Game design document

This week I made a game design document on Dundoc. I have never used or even heard of Dundoc before so I did find it a bit confusing to use. I tried my best to fill in as much into the site map as I could and I am happy with what I have produced. It was really difficult at first trying to wrap my head around everything and understand what I needed to do but once I start writing and thinking clearly I

I found some of the headings and areas of the sitemap to difficult to do and to understand so I would have to just leave them for a while and try and come back to them with a more clear mindset and information on what the sitemap was asking me to write and document

Once I was settled and understood Dundoc I found it really easy to use and quite useful. It helped me to flesh out my game idea and think about what I could possibly ad to my game to make it more exciting to play, it made making a game design document easier and interesting.
Dundoc Document

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Unity Tutorial 4

This week in the unity tutorials we were using raycast again and how to make UI elements, I really liked using unity this week as I find I am becoming more accustomed with using it but at times it still proves difficult. I became familiar with what an action key/text is and found out how to use them efficiently.  I enjoyed adding in the cursor elements I thought it was interesting, it was good to learn how to create an action and have it display.

Adding the raw image to the cursor was fun to do but got a bit confusing as I kept going wrong when following the steps but learned along the way. I then created the C# script for the the gem that was was collected by using an action. The tutorial then went on to explain more about variables and I enjoyed working more with the c# script this week. It was interesting to see how the code works and just how important it is.

I liked how in the tutorial we learned more about adding in the environmental elements, this is such an important thing for me to know and learn and I found it easy enough to follow along with the video. Adding in the fence was easy enough to do and the instructions where clear. I really enjoyed learning how to create a weapon and then learning how to make it usable for the person playing by downloading the axe element. It was interesting to actually create it in unity and adjusting the sizing and making sure all the elements were there, I had to be really careful to not make mistakes or forget anything creating the weapon. Animating was fun to explore and learning how to record so it can either loop or just play once.

Adding in the audio wasn't easy to do because its obviously something I have never done before. It took me a while to really understand what I was doing and to wrap my head around why certain things were used. But I eventually was able to follow the tutorial and have a better understanding. The was a lot of C# script used in these tutorials which I was happy about because I want to be more in tune with using it.

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Games GDD

The Early Stages of Design Process outlines what we have to consider when making a game and how as we go on during this module we will learn more and more about the design process that involves so many different components.

The article I read was Design Considerations by Greg Aleknevicus. The article goes on to talk about rules for good design. Components is the first thing he outlines clearly. Greg gives good tips for example make the tiles smaller than the spaces it will be put on and to use shape and colour to distinguish pieces and to avoid clutter.

It was interesting to read about "The Box" and realise how important it is to a game and how many design elements are used for it. Greg goes on to talk about cards and that how most people think they are easy to make and this is why there is so many poorly deigned cards out there, he outlines how to produce a well deigned card with tips like have the index on all four corners, use large indices, use a white border and to include extra cards as replacements.

Theme was well discussed in this article. "The theme needs to work with the rules rather than against them" is something I will be keeping in mind. Rules are then played out and explained with tips on how to produce good rules first mentioned is blind test the rules which is a crucial step it will be of good assistance and is crucial, don't be intentionally vague with the rules this can ultimately ruin a game. There are many more examples of guidelines to follow though with when making rules. At the end of the article greg writes what he would like to see every company employ which is "Support your game online", "Make replacement parts available" and "Include extra components as replacements".

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Game Vision Statement

Record Scratch is a platform game created for PC, the game will see the main character played by you jumping from vinyl to vinyl across a musical landscape to collect prizes and reach new and different musical worlds.


The game record scratch is a exciting and innovative game that sees the main character who will be an average Joe of sorts jumping onto vinyls which act as stepping stones for the main character to explore the musical landscape and also collect prizes which will be in the shape of musical objects like a microphone, guitar and many more.

 The aim of this game is to not fall off the vinyls. The vinyls act as stepping stones for you (the main character). This game is about an average person wanting to escape the reality of daily life, the main character wants to escape their nine-five job and be someone else and be somewhere else. 

The character then decides to create his own world while listening to music, a world where music is the one and only important thing, where vinyls act as a path and music is constantly changing to correspond with daily tasks

Music is a gateway for many people it can be a way for someone to escape relax and think about nothing but the music thats playing. The game was created for exactly that reason want people to play this game and be transported to a new world where music is the absolute main objective.

 Record scratch will consist of different music genres because everyone is different and I want everyone to enjoy this game.

The game will be fast paced one slip up will cause you to fall from a vinyl and you will have to start the game all over again. 

There will be special vinyls available to jump on and if you jump onto them successfully you will win extra lives or a more points to add to your total.

This game is going to be new and exciting because there is no games like this on the market at the moment. 

It is fresh, enjoyable, fast paced and I think it will be exhilarating when its played because no one will have experienced a game like this before.

Key Features of the game include

• It is a 3D game 
• It will be enjoyed by all age groups
• its a Platform game with some adventure
• Lots of music
• A great story
• Goal driven 
• Simple but not easy

Links that were of interest to me

Linkedin

Pluralsight

Gamasutra

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Unity Tutorial 3

In this weeks unity tutorial the task was to create a simple clock that would display the current time. I found it a little bit difficult to follow the instructions at times and would find myself getting frustrated when it wouldn't be working the way it should. I did like that we weren't following a video this week, It was nice to have a set of notes and guidelines to go by and as I finished a step it was refreshing to just see the nest step written out in text.

Creating a game object was simple enough to do and was easy to understand. Creating the clock face was fun to do but it was kind of hard at parts in my opinion but I did liked doing it and putting in the different values. The periphery was interesting to make I liked creating a separate material for it and changing the colour. It was extremely difficult doing the next steps it took me a while to get an understanding of what I was doing.

Making the arms was very taxing to do but I am happy that I was able to create them cause at times I thought I wasn't going to be able to. Animating the clock was interesting cause I had to add in code which wasn't to bad because the code was provided so it was just making sure that I copied everything and that the code was in the right place and that everything that needed to work was doing what it should. Putting in all the code for the arms, rotating the clock basically making the clock perfect was painstaking at times to do but it was very rewarding when the code would work and the clock came together. I look forward to expanding my skills and hopefully becoming more efficient
with unity.

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Games MDA

The article MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubec. Is about the Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics framework. In the article the it goes on to explain everything about MDA and how each part plays a significant role in understanding games. MDA is helping us to better the experience of gaming as a whole and will then impact people to better their designs and research thats involved in every single game.
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The Vimeo video also went through MDA in more fleshed out detail which was good because it was nice to thoroughly go through everything step by step and helped me to understand what MDA was and most importantly what it actually stood for. MDA is a huge part of games it is basically games itself without MDA there wouldn't be games to begin with.
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Designing to promote intentional play the powerpoint was helpful to read because everything was nicely laid out. The powerpoint is about intentionality its the ability of the players to ache their own meaningful goals through understanding the game dynamics and make plans to achieve them using the information provided. The powerpoint got on to give examples of intentional gameplay throughout and gives examples of the tools needed.

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Feedback Strategies

Feedback is something that often times scares me it can be a daunting thing. I don't enjoy giving feedback most of the time because I can sometimes feel like I'm disrespecting someones work even when I know I'm not it can just in my opinion feel that way.

I read the article "How to give feedback without sounding like a jerk" by Adam Grant. I enjoyed this article because the author drew from his personal experience. The article also had helpful ways to give feedback that where simple and to the point. I like how the author said to explain why you are giving feedback, I think this is a nice example of how to get comfortable with giving feedback. Another simple point was to ask the person if they wanted feedback, this point is so important but something I think most people would forget to ask including myself.
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The next article I read was "The trouble with amazing" by Jennifer Gonzalez. This article was extremely eye opening because I found myself taking in this new way of thinking and giving feedback and how impersonal the word amazing is. This article shows how a simple word can be sometimes destructive. The word amazing I find is a word that gives praise when it wasn't needed its not specific. Gonzalez went on to talk about her experience with the word amazing and I found it quite relatable like many of us would.
Article

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Game idea research

After consideration and the game I have chosen is "Record Scratch". I think this one is my strongest game idea and the one I would be most interested in making and having fun with while experimenting and learning along the way.

Record Scratch in a summary is a game where a character is jumping/running from vinyl to vinyl through different music worlds for example rock and pop. There will possibly rewards to be given during the game when the character passes a milestone in the game.

I didn't really know what game mechanics where before I did some research on them and saw how many there are to choose from and explore. I want my game to be simple but fun, because thats what I like in a game I hate when a game has too much going on in my opinion a game can become boring very fast when there isn't proper structure to it or the mechanics are just thrown in there for no reason just so they can say they are there.

Mechanics I would be interested in adding into my game would be points/progression dynamic, level themes and lives.
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I think adding in the points/progression dynamic would really work for my game idea from my research I can see that it would fit into my game. I would like the points to be earned by maybe jumping onto a vinyl that is gold to represent its a milestone accomplishment for the player so they will get extra points and lives.
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Level themes is a game mechanic I am interested in the most but I'm not sure if it will be in my game at this moment. I would like to do level themes based on music genres, I think it would make my game stand out and be enjoyable to play.
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Lives would be a good mechanic in my game because I also want to have the points system in place. I would like the player to collect extra points from which they could get extra lives from. I would have the player start out with 3 lives and if the player loses them all they would  have to start the level from a certain point/milestone they have passed
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                                         Example of a vinyl that would be a milestone/prize

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Unity Tutorial 2

Unity for me is something that will take some time to understand and get used to using. I was luckily able to download onto my laptop without it crashing so I hope I will know be able to use it more easily than last week when it just didn't go well.

With this tutorial I learned more about adding code to your game. I found the tutorial really useful and easy to follow I did have to keep stoping and rewinding the video at parts and also sometimes the code just wouldn't be working so I would have to go back and fix my mistakes, which was good for me because I got to learn from my mistakes. The colliders are a bit confusing to understand but do able. I enjoyed learning how to add water and the walls but I don't think I will really be needing them for my game in the future.

It was fun experimenting with the cursor and changing it to how you would like it to appear in the game. Reycast is an important element to what will be my own game so I tried to follow the instructions as well as I could and understand what reycast is. I liked that you can change the reycast to what you would like the distance to be and that you aren't stuck with just one setting.

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Game Elements

When I was growing up I was never really into video games, the odd one I would grab my attention but I never knew just how much went into creating a game and how technical and intricate they are. Before today I would have never known just how much goes into creating a good game.

Something I really liked and thought was interesting is the waterfall method when it comes to designing a game and in general I don't know how I hadn't heard of it before but I like how simple it is but how important it is in order to design anything this method is crucial.
Waterfall Method

I found "Design Considerations" by Greg Aleknevicus very insightful and gave clear tips that will help me when I'm making my game and make the process much easier now that I can apply these tips. I want my game to be have colour and be bright and exciting to look at but I have a tendency to go overboard do I like that one tip is to avoid clutter I will keep this in the back of my mind while designing my game. The article had really good tips for if your game will include cards, I'm not sure yet if my game will use cards but it is a definite option. The importance of a good theme is absolutely huge when designing a game, I liked how he said "have the theme work with the rules rather than against" its so simple but a great piece of information to keep in mind.
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The next article I read was "Formal Abstract Design Tools" by Doug Church this article was a good read and had really helpful pointers and information. I like how the reader is urged to use multiple tools and to make it interesting for the player. The article goes on to use examples of Mario kart 64 I found this really interesting to read and try and understand. Tools can make a game great they can change a boring game into one that players will enjoy playing.
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"Feedback Thoughts"

Feedback is something I always in a sense kind of dread because all I think about are the negatives of feedback and not the positives. For years this has been my mindset and I would like to change that because I know feedback is a good thing but sometimes its hard to believe that.

The first article I read was "Neil Gaiman's advice on creative life". I really enjoyed reading this article becasue of how positive it was. Gaiman is brilliant at explaining the truth about mistakes and how they aren't necessarily a bad thing but a good thing that helps us learn and experiment. I will definitely take on what was said in this article, I usually only see the bad in feedback as I said earlier but I will now as Gaiman said "Make them into art". I think that mistakes are always categorized as these horrible embarrassing things and I have been thought that from a very young age thought school, but they aren't they can be an inspiring change and a learning curve in life.
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The next article I read was "Silence the critical voices in your head" by Sabina Nawaz. I took interest in this article because I thought reading it would benefit me and help me to change my mindset. I like how this article gave good and applicable tips to the reader. I enjoyed how there was an example of a real person who dealt with the troubles of the critical voices and how even when he was getting great and amazing feedback all he could focus on was the small fraction of negativity. What I will be taking from this article is to believe the positives and to hear them, I think this is something everyone should do.
Full Article

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Game Brainstorm/Ideas

Summer Forever
This is going to be a fun and simple game about changing seasons. The objective of the game is to catch the leaves that are falling from this huge tree before they hit the ground. If the leaves hit the ground the tree will start to change the leaves will start to change from green to orange which means that Summer is changing into Autumn and the player is losing the game. If the player hasn't collected enough leaves the tree will then loose all of its leaves meaning the player has lost the game. I think this would be a fun game to make because it could be seen as an educational game where it teaches kids about the different seasons.
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Record Scratch
For this game I came up with the idea that there will be a main character that is jumping from vinyl to vinyl and as the character is jumping and progressing the background will start to change around him, for example it would change from a rock music background with electric guitars and dark red colours to a pop music background with light and bright pink colours and so on. If the character falls off a vinyl it means the player has then lost the game and will have to start all over again. The aim of the game is to keep jumping from vinyl to vinyl and win a prize every-time the player passes a different background/genre. This game is a game that I would've loved to play growing up its fun and exciting which is why I would like to explore this type of game.
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Jump the Vine
This is going to be a game where the player chooses a character who will jump and climb up different vines to to get to the top of a mountain to win a prize and win the game. As the game goes on the game will become more difficult for example some vines will fall and other will be snakes that will send the character back to the start. Think this would make a good choose your own adventure game where the player can choose what they want to do.
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Quick Bake
This is a simple straight forward game. How the player plays the game is by picking the food they want to bake e.g. a cake of sorts and then all the ingredients for the cake are on the back of cards. The player will then have to find the ingredients by picking two cards with the same ingredient on it so they match and then the ingredient will go into bowl and the cake will start to come together. Puzzle games are the games that I played most growing up I think they can be an easy and fun way to pass the time which I like.

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                                                              My ideas coming together

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Unity Tutorial 01

This week I learned about unity before last week I had no idea what it was or how it worked. Unity from my small experience this week is a system we will be using to make our games. I first watched the tutorials which really helped understand and how to use unity.

I had a bit of trouble downloading unity every time I would try and download it it would crash and when I did finally get it to download it would crash again this was very annoying as I would be in the middle of following a tutorial going through steps and it would just decide not to work. I was able to create with the tutorials just not as easily as I would've liked.

What I did like about Unity was its set-up it wasn't too hard to understand and work with it of course was a bit confusing because I had never used it before but once I kept going back to the tutorials I felt more at ease.

I liked that in unity most of the tabs can be moved around and you can kind of create a workspace that suits you. I learned how to add in my different objects which was quite easy and fun to do and how box collider is used so a character can't go though an object I found this step interesting. I like how adding a terrain can make a huge difference to your game. There is so many different tools in unity it will take some time for me become familiar with all of them but I do enjoy using them and experimenting with them. I liked adding in the textures to my terrain it was nice to see it become more exciting to look at but I did find it difficult to keep adding new textures. I found it a bit difficult at first using C# coding but it will hopefully become more familiar to me in the coming weeks.

I found using unity at the start really frustrating because if you make a small slip up it can be really hard to figure out but I got used to it, I'm still not entirely comfortable using Unity but I look forward to using it more.

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Game Design

I have never before looked into all there is to know about game design. I liked reading these articles because it helped me to understand more about what is involved in game design and how much time and effort is put into making a playable and enjoyable game.

The essence of Euro-Style Games 
The articles all taught me something I hadn't known before I read them. Before today I had honestly never knew there was Euro-Style games. They don't seem to involve many elements which I like cause I tend to get distracted if a game has too many elements my attention will tend go to something else. I have now found out that I prefer Euro-Style games they are easy to play but also dont give the answers you have to make choices.

Pulling the plug in defence of Non-digital teaching and learning
I really enjoyed the article talking about how it is better to teach with non-electronic games to learn electronic game design. I fully believe that this is a great way to learn electronic game design because  I am. beginner and I feel like if I tried to straight away dive in and learn electronic game design electronically I would be overwhelmed and not be confident in myself. If I was too learn first with non-electronic games I would be more comfortable and be able to expand my skills and understand more about gaming in general.

So You're Going to Make A Game For The Very First Time
I also really liked the article "So you're going to make a game for the very first time". This article had so many informative and useful points of information for beginners like me. Something I will definitely be taking from this article to "reign back your ambition. I have a tendency to sometimes rush into things and make things too intricate, so I now know that this is something that could make me very stressed so I should go with the usual instead of the unusual as it will work more in my favour.

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