Tutorial 02

 This week’s Unity tutorials were especially fun to mess around with. For the first part of the tutorial I had to decorate my own world for the game with additional assets of our choice. I was slightly confused by this since I recall last week needing to copy down a particular background when learning about tile maps.  I even checked  a few of the other blogs to see if I was on the right track, but it turns out we have full creative freedom for this part!

So, below you’ll find a progress of my game world so far. I say ‘progress’ because I’m quite fickle and will likely change things around quite a bit.  I wanted to include the steampunk factory mansion but due to the way I designed the tiles for the background, there’s no ‘space’ for it without the top of the mansion sticking out of the scene. I could have it floating on water but that would look pretty strange. I will definitely alter background before the next tutorial.

The first part of the tutorial showed how to change the drawing order of how Unity renders game objects using its y-axis. We were also introduced to adding and modifying Prefabs which I was familiar with from last semester. (You can tell I had fun with editing prefabs from the excessive red)

The second part of the tutorial was focused on Unity’s physics system and using the Ruby controller script from last week to have her collide with other game objects. Similar to what we’ve previously done, we added a 2D rigidbody component to our game objects. I noticed how detail orientated you need to be when designing for a 2D environment and how the interactions with different game objects occur to make sure the game-play feels smooth. 

Reading 03

 

For our reading tasks this week, we began to write our first annotated bibliography. I already had four sourced ready from last week but I decided to look for six more so I can have the required amount ready in case some of the reading material might not turn out to be useful further down the line.

I downloaded a pdf version for each of the readings I’ve done and brought them into Adobe Acrobat. Following what we learned from the lecture and the instructions on the website using the Three – Pass method:  I read the abstract, introduction and conclusion of the paper. I then highlighted and included notes and comments along the way. I repeat the process when reading the entire paper and wrote extra bits of information.  One  of  the reading material I including is a really interesting book by David Michael and  Sande Chen. However it’s nearly 300 pages long so it will take longer to collect information from. I may need to pick and choose areas that are the most relevant and interesting.

Screenshot of note-taking in Adobe Acrobat - Ger, P.M. (2014) eAdventure: Serious Games, Assessment and Interoperability. 

The entire process was quite long but the method helped me grasp a better understanding of the paper. Although I was able to write up the 4 annotated bibliographies with summaries I feel like I wasn’t able to round it off with critical evaluation of the source.   

Despite the detailed instructions on the website – which are very helpful, I also found this week’s lecture/session golden. Being able to watch and engage in the lecture gave me a kick start for what to expect and how to prepare. I hope these sessions will carry on where needed. Annotate bibliography can be found in the link below.

Click here to view working google document.