when I didn't think I would and I'm enjoying the challenge of completing the tutorials so far.

Screenshot from my unity game.

Game Elements

After reading Level 3 Introduction and Reading I've learnt a lot more about the terminology that can be used when discussing games and game development. The  recurring themes that are found in almost all games and definitions of games are:" games have rules, conflict, goals, decision-making, and an uncertain outcome." The article explains that by identifying the elements that games have in common it helps us identify or begin to identify individual game elements. Overall this helps us more easily discuss and describe games.

 Atomic Elements similarly to Game design is hard to define and no definitions are perfect but if you look at all of them it's helpful when trying to see what we need to create when designing our own games for our projects. There are loads of examples in this reading for example Players is one of the atomic elements that reappear in all games so if you are creating a game you have to look at how many players are in your game, if there are more than one what is the relationship between your different players? A common player structure is having teams in a game with multiple players on each team. Some more atomic elements are: Objectives, Rules, Game strategy, Information, theme and sequencing and each one has questions to ask yourself when trying to create a game and things to talk about when talking about other games.

Lastly, In this reading I learnt about critical Analysis and how useful is it when discussing and comparing games. A critical analysis "is a thorough and unbiased look at the game".
I also learnt about the three steps to help give a game a critical analysis:

1. Describe the game’s formal elements. Do not interpret at this point, simply state what is there.
2. Describe the results of the formal elements when put in motion. How do the different elements interact? What is the play of the game like? Is it effective?
3. Try to understand why the designer chose those elements and not others. Why this particular player structure, and why that set of resources? What would have happened if the designer had chosen differently?

I found this reading really helpful in understanding how I will be able to talk and analyse other games and I will definitely use the information to help me with my own game!

Breakdown of a critical analysis

The second article I read was Formal Abstract Design Tools by Doug Church. In this article Church covers a lot starting with how we talk about games, and as game designers we should be able to go deeper then saying fun or not fun when discussing games. It is a game designers job to try and understand why a game is fun or why a certain part of the game is annoying or why something doesn't work. If we can understand why something works or doesn't work we can apply it to our own game and avoid mistakes. He makes the point that the way we understand each other as game designers  is to dissect the games into components and understand why these components work or don't work together similarly to the first reading and talks about the benefits of Formal Abstract Design Tools.

Doug Church then goes on to talking about 'Mario 64' and how to start "abstracting out some tools and defining them well enough to apply them to other games" He gives examples and discusses the intention in Mario 64, why is works in Mario 64, what intention is in general in relation to games (goals and controls) and then how we should think about intention when it comes to applying them to our own game. 

Overall I found both of these articles extremely useful and feel a lot more confident in how I can discuss and create my own game both articles point out why it's so important dissect the games into components and to constantly ask questions, why doesn't this work? Why does this work? How can I avoid similar mistakes or use similar aspects? I feel like I will be much more able to try and understand the different components and atomic elements when looking at different games after reading these.

Useful links 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3357/formal_abstract_design_tools.php

https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-3-introduction-and-readings?module_item_id=44527

https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-3-dot-1-1-players

Feedback thoughts

After browsing through the articles, the first article that I picked was Why rejection hurts so much by Guy Winch. I chose this article because everyone has dealt with rejection at some stage in their lives and any tips on dealing with rejection are extremely useful. In the article Winch talks about how it’s been scientifically proven that the same part of the brain that is activated during felling physical pain is also activated when feeling the hurt of rejection which is weird that your mind is programmed to feel rejection so bad. My favourite part was when he talked about how your really your own worst enemy after rejection that instead of trying to help yourself get over the hurt you are experiencing you give yourself a harder time, he says that "The greatest damage rejection causes is usually self inflicted. Just when our self esteem is hurting most, we go and damage it even further". I loved this article and will definitely use the tips Winch gives about how you can help yourself after feeling unwanted and rejected.


The second article I read was Seven ways to crush self doubt by John Spencer. I found this article very useful as I often have a lot of self doubt especially when it comes to college work for example last week in my Drama Filmmaking module had to present our ideas for or short films, I dreaded having to present mine all day because I was afraid that my idea would sound stupid compared to other people in my classes ideas which is a negative outlook to have. The first tip that John Spencer has is to not compare yourself to others he point out its natural to try and compare yourself to others because you "don't want to suck" at what your doing "and it's way too easy to find validation by comparing" but its unhealthy and can only result in arrogance or self doubt.

Spencer also talked about how trying to think of all of your work and ideas as experiments can really help with self doubt "if it didn't work it's not a failure, its a chance to figure out what does work". Not doing any work or trying at all is the biggest result and will always result in failure.

Trust yourself picture

I really enjoyed reading theses two articles and feel like there are some really good tips that will help me in my day to day life. In my opinion feedback is really important, for anyone to be able to succeed they need a lot of feedback on their work. I think It's about finding the balance you need to be getting feedback but getting productive feedback. For example when I was in school I had a teacher who would always tell you something positive about you or your work and something that needed improvement so you felt good about yourself and motivated to try harder in other in the things she critiqued. On the other hand I had other teachers who would never give any sort of motivation or positive feedback it would always be negative so I ended up feeling  horrible about the subject and not wanting to try. I think getting feedback from people who are fair, honest and understanding is a key to success in anything you try.

Game Brainstorm

1st Game idea:

 After brainstorming and researching different genre's of games my first idea is to create a car racing game. Car racing games have always been my favourite types of games especially 'Mario Kart's' as I've mentioned in a previous post. I feel like because I like these sort of games I would understand what a player would want when playing my game so it would help when developing. I found a really useful article when researching that goes into huge depth on how to create a race car game  and all the steps that need to be taken to have a good game, https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/2015/839721/. I also found and watched some tutorials on how I could go about creating this type of game by Jimmy Vegas.

If I was to make this game I would be hoping to take inspiration from Mario Kart's and create my own cartoon like characters and backgrounds making it colourful and exiting. Overall I find race car games fun, fast paced and exiting so it would be cool to be able to make my own

Race Car Game Tutorial

2nd Game idea:

My second idea for my game is a 3D shooter game. Shooter games are one of the oldest genre's of games some good examples are: Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Halo and so many more. I've never enjoyed shooter games very much and was never very good at them when my brother allowed me to play them on his Playstation. I would always be the very first player killed and was horrific at aiming. I'd like to create a first player shooter game where the first player is walking around a world with a gun and has to kill their enemy's.  I'd like to be able to make this as a PC game to see if its any easier for example I played Fornight on my brother's playstation and was atrocious but when I played it on my phone I was so much better and enjoyed playing much more.


Some useful links i found for first shooter games are:
https://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/124632/gaming/game_design_tips_for_first_person_shooter_games.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fGB2H1AGP8 - A tutorial on how to create a FPS game.

3rd Game idea:

My third idea is a 3D Adventure world game with challenges or puzzles along the way. My favourite adventure world games were all played on the Playstation 2 some examples are: Grand Theft Auto, the Bratz games and my favourite...  Dogslife. Dogslife was a 3d game where first player was a dog, players could roam around the world as they pleased and then they could also choose to complete tasks and missions along the way to progress. I liked this game as you could challenge yourself in the tasks but if you felt like just exploring the games world you could also do that. If I was to create this sort of game I would be taking inspiration from Dogslife but changing the storyline, tasks, characters and graphics.

Dogslife Packaging

Here's a tutorial that I found that could help me create this sort of game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFguvztl2nA

4th game idea:

My fourth idea is a 3D or 2D platform game. The type of platform game I like and would want to create is an endless runner game. These sort of games are the most popular ios and andriod games and are very addictive, I've definitely spent hours playing endless runner games trying to get a better high score either for myself or to beat my friends high scores some of the most popular were: Temple Run, Subway Surfers and Jetpack Joyride. My personal favourite that I've played is Endless Lake, I find it exiting and different from other ones I have played as your character can multiply while your playing making it harder to concentrate and survive. If I was to go with this idea I would like to take inspiration from endless lake and have something that other platform games don't.

While researching games like this I found lot's of useful links that would really help me develop this sort of game:
https://www.androidauthority.com/lets-build-a-simple-endless-runner-game-in-unity-759135/
This link isn't useful at the moment because the author has to update his own website and links but he has commented on the page saying he will fix the problems so I chose to include it because the images he has are what I would hope my game would look similar to.
https://forum.unity.com/threads/creating-an-3d-endless-runner-game-like-temple-run-in-unity-3d-using-c.469865/

Endless Lake Game

  I had started trying to make one of these sort of games during the summer and had a sort of fixed mindset about it so when it got difficult I would put it off or avoid it so it would be great to be able to look back and say I've made it.





Some other useful links:
https://www.thocp.net/software/games/reference/genres.htm