Multimedia Development 1

Hi all. This week we have focused on fixing our papers. This was challenging as I find it hard write academically. I am glad to get the chance to improve my writing. For this week I have rewritten my introduction and conclusion as I believe they weren't good. I also fixed up my paragraphs where I found mistakes.  I am pretty happy with how it is at this moment and I am happy to continue on with my weekly tasks after Easter break. I hope everyone will enjoy this break as we all need it. Thank you, Denis.

Hi all, This week I have written my introduction and conclusion. I found it quite difficult to plan this out as I don't know how to write a conclusion or introduction. for now I have written this for the introduction: "The point of this paper to simply to build your knowledge around “Game Progression”. This paper will be split into 6 different section. Each individual section focuses on a different part of Game Progression. Some topics found in the paper are Key elements of Game Progression, Automating Game Progression and more." My conclusion is: "As the research has demonstrated engagement, education, automating level up design and the balance of relaxation and hard tasks play a big role in Game Progression Mechanics. Therefore, Game Progression is very complex and important when it comes to Game Development." I hope next week I get critical feedback to be able to fix both my introduction and conclusion. I also hope that I will get some beneficial tips and rea...

 Hi all, This morning we have finished our game! This week we have added a background song and sound effects to the game. I really liked doing this part as I believe it brought the game to life. Sound really makes a big difference. Before the all the audio was added the game was playable but it didn't feel like it's there until the audio was added. Those are the audio files from this project. Screenshot of my project files. We also build our game which is basically exporting the game to play it from our desktop. This was really cool and I am very happy to finish Unity tutorials! Now I need to crack on with the reading task so I shall see you soon. Thank you, Denis.

 Hi all, Today we have done our second last tutorial of Unity! This week we have added in a health bar for our player and a new character. The bar looks great and I was happy to learn how to do one. I am glad I got to do one and see how it works. Screenshot of my own work. The bar was very simple to do compare to what I thought it would be like. I am very happy to be one week away from finishing the Unity tutorials.  I struggle with the animations to get it right so that took me quite a while to do for my new character but I managed it at the end! This is the first game that really feels like a game from all Unity tutorials we have completed so far.  I will see you all next week when I get to finish up this game! Thank you, Denis.

 Hi all, As for this week I have continued on with the themes I have found throughout my reading. I had to write a paragraph on each different theme. I found this very challenging as I'm not the best in this area. I am happy that I get the chance to work on this as I would like to improve.  The paragraphs I have wrote are just drafts until I have to write them into my bibliography. They won't be in this order nor wrote the same way as I will tailor it to fit it right. This task helped me understand my readings more as I have to really think and take out what was the most important point in each writing. this is a screenshot of what I have so far. This is a screenshot of my own work. That's all for this week. I hope you all had a great weekend and see you next week! Thank you, Denis.

 Hi all,  Today I have completed the Unity tutorial for this week. The tutorials are frustrating at times but we got through it. This week we have learned how to make the camera follow our character, add particles and more. I always wondered how the camera follows the player and now I got to do it myself which was pretty cool. Anyways, this week I ran into an issue where the player was stuck outside the map when playing but thankfully that was fixed. I don't really know how it got fixed but it work now which is the main thing. We also expanded the map so the player has more room to play in. This is a screenshot of my map. This is a screenshot of my own work. I honestly can't wait to finish the Unity tutorials. There are three more to go! That's it from me for this week. I will see you guys soon! Thanks, Denis.

This week we have broken down my research articles into 6 themes. We had to break down our writings into sentences to shorten it down to find the themes. I have done that before doing my own writings. I found shortened the articles into sentences to help me develop them in my own words. Using those notes I have and rereading my writings I came down to the following themes. The link between Game Progression and Engagement Automating Game Progression Difficulty balance within levels What is Game Progression (Key Elements) Implementing education (eg. chemistry) within game progression The difference between Progression and Emergence Those themes and note will help me write my own bibliography.  I will see you all new week. Thank you, Denis.

 Hi all,  Today we are back with a new Unity Tutorial. This week we have worked with some animations, frames and more! I found this weeks tutorials very stressful and nerve-racking.  I don't enjoy developing games in general. Sometimes, I find the steps very confusing and unclear. That really puts me off about working through this. I was very happy to finish and I hope next weeks tutorials will be easier to understand. I will see you all later! Bye, Denis.

 Hi all, today I went deeper into "Progression Mechanics" and I found four very helpful articles. The first one is called " A Tool for Evaluating, Adapting and Extending Game Progression Planning for Diverse Game Genres " by Katharine Neil, Denise de Vries and Stephane Natkin. This article about automating game progression in early stage of designing and developing a game. This article links in with a piece of writing from last week called " Automatic Game Progression Design through Analysis of Solution Features "  This article is based around the game progression tool used in the game "Refraction" (by Butler, Smith Liu and Popovic). They believe that "Refraction’s progression tool approach can be applied to the progression design challenges of games other than Refraction" (taken from - 2 Research Objectives). To test this out they have used three different genres of game, "a top-down shooter with puzzle elements, a casual strategy...

 We are back with the Unity tutorials as usual! This week we went more in depth with coding. We added enemies, danger zones and more! I will admit I got stuck at some parts of this tutorial and I had to go and look up solutions for the issue I had. Now it was very easy and I felt stupid for not realizing sooner. The issue I had is finding the "CollectibleHealth". Moving on from my frustration, going through the this weeks tutorial is making the game feel more like a game with the obstacles and enemies.  One thing I am really curious how it will work is the water/lakes in the game I wonder is there will be animations of either swimming or drowning. Also the vent makes me wonder if you can use it the same way you can in the very popular game "Among Us". As in you can hide in them.  My game looks like this so far! This is a screenshot of my work. If any of you are doing the same tutorial please share with my how your getting on by commenting on my post! I will see you ...

 Hi all, today I have started doing my research of reliable sources on Progression Mechanics in Game Development.  I have to say this was a very difficult start. I really did struggle find information on this topic and using the TUD library. I have gotten there in the end, thankfully.  For my sources, two of them are from the library and one I found on Google Scholar. I found Google Scholar easier to find information on. I only decided to use it as I felt like I couldn't find anything else on the online data base on TUD.  My first source is called "The Mario Brothers are Unfair: A study on Sense of Progression in Computer Gameplay" by Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017. This was a great piece of writing to start with as it is about why game progression is important. To take out the important bits in this piece of writing I have used the highlighter on the PDF file and my notebook to write point as I read through it so I can look at my points and understan...

 Hi all, I'm back with a new Unity 2D tutorial. We continued on where we left last week. Completing this task I learn how to work with Rigid Bodies, Box colliders for a 2D game and some script. This was challenging at this as there isn't a lot of videos to explain the steps. The script was short and easy to understand.  Screenshot of my own work. As you see there isn't much going on here but it helps the game run the way is meant to. I also learn how to make "Ruby", the player sit being boxes as shown. Screenshot of my own work. I really enjoyed this part of the tutorial as I really like when a game is as realistic as possible and I believe that if there is a box the player shouldn't be able to walk over it like it is not there. This week was the tutorial was very short gladly. This will give me more time to focus on the reading task.  I will see you all next week for the following Unity tutorial.  Thank you, Denis.

 Hi, today is my first day doing a tutorial. As I was saying in my previous post I will decide what I will go with in this post. I decided to go with the 2D tutorials as I think it will be easier to do. I have to say game development isn't my thing but I'm still excited to learn about it. This week we started by an introduction tutorial to 2D game development. The tutorial we done this week is  Ruby’s Adventure: 2D Beginner .  This As I started working thorough this tutorial I realized that it is very different from last semesters. There are very little video instructions and more written. I found it pretty hard to understand the tasks at times but I got through it.  This is an image of my work so far. This is a Screenshot of my own work. This weeks tutorial didn't include much coding which I was very happy about. I am excited to go further into this tutorial. As usual I will see you guys next week! Thank you, Denis.

 Hi we are back with another series of game development. This semester we will focus more on the research of game development. This week we have learned how to used the TUD source engine (online library). I found this very useful as it will same me the time of browsing on google for reliable sources. Also having access to e-book will be very useful as there is more in depth information on such sources. We all had to choose a section of game development which we will be looking into and learn as much as possible about it. I first chose the topic "Open World".  Unfortunately there isn't enough to write about this topic so I decided to choose "Progression Mechanics". I am waiting to speak to my lecturer about it and see if this will be a better choice. From having a look on the topic I found some keywords that stood out the most: Level Up Unlocking new skills Checkpoint Achievements Time We also have a choice of making a 2D game, XR or a e-learning project. At the ...

 Hi there, I have some exciting news for you!  I have finally finished my game. Now the game isn't the way I planed it to be as at that stage I believed I can get more done that I'm capable of. Anyway the game works which is whats important.  So, basically whats new in it is that the player cant choose between guns, theres no main menu when you get on the game and the game is based on points rather than a timer with different amount of targets. Theres a set amount of targets which is 7. Each target gives 5 points and when the player reaches 35 points is game over. There is also a restart button. This is how the game looks with the score at the top right of the screen. The game isn't as pleasing looking as I wanted it to be but is playable. Honestly, I'm really glad I got everything to work to say the least.  For next week I will be making a trailer or promotional video for my game which sounds but interesting and hard at the same time. We will all find out how I got ...

 As we got to choice to do any tutorial this week I decided to re-do the one from last week as I wanted to understand more about keeping a score. As i don't have time to create the game I wanted I improvised and I'm doing my game based around points.  I will have the targets spread around the map and the player has to take them all out to finish the game. This will give the game a start beginning and end. I found this tutorial very helpful and easy to understand. I like how it shows you how to place a menu to restart the game. As for now I will continue working on my game as I have a good understanding on what to do next and how to do it.  Thank you for your time!  Denis.

 Hi all, today I have made a new game using Unity tutorials. This game is very different from the other games as it is a 2D game. Following the steps I have learned how to place the score of the players progression as they play the game. I found this really useful as I would like to add something like it in my own game. I have also learn how to make a restart button which I think is essential in a game. I think having that button gives an end to a game. That lets the player know that they finished the game with a certain score. The game I created today is some what like fruit ninja but different. Instead of cutting fruits you click on the different object that shoot up from the bottom of the screen.  This is a screenshot of the game with some of the game objects and the game over screen. This is an original screenshot of my own work. I hope you enjoy this weeks Unity tutorial and I shall see you in a few days. Thank you, Denis.

 Today I have worked on my game.  I have decided to not make the doors open and close but to leave them opened to I can manage to finish the game mechanics done. I really struggle to do it all as many tutorials use different versions of Unity. As my work today I have added particles to the gun as you shoot and for next week I want to add an animation to the gun as it shoots.  I also added the damage to the shots on the target. As for now, it takes 5 shots to eliminate the target.  I also changed the target as one piece as I really want to finish this game by the end of the semester. I want to have a playable game by the end of the semester. Making your own game is harder and takes so much more time than I anticipated. So to have a playable game I won't achieve my plan and game idea I had at the beginning. This image shows how the particles look when shooting. This is an original image of my work The following image is an image of how the door will be in the game. Thi...

Another week, another Unity tutorial. This week we finished on the game we done last week and done a challenge that was similar to the game. The challenge is a football game where you are the goal keeper. The goal keeper or player is a ball and he/she has to protect the football balls from going in the goal. For the Unity tutorial we have added more enemies and "powerups" to the game. We also wrote a code that multiplies the enemies by 1 each time you eliminate all enemies. The tutorials and challenges are starting to get easier now that I started experiencing game development by myself by creating my own game. I started to find it easier what to do and when to do certain things.  My work of the Unity tutorial . As you see this game is very simple looking but fun none the less. I really enjoyed working on this weeks Unity task. Now I have to work on my personal game so I shall see you later during the week. Thank you for stopping by, Denis.

 Today I will not talk to you guys about articles or videos. I will talk to you about my experience with this course. This blog will include things like what was my favorite reading, my biggest accomplishment so far in this class and what I think of the reading task. So to start off with my favorite reading this semester. I really enjoyed the reading task from week 3 . Those articles and the video were about what is a game. I really enjoyed this reading task as I found it interesting. It made me understand what a game is made out of, the purpose of a game and how people working in this industry see it.  Moving onto my game project. I have a mixture of feelings about it. Thinking of me making a game and doing the Unity tutorials got me very excited about the idea but actually starting it I wasn't so excited about the idea as I found it harder than I thought and I'm worried about how far I can go with this in the period of time I have. I still want to do the best I can and I won...