From Beginning To...

This week marked the beginning of my research for an online text book on Game Design and Development that our team has decided to write. Our aim is to publish the text book, so the writing and information should be academic, professional, and credible. My topics are 'Internal Economy' and 'Social Interaction Mechanics'. To start, I had to phrase these topics as a research question. "What are the uses of an internal economy in games?" "How do social interaction mechanics affect gameplay?" I had thought of using these as my questions, but after looking at what makes a valuable and useful research question that can yield interesting results for me and other researchers, I decided to narrow down the question. At first, I thought an internal economy in games was a money system. However, upon more research, I discovered that it can be any sort of resource which can be produced, traded or used by the player. Monopoly's economy is money, lan...

  I'm going to let my screen capture do most of the talking for this week. Please note that it's only that laggy because my computer can't handle running Unity and Screen Recording at the same time.  I've managed to add music, sound effects, start, game over, and victory screens, as well as a short Quest UI screen. A troll now features in my game, and getting the animations to work with my scripts wasn't easy, but it's done. Unfortunately, for some reason when I make it so that the troll animates, he can't deal the player damage. I've tried a few different ways of getting it to work, but to no avail. Another small detail is the fact that my players clothes are still quite... revealing. I've made my peace with this, and want to base the entire game around the fact that his trousers inexplicably have no bottom.   I am extremely pleased with how my game has progressed. I have spent a long time trying to make it as good as I possibly could, and...

This week, I needed to add some more UI to my game. This included Start and End screens, and a quest system. I turned to Brackeys once again to guide me through the process. I tired to implement Brackeys’ simple quest system into my game. I created the UI template, and started with the coding. However, as his game is a UI only game, I found some of the code hard to follow and adapt for my own uses. Coding is one of the things I find hard to do independently, and I cannot yet create original code as I am very unversed in the C# scripting code. Another tutorial I tried to follow was by GameGrind. So far by the end of this video, nothing clashes, but it’s only the start of a series. Nothing functions yet, but because it hasn’t called other elements from the rest of the GameGrind RPG series, I am hopeful that this system will integrate more than Brackeys one did.  This is one of the toughest parts of development so far. Because it is a different series than the rest of ...

I won't be winning any Graphic Design awards for this one Source:  Quotes Cover   This task was to create a motivational acronym. One thing that motivates me is to be spurred on by challenge rather than apprehensive of it. The things that I have achieved by simply trying again are far more than the things I have achieved by getting it right first try.   Unfortunately, my image of mountains in the background was hidden behind a pay wall. I would have tried anything for those mountains... Except pay for them apparently. - Ultan

Now Google knows where I... Ah, come on. They already know everything   I find it interesting how simple things are now. Adding an online, real time map to my blog post was as simple as copy and pasting. I wonder about all of the nerdy computer engineers from the 20th Century who had to code onto physical dockets and what they think of all of this.    

  Two tutorials that were vital to me integrating the graphics into my game were by Sebastian Lague. I was able to use his Blender files to implement a customisable character, and some animated enemies too.   This episode brought in armour and clothing into my character. I was able to set up scripts for default clothing, and create armour pickups that I later combined with my inventory. Some troubles I had were to do with importing from Blender. My character only had half of a shirt and pants due to an error with mirroring. I was able to figure this out, but still have problems with clipping on the clothes. I followed Sebastian's steps to create a code that changes the weight of the body skin depending on the type of clothing the character wears. However, his fix did not work for me, and the clipping still occurs. This is a minor issue, and all of the other features work great.   I was able to bring in an animated enemy mesh and add some health bars to the UI...

  One article that I have read this week is " Into the Woods: A Practical Guide to the Hero's Journey " by Bob Bates. He explains that the hero's journey is important because myths are important. They are tales that teach us we should act in day to day life, and the morals that we should adhere to. Myths actively guide our actions, whether we are aware of it or not.   Myths influence our: Personal Identity Communities Moral Values Mysteries of Life and Death   Humans have survived by their communication of dangers to their kin and tribes. When they learned of danger, they would avoid the danger where possible, but also make others close to them aware of the danger, and they would live longer as a result. Myths and parables do the same. They spread awareness of dangers, and teach people how to avoid them. Even personal dangers such as greed, jealousy, wrath, gluttony, pride, lust and sloth are often warned against - more commonly known as the Seven Deadly S...