Analysis

From the lecture, I have learned how I was making mistakes and what to change from my writings last week. It is difficult to find readings on the topic that I'm looking for a lot that I have seen go off-topic. I have added more academic papers this week instead of websites that take longer to read however they have more detail than websites pages. When looking for academic papers it came upon a lot that I had t pay for some which were frustrating as by reading the first few lines it seemed that it could have been useful. After this week reading, I feel that I have learned a lot about different components that is needed to make a game and common factors that are in most of the definitions such as rules, goals,
and plyer. 

here is a link to the google doc with the readings in it 

Game Idea Research

 After thinking of the four games from last week I now have to decide on one which I will make and this is what I will be talking about in this blog post. From doing the second unity video on the plane and finding it difficult I had to think logically on what I will be able to make from the skill that I have now and gaining new skills in the upcoming weeks, I felt that the one that I would be able to make was the car one as what I have done so far is similar to the idea I had as the controls will include going side to side and jumping up using the arrows. In this game the player is the police car chasing the prisoner who robbed a motorcycle and is getting away. There are many different aspects that must be looked at before starting to make the game, to be more organized and know where everything is instead of making it up as I go along.

The first thing that I have to think about is the setting, I briefly said this in my previous post. It will be in New York after being there(before covid) I can confirm it really is the city that never sleeps. I thought that this would be a good setting as it will make it harder on the police because  there will be a lot of obstacles to try and get by and a lot of traffic that they will need to try and get by, these will slow the player down which will make it harder to win.  The image below is one that I found on google which is what I want my setting to look familiar too. An aspect to think about is sounding and what sounds there will be in the game. This is what it will be like when opening the game, there will be a sound of a police car, and the prisoner on the motorbike, as the game goes on there will be a sound of a lot of traffic noise such as cars beeping and car noises. When the car turns a corner the police car sound will be a loud sound of the car braking . There will also be some sounds of the prisoner laughing as he has gotten away.

Next is the characters, the prisoner will be in the stereotypical prisoner look which is wearing a black and white striped jumpsuit. He will be on a motorbike for all of the game unless of the off chance that it happens the police catch him. The policeman will be dressed in a police suit. 

Timer is the next thing to think about in game, the game will have a timer which will make it more difficult for the police to catch him.

How?  The main thing that I was concerned about was, how to make the setting as in the unity videos, I just have to import a file and the setting is there, but I did not know how. I did some research and found how to make a background.  Here is a link to a tutorial that I found on youtube how to add a background to unity from the start so I will look up images of New York traffic and import the image to unity. I will get a police car from downloading one from the internet and importing it into the game just like the car and plane from unity, this will be the same for the obstacles, in unity I had to add boxes and duplicate them to make a few along the path I will be doing the same for my game only it will be cars in the way. Here is an article on how to add a timer to unity. It says how I will need to make a new variable in the script to make a timer. This shouldn't be to difficult as in one of the unity videos it showed how to make a variable. 

“Feedback Strategies”

 The first reading that I chose was called "The mirror".  This article describes the mirror effect which is trying to grow a persons mindset by giving them feedback. It describes how a mirrors job is to reflect without ang judgement. It says "with a fixed mindset comes resistance to work hard or put in extra effort as there is no point". How saying feedback in the correct way can how improve a persons work. 

There are 5 different qualities of feedback that help develop growth mindset. 

1. To be specific, Step out they different steps that the person has done. 
2. Focus, Focus on what the person is doing, not pointing out all of their mistakes that they have made. 
3. Focus of process, Focus on the work that the person has done and the effort that they have put into it.
4. Transfer , Making sure it can transfer, without giving negative or specific feedback on where gone wrong, say it in a way that is not negative but they know how to improve 
5. 
   Take yourself out, To not use words such as "I think " or " I like how " as it is about pleasing people not feedback. Instead to use "When you". This is the most difficult step according to the paper.   

The next article was "The trouble with Amazing: Giving praise that matters"  by Jennifer Gonzalez. She describes her experience of being called amazing and how she felt that it is not really a word to use when praising someone, as she describes that she wasn't doing anything and was given "you ladies' are amazing". she says "she didn't feel motivated or amazing". She then describes how it in unspecific, that when using the word amazing, how is it amazing ? what is the person doing right to be given the word. Another reason not to use it as "it praises the person and not the effort" 

“Unity Tutorial 02”

Tutorial 1 Car- The first unity tutorial was a continuation of the car down the road. In the tutorials it was about adding variables to the PlayerController Script to make the car move by the arrows on the laptop, the first ones that were shown was how to move the side by side, and then once that was done it was side by side using. I usual take a picture of the script from the video on my phone so I don't have to keep clicking back into the video and try to find the spot that I was on. 

I found this video very useful as the game that I'm designing will have many of the features that are in this video. So I have written down how so I can go back when making as see how. 

Image if from google to show example of car 

Tutorial 2 Plane- The second tutorial was about an airplane I wont lie when I seen that we had to do things ourselves such as turn the camera around and reduce the speed I was a bit stressed as I didn't know if I was going to be able to do all of the instructions from just watching the videos of the cars. I had to re watch some of the videos from the car once or twice and had to look at the hints for some help. The tasks that had to be done in it was to move the plane forward and to add a script to change the propeller. Here is a screenshot of me playing the game 

Game Elements

  Reading 1 -The first reading was called "what are the qualities of gaming?". The article first starts off by describing the different descriptions of a game and how some are  very similar, the article then says how even though the description of the game may be different they all have the same elements. In the next paragraph is it about Atonic Elements these are elements that may help a designer see what other games have and how they can bring these into their new design to be such as engaging. Some of these elements include 

• Players
• Theme ( were is the game based) ( where is the player in the position they are)
• Rules 

Any there is many more, Next is about critical analysis and how this has a impact on designing a game. When hearing the word critical at first it may seem about something negative, however in this situation it is trying to make a game better by adding or removing to the game.  The article says breaking it down  into questions to ask someone who is making the game is the easiest such as what is the purpose of the game? is the game fair for both players and if find that something is wrong or seem incorrect to change it to try and improve the game. The article also says to keep asking "why is the game fun?". 

Reading 2- The next paper is called "game design research", it wen into a lot of detail about reseach and design.  The article discusses how game design could also become game research, as many designers actually do a lot of research in this stage to find useful information such as the target audience. 

Video-  The video is about prototypes. The narrator describes how the hardest part is the prototype stage as seeing if the ideas work or not, if don't have to go back and figure out why not. They discuss "primary aspect of the game" what is the players purpose in the game. They then say how instead of going straight into coding to save time can demo the game by cutting out pieces of paper or drawing it. They also show in the video, the designers trying out different version of the idea to see what one is the best and then start brining it into code. The designer also says "don't need ti think of an idea straight but see where it takes you"