All About Mimi

Prototype Today I am starting the coding of my game. First, I looked around youtube for tutorials I have changed my idea multiple times but finally decided on an Obstacle game. Unity I made my prototype I made a player using this tutorial. This Youtuber taught m ]e how to make my characters move from left to right. and at a constant speed, I need this to dodge the obstacles I am going to make. I attempted to create lasers for the obstacle but realized it was too advanced for my skill set. I have been finding it difficult to work the navigations on unity. It truly is like a foreign language. I have set ideas though and will strive to achieve them. I am going to focus on the mechanics of my player for now.  Through the trials and errors I have made my first prototype

 Games GDD Today we are learning about game design documents. Game design documents Are documents that talk about everything that goes into your game. There are two main reasons for GDD documents. The first is memory aid  Many important design decisions define in detail how the game works. Game development usually takes a long time, so if you don't write it down, you may forget your initial design decisions. Designers use design documents to document design decisions as they are made. That way, you don't have to solve the same design problem over and over again. Next, it is also used as a great communication tool. Teams often collaborate with many people to develop games, so we need an effective way to communicate our design decisions. Communication with design documents is not one-way but establishes a dialogue between you, the designer, and your team. By growing with the development process and creating easy-to-comment documents, you can lay the groundwo...

  Game Decision  This week we are learning about flow and decision making in game design. Flow is the psychological theory that we can adapt to create engaging and challenging games. This helps make framework of game play based on human psychology. The flow state is when a player is presented  with a challenge and they really engage with it. In simpler terms it is when you get lost in a game to a point where your sense of time is warped. An engaged player is highly likely to consume more, unlike a disinterested player who is more likely to forsaken the game all together. Flow progression has three stages. First a player is presented with a challenge. the way to go about this would be to create a challenge slightly more difficult than the players abilities. This is done using a flow graph. Players will quickly lose interest in games if success is too easy. If levels are too hard the player is more inclined to abandon the game. on the other side of the graph if a game is to...

 Game Fun  Tic Tac Toe This week we read about how games and fun coincide. Youtuber The Game Over-analyser discusses what makes a game fun, is fun a naccassity in game making? and how our brains react to fun. He first talks about the book 'Theory of Fun' by Raph Koster. Raph states that game needs a rich possibility space for learning and should reveil infinite depth and that is what makes it fun. He used the example Tic tac Toe and Go. Tic Tac Toe is simple with limited amounts of outcomes this makes it less interesting compared to Go, a complex strategic game that requires more mental stimuli meaning there is more for us to learn from.  Koster says we as humans are a "pattern recognition species" and that we learn in chunks stored in various patterns in our brains.any new learning situation  presented to the mind causes a dopamine rush, this is fun. Examples given were chess and poker. Chess teaches you strategy and oversight while poker teaches you probability and...

  Wikipedia Trials From Unity to VR For my first Wikipedia trial, I chose my starting point on what we are developing our games on;  Unity . I figured I should learn about the software that is necessary for me to create my game. Unity was announced and released in 2005 on the month of June at Apple Inc's worldwide developers' conference as a Mac OS X exclusive game engine. This cross-platform game engine was developed by Unity Technologies. The software's easy to use mechanics make it a great choice for beginner developers. A popular game developed by Unity is  Pokemon Go , which brings me to my next page.  Pokemon Go is a free play mobile game developed and published by Nintendo, Niantic and Pokemon. The game was made for Android and iOS devices. The aim of the game is to find Pokemon to capture and train them to battle against other players. By using GPS players can locate and capture Pokemon in real-world locations. This is called  Augmented reality . Augment...

Growth Mindset  This week I watched a TED Talk video on  The Habits of Original Thinkers , The talk was given by Adam Grant an organizational psychologist. Adam Grant explained three unexpected habits of originals.  This talk was very interesting. I liked the talkers delivery and his stage presence was engaging. I learned a few new things that I will take away with me. One thing I had previously known about was his statement on self-doubt. Being in a course where your own creativity is marked it defiantly is a breeding ground for self-doubt. I have had this conversation with some of my classmate's self-doubt is a paralysing mindset and can hinder your work if unchecked. What I didn't know was at the other end of the spectrum is Idea-doubt. Adam says that idea-doubt is energizing and motivates you to test and experiment. The key to changing your mindset from Self-doubt to Idea-doubt is to be content in the fact that the first few attempts will always be rough. This shift i...

Week 9 Reading and Writing Overall the reading I have been doing this semester has been really resourceful. I found it a very interactive way to learn about game development. It was a unique way to write notes, what I learned stuck because I had to write in my own words and opinion for the source material. I enjoyed the reading task more than others especially the Game MDA task. It was my introduction to the headspace and framework of a game developer. Hearing the intricacies of game development was interesting as I didn't think much thought of it before. The amount of detail and thought that goes into developing a game turned out to be way more than I had expected. The Game MDA really helped form a skeleton for my game. I used the three tools; Mechanics, Dynamics and aesthetics to really bring out the best game I could materialise. I have unfortunately fallen behind on some of my tasks which makes choosing my best accomplishments a little more difficult. Hopefully, I will use my r...

Comments and Feedback Throughout the semester I have been receiving useful comments from my peers. If it was not for the comments from my classmates I would not have been confident in my game design decision. I have stated before in my past blogs that I am not confident in game design nor am I a gamer. This made it difficult for me to even think of one game that would be interesting let alone four. Having classmates that are interested in gaming comment on my blog gave me the insight I needed for my game. I would give a high rating to the other students in my class. The types of comments I found most helpful were the comments for my first blog post idea generating. I was given the feedback to merge two ideas into one to give a more fleshed out idea and I really appreciated that.  I have been a little shy sending out feedback given my lack of expertise but have been commenting on other students introductions and feel I have been getting to know the other students better. Iknow see t...

Games MDA Games MDA This week we are talking about Game Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics framework. It is the most accepted game design. It was designed by Robin Et Al. MDA framework helps designers consider the players perspective as well as their own. This encourages experience-driven design. Aesthetic - "describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system". Aesthetics focus on what makes a game enjoyable in great detail. Through direct vocabulary eg. discovery, challenge, expression, a designer can understand what about their game is "fun". Dynamics - "describes the run-time behaviour of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each othersí outputs over time".Dynamics work to create an aesthetic experience eg. adding time pressure to a game creates the aesthetic experience 'Challenge'. Mechanics - describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algo...