Unity Tutorial 02

(Image of Unity)

This semester we were given the option of picking between developing projects with code and trying VR in unity. I decided to go with the 1st option of creating with code. Instead of watching and following along with Jimmy Vegas, I was following Unity's official tutorials.

These tutorials were very simple and went over things step by step in very short videos making it really easy to follow along. There was also a short summary written under the video which explained what to do incase you didn't want to watch the full thing.
Jimmy Vegas also did a good job at explaining but I felt like his tutorials were very long and slow compared to these Unity ones.

I learnt some cool new basic tricks that I didn't know before and just overall felt like I learnt a lot more from these tutorials than the Jimmy Vegas ones. I made a vehicle
collide into obstacles using code which was really cool. While doing these tutorials, I did struggle sometimes but eventually got everything to work.

Reading 2

(Image of planning)

For the book we are writing, I chose to write Chapter 4: Understanding the Player; 5 domains of play and demographics of players(types of players). The 5 domains of play focuses on the connection between "The Big 5" personality groups and the different types of games they most enjoy based off their personalities. Demographics of players(types of players) focuses on all the types of different players.

When planning my approach, I took my 2 topics and broke them down into some questions that I could focus my research on. These are just some of the questions:

• "What are the 5 domains of play"
• "How "The Big 5" personality groups correlate to game type and enjoyment"
• "What are the different types of players/characteristics of the different types of players"
• "How do the different types of players interact with one another"

I also highlighted some keywords that would help with my research. Some of them are "domains" and "play" for the 1st topic and "demographics", "player" and "types" for the 2nd. I tried to find other keywords associated with the ones I already had to further help me.

From what I have looked up so far, a good few articles have come up for both topics so the next step is to properly research and go through all those articles to complete my Matrix to see what is relevant and what isn't. This will then help me when I am in the writing process of the book.

Game Testing

This week's reading was about giving criticism and how it can actually be useful. The useful and good type of criticism is called "constructive criticism". It gives feedback to a person on things that can be improved or issues that can be avoided in a way that doesn't make it sound like you're insulting the person.

When giving constructive criticism, you have to make sure your opinions stay valid and unbiased. This means that the feedback has to be reliable/from a good source,to make sure you know what you're talking about, and free from personal preferences. As we've learnt before, everyone has different preferences in things, so when giving feedback, we need to make sure we avoid what we would personally like to be done and instead give overall feedback that will help the person improve on their ideas.

Along with that, make sure your criticism is clear, easy to understand and relevant to the topic. Be specific in what needs improvement rather than the typical, vague responses "I like it"/"I don't like it". These responses won't help the person so just point out clearly what works well and what doesn't

Giving criticism correctly can avoid people getting their feelings hurt and giving them low self-esteem. So as long as your feedback is specific,understandable,unbiased and reliable, it should be very helpful to the person you're giving it to.

Review Week: Comments and Feedback

The majority of comments I've been getting from other students have been positive and very helpful. I found the comments on my game process most beneficiall. I thought there would be more criticism on my game but it was the complete opposite. Getting comments off others gave me a chance to see my game ideas from someone else's perspective and not just my own. They gave me points on how to improve or ideas on things I could add that I may have not thought of myself.

I didn't really write many feedback comments on other people's blogs,  I wouldn't know what to write or how to give people points on improvement for their game process. Everyone seemed to have a good idea of what they wanted to do with their games so I wouldn't know how to add or improve on them.

I know the main point of the blog comments was to connect with others and get to know them but  I still felt a little awkward writing comments. However, on the few blogs that I have left comments, it was interesting getting to know people through their blogs and to see how others were getting along with their games. I did struggle thinking of what to say and  not ending up repeating myself on some of the blogs but it was still an interesting experience.

For my introduction blog, I never really know what to say about myself so I don't think it was that interesting and I probably could've thought of a better way to write it. I felt like it was really basic compared to other people's introductions. However, having an introduction blog was nice and really helped getting to know people. I didn't think I would, but I enjoyed blogging and seeing people's comments.

In the future, I would definitely try to comment more on other people's blogs and work on giving better feedback on their ideas. I would also put more effort into the appearance of my blog.

Week 9: Reading and Writing

When I first started doing the readings, I found them pretty difficult as most the time I didn't know what to write for the blogs or I wouldn't understand the readings. However, as I did more I got better at typing up blogs about the readings, or at least I'd like to think I got better. I still struggle with some readings but overall, it was a nice experience writing blogs.

Blogging was something new that I've never tried before and I honestly thought I'd hate it but it wasn't the worst experience. With other classes, they'd give readings but I wouldn't really read them, I'd quickly look through but not really pay attention but having to write a blog based off what I just read made me pay attention to details in the readings a lot more which made me learn a lot more too.

I think my favourite reading has been the latest reading I did which had to do with game fun. I learnt about the different types of fun and even though its basic knowledge that everyone has different preferences in things, it informed me about why we have these preferences and how it relates back to our ancestors which I thought was very interesting.

I don't think I have a big accomplishment for this class, I wish I managed my time a bit better and stayed on top of my work more but I'm happy that at least I tried something new and didn't completely give up on it. In the future, I definitely will try a lot harder to keep up with the work.

One of my favourite images from my blog is the one shown above. It's a screenshot I found online from the game "Corpse Party. I like it because it brings back memories to when I first found the game and how much I used to like it. I loved the story and the game style, although some scenes or parts were kind of disturbing, I still really enjoyed it.

I look forward to maybe doing more blog posts. I kind of enjoyed doing them, even though I didn't do all the blog posts I was supposed to do, I'd feel pretty accomplished when I'd actually do them, especially after really long readings. It would always be such a relieving feeling getting it done in time, especially since I tend to leave things til last minute.

Tech Task: Blogger Design Templates

I felt like my blog looked too dark and needed some colour in it so I decided to change up how it looked.
I followed a blog post explaining how to change templates to do this. I had no difficulty following along. There was a lot of templates to choose from and had some difficulty choosing one but in the end found one that I liked. I like the colour red so I tried to make that the main colour for my blog but it ended up looking kind of pink.
However, I'm still happy with the slight change in design in my blog and would definitely like to try find more ways to change up my blog's appearance.

Game Fun

(Source)

In the first article I read was "Natural Funativity" by Noah Falstein, it talks about what makes a game fun when everyone find different types of things fun,how evolution and what our ancestors did influences what we find fun today. It also talks about how fun is subjective and that even though we have a hard time defining the word "fun", "we know it when we have it".

The theory of "Natural Funativity" comes from the merging of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Natural Selection and the question of "What is Funativity Quotient?" from Steve Arnold. This theory is broken down into 3 sections:

• Physical fun
• Social fun 
• Mental fun

Physical fun:

People are most drawn to something that challenges their survival skills. They will continue to focus on something until they can overcome the threats and obstacles which also improves their skills. We find enjoyment in this as it relates back to our ancestors and how they had the need to perfect their skills so that they had a higher chance of survival.

Social Fun:

The way this relates to evolution is not through the means of survival but through reproduction, meeting and attracting mates. Games don't really focus on "attracting a mate" but through things like being able to play online multiplayer, that has changed. Devices and platforms that allow players to be in contact with one another in the real world allow the social aspect of games to develop. As "tribal creatures", we form groups and enjoy to learn from each other. We find ways of survival through sharing and learning from information in social situations and activities rather than through physical strength.

Mental Fun:

Mental fun focuses on improving our mental abilities as a form of fun. Our intelligence is what allows us to make use of our physical strengths, tools, language and carrying out conversations. All those things complement one another. Intelligence is the perception and manipulation of patterns, people enjoy finding patterns in something and learning from it. Being able to recognise a pattern and then act upon it has been a very useful survival skill. It is a workout for the brain.

Many games and activities are a mix of 2 or all 3 different types of fun, which is known as blended fun. However, by understanding the reason why we find these forms of survival so interesting and fun can help come up or further develop on game ideas/concepts. By combining these 3 things, you can capture the interest of many people and how much fun they have playing the game you've created.

The second article I looked at was "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades:Players who suit MUDs" by Richard Bartle. It talks about what people like from a MUD. Bartle collected information from a discussion on what players liked,didn't like,why they played and what improvements they could make to a MUD. He summarised and noticed a pattern in the answers which divided the information into 4 groups. Most people drifted between all 4 groups but overall, the majority was fixed on only 1 group. These 4 groups are:

• Achievers- Focus on points and rising in levels as their main goal. The only time they mix in the other 3 groups is if it gains them more points
• Explorers- Explore the game and its features. Mixes with the other 3 groups if it gives them access to new areas or gives ideas on new things to try.
• Socialisers- Interested more in forming relationships with players than the game itself. Mix in other 3 groups if it allows them to talk to people and understand what they are talking about.
• Killers- Enjoy causing distress to the players and chaos in the game. Only mix in the other 3 groups if it allows them to become stronger to cause more damage, find people to taunt or place to cause chaos in.

Each of these groups enjoy the game differently, however, administrators need to maintain balanced relationships in these groups so the game can still be enjoyable for everyone