Free Unity Tutorials

Screenshots of youtube

For this week unity tutorials, i was mostly focusing on looking for videos that contained free assets that I can use for my game, especially the landscape elements like stones, trees, bushes, caves, surfaces, textures and so on. I went through a lot of videos because each of them contained something new and different and was used in a different way. Even though there are a lot of free assets in the Unity Asset store, you can sometimes find unique textures and assets in description of videos. Also, when you get to see the assets in action, you get to see which ones are worth downloading and using for my project.  

Since I'm working on my game now, i am more concentration on actually making my game rather than looking for tutorials because when I will have my level one, I will then be able to see what I'm missing and then i will look for the tutorials on missing components. 

I went through this really short tutorial on how to add in a minimap to my game, so that the player can know their location within the map. Also it adds a bit more to the Head Up Display to make it look like a real game. 

Games Testing

This week's reading is Level 11 "Testing" and it discusses the general idea of playtesting. There are a few different types of testing and they are all very important tasks at a certain stages of development. It's important to critically test your own game to see the obvious errors and bugs, then fix them on your own. Next step is to try and give your game to other game designers for testing. You should set up certain conditions for the playtest to get the precious information that you need. Then, you give the game to the gamers. This type of testing is very different from the game designers, as you will see how your game is experienced first hand by the real audience, but you as a game designer need to realize that gamers' feedback might not be as accurate and detailed. There are few different types of testing, like the bug testing, focus, usability, balance and fun testing. 

Bug Testing - used to find any bugs and errors. 

Focus Testing- used to determine the specific target audience. 

Usability Testing- used to see if the players can control the game. The testers are usually given tasks to complete.

Balance Testing - used to spot the unbalance in the game - like overpowered classes or tools, as well as to test whether someone can overcome or cheat through barriers. 

Fun - used to see whether the game is fun and enjoyable. 

Testing can be done by you being present so that you can take notes and observe the testers, or without you, where you have very little control and the feedback can be very various. 

The other article for this week talked about constructive criticism and how to give it to other people. 

Also i include a link to a short video that explains a playtesting. Just click on image source. 

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Unity Free Tutorials

For this week Unity tutorials, I finished all lessons by Jimmy Vegas. The first video was about post processing and how it changes the way the game looks. That lesson was very interesting because of the possibilities post processing script gives us. First of all, its free to download from the Asset Store, secondary its really easy to use because you don't need to code anything. There are settings like the Bloom, Anti-aliasing, Motion Blur, Color Grading and few others. They are very powerful options as they completely change the look and the feel of the game, so I would recommend to everyone who is reading my blog to watch the video. Because game is not only the mechanics but also the graphics, and post processing can change any scene into an genre you are looking for, like horror, fantasy, etc. Also, it gives you possibility to change the settings during the game view, so you can full control in game of how it looks. 
The last video was a review of the previous episodes, but in a different way with more details. Also in that video, he showed us how to create a script for opening and closing doors, based on a previously written gem script, only slightly changed. Overall, those two videos are related to my project and I will try use them in my game. 

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Games Stories

 Articles for this week talk about stories and how they are used in games as a very important aspect. The article mentions three writings that are often used by game designers when they are creating story for their game - The Poetics by Aristotle,  The hero with thousand faces by Joseph Campbell and Story: Substance, Structure, Style and Principles of screen-writing by Robert McKee.

The Poetics talks about writing a tragedy - a serious, lifelike story. It has nothing to do with poetry.

The Hero with Thousand Faces goes through a journey of a hero. The author studied a lot of myths and histories, and found out that they all follow a certain action pattern, which he writes about in his book. 

And finally, the last one is more useful for screen-writing, but can also be applied to games. McKee basically rewrote Poetics in simpler language.

All three provide information that are quite useful, even if not directly related to stories or games themselves. The two extra articles just further expanded on the two ideas in the first writing, so one was about the journey of a hero and the other was about the stories in general and how to add them in so they make sense and are understandable to the players. 

Overall, I enjoyed reading the articles. 

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Week 8 Progress

The last reflection post is about progress. In general, I can't say that I'm happy with the progress I did in Unity tutorials, even though I did them and learn something small from each, but I feel its not enough for my game project, so I am looking forward to going through more Unity tutorials which will help me further develop the game into something playable. I have huge overload of work from different modules, so my weekly routine is changing from week to week so I can get all the projects done. There are no class assignment in this module, as everything we do is through blog, but my favourite post type are the Unity tutorials, because I feel like they are useful and related to the game developing, unlike the whole blog writing, but if there were any class assignments in this module, I hope it will be something based on unity tutorials from different perspectives.
Looking forward, i would like to make some changes to the second half of this semester - like less blogging throughout the week, so we can focus more on unity and our game prototype. And instead of blogging and giving feedback through writing, we could do it during lectures where we could discuss each other's opinions, and lecturer could give us proper feedback too, so we would teach something and learn something. For the second semester, I hope we won't have any groups for assignments. Also for the second semester, I hope we will have a clear picture of our end project at the start of the semester, so we can plan our actions ahead of time, because I know second semester will be harder and we need to know what we are doing and where we are heading.

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Week 8 Comments and Feedback

Overall, I think the idea of getting feedback and giving feedback is bad idea, because none of us is professional or even close to professional, so what kind of feedback can i get from someone who knows very little about game design and otherwise, what kind of feedback I can give to someone when I know very little about games myself. 

When it comes to the blog comments, I don't feel that I am connecting with people through blog or comments, because right now, we have so many social medias that we use, and blogs are old-fashioned way to communicate. And secondary, I am not a fan of writing to people through blogs or social media, I am old style and prefer to meet with people rather than write to them, so I think the feedback comments should be moved to the lecture where we can talk and discuss it, as thats impossible on blog because people don't answer the comments. I don't think blog is a space where we get to know each other, because we had been forced to make it, and everyone has twitter, instagram, facebook and so on where you can learn far more about them. 

Looking forward, all my thoughts are focused on the projects, so I can't even thinking about the future. All my aim is to finish all the projects and survive till new year. 

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Week 8 Reading and Writing

Overall, my thoughts about reading and writings are that I prefer to read rather than write. it was a lot of reading this semester that i liked and didn't like, I liked the themes of the articles, but not the fact that they were really old information and written in difficult language. Some of the articles were more aimed at professionals rather than the students, so sometimes I caught the idea of article, but not the full meaning.  My favourite article was about MDA game structure, because it was very informative and showed basic plan of a game designing. So that article gave me a basic structure for my game and that was the first step to creating my game. When it comes to the reading notes, I usually try to highlight the most important informations in my blog posts so I can refer to it later on, so I think that is the only positive thing about writing the blog, you have all  important information in one place.

Some articles I found difficult to read, so I decided to google the overall topic and find articles that are newer and easier to read, usually written by young game developers who try to make the topic understandable to everyone. I also included all the extra  resources I found, in my blog posts. When it comes to my game project, since the beginning it was going bad for me, because I didn't know the final aim or what my project should look like, but after speaking one on one to my lecturer,  I started to understand it better.  Now I have a clear picture of what my project should look like, so my biggest accomplishment will be to make the game I imagined and pass this semester.  

This is an image I used for my MDA post, I like this picture because its simple and the concept shown represents the game mechanics. It is also easy to remember because it is all showed on one picture that is colorful and easy to remember . 

Looking forward, to continue watching the unity tutorials and making my game. 

Unity free tutorials

For my unity free tutorials, I decided to stick to Jimmy Vegas and continue with his series of tutorials because I find them easy to follow and its only 15 of them so I decided to finish them all, because it still has content that will be relevant and useful for my project.Today, I went through two tutorials. In first tutorial I learned more about colliders and how to animate action through the animation bar and how to script that action further. The example in this video was animating and scripting door movement. It was a similar script to the gem collecting, but this time we used a lot more colliders and animation. The second video talked about the particle system and how to manipulate it, and also how to add in more trees and nature into our world. I really liked the particle system and will use it for my project as it is easy to use and can give many different effects to the scene. The two videos were very useful, as they relate to my idea for the project. In the video, I also learned that the particle system is not only useful to create fog, but also fire, smoke, explosion effect, water, rain and so on.

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Game Fun

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After going through this week's readings, I learned more about different types of fun and different types of players. The article goes into a lot more of details about "fun" than the MDA Framework which we read for one of the previous weeks.

Starting off, this piece goes through the standard 8 "funs". The Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression and Submission are the main ones, but, as the author said, the list isn't completed and there is so much more going into it. The other four types found in games are: 

Collection. This is the “gathering” part of hunting-and-gathering, so you would expect it to be fun. In many board games you collect resources or tokens. Trading Card Game players collect cards. 

Spatial Reasoning. Primitive humans needed to figure out spatial relationships in order to build useful tools (for example, if you want to find a big stick to make a crude ladder or bridge, you need to be able to estimate length; if you want to stick two pieces of wood together, you need to be able to figure out how to make them fit). Many games make use of spatial relationships, from Tetris to Pente.

Advancement. The skill of learning new skills, which is obviously useful to a primitive human that needs to learn a lot of skills. We see this formalized in games all the time, from the overt Experience Points and Levels to finding new items or buying new weapons that give us better stats or new capabilities.

Finding Shortcuts. Finding novel, undiscovered ways to work around problems in ways that take less effort than normal helped primitive humans to conserve their energy; in that sense, laziness can be a virtue. Ironically, in games, this often takes the form of deliberate rule-breaking and cheating.

Griefing. Like other forms of competition, putting other people down is a way to show dominance and superiority over your peers. 

Sadly, you can't just create a game which contains all the types of funs and hope it will work, because they all work in a combination with each other, so its something that a game developer needs to be mindful of. 

Another thing that the article mentions is the types of players. Achievers, Explorers, Socializers and Killers.

Game Brainstorm

For this post, I would like to discuss the four game ideas which I was thinking about for this module. 

1. Racing game - I was thinking to create as simple as possible racing game with gokarts, something similar to Mario gokarts. I could make a racing track in an oval shape with two competitive cars.

2. City-Building - My second idea was to create something similar to Age of Empires(1996), a simple building, economical game.  

3. First-person shooter - The third idea was to create a first-person shooter, because I been playing a lot of shooting games like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and my first shooter game, back to 1994 is Contra where two persons go through different screens and shooting enemies.  

4. Sport game - I play Fifa and NHL, NBA and other types of sport games. so I'm interested in this type of games. So I was thinking of creating something similar, but I have no previous knowledge in advanced programming. 

In conclusion, as an experienced player who had been playing many games for many years, I have lots of ideas about what I would like to create, but for the start I would like to create something simple like a 2D game which I used to play. 

Game Design

For week 2, I had to read through two articles. One of the articles was about Euro games, also known as german style games.
This is what makes a Euro game:

1. Rarely take more than an hour to play - they are quick to play. 
2. Simple rules - so that everyone can understand and play. 
3. Only a few plausible or reasonable choices each turn - so people dont take long time to make a decision. 
4. Uncertainty of information - you can't calculate your decisions.
5. No player elimination - nobody loses. 
6. Very pacific - instead of destroying other players, you stop them from improving. 
7. Player interaction without overt conflict.
8. Short intervals between playing ("down time") - again, so it doesnt take too long to play. 
9. There are not many pieces—cards, counters, etc.—for a player to manipulate in a given turn.
10. Great visual interest.
11. Abstract to the point that the "theme" appears to be tacked on.
12. A dislike of dice.
13. Positive scoring mechanisms.

The second articles I read was "So You're Going To Make A Game For The Very First Time?". This article is more about making the game for the first time. 

•  make a tabletop game, or use a simple level editor to modify an existing videogame
• make something based on a game you know
• reign in your ambition--try to complete a small project, not a large one
• focus on gameplay not prettiness or story
• play the game yourself before anybody else plays, even if it isn’t intended to be a one person game
• teratively and incrementally playtest and improve the game
• your never really finish

Unity Tutorial 05

Hi , in this blog I will continue to tell and describe what we have learned new and how it will contribute to the creation of our game. So let's start with what we learned from Unity Tutorials 9 - 11. In first video, we reviewed and learned new game elements such as:         Skybox,Lighting and Wind zone. Very interesting video about the creation of the sky in the game and how you can use the light settings to choose the desired shade or to balance the light or change it to another. We also learned how with the help of Wind Zone settings you can change the strength of the wind, its direction and intensity.  In the second video, we learned how to pick up any object in the game, example weapon. And using the example of the script from the last lesson(gem picking) we went through step by step  how to do this in different way. Also we learn from this tutorial how to Fade in the scene trough Animation and script. In the last video, we learned how to fix bugs in game trough
script, also we go over and repeat whole process of adding a new texture(grass,bushes and House) and also we finish Fade out screen same way as we did in previous video, trough scripting. 
   

My practice field

Games Decisions

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   This week's articles are about in-game decision-making, flow-theory and cozy games. The first of two goes through types of decisions in game, and splits them into two categories: the good and the bad types of decisions.
Good types of decisions are the ones where player can make a decision with the knowledge that they have and feel in control of the consequences. The article mentions things like dilemmas, short-time vs long-time and risk vs reward as good types.
The bad type is when a player has no knowledge to make a decision or when the decision makes no difference in the gameplay, so meaningless decisions, blind and obvious decisions are considered a bad type.

The second article was about cozy games which I didn't understand too well, because I don't think the word fits very well.
Cozy games are the ones that give the player feeling of safety, softness and abundance, while keeping the game in bright and vibrant color palette with relaxing ambient sounds and music. The examples given are Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley.

Unity Tutorial 04

The first thing I would like to note is that I prefer to perform the task in the form of a video tutorial more than text form so I was glad that we returned to a more understandable form of tutorials where at least you can see examples what you get on the screen in the process of doing it. To go through these three training videos, I continued to work on the same map as I had before. The first lesson was about how to create all sorts of different varieties of dynamic cursor and how to create and add more UI elements in to the scene. Also how to work with text and how to attach actually command button to a action. The remaining two videos were about how to create a weapon and animation,how to add sound to a swing,and how actually make that to work through scripting and layering. I went through all three videos tutorial, and did everything gradually, step by step , and I was glad that by the end of these tasks I had everything turned out and worked without errors.

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Games GDD

I have read the article, and found it interesting. The first part was about generating ideas and how to start that process. It mentions few different methods that can be used once the basic concept is generated, like starting with a game system, or aesthetics, narrative, market research or clone-and-tweak method.  Some other methods are to play a lot of games and think about them critically, or keep a collection of all the ideas.

Then, it talks about prototyping, and how it is important when designing a game, especially that it reduces the risks of badly designing. The more iteration you do, the better the game will get. When prototyping, don't try to design something beautiful and perfect - instead make it quickly, cut corners and don't include anything that isn't absolutely necessary. This means, you should protoype in paper, even though it has some limitations.

After that, the articles gives some examples.

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Unity Tutorial 03

I went through this tutorial from beginning to end, step by step, I carefully repeated all the exercises, but at the end my watches did not work. I checked everything one more time, but this did not lead to anything, the clock did not work. In the end, I checked everything with the already given script, but the error was not found. Therefore, I copied the script given in the task and it all worked


                              

Games MDA

I spent about 3 hours reading through the material. First of all, I didnt know what MDA stands for, so figuring it out was interesting. From the article, I found out that MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. Each of the three words has a definition mentioned in the article.
Mechanics - the rules of the game.
Dynamics - Describe the playing of the game when rules are set in motion.
Aesthetics - The player experience, so the effect that mechanics and dynamics have on a player.

Rules -> System/Behaviour -> Fun.

Properties of good game models:
Formal - Well-defined.
Abstract - Widely applicable.
Proven - Known to work.

There are 8 types of fun -
Sensation,
Fantasy,
Narrative,
Challenge,
Fellowship,
Discovery,
Expression,
Submission

I think the article was interesting because we are future game developers, so we should know the languge used. All diffeent professions have very specific language of communicating, so the gaming industry should have it too.  This will help us in the future communication with developers and understanding what they mean.

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Unity tutorial 02

Like in the previous post, I watched and followed the tutorials, but I came across some coding problems thought I am not sure, because Unity shows that the code is correct. The problem is after creating the gem and adding the rotation and collection script to it, it worked fine, but after installing the raycast script, the gem started to fly all over my world. I checked twice in unity, and the unity shows me that the code is correct but... it doesn't work. So I finished the tutorials with one unsolved mistake.

screenshot of my second steps in unity

Unity tutorial 01

I went through jimmy Vegas' tutorials and followed them step by step. I had some difficulties during the first three videos, as I couldn't find the standard assets. In tutorial, the standard assets were included in the installer, but in newer versions, you need to get them from the Unity asset store. The rest was fine, easy to follow and I quite enjoyed doing my first steps in game development as I have never done anything like this before.

screenshot of my first steps in Unity

Game Idea Research

My game idea is a survival/strategy city building.  I played Age of Empire and Civilisation since I was young, and I always liked this kind of games so I decide I will go with that idea. I would also like to do something like Formula 1 or Fifa, but I know it requires a lot of skills, so I decided to stick with my second idea. So my second idea is based on crafting, but I really like attention to details, so I would like to try to make a game full of small details that other games are missing. To expand my knowledge, I had a look at Forest Village and game mechanics. This is official webpage where I was checking information and mechanics. Also I been played this game for roughly 50 hours in total.

The mechanics I would like to include in my game are:
Building structures
Gathering resources
Maintaining body condition
Basically, all the surviving skills.

https://forestvillage.gamepedia.com/Life_is_Feudal:_Forest_Village_Wiki

Game Elements

The article I read was "Formal Abstract Design Tools" by Doug Church, from 1999. I really liked the article as he is mentioning a game that I played long time ago.  The Mario 64, or similar type of games that were popular at the time were based on fun, because popularity of games were just rising at the time, so designers weren't quite thinking about the financial aspects of creating. All games at the time were built on all the things mentioned in the article, but now, in 2018, everything has changed, the purpose of a game has changed, at least from business point of view, its more about the money than entertainment. The principles discussed and language used is still working for nowadays games, but on a very basic level. 

From the article I learned about 3 principles of a game, which I think are fundamentals for game development. Those are: 

INTENTION: Making an implementable plan of one's own creation in response to the current situation in the game world and one's understanding of the game play options.

PERCEIVABLE CONSEQUENCE: A clear reaction from the game world to the action of the player.

STORY: The narrative thread, whether designer-driven or player-driven, that binds events together and drives the player forward toward completion of the game.

I will use the knowledge learned from this article in designing my own game, while adding my own twists and aspects to it. 

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Time strategy

Source: Time strategy

I do my school work when I have time for it, as an adult I have many other responsibilities. I don't really plan out my days, but mostly I do my school assignments at the night time, because that's when I have free time and can concentrate on my homework. In first year, the time management helped us to improve our time schedule.

I read two articles - The myth of too busy and Time Management Tips for Creatives. I liked the second one because it was less strict and more informative as it gave step-by-step instructions. I think that time planning is very individual thing, as the same strategies wont work for everyone. So from my experience, it is better to work when it suits you rather forcing yourself to stick to strict plan.

Technology Tools

Source: Technology Tools

My first impression is that I never been blogging before so it is a bit weird and new for me, especially for gaming module. I would prefer to discuss rather than writing posts. I am very exciting about learning Unity3D and getting into game development part of the module. My goal for the end of the year is to produce some nice games. And to continue to preform at a good level and study more next year.

Assignments

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In this module, we are really responsible for doing the work, as everything is online and nobody is going to chase after us. The way the material is given to us, gives us more options to manage our time and work ahead which will help us later spend more time in other modules which is very good. The grading system, by my opinion, built well because it gives us flexibility to complete topics that interest us and it allows everyone to find the best way to pass the module.
I would suggest that lectures would be a meeting time so we can chat about our ideas and projects - of course only those who are really interested.

My introduction

Image: Introduction

In my introduction, I would like to write  a little about myself, what I like, what my hobbies are and why I decided to go to institute. 
I am Andrej and I come from Lithuania, but I been living in Ireland for 12 years. I had been working till 2015 and then decided I would like to go back to college and improve myself academically. I picked Creative Digital Media because I have passion in video and photography since childhood. My father used to do black-and-white photography which lead me into loving it. I also really like travelling - the last place I visited was America, Seattle to San Diego, it was a east coast trip. I am a nature-lover, and would love to live somewhere far from civilisation. I spent three great weeks driving through America and historical sites. 

My favourite subject last year was Photography, Animation and Video, and I did well in those subjects. I would like to continue to improve in those areas. In the future, I see myself as a movie director or an editor or a camera 
man, basically anything to do with video making. Also, I would like to do something with photography - maybe work for photo magazine or in a advertisement sector.

I am also a sportsman, I play football since I was 5 years old, mostly for my schools, colleges. I also play basketball, but I LOVE all sport activities. 

Workshop 01

Hi. The topic of the lecture wasn't entirely new to me, as I have a driving license for 18 years, so this exercise was kinda weird for me, but the whole idea of trying to think in steps and spreading the problem into parts was great. So many projects are ahead and that exercise will help us to dive in deeper into whatever work we have to do.
From my opinion, I would take something simpler to spread out into steps because not everyone has experience in driving, as most don't have driving license. From the driver' perspective, this was very simple junction. In this junction the traffic lights work the same way for the drivers and pederastians, as a car on the green light you able to go straight turn right and left, to turn right you must let pedestrians go as the have same green light to cross the street, to turn left you must let to pass a car which goes straight from opposite direction. But from the real life experience as a driver I will suggest to be more careful when driving, because not every one still knows properly driving rules. I don't like to write at all, specially when you can just explain verbally, but I like the main idea of that exercise. Sometimes the problem looks difficult at first glance, but once you break it into steps, it becomes easier. So I am looking forward to using this technique in my future projects.

https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/a/angry_drivers.asp

                           

favourite game formula 1

https://cpygames.com/f1-2018-cpy-crack-pc-free-download/

I really like watching Formula1 because of the speed and adrenalin, so I really enjoy playing the game.

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Hi people I'm in